Orel Family

I prepped for this movie. The catalyst, for me, was watching Martin Scorsese's dry-as-bones film "Beatles '64,"  that so diced-and-spliced things up, mashing together the things I cared about with things that seemed irrelevant to me (I suppose it's interesting in the abstract to see Leonard Bernstein dissect the time signature variations within the 1966 song "She Said She Said," but, really? ), that I found myself going back to the Maysles brothers' film "The First US Visit"  just to see again how exciting and fresh the Beatles were to Americans  in 1964. So I got what I could find to prepare for this film: D.A. Pennebaker's  groundbreaking film about Bob Dylan's 1965 UK Tour, "Don't Look Back,"  that revealed Dylan in metamorphosis yet leaving events to speak for themselves. Then, Scorsese's "No Direction Home,"  a thrilling 200 minute document covering Dylan up through the end of his 1966 UK tour, a...

Roger McGuinn at the Michigan Theater, May 16, 2015 How often do we get to see the master and arguably his greatest interpreter back-to-back? Not too often, I don't think. So off we were Friday to see Bob Dylan at the Fox Theater in Detroit , and Roger McGuinn at the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor the next evening. Dylan, of course, has been charting his own path as a performer for... well, forever. These days, he's not altering his setlists, so a quick look at his most recent performances on his official website  -- even though it was two weeks out of date -- gave a fairly precise idea of what he was going to play. I was "busted" for taking this snapshot of Bob and the band. As with the last time I saw Dylan at the Fox in 2012 , the stage was dark, dark, dark. "Photography is Strictly Prohibited" signs were posted approximately every 3 feet, and the staff were instructed to enforce just as strictly (I was "busted" after taking a pictu...

Bob Dylan and his band. Last night I saw  Bob Dylan  and  Mark Knopfler  play at Detroit's Fox Theater.  The concert had originally been planned for the Palace of Auburn Hills, but was moved to the Fox -- a much smaller venue that's also a far superior concert hall. For Dylan to go on stage with a 2nd act of equal or near-equal fan popularity is nothing new; on previous tours we've seen Merle Haggard open for him, and one time out Bob himself played the opening act for Santana .  I blogged two of his previous local concerts; in  2006  at the Palace, and in  2007  at Freedom Hill. But I hadn't seen Dylan since a 2009 show at the Fox that was most memorable to me not for what happened on stage, but rather to the would-be groupie sitting next to us; she turned on, lit up, and got kicked out, all within about 3 minutes, and that kind of lent an ironic twist to Highway 61 Revisited that evening. Mark Knopfler Mark Knopfler and hi...

Last night we saw Bob Dylan at Freedom Hill Amphitheater over in Sterling Heights. The show was hot, though maybe not quite as much as the Palace show last November . Bob's been touring with he same band for several years now, and they were pretty tight throughout. Freedom Hill is about in a county park about 20 miles due east from our house. Surface streets all the way, and we managed to catch every red light. We wanted to see Jimmy Vaughan open, but by the time we got there he was almost done, we got to hear about the last 10 seconds of his final song. After a couple minutes, I went over to the souvenir stand; Dylan always does venue-specific posters now, and I'm a sucker for 'em. I got to the front of the line, and behind the table was... Jimmy Vaughan. So now I have a signed poster. Vaughan was standing with a tall bald guy in an ancient Bob Seger t-shirt, some folks seemed to recognize him, too. Dylan opened with Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 while Jimmy...