A few weeks ago my sister told me that our sister and our 18-year-old nephew went to see Bob Dylan in concert at Bumbershoot in Seattle in September. This third-hand story is that as Bob Dylan began to sing, my nephew's face became puzzled, deeply puzzled. He looked at my sister questioningly, making funny faces at her. Before long, she said to him, "You don't have to stay if you don't want to." He was immensely relieved and left the concert. I would be curious to hear his version of this story. The story is that my sister didn't stay for the whole concert either. The last Bob Dylan concert I went to was so loud it hurt my ears, but it's good I stayed for the astoundingly moving acoustic version of "Girl from the North Country" that was the final encore. That was in the mid to late 1990s in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Here is another take on Bob Dylan that I came across yesterday, written by a man who was born in 1966, when Bob Dylan was 25 years old:
Good question
I laughed out loud when I read these words of Todd Snider:
"...but you see here i go . . . now i'm starting to talk to the very bob dylan_the same way i talk to my nephew about bob dylan._in that spastic way that reminds me of an old far side cartoon_where the two gorillas are under a banana tree gorging on bananas_when one turns to the other and says_"you know man, i know we're supposed to like bananas. being gorillas and all_but i think its different for me. i mean, i really like them"_that's how most true bob dylan fans sound when they start trying to explain him..."
Listen
(Crescent moon and Venus before dawn on January 30, 2011)
