Bob Dylan 980215 in Toledo, Ohio - University Of Toledo
February 15, 1998 Toledo, Ohio University Of Toledo John F. Savage Hall Capacity: 9918 Showtime: 7:30 PM Ticket prices: $35.00, $22.00
Subject: Toledo Show Review From: Phillip Lecso (plecso@opus.mco.edu) Date: Mon, 16 Feb 1998 11:18:05 +0000 Set List: 1. Absolutely Sweet Marie 2. I Want You 3. Can't Wait 4. Your a Big Girl Now 4. Million Miles 5. Silvio 6. Cocaine 7. Masters of War 8. Tangled Up in Blue 9. Wheel of Fire 10. Till I Fell in Love With You 11. Highway 61 Encore 12. It Ain't Me 13. Love Sick 14. Rainy Day Women Warm-up act was Kenny Wayne Shepherd who did a lively set with a strong finish covering two Hendrix numbers; Waterfall and Voodoo Childe Slight Return. The audience was a true cross-section of generations. There were clearly teens at their first concert, college students, forty-somethings like myself and a smattering of fifty and sixty year olds. Then came Dylan and Oh My!. Perhaps inspired by the strong warm-up act, Dylan and the band came out smokin'. From the first chord of Sweet Marie till the end they were right on. Dylan's voice was strong and sang the lyrics clearly. I was in the eleventh row and could see Dylan's face quite clearly. He punctuated many of the lyrics with a raised eyebrow or grimace. For me the high points were the four songs from TOOM. Love Sick during the encore was fabulous! It was great to hear Dylan sing new material. Also nice was that Watchtower was out of the set. He played some inspired lead during Silvio. The "acoustic" set is now better described as "unplugged" as the whole band played along with upright bass, mandolin and acoustic guitar. By the end the whole band was smiling including Bob himself. There was no comments from Bob except to introduce the band. All in all a very strong performance with songs from TOOM taking a prominent palce in the set.
Subject: Review of 2/15/98 Toledo From: Dave (deadhead@now-online.com) Date: Mon, 16 Feb 1998 20:29:06 -0500 Hi Everybody, If you've seen my review of the Cleveland show, you can pretty much apply it to this show as well. The two + hour drive was worth it, but barely so based on the setlist. It was most disappointing to note that this show differed by only four songs in comparison to the previous night. As usual, Bob sang well and the band was strong, but the spark that lifts many Bobshows to the next level appeared to be missing. The crowd was, for the most part, subdued, only emitting significant energy during It Ain't Me, Babe. Thus, this concert veered dangerously close to Rolling Stones-like territory. That is, competent playing based on years of experience, but a rote rendering of a too little varied set list. I think we all expect just a bit more from Mr. D. Also of note was the "Beware of Dog" sign on the guitar racks, left as one looked at the stage. Is this new? What does it signify? Also, thanks to the unnamed convenience store clerk who rescued me from wandering an "oriental spa" type district. I might still be searching for the Univ. of Toledo without your assistance. Dave
Subject: Further thoughts on Toledo, 2/15/98 Date: Wed, 18 Feb 1998 21:54:59 -0500 From: John H. Haas Allow me to supplement Phillip Lecso's comments on the Toledo show Sunday night. Having heard Mr. Shepherd twice before, I stopped on the way to purchase some high-quality ear plugs. I was glad I had them, but I have to admit he was much improved since Fall of '96, which means he was still awful, but not as. He's lost at least one guitarist, and the bass player and keyboard player looked new, though the singer and drummer are the same. The sound was cleaner. I was impressed by the drummer-he's the one to watch. But all these guys are annoyingly young, and Kenny seems to have learned as much from Edgar Winter as from Johnny (not wise), and besides, Johnny's got the ground well covered. And I wish people would stop calling him a blues guitarist-blues is Son House, Gus Cannon, Lonnie Johnson, 'Ma' Rainey, Barbecue Bob, etc.-not this. He may employ blues conventions, but the spirit of the blues is a million miles from him. Which isn't to say it's illegitimate music or anything, it's just that even with the volume under control and a little space between the notes, it ain't so good. The audience (surprisingly at a university venue) was weighted toward the mature and sedate (this will be important later on)-plus these were Ohioans, after all. It was at least 50% thirty and older (me included). I went solo, which allowed me to chat a few folks up and listen to conversations around me. Half of the people I talked to were first-timers. The histoplasmosis scare is bringing a lot of people out who normally wouldn't come to a rock concert, but who remember Bob from the '60s. And, from what I heard, Bob needn't worry that they expect exact reproductions of his records-that's a critic's myth. They were open-minded and digging it all very deeply. Lots of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters. Little knots of teens and preteens here and there. Lots of trotting in and out for some pretty elaborate snacks (?!), but thankfully there was no beer being sold, so