Last night, I was able to see the one, the only, Bob Dylan in concert! The concert was held Assembly Hall in Bloomington. While Assembly Hall is a great building, I was disappointed that the concert was not held in the Indiana University Auditorium. If you have ever seen a concert at the IU auditorium, you understand my disappointment. The IU auditorium is an amazing place to experience a concert. I remember the first time I walked into the IU auditorium. By eyes grew large, my mouth dropped open, and I was awestruck. I was hoping for this to happen again when seeing Dylan; but overall, Assembly Hall a decent concert atmosphere.
Due to hectic traffic, I missed the first opening act Amos Lee. However, I did arrive in time to catch Elvis Costello. Costello performed an acoustic act by himself, and simply brought the house down. He came out rocking with the song "(The Angels Want to Wear My) Red Shoes". There was a good variety of songs, switching between upbeat rockers and slow ballads, such as his hit song "Allison". Costello interacted with the audience quite a bit, by talking between almost every song. He told stories about his children, previous wives, and Governor Arnold Schwarchenegger. Since he was playing at Indiana University, he said at one point, "I hope you all kick some ass tomorrow in your football game against Penn State." After some cheers from the audience, he replied with, "I have no idea what that means, they just told me to say that." Overall, Costello was a great 2nd opener.
Now this was my third time seeing Dylan live. The first time seeing him was a bit of a disappointment, due to the fact that he was on the side of the stage, not even facing the audience, or playing his guitar. This time around, Dylan's performance was much better. He played guitar for his first 4-5 songs, and actually played in the middle of the stage. He has a great backing band, who rocked and jammed on "Ballad of a Thin Man", "Highway 61 Revisited", and "Summer Days". Four songs came from his most recent album Modern Times, which were all performed well. An interesting thing to note was that Dylan's most famous songs, "All Along the Watchtower" and "Like A Rolling Stone", which are both regulars in his live performance, were both omitted from this concert. A song that caught be by surprise was "Blowin' in the Wind". It was the second song of the encore, and I didn't even recognize it until almost a minute into the song. The song was sped up, and had a country sort of twang to it.
Overall, the concert was very enjoyable. I look forward to seeing Dylan live again in concert, after seeing him live, the same goes for Elvis Costello. While I'm sure Dylan's live show is not up to the level it used to be, it was still great a music legend and my favorite artist perform live.
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