Since his last appearance here in 2002, Bob Dylan has written a book, appeared on 60 Minutes and toured, followed by touring and then more tours. But there has been no new music and the sort of turnover that marked his bands of the early '90s has set into the Never Ending Tour (or, is it now just a never-ending tour) so that only one of the musicians on stage (bass player Tony Garnier) was in the band for Dylan's last Vegas visit.
The result was some musical confusion. Dylan isn't big on rehearsal and violinist Elana Fremerman clearly seemed to still be learning his masterpieces: During the songs, her eyes remained focused on Dylan looking for cues (good luck!) and her instrument was low enough in the mix to hide any learning curves.
Dylan long ago lost interest in being an attraction to the world at large, and though his legend still can put him in the big theaters, his set lists and performances really are of interest only to the chosen few, the obsessive types, the people who screamed with excitement when he pulled out the relatively rarely performed "Shooting Star." Unlike the Stones, Bowie or Paul McCartney (perhaps the closest thing to a peer Dylan will ever have), Dylan does not re-create his greatest hits into crowd-pleasing sets. If you go to see Dylan in Vegas hoping for "Blowing in The Wind," "Mr. Tambourine Man" or "The Times They Are a Changin'" then you are going to be sorely disappointed.
Dylan ignored all of those songs in favor of more obscure numbers from his catalogue, like "Tell Me That It Isn't True" and "Down Along the Cove." The classics Dylan did perform, like "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)," received radically new arrangements, rendering them almost impossible to recognize to his first generation of fans. His distinctive nasal voice has been replaced by a guttural growl—think Tom Waits meets Louis Armstrong—where Dylan spits out lines in bursts that don't always fully articulate individual words in the pronouncing.
Of course, Dylan's mercurial set lists, odd arrangements and seeming indifference to his audience are all well known and that, along with his constant touring, has resulted in severe audience drift over the years. The Aladdin was not even close to sold out and many people left before the encore. Too bad for them since Dylan finally pulled out two of his chestnuts to close out: "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" and "All Along the Watchtower."