Why was I surprised? After all, the name IS “Hollywood Slots”. Yet, somehow I was dismayed as I walked through the hallways of the Casinos and Suites at the Bangor facility. All my favorites of TCM, lining the walls and the halls. Stanwyck, with those killer legs from “Ball of Fire”, Rita Hayworth, tall in a black sequined gown, cigarette holder held just so, lips parted just right. Myrna Loy, looking right at me (and just me). What’s a sweetheart like you, doing in a dump like this? Okay, I’ll admit to some righteous judgment here. But really, I had hoped better of them. I didn’t want to see them warming the walls with a refracted life and energy, as bulbous blue-haired ladies waddled through the halls, Wal-Mart shoppers without their carts. Barrel-stomached cotton-haired gentlemen, polo-shirt, tee shirt, socks and sandals, trying to be on vacation with black buried ears.
It was but a low hum of dis-ease. Nothing more. I was on my way to see Bob Dylan in concert at the Bangor Waterfront and my evening digs were at the Slots. Just a place to lay my head. The concert was three hours from home. I had hitched a ride for the lower 2/3 of the trip with && and her son, %%%%. They were meeting Will’s girlfriend &&&& (%%%^^^^ other son)…and going to the concert as well. My nephew had sprung for the bed space, so really….it was all good. On the trip to the concert, )) and I and YYY listened to soundtrack work that he had been doing at Abbey Road Studios, discussing the hazards and joys of multiple takes, editing maintaining and publishing a music library for upwards of 80 musicians. Fun stuff like that (but it really DID sound like fun). And it was weird/cool to hear a soundtrack to a movie while everything was technically still “under construction”.
The amorphous group representing the BobKatz for this concert had an open ebb and flow with members connecting here and there, now and then, for this and that. Although I think I counted something like 10 or so souls whirling through this wee cosmos, the group never met with any kind of total convergence. We were all technically at the Seadog Brewery for the pre-concert meal, for example. Two groups of three joined for a moment, then unfolded, only to be linked by , as Group One told where Group Two could be found. That was the tonal phone-text mix of the evening and it worked well. The Seadog Brewery fare was fine as far as mass-produced restaurant food can be. The fish and chips were tasty, the cole slaw was dry as a green desert, the beers were refreshing, the shot of tequila warm and smooth. Concert ? What concert? Oh, right……march on!
And off we strode to Bangor Waterfront Stadium. We had planned for everything to be within walking (or at least a form of walking) distance. Compared to our efforts at, say, Dylan at the Avalon in 2004, we were VERY successful.
Lines had formed for the concert and so we duly took our spaces and played cattle for awhile. A slight hint of dis-ease rang again when I walked through the security area and looked at the signs, trying to find our seating area. “Inner Circle” said one, another scrawled “Outer Circle”. I turn to Tom….”are we inner circle or outer circle”. A uniform off to my right overhears and states dryly “you’re inner circle”. How did he know that and what did it mean that he did?
It became more evident as we shuffled through the crowd to our seats. When sitting in a public place one eventually has nothing better to do than people-watch. My eyes wander the crowd….lots of men with salty beards, women with etches of age where the smoothness of youth once dwelt. Oh…..the dread demographic of which I feel so decidedly dissonant!! It doesn’t help that some of these folks are dressed like insurance salesmen storming Desolation Row. I squint a little and the crowd flows, a cast of characters, of heroes and villains and malcontents and fatcats. There….over there a perfect image of a priest, to my right an etched, once tender woman, red cotton blouse and all….tucks her hands in her backpockets…smiles wonderfully and laughs a Bette Davis laugh…..middle-aged men already fitted with the heart-attack machine try to make their way through the crowd. The postcards of the hanging are now on sale as “Limited Edition Posters”….my ticket has been scanned. Everyone is making love or else expecting rain. “All the people that you mention, yes I know them, they’re quite lame.” I remember Groucho Marx….”I would never join a club that would have me as a member”….too late, my friend….
