A Dylan Show Worthy of Dylan

SANTA BARBARA —  If you were at Bob Dylan’s concert Sunday at the sold-out UC Santa Barbara Events Center arena, chances are you are either around 22 or around 52.

That’s a demographic that says a lot about Dylan’s continuing impact on the ‘60s generation that he inspired with such landmark songs as “Blowin’ in the Wind” and his recent reemergence as a forceful and relevant artist who can speak compellingly to today’s younger audiences.

The poet laureate of rock-era songwriters, Dylan’s concerts have sometimes reflected an almost perverse indifference to both his latest material and to current events in his choice of songs. And for longs stretches in the ‘70s, ‘80s and early ‘90s, his enunciation and emotional commitment on stage sometimes seemed careless or indifferent.

But things have changed.

There was a purpose and discipline to his two-hour show, climaxing the return to form that began in earnest with the release four years ago of the Grammy-winning “Time Out of Mind” album, continued last year with the Oscar-winning song “Things Have Changed” and has picked up momentum again with the dazzling new album “Love and Theft.”

Dylan, 60, isn’t the only artist of the modern pop era to deliver the best album of the year two or more times in a career, but he is surely the only one to do it 36 years apart.

At a time when music careers seem to be measured in school semesters, Dylan’s accomplishment in coming up with a record as satisfying as “Love and Theft” three decades after “Highway 61 Revisited” is little short of astonishing.

Not only did Dylan and his superb four-piece band showcase five songs from the new album Sunday, but they also built the set around moving versions of songs from the ‘60s that took on renewed resonance in the wake of Sept. 11.

Singing with a clarity and conviction reminiscent of the command captured by D.A. Pennebaker in the classic ‘60s documentary “Don’t Look Back,” Dylan opened with “Wait for the Light to Shine,” a spiritually tinged country song with a winning, sing-along quality that would have fit in at war bond rallies in the ‘40s.

The tune was written by Fred Rose, the songwriter and publisher who discovered Hank Williams, and Dylan has used it as the opener each night on the current tour, which began Oct. 5. A few moments later he turned to “Searching for a Soldier’s Grave,” another vintage country song that seemed especially poignant on a night when the prospect of ground combat loomed in Afghanistan.

But the emotional center of the show was from Dylan’s own back pages. He has sung such numbers as “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” and “Masters of War” hundreds of times over the years, but they showed an intensity Sunday rarely seen since the ‘60s.

That’s partly because the songs are now heard against the urgency of today’s headlines, but also because Dylan seems to take greater care with them, adjusting arrangements of some songs, such as “The Times They Are A-Changin”’ and “Blowin’ in the Wind,” to apply the messages to these times.

The former was initially a battle cry championing the arrival of a new generation of leadership in the country, but the words now stand as a challenge to today’s younger generation, which has seemingly been slow to find its voice and purpose. Similarly, “Masters of War,” which Dylan said in a recent interview is not an antiwar song per se, still seemed to serve as a warning against using combat for profit or political gain.

It was in the intimacy of one of the new songs, “Sugar Baby,” that Dylan seemed the most tender and personal. The tune carries the gentle, philosophical musings of a man who has gone through many unpredictable seasons in his life, and has seen how quickly good fortune can turn into disillusionment. “Every moment of existence feels like some dirty trick,” Dylan sang in his newly found, deep, earthy vocal style. “Happiness can come suddenly and leave just as quick.”

Because critics so respect Dylan’s work, they have sometimes shown remarkable tolerance for his unevenness in concert, so it’s easy to see how fans can suspect them of crying wolf in praising his latest shows. But there’s no need to be wary this time. In a pop world that has long used his work as a standard, Dylan once again lives up to it himself.

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Bob Dylan plays Wednesday at Rimac Arena, UC San Diego, La Jolla, 7:30 p.m. $37. (858) 534-6467. Also 8 p.m. Friday at Staples Center, 1111 Figueroa St., L.A., $35 to $64.50. (213) 624-3100.