No handling fees just lay down $60 cash for Dylan fans in San Francisco

Video copyright ABC News.com

With concert goers complaining about high ticket prices and even higher fees, Bob Dylan experimented last night in San Francisco. You had to pay cash at the door and the ticket had no up charges.

Joel Selvin wrote an appreciative review for the San Fransisco Chronicle.

Bob Dylan conducted something of an intimate house party Wednesday at the Warfield with more than a thousand of his closest friends or, at least, those willing to wait in line for tickets before the show.

Tickets for the last-minute addition to his touring schedule – he played the night before at a sold-out Fox Oakland – were placed on sale the day of the show only and sold for cash. When the box office opened at 5:30 Wednesday afternoon, a line snaked down Market Street, around the corner and up into the Tenderloin. At showtime, the house was little more than half filled. Tweeters broadcast the availability of tickets, but no mad rush ensued.

Dylan, who has played some landmark shows over the years at the former Market Street vaudeville house, was loose and playful in a 17-song, 100-minute show. Flickers of smiles danced across his lips, as he reached into the gravelly bottom of his vocal range for impossible notes. Wearing a wide-brimmed gray riverboat gambler’s hat, Dylan presided over the opening “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35,” hovering above the electric organ, but switched to electric guitar in the middle of the song.

With his crack five-piece band following his every move, Dylan shifted his old songs around and burrowed into vocal performances that teetered on the eccentric. He consistently came in behind the beat and spat out his lyrics in tiny bursts of jagged notes. He dragged out final lines for emphasis and, instead of slurring his words, often gave these punch lines a careful, boldfaced delivery.

Drawing from a set list that mixed classic pieces such as “Highway 61” and “Ballad of a Thin Man” with more recent, blues-based numbers such as “High Water” or “Thunder on the Mountain,” Dylan led the band on chunky guitar through powerful instrumental passages during “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” and picked out a simple, lyrical solo on “Simple Twist of Fate,” ably supported by guitarist Charlie Sexton. At the organ, Dylan pumped loud, funky block chords into the infrastructure of numbers such as “Desolation Row” or “Highway 61.”

With Dylan, nothing is guaranteed. His concerts change like the weather. He doesn’t put on a show; he plays music. Like his mentor Johnny Cash, Dylan has sculpted a highly personal style. He is, of course, one of the great originals of American pop music.

His concerts, which can sometimes be indifferent and sloppy, are never rote recitations. He inhabits the songs, some of which he has been singing almost 50 years, as freshly as he can with every performance. This is a trapeze act without a net and not always successful.

At the Warfield on Wednesday, Dylan steered the show firmly between the gutters. He summoned fierce intensity for his evocation of Mississippi bluesman Charley Patton, “High Water,” and was downright frolicsome, practically cheery on his famous kiss-off “Most Likely You Go Your Way And I’ll Go Mine,” hitting the stop breaks the band inserted at the end of the choruses like a master soul man.

Rabid fans eagerly crowded the pit in front of the stage, leaving plenty of room throughout the rest of hall. It had the atmosphere of a party more than a concert, probably as close to seeing Dylan play a roadhouse as you’re going to get.

E-mail Joel Selvin at datebookletters@sfchronicle.com.