32 Comments

So it's not athletic greens or cold plunges or yerba mate, but a Bob Dylan concert that makes you the super human that you need to be?

All hail the new wellness guru. ๐Ÿ™

Expand full comment
author

great news is that bob dylan concerts taste better than all those alternatives (donโ€™t ask me how i know)

Expand full comment

โ€œNow my brain works goodโ€ ๐Ÿคฃ

Expand full comment
author

me no get joke!

Expand full comment

This article should be in Rolling Stone. ๐Ÿ˜‚

Expand full comment
author

i tagged Bob on the instagram post about this so maybe heโ€™ll put in a good word ๐Ÿคž๐Ÿผ๐Ÿคž๐Ÿผ๐Ÿคž๐Ÿผ iโ€™m sure heโ€™ll be a huge fan of a piece where i call him odd and funny-looking in approximately seven hundred different ways

Expand full comment

Or, he might come at you with his elderly fists

Expand full comment
Jan 23Liked by Katie Nissen

Whatโ€™s amazing and perfect about this was that my spouse went to a show on this tour, and to save money I didnโ€™t attend. I was thinking โ€˜am I missing something incredible and life changing?โ€™ I have seen Bob Dylan exactly once when he toured with Tom Petty and I completely do not remember anything about that so I doubted.

Now I realize that I sort of did (though my spouse assured me I did not) but I think reading this I got everything I would have gotten had I attended. And this was FREE.

Expand full comment
author

two things: first, iโ€™m hearing that i should be charging bob dylan a fee for all the free promotion im doing!!

second, i have now seen both tom petty live and bob dylan live, and im quite certain those two could only be friends via massive amounts of cocaine... or possibly downers for tom and uppers for bob

Expand full comment
Jan 17Liked by Katie Nissen

Iโ€™d have slit my wrists 10 minutes in. Not into Dylan and not into mumbling dystopian nonsense. Music should uplift and make me feel good- I have the same issue with depressing movies- life is short, so enjoy and feel good if you can.

Expand full comment
author

upon conferring with the editor on this one we have theorized that this is possibly a generational take, as we both listen to unfathomable amounts of depressing music......... or, weโ€™re just downers ๐Ÿค”

Expand full comment
Jan 16Liked by Katie Nissen

I want to try the human-improver gun!! blast me

Expand full comment
author

unfortunately the gun did not work on u bc there is nothing to improve โœจ

Expand full comment
Jan 16Liked by Katie Nissen

Booooo

Expand full comment
Jan 16Liked by Katie Nissen

Unfortunately I'm certain I will continue to criticize things I don't understand. As well as things I do understand. I will criticize everything.

Expand full comment
author

we can share an ice cold glass of haterade together ๐Ÿซก

Expand full comment

The editor is a Dylan fan? ๐Ÿ†’โ€ผ๏ธ

Expand full comment
author

enormously so! consequently, iโ€™ve sat (slept) through more bob dylan documentaries than i can count!

Expand full comment

I think Iโ€™ve seen them all, back in the red envelope Netflix days.

Expand full comment
author

at least 1 that i have seen isnโ€™t so much a โ€œdocumentaryโ€ as it is just clips of bob dylan existing... i need the fans to please be normal and demand better

Expand full comment

No one is a bigger Bob Dylan fan than me, Katie. But I refuse to go see the man in concert. I prefer to stick with recorded Bob, where one can expect some degree of quality control.

My wife offered to get us tickets and make the sacrifice of going with me, but I said I couldnโ€™t inflict that kind of punishment on her. I had already dragged her to the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa last year (which she declared to be โ€˜more interesting than expectedโ€™), so I do not care to stress test our marriage further than that. Now that Iโ€™ve read your excellent review, I know that I made the right choice.

Expand full comment
author

you and the editor share this sentiment... it was his (extremely reluctant) fourth time seeing Bob, and my first. suffice to say, i had a far better time than he did bc i could blissfully lull into it with zero expectations... i think it might have been pure torture for The Biggest Fans

Expand full comment
Jan 15ยทedited Jan 15Liked by Katie Nissen

Oh, sure, your brain works good. Iโ€™ll believe that when I see it.

I always wondered if Bob needed to use Fishermenโ€™s Friend throat lozenges, and maybe a humidifier next to his bed at night. I need to check if they make Fisherpersonโ€™s Friends yet.

Expand full comment
author

bob clearly needs Fishergodโ€™s Strongest Soldiers i feel phlegmy just thinking about it... or maybe thatโ€™s just another piece of brain escaping

Expand full comment

Maybe he has TB or snot lung. You shouldnโ€™t make fun of stuff like that.

Expand full comment
author

SNOT LUNG DYLAN ๐Ÿ—ฃ๏ธ SNOT LUNG DYLAN ๐Ÿ—ฃ๏ธ

Expand full comment

Why do I always end up hanging out with the fixer upper friends?

Expand full comment
author

either low self esteem or a god complex, no in between

Expand full comment

Or quite possibly, I span the spectrum to include poor self esteem AND a god-complex. Embrace the liberating power of AND.

Expand full comment

So great! A Dylan concert review not from a hard-core fan and yet not the story of bewilderment and complaint. A funny and wise tale.

Expand full comment

Well-written, honest, transparent, hilarious snark review. You make your point. Thank you. Yours is a parallel track to the way I've described Dylan's concerts of the past 30 years: the small venue concerts put me into a timeless warp, like entering a Catholic church to sit and pray, or wandering around a museum in total silence. It's a settled, knot-untying sense. My motto is often, "Just show up, and be ready.," but a Dylan concert is "Shut up, be still, absorb--it will stay with you."

Expand full comment