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FRIENDS

In all honesty, when I saw Bob Dylan live for the first time, I was disappointed. I must say that it was not easy to type that word; it was so close to getting stuck in my fingers. In fact, I regret letting it slip. That was careless of me. The Dylan performance that I saw was not as mind-blowing as I wanted it to be, and this certainly was a disappointment. A real part of me wants to be annoyed, and rant about how he is a used up, cranky has-been, but if he is a has-been, then I would say that it is worth thinking about exactly what he once was. Doing so might not be enough for some, but it does the trick for me, and I would maintain that much of what makes him great endures. It is just sad that his voice has fallen on the croaky side of things. Or maybe he can still sing, but after so many years he is just tired and grumpy and cannot be bothered.

The fact that the 2010 model Bob Dylan, who will hit 70 on his next birthday and has been active since the dawn of the sixties, did not perform with the same intensity as some of the young bucks who prance about on the stages of today, inflicts next to no damage on the monumental contribution the “poet laureate of rock ‘n’ roll” has made. Some nerd somewhere needs to pull their finger out and concentrate on building a time machine, so that I can go back to watch Dylan perform at The Gaslight Café, or at some other moment during his prime. We need time travel for this and so many other reasons, but do not get me started on that, for it is another issue for another time. Sadly that pun was not intended.

I am waiting for someone to show me the young artist of today who is making the same sort of contribution that Dylan was making when he had more spring in his step, and who promises to be around and as active for as long as Dylan. I would say that I am looking for someone in modern music that I will enjoy just as much as any of my old favourites. It might not be so easy to see who this person is without the benefit of hindsight, all I know is that I prefer a younger Bob Dylan to most of the youngster musicians of today. It sounds awfully gushy and mega cheesy to say something like “there is nobody else quite like him” (I would probably make fun of myself if I ever said something that sounded as silly and lifted from a press pack as that), but these days it seems impossible to recreate the legendary characters of the good old days. Perhaps the nature of music today means that it is no longer possible for exactly the same sort of musical legends to exist; music has certainly evolved and perhaps I need to learn what a legend might look like in the context of the 21^st century. I just hope that one day I will be able to still see performances by older versions of my current favourites, who have beaten the odds and survived and are still playing their hits. Then I will be able to look back and think, with eyes glazed over and fixed on the middle distance, of the happy times when we were all young and lively and their tasty jams were just getting started.

Hopefully this guy will be around when I am a nostalgic old git: