Bobcat Nation:
Memoirs of a Young
Bob Dylan Fan
by Adam Selzer
Contents:
CHAPTER ONE:
By Way of Introduction
CHAPTER TWO:
A Brief Dylan Bio
CHAPTER THREE:
I Was a Teenage Bobcat
CHAPTER FOUR:
The Old, Weird America
Dalton and Atlanta GA, 2001
CHAPTER FIVE
Love, Theft, and Those Dutch Sailors' Eyes
Nashville 2001
CHAPTER SIX
Adam and Mike's Excellent Adventure
Newport Folk Festival 2002
CHAPTER SEVEN
Risking Your Life for the Rail
The Atlanta Lightning Storm, 2003
CHAPTER EIGHT
Cowboys and Hippies
Dylan and the Dead 2003 tour
CHAPTER NINE
We Can All Be Famous
For Fifteen People
Chicago and Atlanta, 2004
DYLAN REVIEWS
2005-Present
Chapter Six:
Adam and Mike's Excellent Adventure
I've said a lot about The Old, Weird America vs. The Mall. There's one thing, though, that I've neglected to mention about living in the Old, Weird America: it stinks.
I went back to school a couple of months after the Nashville show, moving from the state school in Carrollton to the one in Milldgeville, a small town in central Georgia where the radio still played Bobby Goldsboro and the local TV stations had ads for a Macon-area hockey team called, believe it or not, The Macon Whoopee. A primary selling point of the school to me was that the basketball team was called The Bobcats.
The town was firmly rooted in The Old Weird America; even the Wal-Mart couldn't uproot it. The town was large enough to have a mall, but it was a tiny one, known to the locals as "The s'Mall," and its effect on the town was barely noticebale.
Around the campus was a nightclub that had formerly been a movie theatre, at which the projectionist was a young Oliver Hardy. A block from that was the old State Capitol (the town had been the Capitol of Georgia before the Civil War), near a historical marker that marked the part of town where "slaves were sold and sentences were executed." Between the dorms and the campus was the old governor's mansion, a stately Georgian affair that had briefly served as General Sherman's headquarters. For one reason or another, the mansion was pink. One can imagine Sherman marching into town and chuckling "well, no WONDER we kicked their ass...."
Since the dorms were either full or broken-down, the school put me up in a motel on the outskirts of town for the first month or so, and it was fun for a while to pretend I was one of those rock stars who lived at the Tropicana Hotel in L.A. But the novelty wore off fast.
Still, I wasn't miserable there. The first time I went to see the campus, I wore a Bob Dylan shirt, just to see if anyone noticed, and was approached by a fellow named Mike who followed the setlists just as carefully as I did, and who had been to the Nashville show, also.
That winter, Mike and I took in three more Dylan shows: a tight, efficient show in Atlanta, a loose-but-interesting set in Augusta, and killer show in Birmingham, Alabama. None of these were as exciting as Dalton or Nashville had been, but they had their moments. "High Water" came up at all three shows, there was a great, countrified version of "Tombstone Blues" in Augusta, and the version of "Sugar Baby" in Atlanta was simply spellbinding.
Meanwhile, around this time, the Dylanpool started up online. Before each tour, "players" could select a group of songs, and would get a certain number of points each time Dylan played one of the songs they picked. Common songs, like "All Along the Watchtower," were worth one point, and rarer songs were worth as much as 18. Along with the pool came a message board and chat room that put rec.music.dylan to shame; at last, instead of just waiting for the setlist to be posted, we could talk to other fans from across the country while we waited! As a bonus, even if the setlist was dull, one could get excited over how many points they had scored from it.
On the message boards, mp3 posting was the order of the day; when a surprising song came up in the setlist, an mp3 of the bootleg recordings of the show was usually up in a couple of days - sometimes in a couple of hours! Now, if such a thing were possible, Dylan fans could be even bigger dorks.
Rather than going back to Snellville to live with my parents over the summer of 2002, I decided to get a place in Milledgeville with some friends. This was hard to begin with, as small towns, naturally, don't have too many apartments or houses to go around. Second of all, even after I found a place, I had to get a job, which was next to impossible in the small town. Nobody was hiring, and, even among those who were, no one was paying a nickel over minimum wage. Sure, the rent was cheap, but there was a reason for that. Few who could afford anything better want to live in Milledgeville.
Now, don't get me wrong. The campus area and the historic district (the area which sold me on the town in the first place) were lovely. Most of the rest of the town, however, was a dump. On the south side of the town was Central State Hospital, which, in the 19th century, was the largest mental institution in the world. Nearby were five different state prisons and a youth detention center. The neighborhoods around such institutions could only be so good.
But, well, it was home. In a way.
As I moved into the house that I would be sharing with a few friends, Dylan was touring in Europe. Every day, I would go into the Dylanpool chat room online and wait for the setlists, which had gotten interesting. Dylan had brought back "Solid Rock," "Man of Constant Sorrow," and "Subterranean Homesick Blues," among other things. I would've killed to see "Subterranean Homesick Blues."
Then, in May, it was announced that Bob would be appearing at the Newport Folk Festival in August. This was big news.
Dylan first electric show, at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, is one of the most legendary events in rock history. Dylan came out onstage with an electric guitar, backed by an electric rock band, and ripped into "Maggie's Farm." After just two more songs ("Like a Rolling Stone" and an early version of "It Takes a Lot To Laugh,") he and the band walked offstage, amid a torrent of boos from the crowd.
Exactly why they were booing is the subject of much debate. The official story has always been that they were booing because Bob was playing electric. Pete Seeger, in fact, was said to be so upset that he tried to cut the cable with an axe. Clearly, this was what was bothering some of the people.
