No One in Vietnam Wants to See Bob Dylan Perform
Despite being one of the greatest and most influential American rockers of all time, Bob Dylan just can't get the respect he deserves in his first ever tour of east Asia. Last week, a prominent Shanghai newspaper confused Dylan for Willie Nelson, and at Dylan's first Vietnam show in Ho Chi Minh City, only 50 percent of the 8,000 seats at the venue were filled. This might be the first time since early in Dylan's Greenwich Village days that he played to a half-empty venue..
Part of the problem might be that Vietnam's population is quite young -- 60 percent were born after the Vietnam War, when Dylan's music perhaps had its biggest global impact -- so Justin Bieber would probably outdraw Dylan there (and pretty much everywhere else these days, actually), Billboard.biz reports. "We listened to anything that spoke of peace. We called him the peace poet," said Stan Karber, a Vietnam War vet currently living in Ho Chi Minh City..
Although Dylan's Southeast Asia concerts have been greeted with warm receptions, Dylan is taking criticism back here in America for allowing government censors to pre-approve his set lists. "Dylan should be ashamed of himself. The young Dylan wouldn't have let a government tell him what to sing," an executive director of Human Rights Watch said in a statement. Luckily for the Bard, only three more shows remain -- two gigs in Hong Kong and another in Singapore -- before he heads off to Australia, where he'll find larger audiences and cuddly koala bears. .
Despite being one of the greatest and most influential American rockers of all time, Bob Dylan just can't get the respect he deserves in his first ever tour of east Asia. Last week, a prominent Shanghai newspaper confused Dylan for Willie Nelson, and at Dylan's first Vietnam show in Ho Chi Minh City, only 50 percent of the 8,000 seats at the venue were filled. This might be the first time since early in Dylan's Greenwich Village days that he played to a half-empty venue..
Part of the problem might be that Vietnam's population is quite young -- 60 percent were born after the Vietnam War, when Dylan's music perhaps had its biggest global impact -- so Justin Bieber would probably outdraw Dylan there (and pretty much everywhere else these days, actually), Billboard.biz reports. "We listened to anything that spoke of peace. We called him the peace poet," said Stan Karber, a Vietnam War vet currently living in Ho Chi Minh City..
Although Dylan's Southeast Asia concerts have been greeted with warm receptions, Dylan is taking criticism back here in America for allowing government censors to pre-approve his set lists. "Dylan should be ashamed of himself. The young Dylan wouldn't have let a government tell him what to sing," an executive director of Human Rights Watch said in a statement. Luckily for the Bard, only three more shows remain -- two gigs in Hong Kong and another in Singapore -- before he heads off to Australia, where he'll find larger audiences and cuddly koala bears. .
