Never Ending Tour: Bob Dylan State College, PA 11 November 2001

I try not to have any expectations for Bob Dylan shows. They usually work better that way.

Playing music is kind of a magical thing, almost like your conjuring up something and sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn’t and sometimes you have to do some extra special things to make it happen, and sometimes even that extra special thing doesn’t always work.

I try not to have any expectations for Bob Dylan shows. They usually work better that way. But there was no doubt in my mind from the very first listen that “Love and Theft” was easily Bob Dylan’s best and most brilliant album in a couple of decades in every way. And then there were the almost unanimously great reviews of the current tour by both fans and the working press.

So despite my inclination not to, I did have high hopes for my first show of the tour at the Bryce Jordan Arena at Penn State University. The air was let out of the balloon almost immediately when Dylan took the stage and opened the show not with “Wait For the Light to Shine,” or even “Hummingbird,” but (ho-hum) “Rovin’ Gambler.” It was okay, but I wa…