Dylan rolls the dice
Can A Legend Maintain His Cool Veneer Playing Casino Rama?
Joseph Brean, National Post
Published: Saturday, July 07, 2007
When Bob Dylan takes the stage tonight at Casino Rama, an entertainment complex on First Nations land an hour north of Toronto, he will confirm the stereotype for people who think of him as a geriatric troubadour on the nostalgia circuit.
On the neon-illuminated edge of Ontario's cottage country, among the chain-smokers, the slot players and the retirees hunched around low-stakes blackjack tables, his Never Ending Tour might seem more like a museum exhibit, headlined by an artist more like Rod Stewart than Mick Jagger, more Ringo than Paul. After all, the same marquee that today says Dylan will next week say Boyz II Men, and later, Pat Benatar.
This is the gamble Mr. Dylan continues to make by performing mid-range venues, which he does about 100 times a year, rather than less frequent larger shows. A survey of his tour schedule, which took him through Quebec City, Montreal and Ottawa earlier in the week, reveals that he is also playing a zoo, a spa and a town park.
But the whole question of what is an appropriate venue for a concert is changing. Casinos, once the exclusive preserve of schlocky has-beens, nowadays have attracted bigger names with better facilities, a trend epitomized in the Elton John, Shania Twain and Celine Dion shows in Las Vegas. Rama itself has recently hosted Stevie Nicks, and will soon see Randy Bachman and Burton Cummings, but also the Barenaked Ladies and Mary J. Blige.
The simultaneous trend toward viral marketing and alternative concert venues was evidenced this week when the White Stripes, a Detroit blues duo, orchestrated flashmobs across Canada by sending out cryptic text messages to fans, then playing impromptu gigs at a Saskatoon bowling alley, on a Winnipeg bridge, at an Edmonton community centre and a Toronto YMCA.
All of which has confounded rock's elder statesmen. In an age when rock stars can earn flattering media coverage by cutting out the media entirely and playing for free in a bowling alley -- the sort of thing Mr. Dylan himself might have done as a young man -- is it possible for a legend to retain his veneer of cool while playing in a rural, mid-market casino for 100 bucks a pop? Could he not have booked a gig in Toronto?
"I think [Mr. Dylan] is always doing unexpected things that throw people off trying to pin him down, so it doesn't surprise me that, at this peak in his career, he would choose kind of a down-and-out place to play. I think he identifies with down-and-out places, and with people's lives that might not be going anywhere," said Colleen Sheehy, director of education at Weisman Art Museum in Mr. Dylan's home state of Minnesota, and organizer of an academic symposium about him earlier this year.
"It just shows he feels he doesn't have anything to prove," she said.
Indeed, he does not. He could retire now and would remain a relevant musical force for years to come. But as the headliner of a tour that is approaching its third decade, he seems to be trying to prove something, stubbornly if not always successfully.
Stephen Scobie, a professor of literature at the University of Victoria, Governor-General's award winner, long-time fan, and author of the critical work Alias Bob Dylan, said the artist has been playing such midsize venues since about 1988, and that there are two ways to understand his persistence. One is that he is most fully himself while performing. The other is that he does not know how to do anything else. (Certainly, his occasional forays into filmmaking, from Renaldo and Clara in 1978 to Masked & Anonymous in 2003, have been widely panned, as was Tarantula, his 1971 experimental novel. His more recent two-part autobiography, Chronicles I and II, was better received.)
As the oldest person to top the Billboard charts (with last year's album, Modern Times), and with his new career as a satellite radio host, a compilation album due out in the fall, and even a feature film starring Cate Blanchett, Heath Ledger, Christian Bale and Richard Gere as Mr. Dylan at various points in his life, the man is certainly not gathering dust, nor moss. So why is he taking a stage used by the '80s nostalgia band Toto and The New Cars, both booked for Rama later in the month?
"The blues began in gambling dens in New Orleans," observed Prof. Scobie, suggesting that Casino Rama is more appropriate than it might first seem. After all, it is a place of constant drama and disappointment, a place for the greatest living songwriter to put it all on the line, to cast the dice in the service of music no matter what the pundits say, just as he did by plugging in his guitar in the 1960s.
Steeped in the bluegrass gospel tradition, Mr. Dylan's music is infused with gambling imagery, which he uses to convey some of his deepest lyric messages, and which will be particularly poignant at Rama. For example, why is it that in Sad-eyed Lady of the Lowlands, a surrealist ballad written for his first wife Sara Dylan from the album Blonde on Blonde, her deck of cards is missing the jack and the ace?
And how is it that Woody Guthrie, Mr. Dylan's great inspiration in traditional music, to whom he made a life-changing pilgrimage at Brooklyn State Hospital before the folkie's death in 1967, was "faked out and fooled while facing a four flush, and all the time you were holdin' three queens," as he sang in Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie.
Did Lily, "a princess ... fair-skinned and precious as a child," win or lose the hand after she drew the jack of hearts while holding two queens, in Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts? Was it true what they said about the family from Red Hook, Brooklyn, in Joey, that they "lived on gambling, and running numbers, too"? And why was Rambling Gambling Willie holding two pairs, aces backed by eights, the famous dead man's hand that legend says was dealt to Wild Bill Hickok before his death, when Willie himself was killed?
Most notably, in Shelter from the Storm, a climactic song from Blood on the Tracks -- Mr. Dylan's most deeply personal album, widely understood to be a chronicle of his breakup with Sara -- his gambling metaphor evoked a deep Christian symbolism, which foretold his future conversion from Judaism.
"In a little hilltop village, they gambled for my clothes. I bargained for salvation and they gave me a lethal dose," he sang.
Most likely, though, Mr. Dylan is playing Orillia because that is what he does.
"I'm sure the Orillia date just came up because of his calendar availability, that the offer just happened to match his timetable. I'm sure he didn't go out of his way to seek a concert at a casino in Orillia," said Prof. Scobie, who is reluctant to read too far into the choice of venue, wherever he plays, whether a private corporate event, a major sports arena or a country fair.
"I think he's so far beyond any consideration of 'selling out.' I mean, he's been accused of it so many times and the whole body of work survives. The song Love Sick survives, and it's still a great song, even if it was used in a Victoria's Secret commercial," he said.
As to the longevity of the Never Ending Tour, Prof. Scobie is optimistic, even musing about a possible gig near his home in Victoria, which itself is not your typical rock and roll city.
"I think he'll keep going as long as the audience outnumbers the band," he said.
jbrean@nationalpost.com
