My latest…

…can be found at http://www.firstofthemonth.org/archives/2014/12/ol_blue_eyes.html

I can’t resist saying that when the editor showed it to a woman friend, she told him that when she was in college, she would have slept with whoever wrote it. (She went on to say that, regrettably, while now in her fifties that is still her highest praise for a boy author.

I thought, now why didn’t anyone react like this when it would have done me some good. Then Adele reminded me that, aside from how I looked in jeans, my writing was what first attracted her to me.

Anyway, it begins…

To get the preliminaries out of the way, at Bob Dylan’s third of three concerts at the Oakland Paramount, first, the band – Bob (piano and harmonica), Tony Garnier (bass), Donnie Herron (banjo, viola, violin, mandolin, pedal and lap steel), Stu Kimball (rhythm guitar), and especially, given the way the sound mix reached these ears, George Reville (drums) and Charley Sexton (lead guitar) – was terrific; but if you understood more than one-third of the lyrics, you beat the over-under. Second, they did nineteen songs, of which one was from the sixties and five from “Tempest,” Bob’s latest release of new material. (Last year, at Mountain View, they did fifteen songs, of which four were from the sixties and two from “Tempest.” The year before, in Berkeley, eight of fifteen songs from the sixties and none from “Tempest, even though it had just been released and could have used the promotion.) Third, as for ingratiating stage presence, Bob no longer even introduces the musicians. (If he said anything, it was “Thank you. We’ll be right back.” At least, immediately after something undistinguishable uttered from his microphone, everyone walked off stage and returned, fifteen minutes later, to resume playing, without any buzzings or dimming lights to alert those in line in the rest rooms, of whom, given the number of graying pony tails in the audience, male as well as female, there were likely to be plenty. (Of further demographic note, it being the night after the World Series, the audience sported about as many t-shirts saluting the Giants as it did saluting Bob.) And finally, when he’d played Mountain View, Bob was still varying his shows by a couple songs, night to night; but on most of this tour, he has been sticking with the same songs, in the same order, every night, regardless of whether he is moving on or sticking around.