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Posts Tagged ‘Bob Dylan’

Don’t you just love that movie ‘High Fidelity’ where the hero is constantly making lists of his top 5 all time favorite records, girl friends, meals and whatever. I save all the concert tickets from the concerts that I have been to and I can’t help but make up my top five classic concerts and wish I had the concert tickets to go with the memories.

Classic concert ticket number 5: U2 plays on an L.A. liquor store rooftop, March 27, 1987. They were atop a liquor store rooftop, Los Angeles. It may not have had The Beatles’ originality, but Bono and the guys surely enjoyed their 20 minutes on top of the LA world nevertheless. The Irish super group was about four songs into the gig on an L.A. liquor store rooftop when the city police decided to end their impromptu performance and spoil the fun for the fans that had gathered below. Strictly speaking this wasn’t a concert with proper concert tickets but I love the video “Where The Streets Have No Name”, which was the point of the whole exercise.

Classic concert ticket number 4: George Harrison’s Concert for Bangladesh, August 1, 1971 at Madison Square Garden, New York City. What had initially been conceived as a small political fundraiser aimed at bringing humanitarian relief to the refugees in breakaway Bangladesh quickly turned into one of the biggest rock fundraisers of the 1970s. Although Lennon and McCartney never ended up signing on to Ravi Shankar’s cause, many other stars did, including George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Billy Preston, and Eric Clapton, who actually collapsed onstage as a result of his protracted bout of heroin addiction but still managed to proceed with the concert. The 40,000 or so fans who crowded New York’s Madison Square Garden witnessed some rare performances, including a 25-minute Indian recital by Ravi Shankar, Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” and Ringo Starr’s “It Don’t Come Easy.”

Classic concert ticket number 3: Pink Floyd break visual barriers with The Wall shows between February 1980 and June 1981. It was a World tour. Pink Floyd’s visual theatrics took a turn for the legendary with their infamous The Wall concerts, which were the last shows Roger Waters, Richard Wright, Dave Gilmour, and Nick Mason performed together before the Live 8 show in July 2005. Each show required timed performances and unprecedented cooperation between the musicians, concert crew, lighting engineers, and computer programmers. In fact, extended instrumentals and Roger Waters’ impromptu introductions often served to cover up stage fires and other technical difficulties, which seemed inevitable when putting together a show that included a 30-foot-high teacher puppet, a scorpion wife and other such animated characters.

Classic concert ticket number 2: Jimi Hendrix wows Woodstock, August 18, 1969 at Woodstock, New York. After plowing through three days worth of rain, mud, minbending drugs, and music, the 30,000 or so diehard fans who chose to brave one more night for Jimi Hendrix’s Woodstock closer were not disappointed. In fact, those who stuck around to witness Hendrix’s mind-blowing rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” cannot deny its importance on the festival’s soundtrack; it became the eternal anthem of a generation of civil rights crusaders, anti-war protestors and music lovers everywhere. Now I know this was a ‘free’ concert but it didn’t start out that way and there were actual concert tickets issued for Woddstock.

Classic concert ticket number 1: The Beatles sell out Shea Stadium August 15, 1965 in New York City. After a thundering welcome at JFK airport, the American release of Help! And an electrifying appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, The Beatles’ success at Shea Stadium, the first-ever stadium concert of its kind, was all but guaranteed. In fact, the sell-out crowd of 55,600 was so deafening that the The ‘Fab Four’ could barely hear themselves play throughout their 30-minute set. Instead, The Beatles’ grand armored van entrance, John Lennon’s ‘Jerry Lee Lewis’ onstage freak-out and the event’s record-setting gross revenues stole the show.

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At the height of folk music, when American youth began regarding the genre as the optimal way to express defiance against an older generation, Robert Zimmerman plugged in.

Dylan “going electric” is one of those historic cultural moments that everyone uses to define the ’60s. It was the ultimate expression of an individual, someone who wasn’t just willing to rebel against the mainstream, but willing to rebel against the counter-culture as well. Not everyone was happy about his parting with the softer, more peaceful sounds of folk, but Dylan had simply made the next logical choice in an artist career that was only interested in finding new, better tools for expression.

Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman in Duluth, MN in 1941. He was a talented performer as a boy and as a teenager, and would go on to study art in college. He would perform in coffeehouses under his infamous stage name, borrowing Dylan Thomas’ first name for his surname. In the early ’60s, Dylan was quickly making a name for himself in New York’s bohemian circles. In 1962, he released his debut album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. When Peter, Paul and Mary covered his classic song “Blowin’ in the Wind,” it gave him recognition that spread like wildfire. His music’s literate qualities and the winding, labyrinthine nature of his lyrics made him popular among both critics as well as fans. Today, many of his songs are considered untouchable classics from this period.

With albums like Another Side of Bob Dylan and Bringing It All Back Home, Dylan continued to evolve his sound. “Like a Rolling Stone” became a defining single for him, summing up the sense of frustration that was building among the hippie youth. People were questioning social mores and what was expected of them by their society. With all the experimenting going on, it made perfect sense that Dylan’s song would reflect the prevalent soul-searching the younger generation of Americans was doing.

In 1966, Dylan released Blonde on Blonde, a double-disc album that is still considered one of his best. Later that year, however, tragedy would strike. While riding his motorcycle, Dylan would crash and suffering a concussion, as well as damaging his neck vertebrae. The accident would take a permanent toll, changing his voice as well as his personality. He became more reclusive, spending more time with his family and recording more at home.

That didn’t deter him from producing great work. Always a fan of the blues and country, Dylan’s music would continue to explore those genres and find new stories to tell through them. Today, Dylan is considered an elder statesman of rock ‘n’ roll, and has had an undeniable influence on the artists of today. They repay the inspiration he’s given them through homage and respect for his work.

There are plenty of fans that still love him, as well. Bob Dylan tickets are hard to come by, and are often snapped up easily.

This article was written by Andrew Good and sponsored by http://www.stubhub.com/. StubHub sells http://www.stubhub.com/bob-dylan-tickets/ as well as sports tickets, concert tickets, theater tickets and more to just about any event in the world.