So yeah, my area is infused with ‘60s Dylan energy, and despite the attempts to make the small artists’ colony some kind of shitty new Hamptons watered down façade, the creative urge and poetry rolls around the Catskill Mountains and strikes certain people hard still to this day. It’s a “can’t be conquered/held down” sort of evidence of the footprint Levon and Dylan and others left, a musical honesty that people like my friend Simon Felice of the fast rising Felice Bros. are compelled to carry forth into this modern day with their own twists, an homage more than a rip off. It’s cool because even as a punk fan growing up, when Nirvana was the most mind-opening thing going as a kid and I was resistant to older music because a lot of local venues in Woodstock didn’t want louder bands or scrubby kids, the best part of the ethos settled in and made me feel lucky. It makes me happy to see a local band like Metal Blade artists Three, who I’ve known for years, crossing musical divides and playing to fans of different generations and really spanning the gap and representing what the spirit of the sixties that should have endured and was supposed to be about. Similar to even, including the positive side of metal and punk, like when Johnny Rotten talks in his autobiography Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs about when the Sex Pistols played “God Save The Queen” on a boat, and unlike the movie Sid And Nancy, it was a mish-mash of people of all types partying with them on board, not just safety pin-through-the-nose punkers. That is what the ‘60s means to me and growing up, becoming more mature and open minded, led me to really discover and appreciate my surroundings and feel lucky to be from Woodstock, as the creative spirit of the ‘60s was the same as what made me want to book DIY shows locally as a kid. Once that gnosis was reached, I was able to really, really appreciate Hendrix and Dylan properly and embrace a wider palette spanning music history as a fan, which I am so thankful for. I’d been obsessed with Sonic Youth, which is fine, but you also have to realize that Woodie Guthrie is like the first punk!

Still, I had somehow NEVER managed to see Bob Dylan live! It’s personally embarrassing ,though I did see Garth Hudson open for Mercury Rev once in NYC and even saw him warm up in the dressing room while I was sort of awestruck and drinking Guinness from the band’s rider. I think I was snuck into that show and lied and told security I was Garth’s son, because my friend Tom Moretti, who used to run Error404 Records, which put out a compilation Hudson Valley bands in 1999 including some of the earliest Shabutie/pre-Coheed and Cambria recordings, was also working with Rick Danko at the time on some releases before his death and was friends with Mercury Rev around the time of their amazing Deserter's Songs. So, suffice to say, there was a lot of build up for seeing Dylan, one of those things that when it finally happens makes you reel because you’ve heard the music for years and never could’ve predicted somehow the circumstances that would finally lead to you seeing it performed, like suddenly being onstage unexpectedly for the Offspring’s Randall’s Island Warped tour show a few years back. Startling and exciting.

So thanks for allowing me to tell the strange tale ahead of time, and I promise I’ll cover the concert in the process and not take much liberty, but it really was an adventure, and road adventure is very Dylan, people. Dylan was performing at Saratoga Performing Arts Center, headlining an all day show with an amazing line up that included Levon Helm, Conor Oberst (something that still makes my inner indie-rock Saddle Creek fan mind do cartwheels!) and Gillian Welch, among others. I had no plans to go, being broke and very busy, but thankfully fate intervened, although at first via tragedy.

A dear friend was in town from New Orleans and I called her to say "Hi", and she told me another friend of ours was in town from California because tragically, her father had died. I rushed to the funeral and the service was eloquent, the pastor emphasizing that the dash between the first and last dates of your life is what really matters. Afterwards, my friends decided to sort of kidnap our sad but graceful friend from California to Dylan, because we thought that was what her music-loving dad would have wanted. Two of the four amazing hippy/rocker/surrealist girls I was with had tickets already and we planned to get the rest at the box office. Smoking joints in the car and catching up, it was a magical little drive to Saratoga from Kingston, NY.

