The Chris Moeller Archives

Wake Me Up with a Slap or a Kiss - A-Train Fall Concert Series #1 - by Aaron Moeller

In 1988 Bob Dylan began what has become known as The Never-Ending Tour, playing hundreds of shows a year and continually spanning the globe, hitting a handful of continents with regularity. The tour manages to make its way back to the Midwest at least once a year. Two weeks ago, Bob Dylan and his band played the 2000th show of the tour and last week settled in for an evening at Carver-Hawkeye Arena in Iowa City.

This was my 12th show of the tour and I’ve yet to see Dylan in the same venue twice. I don't like to miss local Dylan shows. If you were on the planet at the same time as Shakespeare, wouldn't you try to attend as many of those original plays as you could, especially if he came to your state? Carver-Hawkeye Arena isn’t the greatest venue for concerts but I have to confess that we had great seats. From our spot on the floor, sound simply wasn’t going to be an issue, though marching all the way up the stairs from our floor seats to the street level bathrooms could have been.

Amos Lee, an artist I wasn’t really familiar with, opened up the Bob Dylan Show this time around. From what I’ve read he’s been compared favorably to Norah Jones, though his latest album has more upbeat songs. His music seemed to fall somewhere between John Mayer and Dave Matthews. He introduced himself a number of times – "I’m Amos Lee. I’m from Philadelphia." – for the benefit of the large amount of late arrivals.

Then came a classic performance and what was, admittedly – though I’m a major Dylan fan – the biggest reason I was so excited for this show – a solo performance by Elvis Costello. I’ve been re-reading a ten-year-old book recently by the dean of rock critics, Greil Marcus, entitled "Ranters and Crowd Pleasers: Punk in Pop Music", a collection of his magazine writings from the mid-70s onward and a virtual blow-by-blow of the punk generation. Throughout the book, Marcus traces the punk movement but continually compares and contrasts those artists with two major performers whose long careers have corresponded with that era, Elvis Costello and Bruce Springsteen. "Parallel figures," Marcus writes, with "one always nibbling at the boundaries of the mainstream, the other seemingly at home nowhere else." Marcus contends that in the Reagan/Thatcher era, the two "were headed toward a convergence of Springsteen’s Nebraska and Costello’s "Pills and Soap" and King of America". He calls them "three of the quietest punk records ever made, and three of the truest – negations as complete and unflinching, in their way, as hard and cruel, as any of the explosions in (The Sex Pistols’) "God Save the Queen".

Elvis nearly sprinted on stage, strapped on his guitar and launched into "(Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes", an older tune from the underrated Rock and Roll Hall of Famer’s back catalog, and then "Both Sides of the Same Town", a ballad from his Delta-flavored 2004 album The Delivery Man.

The song "Veronica" is about as close as Costello’s ever come to having a hit single and was the first tune a lot of fans seemed to recognize. One of two highlights of the night was the Hurricane Katrina-inspired title track from Costello’s collaboration with legendary New Orleans producer Allen Toussaint, The River in Reverse. Stepping away from his microphone and gesturing, even those unfamiliar with the song picked up on the shout-along chorus of "Wake me up! Wake me up! Wake me up with a slap or a kiss! There must be something better than this/ ‘cos I don’t see how it can get much worse/ What do we have to do to send the river in reverse?" This is a great angry song, filled with righteous rage, and is maybe the best song anybody’s written in the last ten years:

So count your blessings when they ask permission
To govern your money with superstition
They tell you it’s all for your protection
‘Til you fear your own reflection
But the times are passing from illumination
Like bodies falling from a constellation
An uncivil war divides the nation
So erase the tape
on that final ape
running down creation

It leads to a shouted climactic declaration: "In the name of the Father and the Son, In the name of gasoline and a gun!" Elvis won over the crowd for good with this one, as the Iowa City crowd, most of whom seemed largely unfamiliar with Costello’s work, gave him a standing ovation. (Maybe the lack of Costello fans in attendance was good. Elvis was on fire with energy and commitment, trying to win over the mannered crowd.)

From his very first album, "Alison" is a great ballad and was known to many in attendance as Classic Costello. "Man Out of Time", a personal favorite from the underrated and sonically brilliant Imperial Bedroom album, was stripped down and stunning. Written by Costello and T-Bone Burnett just a couple years ago, but introduced as a rewrite of a 1930's song, we were treated to another highlight of the night, a charming "Sulfur to Sugar Cane", the catchiest tune of the acoustic set with a number of rewritten lyrics for the occasion, "In Iowa City, pretty girls call my name...". "Elvis!" some ladies were heard to shout.

