Memorial Coliseum, Portland
Saturday October 14, 2006
The Who had apparently played this windy hangar the night before Bob blows into town. And God only knows what they may have sounded like here – somewhat akin, you imagine, to a Korean nuclear test in some desolate wasteland, an infernal din, an improbably deafening roar.
The arena’s booming acoustics do no particular favours, anyway, to Kings Of Leon, who sound like they’ve mutated overnight into a thrash metal and playing in a wind tunnel.
The Portland crowd – a strange mix of rowdy types and more sedate old-timers – seem to lap ‘em up, however, displaying on the whole a vivid taste for aural carnage.
I can only think it must have something to do with the weather, which, come to think of it, is turning distinctly blustery, more typical everyone keeps telling me of the Pacific northwest than the balmy conditions so far characteristic of this particular trip.
Anyway, after spectacular shows in Vancouver and Seattle, Dylan and his band sound at first comparatively muted - far from subdued, just a little distant. Pretty soon, however, they are firing on what you might call all cylinders.
Mind you, not much less than the earth cracking open like a vent of doom and being sucked into the bowels of hell could fully have blunted the sharp edge of their peerless musical interplay, guitarist Denny Freeman on fire particularly and Dylan imperious.
And what a set list he has devised tonight, once again ringing enormous changes.
The opening five song salvo is quite unbelievable – “Tombstone Blues”, followed by “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”, a debut for Modern Times’ “Rollin’ And Tumblin’”, a scary “Masters Of War”, and a searing “Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again”. And he later throws in a blistering “Cold Irons Bound” – the only song featured so far from Time Out Of Mind”. Hell, I thought I’d died and moved to Kent.
And now San Francisco beckons. Time to get out of town, and back on the road.
Memorial Coliseum, Portland
Saturday October 14, 2006
Tombstone Blues
Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues
Rollin' And Tumblin'
Masters Of War
Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again
Just Like A Woman
Highway 61 Revisited
When The Deal Goes Does
Cold Irons Bound
Simple Twist Of Fate
Watching The River Flow
Workingman's Blues " 2
Summer Days
Encore:
Thunder On The Mountain
Like A Rolling Stone
All Along The Watchtower
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He is the most talented writer using the english language in all of history. After being a "dylan nut" for close to 45 years. Above all, it's his lyrics. Words have always been Dylan's strong suit, which has in turn earned him some pretty literary fans. Poet Laureate Andrew Motion listens to Dylan almost every day and picked the 1966 track Visions of Johanna as his favourite lyric. Specifically, the lyric-
"The fiddler, he now steps to the road
He writes ev'rything's been returned which was owed
On the back of the fish truck that loads
While my conscience explodes
The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain
And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain"
Which was the topic of a full page article in the New York times a few years ago. He (Andrew Motion) said the the line, "The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain
And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain" is the greatest line ever written in the history of English literature.
The problem or quandary is that in order to really understand Dylan's lyrics/music/poetry is to listen to, and read every song, album, writing, book, poem he has ever penned, and look up every word he uses to see what it means in context of how he is using it. For example, the song "you're gonna make me lonesome when you go" the line:
"Situations have ended sad,
Relationships have all been bad.
Mine've been like Verlaine's and Rimbaud.
But there's no way I can compare
All those scenes to this affair,
Yer gonna make me lonesome when you go." You have to ask who is Verlaine and Rimbaud? What was their relationship? How has dylan's been like theirs?
And that is only one line from one song. Also, dylan will never and has never given a straight answer to anyone about his work and I doubt if he ever will. If you want to know what he is really saying, it is literally a life long endeavor.
At the time, Dylan's lyrics had become pretty opaque, but as far as one can work out the song starts by describing a group of people in an apartment at night. The imagery is sumptuous with Dylan describing heat pipes that "cough" and the "ghost of 'lectricity" that "howls in the bones of her face".
The song features on Dylan's album Blonde on Blonde, which rounded off a string of three records in two years that chart his evolution from acoustic one-man band to leader of a fevered rock and roll outfit.
