Bob Dylan in Berlin

Concert Shared by Dylanistas, 6 October, 2022

A generous acquaintance on Twitter sent me a download of Bob Dylan's concert in Berlin October 6. I appreciate the work these superfans and scholars do: I call them Dylanistas. I can talk trash with the some of them, but when it comes to drilling into the earth's crust to do carbon dating of set lists on every show of the Never Ending Tour, they go their way and I go mine. They're like Greenpeace. I encourage their mission, but I'm not getting on the ship.

The last time I saw Bob was at the Beacon Theater around Thanksgiving 2019. It was a great show, Dylan playing mostly piano, a little guitar, singing well for a then 78-year-old man. There's a reason for Dylan's recent adoption of Frank Sinatra as a person of interest. I've been reading Dylan's captivating book, The Philosophy of Modern Song, to be published November 1. He suggests all the ways that "Mack the Knife" would fall short in Bobby Darin's attempt to be the next Sinatra.

"Whereas Sinatra just about invented the Roman Catholi…