And what exactly do they mean by the term “Inner Circle”…inner circle of what?
A hint of the idea comes with the seating arrangements. The folding chairs are jammed together, metal to metal, no space between. This works if you have thousands of anorexics going to a Karen Carpenter concert. Line up a row of ice cream cones so the cones touch each other. Now pound two scoops of ice cream into each cone. Does the ice cream look comfortable? I didn’t think so.
A shake of the head and the visions stop. Soon the lights dim and the Godfather of ZZ Topp, walking cane in hand eases to the keyboard… silver-maned “Leonine” Russell, will do his voodoo for the night. I’ll not bother with a full review of Leon’s concert. It’s been quite adequately covered on Expecting Rain by others more attentive than I. But I have to observe that Leon Russell’s stage presence, which consisted exclusively of eye movements, was truly the most minimalist performance I’ve ever seen. And it still “worked”, in that the very lack of movement created an attentiveness from the audience. The backing band was tight and effective, reminding me very much of the catch as catch can feel of Delaney Bonnie and Friends, which fits the era that Leon Russell was most prolific. I was unsure at times whether there was much “behind” the workmanlike efficiency and skill. Like welders at a project. Are they working from a plan for an airplane wing and need to be precise? Or are they welding a creative structure, freewheeling it a little, inspiration allowed? The ringing best effort came from a solo of “Walking Blues” by guitarist Chris Simmons. His website lists Peter Green as one of his inspirations, but he doesn’t do a bad Robert Johnson by way of Clapton, either. Russell’s set went very well. Great hits were covered ably. The set was long enough to at least hint at the depth of his work, yet short enough to keep the crowd from stirring for Bob. We sit for break.
The road crew works briskly and the lights dim sooner than expected. Everyone in our group was looking forward to what seemed like a consistent “song number 2” in the Dylan setlists. It had been years since Dylan had sung “To Ramona” but it was appearing with frequency. In fact the last 5 nights saw it coming in right after “Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat”. Well, we soon got the hint that things had changed. Dylan’s steps to the familiar spot at the organ and the first song came out as “Rainy Day Women #12 and 35”. Dylan’s in great voice and his humor and timing already on display as he twists the phrases into a camaraderie of victimization, with everyone harmonizing to the refrain….”everybody must get stoned”….. Hmmmmm…..is this an “uh-oh” to song number two? Yup.
Dylan, loose in Captain Kangaroo striped pants, a tan hat UFO –hovered on his head, like Devo gone MORE alien, stays at his post. Charlie Sexton and crew begin the plinkety plunk opening to “Don’t Think Twice It’s Allright”…. A tender song that fits nicely where the hoped-for Ramona ….. did not show.
The third song and “Things Have Changed”….although that really should be typed “THINGS HAVE CHANGED”. Dylan oddly steps back from the organ and makes his way to a microphone placed at stage-front/center and begins to Tell The Tale of “Things Have Changed”…..complete with broad gestures and opened facial expressions that affirmed lyrics…..this is now a Story rather than rote-rhyme recitation mumbled from the rear of a cheesy organ wheeze. Suddenly I’m back in Augusta and it’s 1975. Dylan in white-face gesticulating with tight fists and open hands, twisting his face around the words, vivid and biting. He sweeps his hand back to the band in accentuation and mutters “I used to care but things have changed” and I’m back in Bangor, 2011. A funneling point and I’m in a time where there is no time. The Moment we so desperately try to capture on film and video and “certified sound recording” has become some pointillist series of dreams. Dylan continues the exploration of Moment and Memory, of Time as a force to be reckoned with, regaling the audience with “Tangled Up In Blue”, two lives together that sure were gonna be rough…..Dylan begins the excursion into harmonica solos that makes the night a remarkable display of his many talents. The Ginsberg reference to Dylan as “column of air” comes to mind for the first time of many this evening when Bob crunches his body up and down in a shamanist harp solo. Is he playing the harmonica or transmitting a message? A woman in front of us starts to wave her hand back and forth as if in evangelical rapture. The night becomes “something different” After the theatre of “Tangled…”, Dylan turns back to his post and into one of his best love songs, leaning into “Beyond Here Lies Nothing”, describing the love that lives where it lives and has no need of an Elsewhere, in fact resents the incursion of everything Outside.
