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Bob Dylan and His Band Show 35 of the 2012 Never Ending Tour
Missoula, Montana
Big Sky Brewery
14 August 2012, Tuesday
Showtime: 7:30 PM
General Admission $50Previous shows for 2012:
16 Latin American shows + 15 Euro shows + 3 Canadian showsMissoula = 35th show in 2012 and at a brewery, no less! Bonus to be drinkin' some of that Moose Drool brown ale. From: http://missoulian.com/entertainment/mus ... 963f4.html Missoula, Montana, USA - C.E. “Abe” Abramson stands by his claim that he’s not a “Dylan Head.”But there’s little doubt few locals are as excited as Abramson in anticipation of Bob Dylan’s fourth Missoula concert, as the longtime voice of the baby boomer generation and his band play the Big Sky Brewing Co. on Tuesday evening.
Abramson, who first saw Dylan perform in New York City while opening for John Lee Hooker in 1961, can easily rattle off the release date of Dylan’s first record (March 19, 1962), has visited Dylan’s hometown of Hibbing, Minn., and even ended up with a surplus of tickets at the Adams Center when Dylan made his first appearance in Missoula in March of 2000.
“Somehow, and I don’t remember how, I ended up with 100 tickets and they were like 20 rows back on the floor, 50 on each side of the center aisle,” Abramson recalled. “Everybody in my bunch had to come in costume and you had to come as a song title, an album title or a character from one of the songs. It was really amazing because every single person came in costume. And when he played ‘Tangled Up In Blue’ we had a bunch of blue silly string and blue crepe paper and we threw all it up in the air. It was just kind of a celebration.”
There aren’t many traveling music acts that inspire the brand of lunacy Abramson and his cohorts provided 12 years ago. Then again, there never has been and certainly never will be anyone like Bob Dylan.
You can rehash the countless honors bestowed upon Dylan that include 11 Grammy Awards, an Academy Award and a Golden Globe. Or the fact that he’s a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Dylan even received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama in May. But that doesn’t scratch the surface of describing the iconic Dylan’s place in music history.
“Elvis might never have been born, but someone else would surely have brought the world rock-n-roll,” wrote J. Hoberman, who may have said it best in a story in the Village Voice in November of 2007. “No such logic accounts for Bob Dylan. No iron law of history demanded that a would-be Elvis from Hibbing, Minn., would swerve through the Greenwich Village folk revival to become the world’s first and greatest rock-n-roll beatnik bard and then – having achieved fame and adoration beyond reckoning – vanish into a folk tradition of his own making.”
***
Fred Rice is a Northern California native who moved to Montana in the early 1970s and hosted The Bob Show on Montana Public Radio for somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 years. Yet it came as a shock to Rice when it was announced Dylan would play Missoula the first time.
“In terms of concerts in Missoula, there were a couple of groups or individuals that I never expected to see here,” said Rice. “The Rolling Stones weren’t even on the list and that was a tremendous event. But I didn’t ever expect to see the Grateful Dead and I certainly didn’t expect to see Bob Dylan.”
Though he’s been touring almost constantly since the late 1980s on what has been unofficially named the Never Ending Tour, even the most devoted of Dylan followers admit that not every show is a gem.
In truth, those prepared to see Dylan for the first time Tuesday might not get exactly what their expecting. Dylan oftentimes seems disengaged with the crowd and the music while on stage. And while he’ll most likely churn out some of his best-known hits like “Like a Rolling Stone” or “Knocking on Heaven’s Door”, they probably won’t sound anything like the versions on studio recordings.
While playing 100 dates or more a year, Dylan is constantly rearranging the music and the melody of even his most cherished classics.
Oftentimes that rubs his audience the wrong way.
“You take a song like ‘Tangled Up in Blue’, which has been pretty much been a standard of the live act for about the last 30 years now and he re-conceptualizes it and sings it with different voices,” said Rice. “It still has the basic structure, but he gives it a different turn or a different twist. And I’m getting to the point where I can’t hear anyway. At some point it becomes not unlike what happened with the Grateful Dead. You go because that’s what you’re supposed to do.”
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It’s more than likely Dylan’s set will feature a handful of tunes from his newest endeavor, “Tempest”, a 10-song album of original songs set for release on Sept. 11.
Produced by one of Dylan’s several alter egos, Jack Frost, the release will be his 35th studio album and helps commemorate the 50th anniversary of his recorded debut.
The project will be Dylan’s first since 2009’s “Together Through Life”, though his last commercial success came in 1997 with “Time Out of Mind”, which won a Grammy for Album of the Year.
However, most will descend on Big Sky Brewing Co. on Tuesday to hear Dylan run though his classics.
But those still on the fence about whether or not to attend a show by an aging 71-year-old who might not play his greatest hits the way they originally sounded, need to remember only one thing – it’s Bob Dylan and he’s playing Missoula.
“He doesn’t call it the Never Ending Tour, but basically this tour started in 1989,” Abramson said with a chuckle. “I saw a stat that said how many shows he’s done since then and I can’t remember the number exactly, but it’s a lot. I guess I’d like to think that he’s still out there because he’s still got something to say.”
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