I went to see Bob Dylan at the X Sunday night (10/29/06). The Foo Fighters opened for Dylan, and were a treat, performing many of their hits in an acoustical mode. Then Bob Dylan and his band took the stage. Let’s just say that I really liked the Foo Fighters.
After the Foo Fighters finished their set, and the roadies reset the stage for Dylan’s band, the X went black, and the opening strains of Aaron Copeland’s Appalachian Spring played on the sound system. At least I think it was. You know it as the soundtrack from the "Beef … it’s what’s for dinner" commercials. We could see the band taking the stage in the lights of the stage stairway. Lights up . Where was Bob Dylan? The band started off with something new, and my wife asked me "where’s Dylan?" It took me a moment or two to figure out that the man in black, in front of the keyboard, standing sideways on the stage, while his band faced forward, was Dylan. From our vantage in Section C5, his back was to us, and remained so through the entire one hour set, and three encores. He never spoke until the after the second to last encore, and then only to introduce his band.
His voice was about as bad as I’ve heard. The first three numbers were an unintelligle collections of raspy growls and high pitched squawks. For a while, I was beginning to believe it was Howard Dean, posing as Bob Dylan. Then I began to wonder it is was some sort of Disneyesque doppleganger, a robotic Dylan clone, programmed to perform a stiff shuffle and several wierd, bent-legged poses.
Even when performing old standards like Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right, Tangled Up in Blue, and All Along the Watch Tower, I could only decipher the lyrics because I knew them so well. His delivery was strained and choppy.
All in all, I was seriously disappointed. At least I really liked the Foo Fighters.
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About the Author:
I am a cybersecurity and IT instructor, cybersecurity analyst, pen-tester, trainer, and speaker. I am an owner of the WyzCo Group Inc. In addition to consulting on security products and services, I also conduct security audits, compliance audits, vulnerability assessments and penetration tests. I also teach Cybersecurity Awareness Training classes. I work as an information technology and cybersecurity instructor for several training and certification organizations. I have worked in corporate, military, government, and workforce development training environments I am a frequent speaker at professional conferences such as the Minnesota Bloggers Conference, Secure360 Security Conference in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, the (ISC)2 World Congress 2016, and the ISSA International Conference 2017, and many local community organizations, including Chambers of Commerce, SCORE, and several school districts. I have been blogging on cybersecurity since 2006 at http://wyzguyscybersecurity.com