any idiots were at least sober or merely high idiots. Two cheers for the Volstead Act. The set list was probably not worth the 300-mile round trip I made, and overall the concert as a whole was around above average, for Bob-which means THE BEST DARN MUSIC YOU'LL HEAR ON THIS PLANET, but the experience didn't really smoke the way it sometimes does. For this I fear the audience was partly responsible. The music was immaculate, and Bob was ON from the get-go, but the crowd didn't respond to his wigglings. He would dip his guitar, bend his knees, make these little gestures, looking for some reciprocation, but there was little hilarity on the floor, so we never got that symbiosis going where each fed off the other's energy till the whole thing turned into a whirling, flailing, dervish convention. In the stands most people sat throughout, on the floor they stood and gaped. (On the other hand, they were very well behaved and attentive, little chatter that I could hear.) I guess I've grown to expect a certain amount of carnival at Bob concerts, an expectation I perhaps should shelve. This concert was meditative, and by no means unsatisfying. Everything was so well played, I bet this will sound grand on tape. And as someone has remarked, it would seem Bob got a new sound system (beginning Spring or Fall of '97?), because things really do sound great-Bob's vocals very high in the mix, very loud, delicately enunciated. THAT was worth the trip! But this is my 5th concert since he unveiled McTell and I still haven't heard it! And-this was expected-I had to again tell my nine-year-old daughter, who's favorite song of all time is Ring Them Bells, that no, he didn't play that one either. Enough whining already! The songs: The major highlight of the concert was without question I Want You. Those with access to tapes, please check this out. I hope my reaction wasn't purely subjective. It was magnificent, almost as slow and deliberate as the gorgeous Budokan version, incredibly beautiful, the vocals aching, studied, deliberate, pouring forth in his Trying To Get To Heaven voice. Were my thesaurus from another world I might be able to do this song justice. My eyes were starting to well up, no joke, and not for any personal sentimental reasons. It was the sheer naked emotional splendor, the utter loveliness of the performance. For myself, at least, this was SO BLEEDING GOOD it would render the rest of the show anticlimactic. If he had come out and played this song and left, I wouldn't have complained. "No one ever spoke to us like that before," saith the Williams of another BoB song; well, no one, not even Bob, ever sang this song like this before. Priceless. What every Dylanist lives for. (Are you listening, SONY? Why don't you folks just take this and the songs you feature on the website, leave 'em unmastered if you want, put 'em on a disc, forget the artwork, pictures, and all the rest of the bourgeois trappings, drop it in a plastic sandwich baggy and give the people what they want/need/deserve? Do an end-run around the bootleggers. You could sell concert discs through the website, they could be official boots, it could even be a boot-of-the-month-club, folks would subscribe, profits would go to charity, we could all do some good in the world! Think about it.) In general, the mood of this show was gentle, pining; earnest but not in-your-face-aggressive; hard to put my finger on, verbally, but miles away from the kind of fin de sicle rockabilly-psychedelic-blues of '95 or '96. There was no real crashing in say Silvio or TUIB. I'm not even sure I would call it rock n' roll, precisely. Whatever Bob says about the never-ending tour, hindsight seems to indicate that the G. E. Smith-J. J. years constitute a kind of unit, and since Larry-or maybe even David-we've moved into a new, more subtle and mature, phase. Anyway, plenty of emotion and technical care in each of these very nuanced performances. Brief notes on other songs: Big Girl Now simply cried out for the harp to lift it into the supra-lunar realm. Why folks complain about Silvio, I'll never get-it's a new song every time, the jam a performance in its own right, containing a borrowed riff it's your job to guess (Fall '97 it was Dear Mr. Fantasy, this time I couldn't get it). Masters of War had a new, more emphatic arrangement. The runner-up for highlight was This Wheel's on Fire, long a favorite of mine, but I've never seen it live up to my expectations in concert until now. Some subtle changes in the arrangement have made this into a real killer. Again, the accent is on nuance, on muted, complex emotion-need to hear it on tape to really appreciate it. TOOM songs settling into a groove. Ain't Me Babe and Love Sick stood out prominently during the encore. The former even sounded good in the bathroom, whence I had jogged for a desperate, brief visit. (Nice clean rest room, with excellent acoustics, too! Thanks, U of Toledo!) Oh, Bob looked great, seemed very comfortable, happy to be up there. Great musicianship all around, as usual. Bob now definitely sole leader of the band, no longer routing his cues through Tony. That's about it. Next time down the highway.
