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| My Morning Jacket |
First, let me be completely up front about this: I am not a Grateful Dead fan. I don't hate them, but very little of what I've heard of, or experienced, from them has caused that visceral excitement in my gut, or moved me on the deep emotional level that great rock music does. This isn't to say that I don't really like some of their music, "Friend Of The Devil" is absolutely beautiful, I've always enjoyed "I Know You Rider," and "Ripple" really hits me where it counts (though in the interest of full disclosure, that has a lot to do with its usage closing "Freaks And Geeks"). But in all honesty, I probably couldn't name 12 Dead songs off the top of my head. I saw them the last day that they played Las Vegas in 1995, a few months before Jerry Garcia died, but I wasn't impressed. Now, the few people who may be familiar with that story could try and argue that maybe my transmission going out put that concert in a bad light, but I would quickly point out that my transmission didn't go out until the drive home. My problems with the concert were this: 1. Who plays Vegas in the middle of the spring, when it's hotter than hell, and plays three plus hours in the daytime, ending when the sun goes down and if finally starts to cool off, setting hundreds of sunbaked, and chemically baked hippies loose on the strip? In the middle of the day there's no light show, just old dudes gently bobbing back in forth, for almost four hours. 2. They just don't rock. Period. How little did they rock? The opening band rocked waaay harder... and that was Dave Matthews Band! I mean, c'mon! If you're getting out rocked by Dave fucking Matthews, then brother, you are playing one puss-ass brand of rock 'n' roll. That said, again, I don't hate the band, they just don't cause any excitement in me at all.
So, now that you know my take on the Dead upfront, I'll continue. Weir comes out as My Morning Jacket start into "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" and I thought it was pretty cool at first. I'm usually down for rare pairings and special guests, so long as they deliver and don't use up too much valuable set time for bands with rich catalogues. They segued nicely from "Knockin'" into "I Know You Rider" and I got quite excited, singing along and whooping it up. I would rank that in my three all-time favorite Dead songs, so no objections. Then they did "Brown-Eyed Woman" which sounded vaguely familiar, and for the record, I'm also not one of those concert goers who only wants "The Hits" and opposes people trying new things live, so not being familiar with something won't put me off. Then Weir left and MMJ delivered epic versions of "Victory Dance" and "Wordless Chorus" before bringing Weir and Ryan Bingham out for a rollicking cover of Bruce Springsteen's "Glory Days," which was a total blast, but I will say this: seeing someone else perform that particular song really makes you realize that what really makes that song is the interplay between Bruce and Little Steven; the song suffers a little when you don't have those two unique personalities, but it was a fun cover all-in-all. Then MMJ did an amazing cover of The Band's version of the Marvin Gaye classic "Don't Do It," before closing with an absolutely amazing version of "Gideon". I was thoroughly impressed with My Morning Jacket's set and look forward to seeing their full show before too long.
By this time I was ready for Wilco! I personally think that they are the most important American band of their generation, and continually develop and grow with every album, the one exception being Wilco (The Album), which is the only album of theirs whose songs sound like they could have come from the leftovers from their previous album. I'm a big fan and always enjoy them live. The opening number, "Via Chicago," is always one of my favorite songs of the night whenever I see them, and this night was no exception. "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart" segued perfectly into "Art Of Almost" off of their latest album "The Whole Love". Richard Bowden joined the band on fiddle for the early cuts "Passenger Side" and "Forget The Flowers" off Wilco's first two albums, then came the building power of "Born Alone". When you see a band with the back catalog of Wilco try get shoehorned into a slot on the bill that allows them to play a little under half the show you would catch if they were headlining, there's always a little frustration, and I was really hoping to see them play as much material off "The Whole Love" as possible, however, I am very glad that if I only got to see them play two songs off the album, they were the two that got played.
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| Wilco |
By this point in the show, Wilco was in full rock band mode, bringing out John Doe to join them on the X classic "New World," before launching into the chaotic bombast of "Heavy Metal Drummer," "I'm The Man Who Loves You," and "I Got You (At The End Of The Century)." And then they brought out Bob Weir, and the rocking stopped immediately. It started out promising enough, Weir came out and the band launched into a beautiful rendition of "Ripple," absolutely no complaints there, it is just such a beautiful song. Then they went into a meandering twenty minute version of "Dark Star," and all momentum ceased. Tweedy did what he could to salvage the meandering nature of the song, working the most subdued version of "California Stars" I've ever heard from the "Mermaid Avenue" project into the middle, but like a flameless, flacid phoenix climbing from the proverbial ashes, Weir rose again and brought the band back into "Dark Star for another ten minutes.
