Bob Dylan played at Mountain Park in Holyoke Friday night, the first of two area concert this weekend.
There was no prancing, no light show; just a man, his piano, and his band. Dylan’s most strenuous move was the lap he took as a sort of victory walk off the stage at the end of every song.
What his performance lacked in flair it made up for in, well, Dylanisms. True to reputation, the ramblin’ man mumbled quite a bit and took the liberty of pulling songs off their beat altogether, though still weaving them into poems. Having performed for fifty years, it’s the kind of thing you expect.
Dylan’s vocal styling has taken a turn to the scratchier side, channeling the cookie monster into his mutterings a la` Tom Waits. This made understanding him a little difficult, however knowing the lyrics proved no problem to fans in the audience.
The band seemed mostly at home doing songs with a more blusey vibe, pulling out the stops to rock with songs like Thunder On The Mountain.
The two hour set included hits like Highway 61 Revisited, Shelter From The Storm, and The Ballad Of A Thin Man. Dylan addressed the crowd once, before closing the regular set with All Along The Watch Tower, saying “Let’s get high, smoke your bowl…” before introducing the band members. The heat swept the crowd here and there, but it didn’t appear there were major busts on those heeding the performer’s advice.
He returned for an encore of Blowin In The Wind.
Dylan plays at the Mohegan Sun Arena Saturday night. Tickets are still available through ticketmaster.com for $49.50.
Here is the set list from the Mountain Park performance:
1. Watching The River Flow
2. Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right
3. Things Have Changed
4. Tangled Up In Blue
5. The Levee’s Gonna Break
6. Make You Feel My Love
7. Honest With Me
8. Every Grain Of Sand
9. High Water (For Charley Patton)
10. Desolation Row
11. Highway 61 Revisited
12. Shelter From The Storm
13. Thunder On The Mountain
14. Ballad Of A Thin Man
15. Like A Rolling Stone
16. All Along The Watchtower
(encore)
17. Blowin’ In The Wind
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7 Responses to Concert Review: Bob Dylan At Mountain Park
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My daughter and I thought the band was a tight as I’ve ever seen a Dylan band be, including “The band’ for 2 nights at the old boston garden 74-75? It appeared to us thet Bob really wanted to give a beautiful crowd a beautiful show on a beautifil night. It was a graet show
Desolation Venue
Great performance — with Bob’s voice strong and clear and even melodic at times, like his absolute crooning of the chorus of “Desolation Row.” All songs tonight sung from the piano, except a keyboard stance of “Watch the River Flow,” and finally, FINALLY coming to the front of the stage with just a mic for “Thin Man” — where the echo now employed makes the song feel even more like the beginning of Mr. Jones’ bad trip.
I’ve seen Bob only seven times during the past 15 years — with six of those shows in the past four years. Remarkably, and without a doubt, he is getting better — and this show was one of the best I have seen. God bless this man and his band.
I cannot do justice to a review of the Maestro, but let me tell you about the Desolation Row scene down at the front of the stage, in what turned out to be a colossal failure to control the venue or provide a suitable, staple situation in which to enjoy the show.
Abysmal venue — MOUNTAIN PARK IN HOLYOKE, MA.
The “Security Wizards” Company was providing stage security for Mountain Park for the first time at this concert. If justice, and the venue’s insurance provider, have any say, it will be there last time.
We were in the first row, off to the right. We were doomed from the start, because Bob’s piano had been placed 3/4th of the way towards the back of the stage, and between us and Bob was literally a wall of amps & other equipment. Not just us, but more than 100 people who should have been able to see the stage and bought tickets for the same prices as the folks front & center with unimpeded views of the performance, were suddenly at a radio broadcast rather than a show you could see.
It was downhill from there.
