I was fortunate to attend a handful of shows during the Spring 2024 iteration of the ‘Rough and Rowdy Ways World Tour’ (Memphis, Lafayette, Dallas, and Austin). As always, they were a fantastic set of shows, only further enhanced by catching up and hanging out with some of my favorite Dylanheads. That being said, I’d like to offer another “review” of RRW in the spirit of my piece on the Chicago shows last year…not so much about the specific performances but moreso some of the philosophical themes that I felt emerged during the course of my multi-show run. In particular, I think Dylan is creating art that can be fruitfully understood as an instance of street art.
First, let me offer a brief overview of the ontology and aesthetics of street art. According to the philosopher Nick Riggle, street art should be understood as a response to the Modernist impulse to separate life and art - or the distinction between high and low art. Pop art did this as well, transforming everyday objects such as soup cans into museum-worthy pieces of “fine” art.
Conversely, according to Riggle, street art brings aesthetic value into the “fractured stream of everyday life”. Street art has the power to engender aesthetic attitudes (disinterestedness, aesthetic contemplation) in our otherwise non-aesthetic endeavors, which allows the aesthetic to “join the living” (or else we’d be ‘better off over there/with the dead’). For example, strolling on the sidewalk on your way to the coffeeshop only to stop and appreciate a mural.
The point being that you aren’t walking on the side walk in order to appreciate art - this is not your intended end. As such, street art has the power to “transfigure the common place.”
For Riggle, street art is distinguished by its essential dependence on the materiality of the city: “An artwork is street art if, and only if, its material use of the street is internal to its meaning." Further, street art is a form of public art because its existence depends not only on the acts of the original artist, but also on every other person that notices it and 1) does not remove or deface it, 2) adds, modifies, or contributes to it. Street art is essentially collective. Street art thus bears a commitment to ephemerality: “the artist accepts that works may be short-lived if they are removed, destroyed, painted over, or appropriated into another's work.” And it’s these points that I think resonate most deeply with my experiences of and in Dylan’s RRW World Tour.
In some ways the analogy is obvious. I think he’s always engaged with the city in which he performs, as well as the audience RRW is a collective piece of street art. Dylan also plays with and subverts the traditional distinction between high and low art. Consider the hilarious if not confounding juxtaposition ‘I’m just like Anne Frank/ like Indiana Jones’ or the fact that he ‘paints nudes’, ‘eats fast foods’, and ‘plays Chopin's preludes’. Or that during the last few iterations of RRW, Dylan has been performing cover songs that refer or relate to the city in which he is performing.
Now you’re probably thinking: but “the street” does not play an essential role to the meaning of Dylan’s works?! Sure, perhaps that’s true, but let’s consider “the street” in a more abstract sense: as the audience, in the context of each city (or each night in the same city). Every show works with rather than against its audience - allowing the specificities of each city to inform and mold the songs, to further shape its soundscape and sonic texture.
I think the best example of this is the recent re-arrangement of When I Paint My Masterpiece, which was first introduced at the March 1st show in Ft.Lauderdale, FL (incidentally a show I was supposed to attend, until Frontier Airlines had different plans for me). As the story goes, in the break after False Prophet a woman in the audience yelled “play something we know!” after which Dylan began playing the familiar melody to Istanbul (Not Constantinople) slash Puttin’ on the Ritz before singing the lines, ‘well the streets of Rome/are filled with rubble’. Fortunately, he kept this version throughout the rest of the tour because IMHO it totally works! If you haven’t already, be sure to check out Laura Tenschert’s fantastic episode on the significance of WIPMM in the context of Dylan’s creative process.
Another way in which RRW engages in a transfiguration of the commonplace is the fact that Dylan’s arrival brings with it an international circus (or freak show?) of wandering “Bobcats” - a collection of sects I lovingly refer to as “delegations” : there’s the German delegation, the British delegation, the Japanese delegation, and of course, the Deadhead delegation. A Dylan show offers us freaks a chance to visit local sites and establishments, to experience the specific culture of each city. Like Taylor Swift warns in her hit Anti-Hero, she’s a monster ‘slowly lurching towards your favorite city’ which echoes one of my favorite lines in Goodbye Jimmy Reed:
‘If you don't mind me asking
What brings you here?
Oh, nothing much, I'm just looking for the man
I came to see where he's lying in this lost land’
Riggle argues that an important component of street art is that its meaning is severely compromised when it is removed from the street. I think the same follows for RRW as well. Though I enjoy listening to the occasional boot (except when I can hear myself on it…), it simply does not have the same meaning as being there in the flesh, being a component of its creation. The “static setlist” has one meaning when you’re reading it from the comfort of your couch and a whole ‘nother meaning when you’re experiencing it in person. As anyone on expectingrain can attest: what appears static on paper is anything but in person. One of my favorite things about post-show chats is how people tend to describe experiencing a RRW show to a newcomer as “getting” it. Like a joke, the RRW Tour is just something you either “get” or don’t. There is no try.
Riggle notes that his definition of street art entails that street art is: “illegal, anonymous, ephemeral, highly creative, and attractive” (246), and what better words to describe not only the performances of RRW, but the broader collective culture it introduces and supports? A virtuous freak show, the church of song and dance.
Henry Bernstein’s fantastic jacket to close us out.
Cool meditation on RARW in relation to street art, Elizabeth. You now have me thinking about places where Dylan incorporates streets visually (does that count as materially?) into his work, like on the covers of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan and Street-Legal. Thanks for getting my wheels spinning!
Hole in the Wall (2020)
The Hole In The Wall
Arcade Restaurant
2538 Guadalupe Street
Austin
Texas 78705
(near the University of Texas)
Acrylic on canvas
92 x 122 cm
2020 Beaten Path / MAXXI 2022
https://www.facebook.com/groups/edlis.cafe/permalink/5981853068519842/
Bob Dylan became Elvis Presley! ;-) Trickster!
Fits your street art theme.