They say Bob Dylan gets a special kick out of shattering expectations, which would explain a lot about his concert Halloween night.

Everything about it was wrong, starting with the venue: a gigantic arena with locker room acoustics, half full of big empty--a place no sound can enter gracefully, made clear by the announcements: "Pleasssindindyourseatss!sshowwwssstar!sssoonoo. Thankhankooyooooo!"

Then the crowd: how polite they were, how respectful and old. Even the young people were old and slumpy, like history majors, there to sniff authenticity, get a whiff of genius, dispel a myth, make a new one.

Waiting only gave the crowd more time to look around and bum themselves out, for there were old people everywhere, and it was shocking because everybody looked so much older than everybody else and nobody wanted anybody to notice they'd noticed, so everybody smiled with embarrassment for awhile until eventually everybody read their tickets and the men closed their eyes because it was getting after eight thirty.

Aaron Copeland wasn't helping. First it was that tweedle-deedle orchestral hoedown, "Appalachian Spring," which has always been hokey and hard to hear without picturing rosy-cheeked big-skirted women twirling around gay men dressed up as cowboys. I strained to see Dylan's hand in this. Then they did it again. Blaring from the hockey speakers were the trumpets of "Fanfare for the Common Man," a piece so overused it's a mockery of itself, the song we hear in our heads as we pitch another beer bottle into the garbage can. Somebody was gradually turning up the sound while somebody else was turning down the lights. And then it was dark, and a voice called out: Laaaeessssmnnn! --but that's all I got.

The stage lit up and Dylan's band began to play. They were tight--far tighter than any band he's ever had. We expect from Dylan a sloppiness that simply was not there. And neither was he.

Was he? Where was he? Which one was him? That one? That skinny guy in the flat black hat? Must be. Don't ask anybody — they'd never stop laughing at you. But wait. Why was Dylan playing bass?

How, doesitfeel--how?
does. It feeltobeonyour? Own!likeacompleteun
Knownlikea
Ro! llingstone.

It was Dylan all right. "Like a Rolling Stone," only it was nothing like a rolling stone. Dylan had cut it all up, flattened the melody and made it into a bar band's opening anthem. He changed it!

Changed it? It was cruel. He had an entire audience of cocked heads scanning their banks for some hint of what he was doing, processing emotions, feelings of loss, our shared arrival on the doorstep of the same dumb realization: that they're his songs and he can do what he wants to them. We accepted, tried to sing along, got pissed because it was not possible. He was was doing it on purpose.