Albuquirky

So I went to see the gig mentioned in the previous entry and I have just a little post to write on it.

Firstly, the venue was at a place called the Journal Pavilion, and was effectively a grass amphitheater facing a sizeable stage that’s buried in a valley. Country music, or country-inspired rock, isn’t really a very prevalent genre in the UK – and not knowing much about it anyway, this was an entirely new experience. At first I wasn’t a very good listener. Willie Nelson opened, but I was rather busy admiring the sky, which had upgraded itself to ‘epic’ for the sunset. The sun sank behind the east-facing stage and lit up the stratus clouds from below, whilst away to the south-east huge lightning giants shed a misty rain that evaporated before the ground, giving the impression that the bottom of the cloud was disintegrating into nothingness. The other thing that was distracting me was the crowd – there were two distinct subcultures at large. On the one side, you had a bunch of conservative folk in sensible dress, with their families, nodding appreciably at the music so familiar to them, and on the other hand you had tatty hippy stoners wreathed in tie-dye and cannabis smoke, raving away with abandon. It was pretty interesting – and gratifying, almost – to see these two erstwhile mortal enemies sustain a temporary truce.

Eventually I was able to turn my attention back to the music. I confess Willie Nelson was lost on me a bit, and I put that down to my inexperience with the genre. John Mellencamp was an energetic act that adroitly ignored his 57 years and did a good job getting the audience going with some fun, if a little superficial power ballads – and then Dylan.

I think I had an advantage here. I barely know any Dylan outside ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ and ‘The Times They Are A-Changin”, so I had no pre-formed image to shatter. Unfortunately, it seemed about half the audience did, and I watched sadly as group after group streamed towards the exit, a sort of perplexed embarrassment on their faces. This isn’t what I came to see seemed to be the general sentiment. Dylan’s voice was scratchy, torn, occasionally unintelligible and half the time he dropped the melody. It was the voice of an old, old man.

But I thought the people leaving kind of missed the point. Perhaps it’s because I like Nick Cave, but the strained voice didn’t bother me at all. The texture, the cadence, and the sheer energy of this figure on the stage, far away, no more than two centimeters high in his white stetson hat… it overrode the crackle and snap of age. I don’t wish to sound self-righteous. If I knew more Dylan beforehand then perhaps I, too, might’ve been disappointed. But I didn’t, and I wasn’t.

Interesting day.