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| Compulsive Noodler Bob Weir |
"Stop encouraging this band's gentle noodling!," I yelled, as the Weir-led Wilco launched into "St. Stephen." Well, perhaps launched isn't the appropriate word, as that implies some sort of explosive or exciting nature, but they played the song none the less, while I prayed for Weir to get his filthy hippy hands off of my rock 'n' roll. This would not have seemed like such a trying experience had it used up the last portion of Wilco's usual two and a half hour set, but when it takes up one third of the set that I'm most looking forward to in the only rock show I've been able to afford to see in the last two years, it makes for one giant wasted opportunity. This is valuable set time, after all, and without Weir's interruption, maybe Wilco could have played a song or two off of "A Ghost Is Born," "Sky Blue Sky," or "Wilco (The Album)," but noooooo, we have to waste time paying tribute to the sexagenarians in the house tonight. It also would have been more tolerable if all rocking hadn't stopped completely the moment Weir took the stage. For the finale, Wilco kept Weir on stage, and brought out Ryan Bingham, John Doe, and members of My Morning Jacket for a faithful rendition of Dylan & The Band's "When I Paint My Masterpiece," and apparently Dylan wanted nothing to do with any of this. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Wilco's set, I just wanted to hear more Wilco songs during the set.
Finally, Bob Dylan, arguably America's greatest songwriter took the stage. There are few artists more gifted with the combination of words and music than Dylan; you can count the American songwriters who could be in the conversation on a hand: Reed, Waits, Springsteen, maybe Petty & Byrne, but Dylan is the high water mark to which all other American songwriters are held to. Over recent years, Dylan's nasal drawl has become almost as gravelly as Waits, but without the fury of Heaven and Hell being forced out of his windpipe like Waits; Dylan's voice is thin and pained, and it makes the pain in his largely blues-based recent works very believable... to paraphrase, "These other guys are, I hate to say it, but they're a fad. When you've loved and lost the way that Bob has... you know what life's all about."
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| Bob Dylan |
Dylan recognizes his current strengths and weaknesses and plans his show accordingly. It would sound sad, a legend painfully trying to hold on to past glories, if he came out trying to replicate his greatest hits, espially when he has been putting out albums of fairly high quality since 1997. He knows the state of his voice and what the band he's assembled excels at, and gives the audience a slick, powerful evening of late era Dylan, with a small dose of hits and classics filtered in. In fact nine of the fifteen songs were released in the '90's or later, counting "Blind Willie McTell," which was recorded in the '80's for "Shot Of Love," but not released until the first release in the "Bootleg Series" in 1993.
Throughout the night Dylan interspersed recent gems like "Things Have Changed," "Love Sick," and "Beyond Here Lies Nothin'" with the much loved classics "Tangled Up In Blue," Shelter From The Storm," an earth-shattering rendition of "Desolation Row," and a virtually unrecognizable "She Belongs To Me." The latter showed Dylan's intention to remain true to what he feels as an artist, by continuing to explore variations in classic songs rather than just play it the way it sounds every other time you hear it. This was also evident during a ghostly softness of the set closer "All Along The Watchtower," with the band not really reaching full crescendo until the final few bars of the song. Every other band plays it that way; Dylan has no interest in doing what every other band does, which is precisely what makes this era of Dylan so enthralling. Even the encore showed Dylan's need to not succumb to expectations, choosing to close with "Ballad Of A Thin Man," rather than the more crowd pleasing classics, i.e. "Like A Rolling Stone," "Blowin' In The Wind," or "Knockin' On Heaven's Door," to name just a few. I've heard Dylan can be hit or miss live, but all three times I've seen him, ('95, '07, and '13) he's been extraordinary. I really hope that there are more tours like this one, with several great bands playing for an affordable price, without the atmosphere of a full-blown multi-day festival. Americanarama was a goldmine of a show, despite the gentle noodling.
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