Re: [bomp] Dylan at a club last night

["Immortal Porpoises" <immortalporpoises@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> How's his voice holding up? I keep reading on the newsgroup that he can't
> sing anymore, but they always say that kind of thing on newsgroups.

I think his singing was great. People said he couldn't sing even when he was
a kid. He invented his own kind of singing, did it well, and still does well
singing with his 63-year-old scotch & cigarette-burned vocal chords. The art
is not in what nature gave you but what you do with it, no? The guy was
rockin' hard all night. Sometimes he growled, sometimes he barked, and
sometimes he wailed. He didn't miss anything that he reached for.

And he was actually leading the band, too, instead of just doing his thing
while his group played back-up. He was counting in starts and stops, cueing
solos, and running some kind of private joke between himself and the rhythm
guitarist through the whole show that was eventually driving me crazy that
they weren't letting the rest of us in on it. In summation, the show was
pretty much a well-run dress rehearsal that they let a few hundred of us
watch. As a performer, there's no way I can't appreciate that, no matter
what nay-saying anyone else may engage in. No 63 year old owes the audience
a 21-year-old singing voice or a faithful recreation of 40-year-old hits,
unless they're on the Richard Nader oldies circuit.

I keep having this fantasy that Bob & Willie are going to sing "To All The
Girls I've Loved Before." I know they won't, but a man can dream, can't he?

Speaking of oldies acts: I don't know if it was just something wrong that
night, but 3 years ago I saw John Sebastian open for the Everly Brothers. He
sang 4 songs, sounded like he had his larynx removed and had a frog
surgically implanted where it used to be, and finished up with a long
harmonica solo. The Everlys sang like no time had passed, did not look at
each other through the whole show (I guess they still haven't settled
anything but love the paycheck), did not change a single note of any song's
original arrangement, and you might have well been listening to them
lip-sync to a 1965 show on playback.

Johnny Maestro does a pretty classy show, glittery tuxes & slathered in
oldies-circuit schmaltz and joie-de-vivre that can't be faked. Just saw Jay
Black two weeks ago. That was a shocker. No schmaltz at all, everyone wore
jeans & t-shirts, lots of sarcasm, dirty jokes & foul language.
Unapologetically subjected us to letting his 20 year-old son sing one while
Jay had a glass of water. And that voice. Holy Cara Mia, Batman!

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