Who’s Gonna Throw that Minstrel Boy a Bone? by Avner Ohev

*Eds. Note: This piece was contributed to Tant Mieux, so I run it here. Thanks to Avner for covering the Brooklyn show for us. - s.r.p.

***

I find myself inside the Red Hot in the Slope with my oldest friend, as we return to one of our favorite subjects: people with the name George but who don’t use it; Babe Ruth. Tom Seaver. Elementary-school friends Kevin and Mike – who has since legally dropped his real name, in German Georg, altogether. Then, my buddy drops the bombshell. “I always keep Michael Gray in the bathroom. He was talking about another George. Who is it? Oh yeah – Van Morrison.”

Friend and Marvel Comics Mavin, who was featured in a story at that learning factory we attended a thousand years ago about finding Judge Crater in a secondhand bookstore after escaping a dive with wall-to-wall Charles Mansons, finally makes his entrance – so dandy and so fine. “You know Van Morrison’s real name?” “Sure. George. Everyone know his middle name?” A chorus of Ivan.

I had the concert tickets to Dylan in Brooklyn to distribute – even to Pal one, who’s having a pepperoni crisis back home – though he had bought them before rolling in all the way from the Cod back to his old block in the Slope. He mailed his own ticket to travel light. Crony number three enters the dim-sum place as we start to eat. He practically started MTV till they gave him a uranium parachute. I hand him his ticket. He’ll go home first and meet us at our seats.

The four tickets list no second act nor time except “6:30 DRS.” “That means 6:30 Doctors,” I’m reassured. The line at the Prospect Park Bandshell is enormous. A few of the old freaks are there: Mr. Natural types. As half-Sicilians, my friend and I are the closest thing to any black face. The concert, as far as we can see, is curiously absent of color. Half Italian is as ethnic as it’s getting, so it would seem.

Instructions are to walk left down the hill; except, the instructions are wrong. We return to the line. We remember the Schaefer Concerts in Central Park. My first was the Mothers of Invention, at which I was egged on, at fourteen, to tell Frank Zappa that his drummer’s bouffant matches my Italian teacher’s, Mrs. Barbato.

There is much confusion in the Bandshell, but someone points us to a distant end. I buy a souvenir, solemnly promised, with my lucky number attached to it, while my two friends gab. They talk of seeing Dylan here, there, everywhere. Between the three of us, we must have seen him perform thirty times. (Earlier the same day, at midnight, my neighbor Alanboy and I happen to exit our apartments at the same time for the incinerator room. It is like a scene from Help! “I see Dylan tomorrow night; actually, tonight.” “Bob Dylan? He’s a legend! His catalog is enormous.” This fellow was friends with the late Paul Griffin, a few buildings away, who is uncredited in his keyboard work on Blonde on Blonde.) My last ticket to Dylan was two years ago. My first was the Concert for Bangladesh, second show. Rolling Thunder in December ’75 when I was in Toronto. And I won four tickets from Scott Muni for the Before the Flood concert the year before, a terrible show I loved at the time.

Before finding our seats, someone calls my name. It is the Dylanologist (a dirty word, and we must find another, for who wants to be associated with Weberman),Toby. He has a blanket, not underneath his arm but on the grass, which he shares with his handsome family. He also wrote a wonderful book about Lord Buckley, someone I had discovered on a Zappa album doing a bit about a questionable politician: “I’ll see you next very, very soon.”

MTV friend four has showered off the Manhattan goop and wanders aimlessly straight at us but not noticing. We call and he says the seats are great. Tenth row, a little off to the side. We talk baseball – it’s almost the forty-fourth anniversary of the Phil Linz Harmonica Incident. . Fortunately, the seat in front of me is empty. I think of seeing “Eat the Document” at the old Academy of Music, when someone behind my Cod friend says, “No offense. But you guys have big heads.”

Finally, the show starts. No opening act. No Tom, Paul, Willie, Jerry, Cheryl, Carol to clog up the works. As Kramden of Brooklyn (!) says, no warming up in the bullpen. It’s the sorriest “Rainy Day Women” anyone’s ever heard. But then, the band launches into its best song of the night, “Lay Lady Lay.” “Whee weet any longer for the one you love when he’s standing in front of you?” The line got a big hand at the Isle of Wight. Not now, but I get a chill thinking of it. I’m back to depressing adolescence, hearing “Lay, Lady, Lay” with “A Boy Named Sue,” “Quentin’s Theme,” and “Wigwam” on A.M. Maybe thinking on 2001 and “In the Year 9595” or whatever it’s called. Discovering I wasn’t born to lose her . . . . Now, “His clothes are dirty but his shoes are clean.” Did I hear that correctly?

Dylan is having trouble with his theater-usher trousers. An Oscar is perched on a speaker or something, stage left. You can hear his tremendous organ work all night. He does stretching exercises. He is a genius.

This night, Neil “What Do You Want Me To Do? Fall Asleep Onstage?” Diamond is playing the Garden. We wonder if this will be among the Brooklyn tributes we hear. Or if Dylan will trot out “Joey.” Or the songs about escapades on the D Train or Montegue Street. But the only reference comes at the close – something about the Brooklyn Dodgers, during the intros and the outros.

It was not to be a Greatest Hits night after all. After “Lay, Lady, Lay”, we jump from the end of the 1960s to the millennium, as my bud points out. Lots of stuff I haven’t bothered to listen to from Modern Times et al. – the only song I remember is the one about the Lewis Carroll characters; I don’t remember the album. “Your presence is obnoxious to me.” (But it’s not played. I stopped listening with Oh Mercy, a masterpiece.) One chestnut, “John Brown,” is more or less from The Times They Are a-Changin’. When MTV asks what album, I can’t even think. It’s a pre-senior moment. “The one with the haircut.” We talk about this great show. “How come no ‘Minstrel Boy’?” I ask. “Yeah. Who’s gonna throw that minstrel boy a bone?” “Not bone. Coin.” “Oh. We won’t be doing this forever.”


Avner Ohev is a regular contributor to Bob Dylan on Tant Mieux.

 Please direct any comments to aupiano@gmail.com