Costello has a lot of old school entertainer in him. (I greatly value my tattered VHS copy of the time Elvis filled in on the Late Show with David Letterman, not as bandleader, but as actual host when Letterman was out with shingles. He told monologues jokes and everything.) Costello introduced himself as the ninth of 13 generations of musicians (or something on that order) and spoke of his father, a British jazz and big band singer since the ‘40s. According to some internet reports, Costello was not as chatty as he’d been at some of the other shows on the tour, likely since the Iowa City crowd seemed so unfamiliar with his work. (He’s apparently had his wife, American jazz singer, Diana Krall, and their twin baby boys (Aaron and Chris?) traveling on tour with him.)

Costello is always one to mix in covers and one song morphed into "Not Fade Away", the Buddy Holly-rocker that served as another crowd sing-along. (With his horn-rimmed glasses, Holly is an obvious physical – as well as musical – Costello precursor.) Another ‘70’s song that’s grown in stature the last few years and is perhaps becoming the best known of Costello’s recordings, "(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding" was a big crowd pleaser. Some may know "Complicated Shadows" from its inclusion on The Sopranos soundtrack. He introduced it as a song he wrote for Johnny Cash and the crowd shouted its approval. "You don’t have to applaud," Costello said. "He never recorded it."

The final tune was "The Scarlet Tide", a Costello-penned, Oscar-nominted tune about a soldier that Allison Krauss recorded for the film Cold Mountain. The theme of war and its tragedy has clearly been on Costello’s mind and seems to have affected Dylan’s set list as well. Costello was insanely good on this night and the performance rivaled Al Green at the Minneapolis State Fair in August as the greatest of the sadly abbreviated (less than an hour) sets I’ve ever witnessed.

Blogmaster Chris has been kind enough to link to a number of my Bob Dylan concert reviews from expectingrain.com in the past, so I’ll keep this one brief. (Consult the archives!)

"Rainy Day Women #12 & #35)" with its "Everybody must get stoned" chorus was the wrong opener for such a sober, indoor performance, and while "Don’t Think Twice (It’s Alright)" is a top ten Dylan tune in my book, it wasn’t until the ending flourish of "Watching the River Flow" that Dylan and the boys really found their power.

Bob switched from his guitar to the keyboard for the rest of the show. Everybody loves to hear "Tangled Up in Blue" and Bob is back to changing around the lyrics (his boat sank three times in Delacroix). Dylan’s voice is as gruff as ever but he’s been vocal dynamite of late – full of piss and fervor – and passionately enunciating those often half-spoken lyrics.

"Rollin’ and Tumblin’" was a marathon version. Denny Freeman is taking more solos on guitar than I’ve ever seen a Dylan sideman take. Bob is also starting to radically rework some of his new songs, the way he’s been rearranging his old tunes for decades. "Honest with Me" and "Summer Days" seemed to throw the band, taking awhile to find their new grooves, then absolutely took off into the stratosphere. "High Water" was a high water mark in the set, with Donnie Herron on his electric banjo. This song has some of my favorite lyrics of the recent Dylan albums.

Bob Dylan Band 'Did You Know?' : Bassist Tony Garnier, who has been with Bob for nearly every show on the Never Ending Tour and is by far the longest serving sideman Dylan has ever had, is the grandson of New Orleans bandleader and musician D'Jalma Thomas Garnier, also known for his involvement with the New Orleans Boys Home for Colored Waifs. He's the man who taught Louis Armstrong how to play his horn.

"Desolation Row", a Highway 61 Revisted classic, was intriguing. Dylan was in the middle of a striking, memorable version when he launched into a harmonica riff and realized the harp was out of key and immediately stopped. The band kept the groove going as he strolled casually to the amp where he keeps his harmonicas lined up. Dylan fingered a couple of his candy-bar sized duet partners, wandered back to his keyboard, sang another verse, cued another Freeman guitar solo, then lit into the most emotional, cut-throat, 2+ minute harmonica solo I’ve ever heard.

I’d never heard "Ain’t Talkin’" live before, but it’s now a favorite of mine. He willed the lyrics to be understood. Despite all of its emotional weight and hard-earned wisdom, that voice is admittedly ravaged. We all know it’s nothing pretty, but anyone who tells you they’ve attended a Dylan show and couldn’t understand the lyrics – mid-1980s shows possibly excluded – are lying to you and you should not be friends with them.

"Thunder on the Mountain" and "Like a Rolling Stone" were solid encores, but it was the main set closer "Master of War", the granddaddy of anti-war songs that brought the greatest thunder of the evening. There’s no Bruce, and no Elvis Costello, of course, without Bob Dylan, and we were all reminded of that. And rewarded with a dynamite night in the ol’ college town. Keep your ear tuned to the roar, folks. He’ll be coming to your town soon.

posted by Anonymous @ 5:20 PM