Reviews

11:28 AM CDT on Monday, April 17, 2006

By THOR CHRISTENSEN / The Dallas Morning News

Anyone looking for reasons to gripe about Bob Dylan's show Saturday night at Nokia Theatre didn't have to look far.

Like his bad harmonica solos (which went nowhere and took their sweet time getting there) or his aloofness (he hid in the shadows behind a keyboard and barely acknowledged the audience).

And of course, there was his voice, which grows more frog-like by the day.

But all the drawbacks couldn't negate the show's brilliant moments, and there were plenty of them - more so than at his 2003 show at the Granada Theater or his 2002 gig at Reunion Arena.

Walking onstage amid a cloud of incense, he kicked the night off with a perverse surprise: A happy-go-lucky version of his normally-angry "Maggie's Farm." Fourteen songs later, he closed with another stunner: A chopped-and-screwed arrangement of "All Along the Watchtower," complete with looped vocals and otherworldly organ.

It was classic Dylan: You think you know this song? Think again, pal.

But the show's high point came in the middle of the set as "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" turned into a pedal steel-driven country ballad before inexplicably morphing into a raunchy stripper's strut. By the time it ended, it was hard to remember what the original sounded like.

Ditto for "It's All Right Ma, (I'm Only Bleeding)," which swaggered like John Lee Hooker by way of ZZ top. In fact, much of the set had a demonic blues edge, from "Highway 61 Revisited" to more recent tunes like "High Water (For Charley Patton)" and "Cold Irons Bound."

Credit guitarists Denny Freeman and Stu Kimball, but the most sinister sound was Mr. Dylan's gasping, gargling voice. Pretty it isn't. But when it comes to singing the blues, the creepier the voice, the better.

It's too bad he didn't try out any new tunes (he's working on his first CD in five years) or ditch the keyboard for a few songs and play guitar - which would have made it easier for fans to actually see him.

But there's no need to quibble. When a performer as erratic as Bob Dylan hits as many peaks as he did Saturday, it's worth celebrating.

At first glance, Merle Haggard seems like an odd opening act for Bob Dylan, given his hippie-bashing anthem "Okie from Muskogee." But the Hag wisely skipped "Okie," and some minor heckling aside, he easily won over the near-capacity crowd of about 6,000.

At 69, he still sounds great – especially for a guy who had pneumonia a few months back that forced him to bow out of opening for the Rolling Stones at American Airlines Center. Flanked by his eight-man band, the Strangers, he wrapped his rich tenor around everything from "Mama Tried" to "As Time Goes By."

But he seemed to have the most fun swinging through country standards like "Honky-Tonkin' " and "If You've Got the Money (I've Got the Time)."

The latter "changed my life and started me on the road to sin," he said, breaking into a grin and adding "which the Lord has since forgiven me for."

E-mail tchristensen@dallasnews.com