Bob Dylan at Pier A

One could explore Bob Dylan’s 50 years of music for pages. He initially became known during the protest years in the 1960s, when his folk-styled lyrics seemed to chronicle the social unrest of the period and several of his songs, such as “Blowin' in the Wind” and “The Times They Are a-Changin’,” became anthems for the U.S. civil rights and anti-war movements. He then made the controversial move of combining folk with rock in 1965 with “Like a Rolling Stone.” Since then, he has intermittently recorded classic albums, while others were quickly forgotten.

At Hoboken’s Pier A tonight, the reclusive musician pulled a few surprises. First of all, while virtually all of his trademark photographs have shown him playing an acoustic guitar, Dylan only played keyboards and harmonica tonight. As he often does, he reworked the arrangements on some of his better known songs to the point where they are barely recognizable (“Tangled Up in Blue”, “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” and “Simple Twist of Fate”). He never spoke to the audience, except once to introduce the three guest singers on a cover of the Band’s “The Weight” (Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, Peter Wolf of the J. Geils Band and Jim James of My Morning Jacket). The stage was dimly lit throughout the concert, making it hard to see him clearly (worse for taking photographs). So here is the problem. Did Dylan make any attempt to give value to the ticket holders who paid $90 to see his perform? It did not seem like it. His voice sounded bad – really bad, like stay-home-from-work bad. It is okay to perform a set comprised of barely known songs and reworked songs if you make them interesting, but the band simply chugged along. The concert only became engaging for the last three songs, “The Weight”, a rocking “All Along the Watchtower” and an encore of “The Ballad of the Thin Man.” The rest of the performance was simply blowing in the wind.