Today, Thursday, Nov. 16, Smith College celebrates Julia Child '34 and her contributions to the college community. Her recipes are featured at the Campus Center Café and Smith College Club for lunch as well as in the Smith dining rooms and the café for dinner. “What I learned in the Kitchen,” a panel with Smith faculty discussing the pleasure treasures of a life well-lived and loved, will take place in the Campus Center at 4:15 p.m. and will be followed by a gala reception.
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Last night’s concert deserves a ‘pretty good’, but not a ‘great’, in the humble opinion of this Blapp.
Openers The Raconteurs = indie songwriter stud Brendan Benson + the rhythm section of Cincinnati’s The Greenhornes + some manic fidgety guy named Jack White who plays a pretty mean guitar and sings a bit too. The flashes of Led Zep worship shown on Broken Boy Soldiers were in full effect live, and several songs were extended by bluesy psychedelic Page-esque noodlings that probably would have been much cooler in a small club setting.
White blew his voice out mid-way through the set, but gamely kept reaching for those high notes anyways. Ouch. Rhythm section was very solid, but clearly relegated to second-fiddle status backing up the Benson & White show. A noisy version of “Steady As She Goes” was the closer and highlight of the set, which ended promptly at 8:30 PM.
Dylan? Well, Dylan’s songs speak for themselves, but on this night he was definitely not a showman or a performer. He played the keyboard and the occasional harmonica line, facing his band, shoulder to the audience - his only verbal acknowledgement of the crowd was the mumbled afterthought of, “Thank you, friends” as he left the stage.
Interesting demographic mix in the audience, with an about-even mix of boomers, gen Xers and college-age troopers.
An excitable young fellow sitting near us apparently felt that giving the “devil horns” sign for each song was an appropriate tribute, and his friend’s yelled proclamation to anyone and everyone of, “He’d better f&*#ing play ‘Like a Rolling Stone’!” midway through Dylan's set was . . . um . . . charming.
Mr. Zimmerman and his band performed songs drawn almost entirely from the new record Modern Times, with the notable exceptions of “Highway 61 Revisited” and a driving version of “Like a Rolling Stone” as the crowd-pleasing finale. Dylan's voice was a bit ragged and scratchy; of course Dylan’s backing band was fantastic, propelling each song with precision and finesse.
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1 comment:
In 1997 I worked for a man who adored Dylan. The night before his birthday - Dylan's, not the man's, I snuck over to Mr. Zimmerman's estate home near my parent's home in Hanover MN and dug up a bit of his lawn. The next day I presented it to my boss in a glass bottle that, I hear, he still proudly displays in his office.
I'm cool.
-Tracy
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