The Show In The Stands

Which happened to be at The Bob Dylan Show…

A warm afternoon at the home of the Dayton Dragons with Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp and Bob Dylan, and 7,000 of our closest friends. Make that 6,998 of our closest friends, because the two ladies behind us were annoying as hell. Do I really need to talk about the music? It was awesome. I loved it. These are three legends of music that you either like or dislike. I'm not going to sway you, but if you don't like them you are dead wrong my friend.

Anyway, back to the real action. We sat down in our seats to enjoy Willie tear through a great set with the energy of a guy half his age and probably while high. Go Willie. This big group came in to take their seats behind us and the two ladies directly behind us starting blabbing immediately. I don't expect quiet at a ballpark concert, but they were shrill and talking loudly about everything that happened to them that day right in our ears. Then they would clap at the end of the song as if they heard anything! I couldn't hear it! I think Gina was going to punch one of them in the face at one point. It would have almost been worth it to get kicked out. We chose to move, because the dirty looks weren't working.

We found a spot in a little side grassy side area (click on photo above for the view from that spot) with some chairs lined up along the top. We chatted with a couple of ladies next to us, enjoyed some “jumbo” corndogs and listened to Mellencamp tear it up as he made every classic sound new again. It was a little off to the side of the stage, but you could see the front of the stage well enough and, once again, the real action was in the stands. This time we happened to sit down right behind a couple that was high or drunk or some combination of the two. The woman spent most of Mellencamp’s set on her back with her eyes closed. They both were grungy and covered in, what appeared to be, needle marks.

At one point the guy jumped up and ran toward the poor people sitting in the stands off to our right yelling something completely unintelligible, stumbling and laughing. The lady nearest him must have been horrified, because it wasn’t long before she grabbed the first guy in a uniform she could find to report the guy for his behavior. Later he jumped up and asked a few ladies next to us to watch his girlfriend because she is “stupid”. Really buddy?

Some of the other crowd highlights included a man running around the crowd of the in field doing a very jubilant version of the Macarena, and several guys of all ages being escorted away stumbling and weaving. Good stuff.

Some of the concert highlights?

Willie - “If You’ve Got the Money I’ve Got the Time”
It always makes me think of my grandma singing it and brings a smile to my face.

John - “Small Town” alone on stage with an acoustic. One of the few times he slowed down and changed a line of the lyrics at one point to say that he wrote that song when his wife was 13.

Bob – Honestly, I was surprised by the entire Dylan set. Never seen him in concert, so I didn’t really know what to expect. He had an excellent band and it was a fairly rockin’ bluesy set. I would have to hear the set again to pick out a fav..or maybe see him again.