A long night with Bob Dylan
It was an old voice at a new building. What could go wrong?
Bob Dylan, the poet of my generation, opened up the new Wintrust Arena, in Chicago's McCormick Place area. The building itself looks beautiful on the outside. It was nicely lit up in purple lights...very attractive. And then you walked inside and blah. Plain. To say it was vanilla would be dissing vanilla.
The city built the arena to give DePaul University basketball a new place to play, as well as having concerts and other events. The Wintrust Arena doesn't look much different than the Allstate Arena, in Rosemont, where DePaul has been playing for decades. There are so many nice new arenas that the owner and architect could have copied, that it's shocking that they came up with something so bland.
The good news is it only cost $173 million to build. Sheesh, you think there are any programs that have been cut by the city and state that could use a few million? Oh well, at least the Blue Demons have a new place to ball.
Now on to Bob....oh boy oh boy!
To say Dylan is a legend would be an understatement. When you get a chance to see a Dylan perform, you have to take advantage of the opportunity, especially if you've never seen him before. Let's face it, with the way musicians have been dying the last few years, you're never sure when it's going to be someones time. So for forty bucks, I'm going to see Bob for the first and most likely the only time.
The last few years, the reviews of Dylan's concerts have been horrible. For awhile he was just doing those standards from a couple of recent albums. Awful! Even on YouTube, they're unwatchable. But now he's mixing it up. Half classic Dylan, half standards. On this tour, his show is almost completely the same at each stop so you can check his set list and know what you're going to hear. The problem is the arrangements are different than anything you've ever heard, so it takes some time to recognize even your favorite songs. When you don't know "It Ain't Me, Babe", "Tangled Up In Blue" and "Blowing In The Wind", well that's not a good thing.
If that wasn't enough, the show was boring. Not a lot of energy from Bob or his band. He didn't talk to the audience...not a single word. Plus the acoustics were a little off. After each song, there was polite applause but I never saw the crowd get up and get into the show...not once.
I wanted to make sure it wasn't just me, so I talked to some concert going strangers to see what they thought. They said pretty much what I just wrote. The funny thing is all of us expected this and went to the show anyways.....and we got what we expected. As the last person said to me:
He's a legend and we had to see him. We're going home and listen to his records to remember what he once was.
There was one saving grace to the evening. The great Mavis Staples opened the show with a wonderful set. She's now 78 years old and you wouldn't know it by listening to her voice and witnessing her energy.
While Dylan doesn't talk to his audience, Mavis sure makes up for him. She talks about her more than sixty years in the business. She talks about singing with her family, The Staple Singles, led by her father, Pop Staples. She talks about marching in the south with Dr. Martin Luther King....getting arrested for marching without papers and going out and doing it again. She talks about being home in Chicago and how happy she is to be here...and you believe her.
Mavis did a fifty minute set that left you wanting to hear more...a lot more. She closed it out with her classic "I'll Take You There" and oh yeah, she certainly did. Her performance alone was worth the $40. If you ever get a chance to see her, GO!!! Mavis said she's not stopping anytime soon, so there will be plenty of chances.
So another one off the musical bucket list. Next month we have The Avett Brothers and Joe Walsh. I'm sure they'll be better than this one....they have to be.
Related Post: Do you have musicians you want to see before they die?