Others, however, say that the boos were mainly because Bob had only played three songs, and that the sound was too muddy for anyone to make out the words. Indeed, Pete Seeger now claims that he was just upset that he couldn't hear the words. When I interviewed him on WWGC in 2000, he discounted the axe story, saying that he really just said "if I had an axe, I'd cut the cable."
But, one way or another, the boos were a result of the electric guitars. The set was short because the electric band hadn't had time to rehearse much, and the sound was muddy because the soundman wasn't able to mix the guitars very well.
The concert immediately went down in history as the night Bob Dylan changed both folk and rock forever and by the next time Bob played a show, in Forest Hills the next month, the crowd was clearly booing because of the electric guitars. Apparently mad at the reaction of the crowd, Bob hadn't appeared at the Newport Folk Festival since.
The night the Newport 2002 show was announced, Bob was in Manchester, and opened his concert with an acoustic version of "Maggie's Farm," the song he'd opened with at Newport ?65. This not only seemed hilarious to those of us in the know, but it seemed that it had to be intentional. Bob had never played "Maggie's Farm" acoustically before, and hadn't opened with one of his own songs in three years.
I immediately called Mike. "We have to go!" I said.
"Oh, man!" said Mike. "That'd be so awesome if we could make that trip."
So we decided to do it. Mike ordered the tickets online when they went onsale, and we began to make plans.
I should point out that this was not going to be an easy trip. We were both broke, and out of work. We both had bills to pay. Neither of us drove a car that we felt could withstand a trip to Rhode Island. We couldn't afford plane fare, and, even if we could, we weren't old enough to rent cars once we got to Rhode Island. But we got the tickets anyway, as sort of an act of faith. I was determined that we were going to make the trip. Both of us doubted that we could actually do it, but, well, we knew we?d try our best.
I finally got a job as a pizza man, which wasn't so bad. I got to spend my evening driving around listening to music, but Milledgeville turned out to be a terrible town for delivering pizza. I had to drive on a lot of unpaved roads through bad neighborhoods. There were few street lights, an awful lot of streets that had no street sign, and many of the houses were unnumbered, making it awfully hard to find anything. The people not only never tipped, they were frequently rather mean, and more than one person accused me of being a racist for being five minutes late (what did they think? That I had looked at the name on the receipt and thought "hey, they sound black. I'll just take my time?")
Many of my co-workers were no easier to get along with. One of my bosses communicated primarily by shouting at everybody (myself included), and had such a thick drawl that I could never really understand a word she said, other than the s, f, and n words, which seemed to make up pretty close to half of her vocabulary.
I was determined to make the job an adventure. Because they couldn't scare up a uniform for me, I made every delivery for the first two months wearing a Starbucks apron. No one ever noticed.
Despite the problems, it was a job, and it brought in a pay check. I could usually only make five or ten bucks a night in tips (which was pathetic, considering that pizza men in Snellville, where my parents lived, were making five times that much, and the work was much easier), but, still, five or ten bucks a night adds up over time when your rent is minimal.
Mike, making a smarter move than I, went back to the Atlanta area to work.
By July, things were shaping up, financially. We both reasoned that we could probably afford to go ? if we could find a way to get there.
I started making a lot of posts to the various newsgroups, asking if anyone from our general area wanted to carpool ? but there were no takers. My friend Sam, who used to come in to Starbucks to trade bootlegs with me, was going, but wouldn't have room for two more people.
Then I got an e-mail from a fellow named Peter Stone Brown saying that, if we could get to Philadelphia, we could ride with him the rest of the way.
Now, I should explain that Peter Stone Brown was a man of no small reputation in the Dylan community. I?d first heard of him years earlier, when a couple of essays he wrote were published on bobdylan.com . The official site!
In the essays, Peter described his experiences as a young Dylan fan in the early sixties. He described seeing Dylan in a small club in '63, attending the infamous Halloween show in '64 (finally released in 2004 as Live 1964), and the second electric show, at Forest Hills in '65, among others. His brother, in fact, had even played bass on Blood on the Tracks. Pretty impressive credentials!
So getting an offer to see Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival with him was sort of like getting an offer to attend a major news event, like a Democratic Convention at which the ghost of Franklin D. Roosevelt was a keynote speaker, with, say Walter Cronkite. But we still had to get to Philadelphia.
Airfare was still too expensive for us, so we decided to take a bus. That meant spending roughly 19 hours in a bus full of strangers, but, well, it was cheap, and it would get us to Philly. Probably.
Shortly before the trip, it was announced that, the night before Newport, Dylan would be playing in a club in Worcester, Massachusetts. Peter e-mailed me and asked if we'd be interested in hitting that show, also, and we figured that we might as well, while we were going to be in the area.
So it was settled. We were going to the Northeast to see a couple of Dylan shows. We were actually going to make it.
I got the feeling that it would be a long time before any of the major credit card companies would send me any more offers.
****
The night before the bus trip, we spent the night at Mike's parents house in Atlanta (we were going to depart from nearby Macon, but it turned out that that would cost about twice as much as departing from Atlanta, for some reason). We packed a bunch of sandwiches and junk food for the trip, loaded a backpack with bootlegs, and spent the evening watching Hearts of Fire, a movie in which Dylan starred in 1986.
Hearts of Fire is by no means a classic piece of cinema. Frankly, it's rather bad. But it's delightfully bad; there are plenty of one liners that seem funny (whether they were supposed to or not), and the scene in which Dylan punches Rupert Everette is one of the funniest punches in the history of the movies. All in all, it's a lot like The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It sucks, but you can't help but enjoy watching it. I'd love to start showing it at midnight in theatres; Dylan fans could throw eggs at the screen whenever a chicken appears on the screen (which happens from time to time). Somehow, I doubt many theatres would go for this; the clean-up would take weeks.
