Bleeding Fiction

Generally speaking, I wouldn't pay eighty dollars to listen to a man whose speech I can barely understand sing live. Specifically, as in "when the man in question is Bob Dylan," I jump at the chance. I went with The Delightful Jeni Garber and her visiting friend, Rick. So, let's talk nitty-gritty:

Opening: The opening act was some sort of country band. I can't remember their name, but I'm told that they're a bit on the famous side. Whatever the truth of that, the people of Seattle (at least those who fall into the Bob Dylan concert-going subset) loved them. I find the local appeal for country music a little disturbing, truth to tell.

Bob: Dylan himself was ok. Worth seeing, absolutely, but not spectacular. His voice, of course, was garbled and gravelly. But I expected that. What was odd was that he didn't play guitar at all. Just the piano and the harmonica. The band he played with was good, but I didn't come to see the band, you know? It was totally cool that they closed with a Hendrix cover, though: All Along the Watchtower. Tribute to playing in Seattle, I guess.

Also, the older Bob Dylan gets, the more I think he looks like Vincent Price. That's sort of cool:

The Crowd: We had great seats and the folks we saw this show with were an absolute riot. The woman directly in front of me kept taking pictures of the stage with her cameraphone; there's no way she could have gotten anything, given the darkness. The woman two seats to my left spent half the show with her hands over her ears; really, what's the point? The best, though, was the guy at the end of the row ahead of us. He was having a flashback to the brown acid or was an epileptic having a fit or was quite possibly in some sort of ecstatic trance, because he was moving. Not dancing, really. More just spasming back and forth and gesticulating wildly, occassionally surging out of his seat. This one guy alone was worth the price of admission.