“Mississippi” flows next and it’s wide and wonderful, but Dylan can’t help but refer to Time yet again….’he stayed in Mississippi a day too long…..Over the first few songs, the audience created its own interplay, demographics rubbing against each other. As the Waterfront Stadium is nothing much beyond a field, there’s no rise to the “floor”. A viewer in Row 28 has 27 viewers in the same line of sight. The great thing about old people, even old people who used to be rebels, is that they obey orders and are on the whole well-mannered. So when people in the back started yelling “down in front”, we actually SAT DOWN! Unlike, for example, my youthful actions when in the front row to see the Doobie Brothers, years ago. A flask of tequila under each arm, standing on my chair, waving. Calls of “SIT DOWN!” met by “NOOOO….you STAND UP!” Ah, impetuous youth. A phase some of us don’t exactly live, as much as survive. But I geezerly digress.
At first I had REAL problems with Dylan’s next song, “Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll”. Presented in a clockwork beat by the band, Dylan “at his post” at the organ, cold in highly-mannered clipped speech elipsed of emotion. Dry…..dry as a Police Report. It is as if Hattie Carroll is in some macabre wind-up music box ballet, her life swept by matters not of her control. Maddeningly rigid in tone and delivery, Dylan then follows this with a Brechtian take on “Ballad of Hollis Brown”. Back at the microphone, he delivers an operatic Life of a Farmer Down on His Luck. An I-Witness instead of a storyteller, Bob theatrically splays his arms to your poor little children “a-tugging at your sleeve”, turning to “the rats have got your flour, bad blood it got your mare”. When he tells you of the “cold coyote calls”, his voice barks and you can feel them in the night, just out of sight of the cabin, waiting.
The two works were tied somehow, bound by something common and not just because they’re from the same album. The characters live forever and their plight never changes. Relevant now as they were when written over 40 years ago. Lives locked into Cartesian time, a ‘clockwork” of modern Man, the circumstances of their situation constantly undermine their existential humanity. We are Captains of Our Destiny? What a joke, Dylan says. The only control left to Hollis Brown was his decision to end it. And the only time Dylan turned from the audience was when he refrained “somewhere in the distance there are seven new people born”. It never stops. Things DON’T Change.
Except in Matters of Love and by a “Simple Twist of Fate”…..which is Dylan’s next pick, a tale of a man obsessed by wanting the woman he once knew for a time. That which brings you together can also tear you apart. It happens. Get over it. But he never does. He waits at the dock, hoping that lightning strikes twice. Gambling clubs build casinos on this premise.
“Highway 61” follows and Dylan is time-juggling with String Theory phrasing and timing, releasing the band to wanton rambles of guitar, reeling them back in with extended bellows of “out on Highway Sixteeeeee…..ONE!…..the delivery turns staccato, punchy like a fighter hitting an opponent in one spot over and again. I never know what to make of this but it’s happened several times in his live sets.
Dylan weaves into story-teller again, warming to the microphone to tell us all of Blind Willie McTell. Clear phrasing from Bob, along with extended harp solos and the gracious guitar of Sexton and resonant Garnier bass-lines mark this as a stellar version.
“Thunder On The Mountain” has become a staple of the sets and deserves it. Good song, lively, gets the audience ready for the idea of an end to all this joy and hoopla. Dylan strikes with one more jewel of theatric delivery at the microphone, an impish yet biting “Ballad of a Thin Man”. He’s having a lot of fun and ….. is he making fun of us? Do any of us know what is happening here? Then off…..to await the encore….