As a favor to the reader, for the sake of keeping the narrative tight, I'm going to condense the two bus trips into one trip. There were, obviously, two bus trips (one ride there, one ride back), but, seeing as how ending a long story about seeing a Dylan concert with an account of riding a bus for 19 hours would be anti-climactic, I'll just pretend that some of the events from the trip back happened on the way there.
First of all, I'll just go ahead and say that I found the bus rather pleasant. The seats were comfortable, the air-conditioning was decent, and the scenery was nice, now and then. We drove through Augusta, taking the same route we'd taken to see the Augusta show nearly six months earlier.
The observant may notice that, if one is starting in Atlanta, Augusta is not really on the way to Philadelphia. Quite the opposite! That's one of the big problems with the bus ? what would be a 12 hour car trip translates to at least a 19 hour bus ride. And that's assuming that things run on time, which they won't.
The other real problem was, well, the people. In particular, the way that they treated their kids. The whole trip, most any naps I tried to take were interrupted by people shouting at toddlers, often threatening to beat them. Mike, the psychology major who did social work with kids, remarked that the poor kids barely had a chance. That was awfully depressing to me. Forgive me for getting on my soapbox here, but there are some things about which I'm not at all open minded. I won't listen to theories that racism is okay. I won't listen to any theories that the Jews made the Holocaust up. And I won't believe that it's okay to hit kids, and I think poorly of people who do.
But, aside from that, I did actually enjoy the bus trip. I always like seeing cities and towns that I haven't seen before, and the trip took me through all sorts of small cities that I never knew existed.
Unfortunately, there is no one to tell you where we were. In one town, Mike and I remarked that one whole city, even the ghettos, which had turrets, looked particularly nice. It wasn't until I noticed that Washington Monument that we realized that we were in Washington, D.C.
Washington D.C.! I'd never been to D.C. before, and getting to do some bus-based sightseeing was a great bonus. Just riding on the bus, I saw The White House, The Lincoln Memorial, and The Jefferson Memorial.
We stopped in D.C. to switch buses, and, standing around the station, we found ourselves standing next to a brightly-dressed middle-aged woman wearing a button that said "It's my birthday today!" I wished her a happy birthday, and she started right in telling me about her day.
"My friends bought me a bus ticket, and we went to Atlantic City!" she practically shouted. "We ate an Irish pub, and went to a casino, and I won money! Then someone else won money! And then," her eyes got wide "we saw Bobby Vinton live!"
"Sounds like a fun day!" I said.
"And my friend got his autograph! Where are you going?"
"We're going to see some Bob Dylan concerts," I said.
"Oh!" she said. "Bobby Vinton's albums are nothing compared to him live!"
I had actually seen Bobby Vinton live at a fireworks jamboree in Omaha when I was about eight years old; I was just about to tell her that when we had to board the bus. Later on, I saw noticed that she was telling the person next to her - a young black man who looked like a deer caught in headlights - the same story, with the same enthusiasm, that she'd told me. I wished we were sitting next to her.
The next stopover was somewhere in Virginia just as it was getting dark. I'm not sure where (Mike thinks it was the town of Bumblefuck) but it was right next to a minor league ballpark. We were stuck in that terminal for just a short while - not long enough to get anything to eat. One other major problem of bus trips is that the grills and cafes in the stations are notoriously slow. Ordering anything is dangerous, because you're not likely to get what you ordered before your bus leaves. On the one occasion that I did get a hot dog in time, it was cold and awful. We were awfully glad that we'd loaded our backpacks with enough snack food to get us through the day.
I rigged up my CD player with a Y-splitter so we could plug two pairs of headphones into it. As the bus pulled out into the night, we turned on Time Out of Mind. Now, remember what I keep saying about how the environment in which one is listening to music can affect how the music sounds? Well, riding in a bus, weary after having been on the bus the whole day, staring out at the suburbs of whatever city we'd been in as we whizzed by them on the freeway, with the stars clearly visible above them, was a great, great way to hear Time Out of Mind. It had never sounded better. We could both just stare out the window and concentrate completely on the music, since neither of us had to watch the road or anything.
Getting to listen to music like that made the bus trip seem like it had been the best idea we'd ever had.
When I woke up the next morning, we were in Pennsylvania. It was actually the second time I'd been there that week; just five days before, my guitarist and I had played a gig in Pittsburgh (and made enough money from album sales that we could afford to fly on that trip). The outskirts and suburbs of Pittsburgh are really very nice; it's a green, mountainous area. Strip malls aren't nearly as ugly when they're on top of a mountain. Looking up at them from below, I said "Hey, what do you know? Shangri-La put in a Best Buy!" That had been a nice trip ? we were driven around the city with a couple of other musicians who were about our age. When driving into Pittsburgh from the suburbs, one can get to the city via what's known as "Pittsburgh's Front Door." Basically, it's a tunnel through a mountain. Before you enter the tunnel, there's been no sign that the city is nearby. But as soon as you pull out, you're in the middle of it. Skyscrapers are everywhere. It's awfully cool.
That, less than a week before, had been my first time in Pennsylvania. Now I was back already, on the other side of the state. The eastern part of the state wasn't mountainous at all.
We had arranged to meet Mike's brother, who lived in Philadelphia, at the bus station, but we got there early and had to amuse ourselves for a bit. I contemplated getting a Philly Cheesesteak from the café, but decided that, local cuisine or not, a cheesesteak from a bus station café just wasn't appetizing at six in the morning.
