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Sunday, August 22, 2004

Bob Dylan: Live And In Person!

From the Bob Dylan: Live And In Person! website, last night's setlist:
Lexington, Tennesee [Kentucky!]
Applebee's Park
August 21, 2004

Maggie's Farm
The Times They Are A-Changin'
Cold Irons Bound
I Shall Be Released [with Willie Nelson]
Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum
Stuck Inside of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again
Blind Willie McTell
Watching The River Flow
I Believe In You
Honest With Me
The Ballad of Hollis Brown
Summer Days

Like A Rolling Stone
All Along The Watchtower
I heard a lot of people complaining about his voice, and few people could understand the words...but it was fun.

From the Lexington Herald-Leader:
the master pop poet submerged the show in rock 'n' roll.

Dressed in a black suit and white cowboy hat, Dylan remained a mysterious presence onstage. He hardly spoke a word to the audience. He played a small, stage right keyboard instead of guitar. And his voice -- a scorched, raspy wail -- was positively ghostly.

But with the roar of a highly functional quartet to back him up, Dylan ran from the quiet and mostly acoustic menace of 1964's The Ballad of Hollis Brown to the dark, thundering twang (fortified by guitarists Larry Campbell and Stu Kimball) of 1997's Cold Irons Bound.

Best of all, the often detached Dylan looked to be having a ball as he flashed huge grins to his bandmates during the bluesy rumble Honest With Me. Such a moment hardly demystified Dylan. But it certainly presented him as an involved, invigorated and, yes, very human rock 'n' roll voice.
Willie Nelson was good, my wife and kids liked his set better than Dylan's.

We saw Nelson a year or two ago in Louisville, and this show wasn't all that different. Nelson plays his hits in almost sing-along style, and everyone has a pretty good time. He also played a couple of Hank Williams hits, which everyone in this part of the world learns from birth.

The warmup act was Hot Club of Cowtown, which played a lot of Texas swing. Not bad.

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