Review provided by Dan Rest. i've seen dylan a decent number of times in the past two or so years, and i don't think i've ever been as blown away by a dylan show as i was last night in cedar rapids iowa. that show was the last stop on this current tour for me. i had been on it since the rapid city SD show, skipping only the one in sioux falls SD. this current tour had grown a little mundane (or at least as mundane as a dylan show every night can get). it was just that the set lists weren't changing enough to keep us interested. over the course of two or three shows, he might only change up a quarter of the tunes. i mean, i like all along the watchtower and all, but i kind of get the point after hearing it two nights in a row and i'm ready for something else. now, i understand why he might play a tune like country pie night after night, cause nobody's heard that one, but stuff like watchtower, hwy 61 and even (dare i say it?) tangled up in blue, it just gets a little, well, ordinary, and that certainly is not how we like our dylan shows, is it? and then we roll into iowa city from rochester for a relaxing weekend of recovery from the 2300 mile journey, and in all honesty i really didn't think about the monday night show a whole lot, cause after reading the set list from sioux falls, i figured it would be just more of the same. holy jesus fuck. i knew something was up when he kicked song to woody as the second tune. and desolation row was so far out of my conciousness that before he started singing i thought we were getting stuck inside of mobile. i've wanted to hear desolation row for years and never gotten it. twice he's done it the night after i saw him. so when they started selling postcards, it was my spirits that were hanging, as in from the fucking rafters. and all this occurred within the first three tunes!! i was with two friends of mine who were dylan virgins and i kept telling them what an extrordinary show this was. i don't think they fully realized the rarity of this set, but i guess it doesn't really matter. the show really only got better. after such a selection of tunes in the main set, i really didn't care that the encores were pretty standard for this tour, though knockin on heavan's door was very appreciated. suffice it to say that when i'm sucking in my last breaths of air and i think back to all of the bobby shows i ever caught, that's pretty much the only one i'm ever going to need to die a sated dylanite. long live Bobby D.
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