We stepped outside of the station, and, with our loaded backpacks, obviously looked like tourists. We were immediately approached by a large man who seemed awfully friendly.
"Welcome to Philadelphia!" he said. "I'm Pete! Where can I take you?"
I'm no wide-eyed small town kid. I know a hustler when I see one. Mike did, too. This swas probably a crazy one, too; if he was sane, he wouldn't be hitting up people from the bus station for money. Who at the bus station is going to have much money to give away?
"We're just waiting on a ride," I said.
"Oh yeah?" asked Pete. "What're your names?"
"Mike Johnson," said Mike. He was much bolder than I, as we've seen before.
"I'm Phil Black," I said. Pete laughed. Somehow, he could tell that I was lying.
"Aw, man," he said. "I ain't gonna do nothin' to ya! I mean, I hustle, that's what I do, but I ain't gonna make you give me nothin'!"
"Well," said Mike, "we're just waiting on my brother, so we'd better get back inside."
We started to walk away, but Pete managed to pull Mike aside and try to sell him some drugs.
"How 'bout some coke, man?" he asked. "You and your brother can get all high. It'll be cool!"
Needless to say, Mike passed, and we went back into the bus station, which was now filled with nuns, complete with habits, which is something you just don't see anymore.
In five minutes, we'd met a drug dealer and several nuns. Nice city, Philadelphia.
Mike's brother showed up in his girlfriend's car, and we rode to her apartment, where we indulged in showers.
We still had a good hour before we were supposed to show up at Peter Stone Brown's house, so we went to a nearby deli, which served all sorts of traditional Jewish food. I was awfully tempted to get some - when I first moved to Milledgeville, you couldn't even get Manishevitz Matzoh Ball Soup at the supermarket, and countless people in town claimed that they'd never met "a Jewish" before - but, with my wallet in mind, I decided to pass on getting more than a bagel.
"Well," Mike's brother told me, "you can get a pickle out of the barrel."
"How much?" I asked, eyeing the large wooden pickle barrel.
"They're free."
"Really?" I asked, incredulous. "You sure you're not just trying to pull one off on the out-of-town kid?"
But they were indeed free. I'd never heard of a place having free pickles in a barrel before, but it was a concept I could get to like.
After wandering the town a bit more, we were driven to the home of Peter Stone Brown. It was a nice looking house in the downtown area.
We knocked, and Peter opened the door and invited us in.
If you're going to meet someone for the first time, the early morning is never the best time do it. I myself tend to wake up looking like I just got out of a nasty fight. Having just crawled out of bed, and not quite dressed, Peter stood at the door with hair and eyes as wild as Dylan's. He looked like the stranger that officer friendly told you not to take candy from in kindergarten. And we were about to get into a car and ride into New Jersey with him.
But appearances are, of course, deceiving, especially that early. Peter is awfully friendly guy, and had more cool stuff in his house than anyone I've ever known. There was Dylan memorabilia the likes of which I had never seen. There was a whole collection of Ed Grimly memorabilia, and more records than I knew existed. Have you ever been in a professor's office that was full of old books and cool stuff? Peter's whole house was like that. "That was the coolest house I've ever been in as far as crap that was interesting," Mike later said.
While Peter took a shower, he invited us to make free use of his VCR and extensive collection of Dylan videos, and we popped in a compilation tape from the 1992 tour. He came back down dressed and looking much less immaculately frightful, and we made a pile of sandwiches for the trip.
"I wasn't at Newport '65," said Peter. "But I was at Forest Hills. Forest Hills was scary." Short though it was, that marked the first Dylan story we heard from Peter that weekend. He had a million of them.
Peter hadn't seen any shows since the New York show in November of the previous year, but said that he didn't much care for the boots he'd heard from 2002. We assured him that the show we'd seen in Birmingham was very good, but agreed that, performance-wise, Dylan hadn't been as good in 2002. The band, with David Kemper gone from the drums and replaced by George Receli, simply wasn't as tight, and Dylan wasn't singing as well as he had the past couple of years. However, the show in Worcester would be the first show in nearly three months, and during the break he had filmed a new movie, entitled Masked and Anonymous, which he'd also apparently written. There was no telling what that might do to his stage demeanor.
We piled into Peter's car, and he drove us past some of the famous sites of Philadelphia, including Independence Hall and the shack in which the Liberty Bell is stored.
"You know," I said, "I heard that they suspected that the Liberty Bell was a terrorist target, but I can't imagine a terrorist aiming that low. I mean, it's already broken!"
"Yeah," said Peter. "They moved it recently, and made a whole huge thing about how they were moving it. But it's just a bell!"
Peter and I are on just about the same page politically. Mike is a bit less liberal than I, but we have pretty good discussions. When we got into politics on the bus, which we frequently did, we agreed on enough to get along, but disagreed on enough to keep things interesting.
Most of the talk in the car, however, was based around Dylan.
"If I were a betting man," said Peter, "I'd say he was just going to treat Newport like another show. But- you never know!"
That was the general opinion of most people. The odds that Dylan would say or do anything to commemorate the occasion were awfully slim. But, still - one never knew. After all, in the latest European tour, he had been clearly making a point of playing songs which mentioned the city in which he was playing. In Paris, he changed a line in "Desolation Row" so that he could pronounce "Notre Dame" properly. In Brussels, when he played "When I Paint My Masterpiece," he wound up saying the word "Brussels" a few extra times just to get applause!
Meanwhile, Peter and I both speculated that the large number of setlists surprises in the Spring tour had been deliberately to mess with the people in the internet Dylanpool. The pool had been profiled on CNN just before the tour, and it's likely that Dylan had heard about it.
