We have seen Bob Dylan many times over the years, going all the way back to a concert at the Spectrum in Philadelphia in October of 1981. On Tuesday, Dylan performs at Prospect Park, and we secured 3rd row tickets through the pre-sale many months ago. The last time we saw Dylan this close was when we stood at the rail in the rain in Washington DC in 1995 and sang along with “Joey” — “born in Red Hook Brooklyn in the year of who knows when.” Next week Dylan is back in Brooklyn since who knows when, but based on the setlists from the tour of Europe in the early Summer, we don’t expect Dylan to perform “Joey”. We’ll settle for “Hattie Carroll” or “It’s Alright Ma” or any number of folk-era numbers that defined the genre for generations of artists and fans.
This week also marks the annual Anti-Folk Festival at its home base, the Sidewalk Cafe on Avenue A. It begins tonight August 8th at 7 p.m., continues throughout the week and ends on Sunday night August 17. The complete Anti-Folk Festival schedule is listed on the Sidewalk Cafe page [here].
One of the anti-folk scene’s early success stories, Regina Spector, performs at the McCarren Pool on Friday August 15. We will be there, as we were back in October at Hammerstein Ballroom when Regina proved up to the challenge of a big room. The Pool is perhaps her largest venue yet, and it will be interesting to see if she can wow the outdoor Brooklyn crowd as she did last Fall.
To finish this appropriately thematic week, on Saturday we will travel to Pennsylvania for the 47th Annual Philadelphia Folk Festival. We applied for and received a media pass for the Saturday afternoon session, so that this event will be covered less as an audio archivist and more like a journalist. Its not the Spectrum, and Dylan won’t be there, but this Festival has existed longer than we have, and we expect to witness some major talent young and old.
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