Just how awesome is Bob Dylan? ... Well, click on this freaking link to find out! The Review of the Bob Dylan and Somebody Else Concert in Wichita Freaking, Kansas on a Steamy September First, Two-Thousand-and-Four Evening ... Overall Concert Score: Bob Dylan was Freaking Awesome! Dudes! I totally just saw Bob Dylan live and in person! ... Pretty much everything I worked for in this life this far is valueless ... It was the best!!!!! Unfortunately, I had to sit through an opening act (The Hot Club of Cowtown) and Stupid Willie Freaking Nelson before I could listen to Bob Dylan, the Old Wrinkly Guy Without Much Gray Hair. This was a part of "The Field of Dreams" tour ... where Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson were touring little league ballparks from around the nation. And, who has a better little league ballpark than my stupid bitty city of Wichita, Kansas where I live for some reason? Frankly, I'm surprised that I was able to even get a ticket! I knew that they were coming to Wichita about four months ago or something like that, but about three days before the concert, I suddenly remembered about it. The next day, I called over and asked if they still had tickets left ... and they did! Hallelujah! Unless you have severe stupidity, you probably figured out that I had an extreme bias at the concert! It could have been Bob Dylan and Britney Spears for all I cared. Willie Nelson isn't somebody I really cared to see. That said, Willie Nelson was actually pretty good. I haven't listened to any of his albums, but the songs he performed on stage were nice. He had a pleasant delivery and was a very friendly guy on stage! About every thirty seconds, pretty much, the guy would stop playing his guitar in the middle of a song just to wave at somebody. No wonder so many people love the guy! How can you hate somebody who waves at you? Even I, basically the most adamant country-music hater on the planet, liked watching Willie Nelson! ... But I totally forgot about him at the end of the concert. Because I just got finished watching BOB DYLAN. The sad thing, though, is I'd estimate about 80 percent of the people were there solely to see Willie Nelson. As I was standing in line to get a decent seat (all tickets were 'general admission,' which basically sentences me to more than one hour of standing in the hot September sun with a bunch of hicks), everybody who talked about the concert referred it as "The Willie Nelson concert." I guess that's what you freaking get for being a hick! No sense of good music! Actually, come to think of it, why did Dylan and Nelson decide to tour with each other? ... They don't have much in common, other than they're both old wrinkly white men who are prone to don cowboy hats. They cater to completely different crowds ... It would have made more sense if Dylan would have given his songs a country twang (...he didn't even give his *country* songs a country twang, but ... I'll get to that later...) There was an opening act, too, that I mentioned but failed to discuss. ... The Hot Club of Cowtown is just your regular, showey, Branson Missouri type band that exists only to please senior citizens and their grand children. (They were very well dressed, too ... like they were going to a dinner party with the president of Microsoft.) The only difference is that we didn't get a meal before the show! And there wasn't a magic act! Or a ventriloquist! ... But, alas, I've been to Branson, Missouri once, and The Hot Club of Cowtown were about 399 times better than that stupid country-show tune band that I saw there (whose lead singer was an old guy in his 50s who looked like he just got finished delivering a sermon on television ... there were only three of these guys, and they were young). Plus, I believe, many of the songs the Cowtowns performed were original! They might have been utterly derivative, but the fact that they write some of their own songs gives them much integrity, indeed. And that girl playing the violin was really hot. ... I was thinking about proposing, but ... if I did that every time I thought about it, my head probably would have fallen off by now seeing how often it would have gotten slapped. But let's get to the good stuff. I went to the concert to see Mr. Bob Dylan, the Rock and Roll Legend Man. And ... he rocked! Willie Nelson was unrelentingly light and low-key, but Bob Dylan gave us a real ROCK concert! He had a really really excellent band backing him up. Some of his old classics were almost unrecognizable because Bob injected them with so much ROCK. It was awesome, really. Indeed, Dylan's wispy voice is always difficult for people to get used to. He was belting his lines a bit too closely in that microphone, and so his voice sounded even worse in concert than it sounds on his albums. But after he was through playing his first song of the evening, "Down Along the Cove," from his John Wesley Harding album, I got over the voice thing and was enjoying the concert entirely. He mostly played his classic songs (while avoiding many of his staples such as "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "The Times They Are A-Changin'"), but he did play "Like a Rolling Stone" ... my personal favorite of his. He also chose to play a lot of his newer numbers as well. His Academy Award winning song that he wrote in 2000, "Things Have Changed," is probably my favorite song of his ever since "Hurricane" on Desire. (Unfortunately, this doesn't appear on an album, so I was unable to review it ... but I'll tell you right now that it's an excellent song!) Also, at one point in the Dylan section of the concert, Willie Nelson came back on stage, and sang a duet of Nelson's "Heartland." (Eh ... Willie Nelson ... It was Bob's band playing the back-up, though! That band is freaking awesome!) Pretty much, Dylan spent the whole concert at the side of the stage, singing and playing the electric piano. At one point, when he was performing "Honest With Me" from his 2001 album "Love and Theft," he ventured toward the middle of the stage and gave a very lethargic, "zombie" dance, which really cracked me up! He spoke very seldomly, but when he did, it was kind of strange. His manner of speech was very showey ... and he seemed to gutturally roll off his words. ... It was kind of funny when he talked ... When the concert was over, Dylan walked to the center of the stage, stared at the audience for about 30 seconds, said nothing, and walked away. Really, only a rock and roll legend of Dylan's caliber could be so suave! Oh yes, Bob Dylan is *THE* awesomest! ... He could very well have sucked, and I would have been glad to see him (...I mean ... he freaking influenced THE BEATLES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ... right?) ... I honestly didn't expect him to be so awesome! Indeed, I was a very very happy concertgoer. I hope he comes back to my fair (stupid) city. I swear, it's the only good thing that ever happened to this dumb place. And, here's some probably not-that-humorous information that I'm going to mention anyway: a Metallica concert was going on at the same time someplace else. ... It weeded out all the stoners from being there, at least! Only the red necks, hicks, former hippies, and Michael C. Lawrence (aka Don Ignacio) were in attendence. Might you have something you want to say about my review of this tour? Send your COMMENTS here!

All reviews are copyrighted by the author, Michael Lawrence. His haircut might be strange, but at least it isn't a mullet.