After a few minutes in Philly, we pulled into New Jersey.
Personally, I was excited.
Yes. You heard me. I was excited to see New Jersey.
After thinking about doing so for a long time, I'd chosen that summer to get into Springsteen. Figuring that his music would make a good soundtrack for delivering pizza to ghettos, factories, prisons, and mental hospitals, I bought a bunch of his records and had spent most of the summer listening to them while I worked. The first two records, from back when he was still a beatnik, were my favorites. So a trip to New Jersey was like a little pilgrimage within a pilgrimage.
Now, New Jersey tends to get a very bad rap. And I could see why, at times. More retail wasteland than most states would want, and an awful lot of bad-looking neighborhoods. But I liked it. Even the bad looking neighborhoods looked sort of nice, with all of the Victorian-looking houses that lined the roads. In points North of the Mason Dixon line, people tend to think of areas as "ghettos" that are actually much nicer than the southern ghettos, which can be an awful lot nastier. Even the worst buildings in the North have to be able to make it through a nasty winter - and plenty of buildings in the South couldn't.
Peter pointed out when we were in East Orange, the New Jersey town in which Dylan had met Woody Guthrie in the hospital. "I don't know what it was like then," he said, "but it's a real ghetto town now. But West and South Orange are nice." I knew from my own experiences over the summer that neighborhoods near hospitals were rarely nice.
Peter kept driving until we came to the very lovely town of Montclaire, at which we met up with Peter's friend, who wishes to be called Martin Van Nostrand, who would be driving us all the rest of the way.
Martin Van Nostrand, a bearded fellow whom I'd say was in his early-to-mid thirties, met us at his house, where he lived with his wife and young sons. We piled into his car, broke out the sandwiches, and began to make tracks for Worcester.
Martin was a stay-at-home dad, and clearly loved his work. "Even on the days when the kids are being awful," he said, "they always, every day, do something to remind you of how wonderful they are." I can't say how good it was to hear someone saying that after hearing people shouting at their kids on the bus. I mentioned that Montclair looked very nice, and he said that it really was. Something like 70% of the taxes there go to the schools.
His three-year-old son, he said, could always tell you which Beatle was singing. I was awfully impressed.
Among his other cool qualities, Martin made terrific mix tapes. As we drove through New Jersey, all of us in the car had a delightful talk about Dylan, Springsteen, Tom Waits, and everyone else while the mix tapes played a collection of old-school country music. I knew Mike, of course, and Peter and Martin knew each other pretty well, but, in a way, it was a whole car full of people who really didn't know each other too well. Considering that, the conversation was fantastic. This was the first time I'd ever been in a whole car full of people who really shared my hobby!
One Hank Williams song on the mix tape started with the line "I went down to the country," which struck me as a bit funny. Where had he been before?
Now, I feel it necessary to point out that the state of Connecticut is going to get a very bad review in this book. I'd never been there before, but, aside from Waterbury, which looked nice from the road, the state did not impress me much. For one thing, the whole state was one large traffic jam; we barely got about 40 miles per hour the whole time. It wound up causing us to make it Worcester just in time for the concert; and it was a close call.
Also, in Hartford, there was a billboard advertising a performance of Cabaret starring Tony Orlando. I can't picture him in a single role in that show. The fact that such a thing would play in Connecticut does not speak well of the state. Maybe, I can only hope, it was simply Tony Orlando appearing in cabaret-type show.
I'm being unfair, I know. But I'm calling 'em as I saw 'em. From a crowded highway, Connecticut doesn't look so great. Few states would.
By the time we crossed the border in to Massachusetts, I had decided that Connecticut probably just existed because New York and New Jersey needed a third to have a tri-state area. That sounds better than a bi-state area.
Worcester wasn't the nicest looking town in the world, but the theatre, an old Vaudeville house, looked nice. I can't say much for the crowd, though.
Through the whole show (which, I believe, was Martin's 50th Dylan concert), the people around us refused to stop talking ("So much for Yale intellectuals," as Peter later said). It got to the point, now and then, when I couldn't hear the music very well over all the yammering going on behind me. I had forgotten to bring my recording gear, but it didn't matter. The recording I would have made would have been awful.
But I shouldn't just review the crowd - I should talk about the show itself. The show opened with "Hummingbird," which had been the opener in Nashville, then the band roared into "My Back Pages," "It's All Right Ma," and "To Ramona." No real surprises, and the band sounded about the way they had in the early 2002 shows.
"To Ramona" was an early highlight for me. I'd never heard it live before, and Larry played some terrific mandolin, and Dylan played around with the words quite a bit, emphasizing words that I wouldn't have expected him to emphasize.
Following "To Ramona" was "Tombstone Blues," which hadn't been played since the Augusta show. The pedal steel was gone, and it was more of a rock arrangement. It would be a regular in the set for the rest of the year.
Next up was the clear highlight of the evening - "Standing in the Doorway," with Bob on harp. Having just heard the studio version of the song on the bus, the live version sounded especially nice.
Next up was the first surprise of the night - the band started playing a song that I couldn't identify right away. I thought for a second that it might have been "Subterranean Homesick Blues," but didn't dare hope. When Bob sang the first words, it turned out that the song was "Highwater." Not a surprise in and of itself; it had been played many times over the year. But this time, it didn't have the banjo. Larry, playing an electric guitar instead, seemed to miss his banjo. I think the song was better with it, personally. It didn't sound like a masterpiece, the way it had in February. It just sounded like another song. Another good song, mind you, but nothing really special. Bob sang it very well, though. Maybe he was trying to make up for the lack of the banjo, taking the focus from the music to the words.