Alas, disaster seemed to strike when we got there and the box office had been closed for fifteen minutes! It was really a blow, especially as it was meant to cheer up our friend, and the place was far from capacity. Our friends with tickets went inside and we looked around to scalp, but S.P.A.C. is a lot harder to scalp at then say, Roseland in NYC. Dejected, we walked around to the other gate of the venue in a last ditch try and I spoke with the security woman there, asking why the gate wasn’t open when it was far from capacity. Didn’t Bob Dylan want to make more money and was it a security issue? Amazingly, she just waved us inside! We couldn’t believe it. I paid for a lemonade and it came with a free Bob Dylan concert, basically! Thank the stars!

We had missed the other amazing slew of performers but it was still pure magic to be there and the weather was perfect. The crowd was a wonderful mix of people and though we were far from the stage, the feeling of elation and gratefulness of Dylan’s music as a web spun in different contexts through people’s lives over the years was palpable. He opened with a searing rendition of “Leopard Skin Pill-Box Hat” and the crowd was overjoyed. His current band sounded amazing and the guitar tones were just incredible, Saratoga’s sound people placing the band at a perfect volume to echo up the amphitheatre and into the hills loud and proud yet still quiet enough to hear every distinct phrasing and player with succinct clarity.

“Desolation Row” was my favorite song of the night, perhaps. Stretched by Dylan and the band on and on into a true sprawling snapshot of storytelling, it allowed itself to become metaphorical for anytime period’s woes, feeling especially current still in regards to the sorry-ass state of the economy and all these people struggling. Props to Roseanne Barr, that’s all I have to say. We need to cut the crap and solve some things, people. Kids are dying out there. It is cool that it is rumored My Chemical Romance are covering this song for the film Watchmen, as it goes great with the storyline of that comic/movie and Dylan is quoted a lot in the original Alan Moore graphic novel, a meditation on power and its abuse.

“Desolation Row” was beautiful and captivating, the band relaxed and yet energetic. Another great surprise was “Ballad Of A Thin Man”, which my friend couldn’t believe he was playing, as she’d most wanted to hear it live from his whole repertoire of 8 million songs. That song’s narrative of a clueless man tossed about in a world he doesn’t understand but criticizes, is one of Dylan’s most debated musical texts, as far as what context to approach it from. From Highway 61 Revisited, this song is perhaps an attack on journalists misconstruing Dylan, among other things, and tonight was transformed into an almost comforting nudge towards face-the-facts acceptance, with a country twist to the sound that was infectious. George G. Receli is an amazing, amazing drummer, just spot on. I was really into his playing all night, maybe my favorite aspect to the set except for the tiny fact that I was finally seeing BOB DYLAN!

“It’s Alright Ma I’m Only Bleeding” was another highlight, with Bob’s acerbic wit really shining through. I love when a performer of such dizzying scale and significance can make even older songs resonate, and not by bludgeoning you with any certain way to take it, but by the power of the music itself. Despite parts of his career when he got sick of “protest music”, Dylan’s songs really can help change the world, even if that means the times when it just creates a nicer environment for someone as a listener in their own little daily life. That is changing the world. Dylan and the Beatles adjusted things simply by existing, and whether it stopped war forever or not, we are very much better off with them in our lives and with their words, be they hopeful or discouraged or bitter or rallying. The recent documentary The Singing Revolution is more proof that a song can change the world, a gorgeous examination of Estonia’s independence movement against the U.S.S.R. and fifty years of occupation and cultural repression unraveling because of an insistence by the people to never give up their most beloved Estonian songs. America, we should be so proud, and never let censors discourage us from playing John Lennon on the radio ever again, something I often bitch about.

Still takes a minute to get used to Dylan talking about Alicia Keyes in “Thunder On The Mountain”, but she is amazing, and Modern Times is a perfect name for Dylan’s recent multi-faceted record, that, once again, bridges worlds fluidly, claiming and exclaiming and collaging.

“Like A Rolling Stone” was another surprise, because as much as it is definitive, Dylan doesn’t always play it, and the re-arrangement of the tune to an again, more sprawling and effortlessly engaging near-boogie was clever and great, the organ parts soaring up into the night sky under a pregnant moon. We danced and danced and danced. The crowd melodically sang “How does it feel” very loudly even as Dylan eschewed the melodies in the original recording for more of an old-timer wise man speaking narration. The combination was anthemic and huge.