Stories in the Press: Atlanta 2004

2004-04-12-14, Tabernacle, Atlanta, GA

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Photo by John Hume

A couple months ago, the newspaper archives site newspapers.com offered a free President’s Day trial. I spent more time than I care to admit that weekend saving Dylan-related news stories from papers of yesteryear. (I needn’t have raced; when I discovered how useful a resource it could be, I signed up properly.)

I wasn’t looking for Dylan interviews – easy enough to find those online – or album reviews. I was looking for concert coverage. Not of the big splashy shows, and not in the big national newspapers either. I was looking for articles in local papers that set the scene. It’s easy to look at a long list of tour dates, or listen to a bunch of bootlegs, and have them all blur together. But particularly in smaller cities, it was a big deal the day Dylan came to town. These clips bring out that local energy.

Thus we launch another irregular series today: “Stories in the Press,” which will look at the contemporary press coverage of a Dylan show from the past. Sometimes the newspapers profile a local superfan. Sometimes they photograph an insanely long ticket line. Sometimes they use the occasion to recap past Dylan shows in town.

We start with one of the more recent shows I found clips for: Atlanta 2004. It’s actually not one show, but three, a short run at a venue called The Tabernacle. It’s also, admittedly, a much bigger market than Bozeman, Montana or Lenox, Massachusetts. But you can still get a taste of the scene in local paper The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.