Later in the set came the biggest surprise of the night: "Never Gonna Be the Same Again." It hadn't been played live in a few years, and had been played just a handful of times in the previous several years.
However, the arrangement was a failure. The band would play for a line, then stop for a second, while Dylan played (sometimes) one or two notes on the guitar. The first time it happened, I thought Dylan was aborting the song. But then he did it again. The parts that were played sounded good, but, stopping every line for some noodling, the song never had a chance to get off the ground. It was like playing a song on realplayer, a program that frequently has to stop playing a song to "buffer" the file every few seconds. Standing there watching it, it was like watching a train wreck. I kept expecting Dylan to just stop the song cold. But he played it out to the end.
After the show, I remarked that I'd have to update the entry for "Never Gonna Be the Same Again" on the "How Long Has It Been Since Dylan Played?" page, and predicted that it would be the last time I had to do so. But I was wrong; it was back in the set two nights later, in the same weird arrangement.
After the show, we hung around on the sidewalk for a bit, talking to other people from the Dylanpool. I'd spoken to them all online before, of course, but had never met most of them in person. We didn't have too much time to chat, though. There would be time for that later. There was going to be a party after Newport. Many of us - including Peter and myself, would be playing music.
We piled into Martin's car, generally agreeing that the show had been "moderate." It might have been better if the club hadn't been so hot - the air conditioning apparently didn't work; even Dylan rolled up the sleeves of his jacket - and if the crowd hadn't been so damned noisy.
We spent the night at a Day's Inn in Cranston, Rhode Island, for which Mike and I paid the ridiculously high price of $100 for a tiny room. It was worth every penny. We'd had two days of nearly constant travelling, following by a couple of hours standing in a club. "Man," Peter said to Mike, "I'll bet you guys are beat!" And we were. That expensive, hard, scratchy bed felt wonderful.
The next morning, the continental breakfast was lousy, so we went to a terrific diner called Miss Cranston. Diners are much easier to find in the Northeast than they are in the south ? in the South, all we really have is Waffle House and a few variations thereof. Miss Cranston was a nice little place with a particularly friendly waitress.
"This is nice," I said. "The only way to eat at a dinner in the south is at Waffle Houses, where all of the waitresses are toothless women named Wanda."
"That doens't make them bad people," Martin cheerfully, and correctly, pointed out.
For the ride to Newport, Martin pulled out another mix tape - this one was a full tape of different songs that were all called "On the Road Again." Some I knew, some I didn't. I promised Martin that as soon as I could, I'd write a song of that title myself and send it to him. However, to date, I haven't managed it.
Newport is a gorgeous little coastal town. It has a very large downtown area full of things like ice cream stores and gift shops. Most coastal towns tend to look as though they could use a new coat of paint, but Newport was positively shimmering. But the traffic was worse than it had been in Connecticut. I thought it was because of the festival, but as we broke away from downtown and got closer to the park, the traffic dropped off considerably.
The venue was in a nice place - one could, quite literally, jump into the ocean from the lawn. It wasn't a great place for a concert - the side stage artists were made to play in booths near the concession stands - but the scenery was nice. In front of us was the stage, behind us was the ocean. The docks were full of sailboats.
We staked out a spot towards the back and spent the day listening to the two warmup acts - Jonatha Brooks and Shawn Colvin, hoping that we wouldn't get an awful sunburn. Martin was gracious enough to share his sunscreen with us.
In the crowd, I bumped into the aforementioned Sam from Georgia, who was sitting with a fellow who had seen Bob play "Subterranean Homesick Blues" in the U.K. I was awfully jealous.
We were joined on our blanket by another nice person, a woman named Lynn who would be driving us back to New Jersey after the party (Martin was unable to stay for the party, and would be driving straight back from Newport). She'd seen about as many shows at Mike and I had seen.
When Shawn Colvin finished, a man came onstage and asked the crowd to keep an eye out for a woman who had been separated from her family after jumping off of a boat. No one was sure whether she had drowned or simply swam off. Not something one wants to hear before a concert.
Shortly therafter, he came back out and said that Dylan had asked that no pictures be taken. That wasn't something you heard at every concert.
There was obviously some sort of delay. They played parts of Aaron Copeland's "Fanfare for the Common Man," which was played before every show, off and on. The man came out two more times to say that Dylan wanted to make it clear that no pictures should be taken. It was starting to sound like a dare.
Then, finally, Dylan and the band took the stage. Dylan was wearing a white shirt with a black vest, marking the first time I'd seen him wearing anything but a jacket. The band broke into "Roving Gambler," which I hadn't seen live before, as if it were just another show, though he was, interestingly enough, opening with the only song in his current repertoire which was truly a traditional folk ballad, and one that hadn't been played in a while, at that (and, as of early 2006, he hasn't played it, or opened with any traditional folk song, since). But something else was different.
Martin, to my right, was looking through his binoculars with his jaw down. He turned to look at me.
"Is he wearing a fake beard?" he asked, astonished.
"Of course not," I said, automatically.
I looked as closely as I could. It was hard to tell from as far back as we were. Martin looked again. "There's definitely something on his face!" he said. He handed me the binoculars and I looked through. Something was different all right.
That settled things. We were going in.
Leaving the blanket behind, we all wandered up through the crowd, getting closer to the stage. People were getting up from their blankets, and we were able to move in much closer. We got to be within about 20 feet of the stage.
Dylan was, indeed, wearing a long fake beard, along with a long hair wig.
Surprise!
Bob Dylan had showed up for Newport in a fake beard. A fake beard!
