Everyone I talk to is going over the hill – finally they have a good reason to visit Hamilton.

Hush my mouth. There are, of course, many good reasons to go to Hamilton. Give me a few minutes and I'll think of one. Okay. We'll get back to that.

Bob Dylan's gig in Hamilton will see him closer to Tauranga than
he's ever been before.

The reason all the folk I talk to are heading across the Kaimai Ranges is in exactly two weeks' time Bob Dylan will be closer to Tauranga than he's ever been before.
Yep, it's nearly Bob-time – and once again it's worth mentioning this may be the very last occasion the old fella will drag his tired bones down to this part of
the world.

He's 73 now. He comes to New Zealand around every four years, last time was 2011.
Bob at 77? It seems hard to imagine. After all, he's no Leonard Cohen.

That was another 'sort of” joke. Bob and Leonard are two very different beasts. Leonard's voice seems to improve with age, and he has a precision band and superb sound set-up.

A vocal struggle

Bob is using a varied range of strategies to work around his vocal deterioration; the band is kept on a tight rein and his sound is absolutely hit or miss.

Which is why I'm not going this time. After 2011 when I shelled out $200 for 13th row tickets at the Vector, then couldn't hear a thing because the sound was so awful I vowed to give Bob a miss in future. And I've been to every tour here since the seventies.

But I don't say that to put anyone off. There are still tickets for the Sunday night at Claudelands. Bob could be brilliant; he often is. And the thing about a Dylan show, unlike those of Field Commander Cohen, is they're still wildly unpredictable.

That's something Dylan fans have always cherished, a badge of honour if you like, the fact that their man will zig when the rest of the world zags.

In a weird contradiction, the fact he still confounds expectations and disappoints his fans is actually treasured as part of his appeal.

Singing Frank's songs

So what can I tell you in preparation for the Bob show in a couple of weeks? I could mention he has a new album coming out in August, which will, apparently, be an album of Frank Sinatra songs.

It might be called ‘Shadows In The Night'. Back in May he released a cover of Sinatra's 1945 hit ‘Full moon and empty arms' as a teaser.

But that won't help with the show, as he's yet to perform any of Frankie's tunes live.
The strange thing about Dylan's shows in the last couple of years is...they've been all the same.

Yep, the guy who famously plays different songs at every show suddenly changed his modus operandi overnight and started playing exactly the same songs every night.
That came as a shock, particularly to die-hard fans who travel to every concert on a tour.

Every show, night after night, they got the same 17 songs. And, to be a bit more perverse, these weren't exactly 17 greatest hits.

I won't give away the whole thing, it's easy enough to Google, but the set included a mere three songs from the sixties. And two from ‘Blood on The Tracks' representing the seventies.

And there were six songs from his latest album ‘Tempest', along with the remarkably obscure likes of ‘What Good Am I?' and ‘Waitin' For You'.

Surprise tunes

But, before you decide that going to both nights to hear the same songs would be overdoing it, one more thing: last month on his European tour Bob started mixing it up by, some nights, playing a totally different 17 songs, except the final encore of ‘All Along The Watchtower'.

This set included not a single song from ‘Tempest', but it did showcase eight well-known sixties songs.

In Europe Bob pretty much alternated one set with the other, so in Hamilton it's pretty much anyone's guess as to what you'll get to hear. I'll keep my fingers crossed the sound is good for you. Wish I was there.