Despite the fact that front & center could see clearly, an obnoxious woman kept asking if people could come up and stand at the barriers. A little prick of a guy with a raggedy white pony tail, the man in charge of the Wizards, equivocated, so when the house lights went down, the rush forward hit those barriers like a tsunami. My wife & I quickly did the calculation (shall we watch the backs of people who jump in and stand between us and our obscured view or do we hit the barriers too) and grabbed our piece of the rail.
For three songs, and one of the coolest moments of my concert-going life, we were as close to Bob as we’ll ever be. Not breathing down his neck, but close enough to watch his grimace as he worked the baby grand. We could see the pattern in his cowboy boots, and the way he lifts his left leg before pounding those piano keys again. Beautiful.
Someone from Dylan’s stage management stood directly before us, reaming out the pony-tailed Wizard boss, telling him, “You’ve lost control of the house. As soon as you let this crowd go, you lost control, and that’s it. Let it go. You won’t get it back.” Amen to that.
An usher grabbed me from behind and told me to return to my seat — and I said, “OK, but what about the other 200 people up here?” Usher man slinked away. My wife had a similar experience, except a red-haired bushy-bearded clown began poking her in the chest while telling her to move. Thug. We stayed where we were because literally no one in the crowd at front had moved an inch.
Then — and all this while the performance continued — the Holyoke police do a “sweep” of the front, telling people to “Get moving!” Ok, ok — we’re going, like everybody else — for three seconds. We dutifully sat back in our worthless seats, while people streamed up and around us, flooding the area again with standing bodies. The Security Wizards, having surrendered the ground to the pushiest drunks, concentrated on loud, frantic efforts to stop people from taking pictures. Pony-tail was almost literally diving into the crowd to confront photo-snappers, and all the scared, hapless Wizardette cadets were doing likewise, making a challenging listening experience even more disrupted.
Meanwhile, Holyoke’s Finest – a sad testimony about that town — came through with another, half-assed sweep which amounted to the barrier-crowders parting the waters so the cops could wade through. We continued to sit dutifully, watching parades of eye-level asses shuffle by, attached to drunks from the back rows come down front to hang while having a beer and shooting shit with friends. And the band played on.
Incredibly, while Bob & the band heated up and just got better and better, the scene down front continued to careen downhill. At a certain point, you mentally give up the fight against the gawkers stepping into your sliver of a view. Let it go. But then I realized I was staring at the back of the head of an usher, a curly-haired blond wearing a black kilt (if you need clues of who to fire) was standing, clueless, in front of us, apparently having quit the job that got her in the gate. Another Security Wizard made it a point to allow a man on crutches — but over 6 feet tall — to get down in front to stand where my view was, so he could snap a photo.
It was, without a doubt, the worst management of a concert I’ve seen. Not quite Altamount, but it had the potential.
I have not declared myself done with attempts to see again this musical giant, while he and I see walk the earth together. But I do declare, right here and now, that I will NEVER GO TO MOUNTAIN PARK AGAIN!
Hello iamjh. I am sorry you had such a scary experience. Assuming your account is accurate, I agree that the Rent-a-Thugs did an inept job at crowd control. Now I wasn’t there, but just reading your report, I am thinking you left out one person who holds much of the blame.
You know who I mean. A certain Mr. Robert Zimmerman should have stopped the performance until the gate crashers returned to their seats, and unless the house was sold out, you should have been offered alternative seating with a full view.
Mr. Zimmerman should have stopped the performance? That’s hilarious! Yeah, you’re right, that’s his job!
Worst run event I’ve ever been to..The lighting and sound quality were horrible….Bob’s a shell of what he once was…Security was a non existent joke…Total waste of time and money…
I didn’t get read the reviews before I posted mine but “iamjh” is right on point…We actually left 1/2 way through because of the lack of crowd control
Big disappointment. My husband and I thought Bob Dylan was great,we couldn’t see the stage, because everyone in front of us stood up, some even standing on their seats. We regularly go to concerts in many parts of the country and have never seen anything like the lack of crowd control. Even the free concert in San Francisco was better and there were 750,000 people there.