Of all the things we'd thought of that he might do to mark the occasion, not one person had said a word about a fake beard or a costume.
As Peter said, "Just when you think you've got him figured out, he pulls something like this!"
From a distance, he looked like an old mountain man. Perhaps, remembering being booed for going electric, he'd put on the costume of a guy from Lomax's Anthology of American Folk Music, as if to say "Here! Is this what you Newport Folk people wanted me to become all those years ago?"
Closer up, though the earlocks on the wig made him look like a Hassidic Jew, the beard and hat made him look Amish. I laughed at the thought - last time he'd played at Newport, he'd gone electric. Now he was doing the exact opposite - going Amish.
Now, Dylan shows at this point were made up of three main parts. The first part was the first eight songs of the main set - the first four acoustic, the next four electric. This was the part that varied the most. The second part was the handful of songs that finished out the main set, which didn't vary much, and the third was the encores, which were mostly the same from night to night. At Newport, the whole first part was made up of songs relevant to the occasion.
After the traditional "Roving Gambler," the band moved into "The Times They Are A-Changing," which had been the first song at most Dylan shows in the early 60's; the Newport Folk Festival in 65 was the first show he'd played in over a year at which it hadn't been the opening song; people had probably expected to hear it at Newport 65, if not at the beginning, then at least somewhere in the set. And here he was, finally getting around to it.
It became apparent at this point that Dylan was, once again, ON. The tightness that was missing the night before was back in a big way, and Dylan was singing his head off. "Times" was dead-on.
Next up was "Desolation Row," in more or less the same arrangement as it had been in the past couple of years. The delivery this time was like running commentary from a resident who loved the place. In the Hassidic Mennonite getup, Dylan would have fit right in on Desolation Row.
To my surprise, Dylan even played the "Einstein disguised as Robin Hood" verse, which many people thought was written about Newport ?65.
He looked so immaculately frightful
As he bummed a cigarette
Then he went off sniffing drainpipes
And reciting the alphabet
Now you would not think to look at him
But he was famous long ago
For playing the electric violin
On Desolation Row
I'd seen him sing "Desolation Row" several times before, but I'd never heard him sing that verse - the verse that sounded like a response to Newport '65.
The first acoustic set concluded with a lovely "Mama You've Been On My Mind," which was, at one time (maybe two) one of his signature duets with Joan Baez, another song many people might have expected to hear at Newport '65.
At that point, the first acoustic set ended. The electric guitars came out.
I think one or two people might have booed. But I'm sure they were kidding.
At least one guy shouted "Judas," but he had to be kidding.
More people were shouting "Turn it up!"
If people weren't ready in 1965, they were ready now.
First up in the electric portion was "Down in the Flood," a song about getting revenge on a former friend. The band roared on it, and Dylan growled out the lyrics menacingly. It was followed by "Positively Fourth Street," which is also about getting revenge on a former friend. It made for an interesting pair of songs, especially considering that many people believe that "Fourth Street" was written to the folkies as a direct response to the reaction they gave him at Newport '65.
Following "Fourth Street" was the opening of a song that I couldn't quite place right away. Until the first line.
"Johnny's in the basement mixing up the medicine...."
"Subterranean Homesick Blues!" It made sense that, in Newport, he would play his first electric single! I was jumping up and down. Peter said "oh ho!" and Martin grinned like a fool.
Bob hadn't played "Subterranean Homesick Blues" in the U.S. in over a decade. And its few recent performances in Europe had been just so-so. Bob didn't seem to remember all of the words, and the band didn't seem to know what to do with the song.
All of that was gone in Newport, though. The band was tight, playing a funky backing while Dylan sang the words without missing a single one. Awesome!
"Subterranean Homesick Blues" was on my list of "songs I'd like to hear live, but never expect to." Even if Bob hadn't worn the beard, and the rest of the show had both been as mediocre as Worcester, seeing that performance of "Subterranean Homesick Blues" would have made the trip worth my while.
There are very few live versions of the song - all from the late 80's and early 90's, when it was a setlist regular; I think I only have a few on tape. Hearing this version, with different words emphasized from the album, was really hearing it in a whole new way.
Meanwhile, Al Gore was dancing offstage. I'm not making this up.
Closing the first electric set was the another kiss-off to a former friend/lover: "Cry Awhile," from Love and Theft. I'd just remarked to Peter that I hadn't heard that one live yet. It had been sort of lackluster when he played it at the Grammies, but this version was hot.
The rest of the set was pretty much a standard Dylan show. "Girl From the North Country" and "Mr. Tambourine Man" (the first song of the set that had also been played at Newport '65, after switching back to acoustic), Dylan and the band ripped into the rockabilly "Summer Days," then moved into a countrified "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere."
As "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" ended, Dylan grinned. He had somehow kept a straight face throughout the entire show. The band did, too, and how they did I'll never know. Stories went around later that the band had been told not to look directly at Dylan during the show.
After that, the encores were mostly business as usual, just played very well. The standard "Like a Rolling Stone," "Blowin in the Wind," and "Watchtower," the only surprise being an encore-opening cover of Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away." Bob hadn't palyed it in a long time, and wouldn't play it again for some time. Clearly, he just thought the folk festival people needed to hear a good rock oldie, something he himself wouldn't have dared to play at Newport 65, but which brought huge applause and got the people dancing in 2002.
Obviously, the folk purists weren't shouting loud enough in the early 60's.
When Dylan left the stage, the announcer came back to say that they'd found the woman who jumped off the boat, alive and well. The crowd cheered.
