Bob Dylan in Auckland

Reuters

NO PHOTOS: Bob Dylan plays in Los Angeles in 2004. He refused to allow photographers into his Vector Arena show.

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Folk music legend Bob Dylan refused to allow photographers into Vector Arena. But reviewer Michael Field was there - and he wasn't impressed.

Tonight at Vector Arena in Auckland he churned out the barely requisite number of songs, said next to nothing to the crowd and by 10.20pm the aged audience were finding taxis home in time to watch the re-run of the rugby.

Dylan should stop singing to big live audiences, although whether the audience was fully alive will be discussed a little further on. He and his exceptionally talented band of five really deserve a smaller, intimate venue.

And they'll get that chance when Dylan plays two smaller shows at The Civic in Auckland later this month.

A declaration early on: I adore Bob Dylan and think he should get the Nobel Prize. All the best songs he ever wrote I still listen to, cherish and think are brilliant. He didn't sing any tonight.

You had to feel for the vaguely boring Irish band The Frames who opened to an audience simply not interested.

Nor were they, as the lead singer told the crowd they thought nobody wanted really to hear them. But they soldiered on, saying "you got to go out there and sing your songs".

At 8.20pm the houselights went down and up went the opening music: Aaron Copeland's Fanfare for a Common Man and a bit of Rodeo. What was Dylan saying with that? Acknowledging, perhaps, that in a 100 years they will still be playing Copeland, but most of Dylan - at least the way he wrote it - will be gone.

A quick trio of standard songs from the late 1960s followed, superbly executed and with a kind of recast that made them sound like at least fresh zucchini had been added to the salad. But it really had all the thrill of watching the All Blacks play Canada. Technically fine, completely soulless.

Dylan just stood there - we, the audience, did not exist. Black suit with a Spanish hat, a mother-of-pearl faced guitar: the General Patton of music.

The fourth song: Just like a Woman. Oh, please, no. Geriatrics should keep their sex lives to themselves.

The crowd wanted to join in the chorus but the concrete bunker that is Vector killed any kind of audience support.

Dylan played the harmonica and the crowd cheered. Once he used to bite the harp and spit out the notes. Now it is all perfunctory, for effect.

After a couple of guitar pieces in centre stage he moved off to the side and played the organ. He had a strange stand and an odd, lost look. He reminds you of somebody. Then, recognition: he looks like Richard Nixon. He even has the kind of little spasms that Tricky Dick suffered late in Watergate.

Dylan was starting to lose his audience.

To my misfortune I was sitting in front of a group who were obviously on a work outing from West Auckland. "Mike" spilled his beer and I had to sit with it slopping under me. His strangely-dressed wife kept talking through all the songs.

She'd been at the Mission when Ray Charles sung there.

"He's blind, you know," she said through her nose to three rows.

Dead too.

The eighth song was Tangled up in Blue. No! It wasn't any good back then, and hardly deserves revival now.

The odd "go Bob" was called out: its like the benediction phase in a Mass. You have to say something, anything.

Old bald guys around me, all with the look of Queen Street law partnerships, played air guitars on their paunches. Somebody yelled out "bring on Milli Vanilli".

Highway 61 was trotted out. Of all his efforts during the evening that was the best. It sounded liked he cared for the song, and had redeveloped it.

He had a manic grin singing Desolution Row and off to the wing an incident occurred. A retired sharebroker tried to break security and kiss Dylan. Got no where near him.

The low point came with some piece of religious mumbo jumbo from the master. People were talking loudly: even the Ray Charles fan was a relief, although I am sure she could have been usefully employed at Henderson Mall. It was like watching the second half of the test with the All Blacks up 60 points.

Masters of War hinted at some old passions: it was about Vietnam, this is Iraq. Dylan probably sang it for that reason, although he said nothing else.

By 10pm he was off the stage for the ritual pleading encore. The house lights were not on, of course, and it was just to let the Old Bugger go to his own men's room and then return to sing Thunder on the Mountain. By 10.15pm and 17 songs later, it was over. Almost mercifully.

The audience was an embarrassment to be with. They were so old they long ago gave up on the revolution; they're buying Rakon shares and worrying about the subprime mortgage market and how it would affect the Labour Weekend trip to Fiji.

They were not into endless youth: St John's were on hand not for drug overdoes, but in case the odd prostate gland gave out. At Vector tonight there was a real prospect of multiple death - from old age.

Somehow I missed the sexual revolution when I went off somewhere; now that I am back and looking at the folks around me. Well, pleased I missed it.

The Bob Dylan programme was meaningless $25 rubbish and the souvenir teeshirts were made in China.

Vector - which is remarkably hard to find from Britomart (go through the service lane beside Foodtown, and at Frozen goods turn up the next lane past the third checkout) - they warned the audience they could be searched for weapons.