A review of Bob Dylan’s show Saturday night in Lewiston, Maine, by one Bob Keyes in the Portland Press Herald, suggests that Dylan’s set list was sending a harrowing message.

On Saturday at the Androscoggin Bank Colisee, Dylan and his band performed a searing 17-song set of apocalypse and catastrophe — songs that professed rising water, human misery and unimaginable doom.

Perhaps the master of musical philosophy was summing up the mood of the country as we head into a summer of discontent?

Maybe, maybe not.

[...]

Playing in front of an enthusiastic audience of 3,000 or so, the soon-to-be 67-year-old Dylan trotted out a bundle of songs from his very earliest days to the most recent, and many settled on harrowing themes.

Simmering along with an edgy acoustic backing, “The Levee’s Gonna Break” offered salvation for those willing to take the plunge. A plaintive “Shelter from the Storm” suggested a different kind of human cauldron, and a blistering “Highway 61 Revisited” pointed the way of escape: “Just put some bleachers out in the sun,” Dylan sang, punching the air for emphasis, “and have it out on Highway 61.”

Well, that’s a very interesting and valid take, I think. I guess you’d have to go back and look at old set lists and determine whether there’s a dramatic difference these days versus some years ago; Dylan, after all, has never been one to flinch from the big questions of mortality, chaos and eternity. There’s almost always some apocalypse going on in his songs, whether it’s the kind that involves floods and fires or whether it’s more like an apocalypse of the soul.

One of the songs Bob and the band did Saturday night was Mississippi — which also fits with the themes above. It’s a song from 2001’s “Love and Theft” which has never become a staple of the live shows, although Bob has returned to it sporadically. I have a feeling we’ll be hearing the arrangement they played on Saturday night more often, because I think it works pretty darned well. Click here for a clip.

My clothes are wet, tight on my skin
Not as tight as the corner that I painted myself in
I know that fortune is waitin’ to be kind
So give me your hand and say you’ll be mine

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