The mood after the show was much different from the mood after Worcester. Everyone from the Pool seemed exuberant, trading theories back and forth about why he had worn the beard. Most of us, including Peter, thought that it all had something to do with Masked and Anonymous, the film in which Dylan was starring. Maybe they were filming the show for the movie or something; the plot of the movie did involve Dylan's character, Jack Fate, getting out of prison, and the stone walls behind the cage looked a lot like a prison. The general feeling was that Dylan hadn't returned to Newport at all ? he'd sent Jack Fate to do it for him!
We hung around with a crowd by the tour bus for a while. Charlie and Tony were talking to a few people. A couple of cops stepped off Dylan's bus, having obtained an autograph for a member of the force who was a big Dylan fan.
"Has he taken the beard off?" I asked.
"Yeah," they said, "he's Bob again."
I tried my best to get them to go back on the bus and get something signed for me, but, alas, it wasn't to be.
As we walked back to Martin's car, we found ourselves walking alongside Bob's bus, which was caught in traffic like everyone else. I took the opportunity to shout "Jack Fate rules!" at an open window.
We parted ways with Martin with a few handshakes. Having spoken to him at length, I was ready to consider Montclair as the city for me. I like the way the taxes work, the neighborhoods all looked very nice, with old, well-kept houses. And, any town that can be home to people as nice as Martin is okay by me.
Peter, Mike and I got into Lynn's car to head for the party. The traffic downtown was still awful; it took us an awfully long time to get to a convenience store. None of us were hungry, but, after spending a day in the hot sun surrounded by juice ads, we were all dying of thirst. Lynn nicely bought us all drinks.
The after-party was at a joint called The Narrows in Fall River, Massachusetts. It was a nice little joint, except for the lack of an elevator. Peter played a wicked version Dylan's lost masterpiece, "Nobody 'Cept You," and a couple of his own songs. I played one called "Talkin' Bob Dylan Impersonator."
When not playing, we schmoozed with the other Poolies. I met Ryan Carey and Eben Hensby, a couple of guys about my age who had come from Canada for the shows. Free bootlegs were passed around. After spending most of my time over the past few years being around no one, other than Mike, of course, who knew anything about the details of going to Dylan concerts as a hobby, it was delightful to find myself in a room full of people who were as obsessed as I was. Even more so, in some cases.
When the party finally wrapped up, Lynn drove us back to Martin's house in New Jersey, stopping now and then for gas. When we stopped at a McDonald's in New Jersey, they actually had a McLobster Roll for sale. I?m not making this up. I would've tried it, but it was $8.99. More than I could afford to spend on food that sort of frightened me.
About every half hour, one of us would suddenly sit up and shout "I can't believe he did that!" And Peter had seen Dylan do just about everything!
I stayed awake to help keep Peter up as he drove as back into Philadelphia as the sun came up; he regaled me for most of the night with stories of Dylan concerts from the past. He talked about seeing the Rolling Thunder Revue in 75. The Gospel tour in 1980. A great show in 81. The "Bobfest" show in 92. For a Dylan junkie, it was paradise.
"I saw the Hartford show in the Gospel tour," he said, "that was the night of his infamous 'there's a lot of inequity in San Fransisco' speech. But I wasn't buying it. After the show, I hung out by his bus, and he came out flanked by a couple of body guards, and wound up inviting Ratso Sloman, who was the editor of High Times at the time, onto the bus." I knew about the famous "San Fransisco" speech, of course; it's probably the best known of the frequently offensive sermons Bob preached early in his Born Again period. Not long after that, however, he was hanging out with his old friend, Allen Ginsberg, who was just about as gay as they come.
We pulled back into Peter's place early in the morning. The news on the radio actually did a short report on the concert, saying there was no booing this time, as Dylan "wowed the crowd" with a set of classics and newer material. Back in Peter's place, we read every article that had been posted, and laughed insanely at all of the pictures that had had already been printed (as I suspected, the request for no pictures was largely ignored) until it was time for Mike and I to head to the bus station, which was just a few blocks away.
The original plan had been to have lunch with his brother again, but his brother called to say that he couldn't make it - he had some form of the West Nile virus, and had spent the evening "shitting his brains out." And, oh yes, it was probably contagious.
So there we were, walking to the bus station, about to be on a Greyhound for 19 hours, with the possibility that we might have a disease that caused explosive diarrhea hanging over our heads. If nothing else, we reasoned that the bus we were on would become famous throughout the country. Fortunately, our immune systems saved the day, and, though we were both exhausted enough to feel like crap, we never did get the West Nile virus.
So that was our excellent adventure. We got on the bus feeling absolutely bushed, having spent the better part of the last three days travelling, and not having slept at all the night before. I managed to stay up for most of the bus trip back, and, when I woke up, we were back in Georgia.
At the time, I figured that this account would be the last chapter of this book. How could I top it? What else could Dylan do?
On the drive back, Peter and I had discussed the significance of Dylan playing "Never Gonna Be the Same Again." Was that a reference to Newport '65, after which he was never the same again? Or was he maybe saying that NOW he would never be the same again? Would he wear a fake beard at every show now?
It turned out that we may have been pretty close to right on that one. The fake beard never turned up again in concert (though he wore a different one in the video for "Cross the Green Mountain"), but, after that tour, it appeared as though he wouldn't be the same again, indeed.
Two months later, on the opening night of his fall tour in California, he suddenly started playing half of his songs on piano instead of guitar. At the same time, he started playing such covers as The Rolling Stones' "Brown Sugar," Don Henley's "End of the Innocence," and a whole bunch of Warren Zevon songs. Even after the beard, he still had tricks up his sleeve.
But, unlike other setlist surprises, Mike and I found that we no longer felt all that jealous. After Newport, we'd seen enough surprises to last us a long time.