Election night with the master

By Michael Fraase

Wednesday, 05 November 2008 11:37AM CST

Section: Politics

Bob Dylan 2008Bob Dylan played the University of Minnesota last night for the first time ever. While the front-of-house sound was a mixed bag—the guitars were clear as a bell; Dylan’s vocals were incredibly mushy—it was an historic, yet vaguely predictable night.

Dylan’s shows are usually either spectacular or spectacularly lackluster. The US election night show was more erratic than John McCain’s campaign. Chalk it up to constantly different arrangements for the old chestnuts, I suppose. The mushy vocals were attributable to a crooner with a croak and bad microphone selection. But Masters of War, It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding), and Blowin’ In The Wind were exceptionally well done.

Last summer, Dylan told the Times of London, “We’ve got this guy out there now who is redefining the nature of politics from the ground up: Barack Obama. He’s redefining what a politician is, so we’ll have to see how things play out. Am I hopeful? Yes, I’m hopeful that things might change. You should always take the best from the past, leave the worst back there and go forward into the future.” So you just had to know this show was going to be a political statement.

The setlist was carefully selected for US election night:

Cat’s In The Well
The Times They Are A-Changin’
Summer Days
This Wheel’s On Fire
Tangled Up In Blue
Masters Of War
Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again
John Brown
Beyond The Horizon
Highway 61 Revisited
Shooting Star
It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)
Under The Red Sky
Thunder On The Mountain
Ain’t Talkin’
Like A Rolling Stone
Blowin’ In The Wind

And, for the first time in my memory, Dylan actually addressed the audience. Again the vocals were awfully mushy in the mix, but I managed to pick out something about Pearl Harbor and “It looks like things are going to change now.”

Indeed.

Just as the audience checked their cell phones, learning Obama had won the US presidential election, Bob Dylan broke into Blowin’ In The Wind. As the crowd spilled out into the Northrop Auditorium atrium, cheers erupted as a projected display of CNN.com indicated that Obama had received 287 electoral college votes. Exiting Northrop, into the impromptu drum circle celebration, I was struck with how much different Chicago’s 2008 Grant Park must be from that of 1968.

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