The concert starts to wrap up with “Like a Rolling Stone” , again such a staple of the sets that you have to play it and everyone wants it so here it is….do you know what any of this is worth? Yes….Dylan then ends the concert with “All Along the Watchtower”…..although he hauls out the standard version…..and leaves the audience and the night with a growling “and the wind begins to howl”……..
The loose affiliations continue into the post-concert. Tom and Airen have returned to the Suites to slow down for the evening. ******’s daughter and her husband repair to their motel space after meeting a few of us briefly outside the gates. &&&&&&&&&&& and myself return to a crowded pub at the Fireside Inn and proceed to de-construct the concert. Setlists match precisely so we quickly move to observations, personal favorites, and I scrawl while I still recall, wandering through a final Chardonnay.
The next morning a series of buffet breakfasts for myself as the Katz seem to rise at odd hours. A breakfast with Tom and Airen, another breakfast with**************. A threat of a third breakfast with)))))))))))….although I graciously demur (okay, a bite of Patty Cake, but that’s IT!). I’m wondering if it’s too late for me to learn the principles of “binge and purge”, but it just seems so Roman. The Katz meander to cars and work and moments of thought here and there. We motor back to Farmington in a car that refuses to play Dylan. “you can’t repeat the past”
scrawls upon a wandering notepad……..
When Dylan starts playing All Along the Watchtower, bringing in the Joker and the Thief, my thoughts turn to Lewis Hyde’s exploration of the Trickster Myth in various cultures. A shaman, or perhaps a gifted animal, maybe a demi-god who lives on the border of opposites (at least initially, the boundary between the Gods and Man, or Heaven and Earth, although the concept extends and expands over Time)…. Part thief, part joker, standing in the doorway that hinges the two worlds, “responsible” in a very chaotic way for bleeding elements of the opposites into each other. By trickery or direct stealth, he moves powers and gifts back and forth, keeping the worlds from polarizing to the point where they have no borders. If the two worlds split and no longer border each other, what comes in between them to fill the chaotic gap now created? Finding out seems to be not only dangerous but world-ending. The wind begins to howl…..
The time-funneled Moments of the concert, the ruminations of Memory and Time that many songs explored were juxtaposed throughout the concert with the actions of Security. Dylan can seem inordinately concerned with photos and videos and bootleg recordings. Some of that most likely is copyright obsession and such. Is there more? In my recent reading of works by writers such as Hyde, Roland Barthes and Susan Sontag, or in those conflated memories like the Dylan concert(s), when Time seems ridiculously fluid, Dali’s Persistence of Memory keeps suggesting itself. Perhaps Memory is a creative act as much as anything, as valid as “factual records” What we remember and why. How we color it, what we use it for. Recent inventions solidify events, concretize them into chunks we can bring up whole, like, well, the metaphor is Biblical. Do we create memories just to regurgitate Time or are they “good for something” , a tool of our spirit, a creativity that moves us forward? Do we isolate them like unconnected little blocks or do we smoosh them like multi-colored paint?
In my favorite movie, Wings of Desire, the purposefully-fallen angel Damiel walks in his new humanity, repeating the word “Now” and “Now” and “Now”. Gloriously realizing the concept of Time and Moment and the repetitive joy of each second of experience. Why repeat? Why am I writing of an experience instead of having a NEW one?
A friend of mine who has spoken with me of these things advises that one cannot stand in the doorway forever, experiencing the rush of bordered worlds. Every once in awhile, one must sit. Can all experiences be brought to a sensible, relational order in the mind? Probably not. But experience without contemplation is nothing more than a lab mouse strapped to an electric wire. Sensation # 1 and Sensation # 88 have no relationship to each other…..unless the mouse discovers that Sensation # 1 is the further left key on the piano and Sensation # 88 is the key way to the right. That’s when the mouse discovers that he really never liked piano music.
Okay….I’m extending the metaphors a little too much….end of riff!
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