Perhaps it was the week long binge of anti-histamines still coursing through my blood, perhaps the chardonnay, perhaps the raw, terrible weather. Whatever the reason, I think I'll never know why I got so very pissed off that evening.
Wait, maybe I should start at the beginning...
Recently my hubby Brian and I took a trip to Cooperstown, NY, to see...Bob Dylan! It's been my dream for over a decade now to see him play live. I've heard all sorts of things about Bob in concert...he's the best, he's the worst, basically I decided to expect nothing and therefore not be disappointed.
I was so sick the week leading up to the show. Like, really sick- Tylenol with codeine sick. (The best kind of sick, if you ask me!) But still, I was looking forward to the weekend. We were also going to hit up the Baseball Hall of Fame, which Brian was really excited about. (He's not the Bob nut that I am, but that's ok. He still appreciates him.)
The day of the show arrived and was rainy, cold, and raw. Just as the weather forecasters had predicted. (Hey, wait a minute, aren't they always wrong?) So we bought ponchos. We enjoyed a nice drive to Cooperstown, despite the gloomy weather. We listened to Bob for a while on the way and I could hardly believe in just a few hours I'd actually be in his presence.
Cooperstown is a really small town...when we pulled up to the Best Western and saw a tour bus, Brian teased that it was Bob's. It probably was. The town was totally psyched for Bob Dylan and we could almost feel it in the air. The restaurant we ate in was playing Bob's new album. I was positively giddy.
After dinner we found a cute little cafe and had a drink or two before the show, and there was a small group of people at the table next to us. I eaves-dropped while Brian was in the restroom. I quickly found out the youngish guy drinking a soda was the lighting guy for Bob Dylan! He was telling this lady how Bob waits in his trailer until just before he takes the stage, then after the show goes straight back to his trailer. He's got his own chef and everything. So I guess those recluse rumors may be true. But hey, he's Bob Dylan, hasn't he earned the right to be reclusive if he wants? If I were him I probably wouldn't befriend a 20-something hipster lighting guy, either!
I also heard hipster guy say Bob doesn't want to stand out at all- he wants to be under dim lighting. Hipster had worked on another tour, did I hear Willie Nelson? And Willie was always nice and friendly and always gave autographs. Well, lah-de-frickin-dah. Then the waiter moved them all to a table in the dining room and eaves-dropping time was officially over. Too bad. I went back to sipping my chardonnay.
My mood remained positive.
We decided to head into the concert. The show was being held at Double Day Field. (Dylan was doing a minor league ball park tour this summer.)
It wasn't even raining! Seriously, what luck! We weaved our way through the crowd until we were about 10, maybe 15 feet from the stage. Stoned old hippies are easy to weave through, they're very agreeable. We sat through two well-known but mediocre blues bands. Lots of gratuitous, predictable guitar riffs. (What my husband would refer to as "musical masturbation") The uninspired female vocalist was taking drags off her cigarette in between singing. I think the hippies surrounding us had either never heard Blues before or were very, very stoned, because they were loving it. I was starting to get antsy. I felt like Pee Wee Herman while he's waiting for the tour of the Alamo to end so he can finally see the basement. Enough, already!
The couple behind us kept swigging from a bottle of liquor. It was a dry show, no booze allowed. (Curious, right? Did Bob make up that rule?) The couple started getting rowdy. But in the worst, most annoying way possible. The girl began shouting "Bobby Dylan!!" "Bobby Deee-lon!!" "C'mon, Zimmerman!!" I cringed. This was a mockery! Filthy bastards.
To the left of us were four teenage girls. They couldn't have been much older than sixteen. The rest of the people surrounding us were just random hippies or hipster couples.
Finally, Bob took the stage and began to play without addressing the audience. Big deal, I had heard he did this, right?
I started having one of those magical moments, the kind where life is so wonderful I can hardly believe it, when I couldn't help but notice...the crowd. Oh, the crowd! The crowd. Was. Awful.
The teenage girls to the left of us began "rocking out" to Bob. Dancing to Bob. Swaying lovingly to Bob. He started into "Lay, Lady, lay" and the girls positively shrieked. Um, was I at Bob Dylan or a freaking Justin Timberlake show? To the left and the right we were surrounded by people absolutely jamming to Bob Dylan. Bob is not supposed to be jammed to, Bob is supposed to be absorbed. Enjoyed. He is a legend, an icon. He is my favorite. Sway to his music a bit, if you must, but PLEASE, do not gyrate. Do not do an awkward, ryththm-free dance to Bob Dylan. Basically, all of a sudden I had to move. The crowd was ruining it for me. Seriously, ruining it! I couldn't watch Bob through the eyes of these people for another minute!
Brian thought I was crazy when I told him I needed to move. But at that point I think I was making him nervous, he'd do whatever I asked. He peed, we got hot chocolate, and then we went and sat on the damp bleachers.
This was Bob Dylan! This was my dream! It wasn't even raining!
Brian noted the irony of how we were sitting far away on the bleachers at Bob Dylan when we had been right at the front of the mosh pit for NOFX, and had gone onstage at The Dropkick Murphy's. I couldn't explain it, either. I still can't.
So we watched Bob from afar. I tearfully listened to "Simple Twist of Fate." He changed almost every song so it was really difficult to know which song it was unless you were a Bob nut, which I am. Bob's band was really good. Bob is old, but he sounded really good, too, and he played the keyboard the whole time. Later, we went a bit closer, maybe to buy a T-shirt, and thought better of it. 45 bucks for a shirt?! This seemed very un-Dylan, but what do I know?
The show was almost over. It was starting to mist. We stood next to a thirty-something-ish Mom and her daughter. The Mom was dancing in a manner I can only describe as horrific (think Elaine from "Seinfeld") and when Bob was backstage and the crowd was calling for an encore, she actually shouted out, "Come on, Bob! Come on, handsome!!" She said the word "handsome" in this creepy, sing-songy voice. As a matter of fact, she wouldn't stop saying it. "Come on, handsome!!!" Now. I would call Bob Dylan many, many things: genius, visionary, national treasure... But handsome is not necessarily one of the adjectives I would use to describe him nowadays. I could've slapped her. You should've seen the way she gyrated to "Like a Rolling Stone." Is nothing sacred?
My heart sank when I saw Bob throw his harmonica out into the crowd. That should've been me catching it! I'm like his #1 freaking fan! But I was frozen in my spot, unable to move. So strange. So surreal.
I think in the end it was just too much of a personal experience for me to share with a crowd, regardless of their obnoxiousness. I think perhaps I felt I had missed something, and found myself wondering what a concert of his in the 60's would've been like. This sort of seemed like a cheap knock-off of what a real Dylan concert should be. Real Dylan fans wouldn't maniacally gyrate to "Mr. Tambourine Man," would they? Also, I knew perhaps I'd be disappointed; maybe this was why I was. But still, I'll really never know why I couldn't get over the crowd and their bad dancing and just enjoy myself. It's a mystery to me.
We didn't even end up needing to use the ponchos. The heavy rain held off until we got back to the hotel. My Mom called my cell phone when we got back to the room and excitedly asked, "So, how was the concert?!" I told her we were right up front but had to move because the crowd ruined it. She thought I was nuts, disturbed.
Who knows.
The next day we went to The Baseball Hall of Fame and I got a picture of me next to Curt Schilling's bloody sock.
All in all, it did end up being a very nice weekend. I think maybe I'll try to see Bob again. Maybe in a smaller venue? Where the age is 18 plus? When it's not cold and raining and outside? And nobody is allowed to dance?