Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello, October 22, Fox Theatre

[Update Oct. 24 1:15 p.m.] An mp3 of the Dylan/Costello "Tears of Rage" duet is available for download here.

Having a stellar double-play combination is overrated. The year I won my first division championship, 1983, the White Sox double-play tandem consisted of Julio Cruz at second base and Jerry Dybzinski at shortstop. My first World Series championship, with the A's in '89, we had Tony Phillips at second and Mike Gallego at short. Last year with the Cardinals we won it all with Aaron Miles and David Eckstein. Nothing against any of these fellows -- Phillips, in particular, had some decent years with the leather, and you'll never hear a discouraging word from me about Eck -- but it's more than possible to go all the way without a pair of sackmates on par with, oh, Jackie Robinson and Pee Wee Reese.

That said, you could have knocked me over with an empty bottle of Gaja's Langhe Costa Russi 2000 (quite possibly the best Costa Russi ever made -- and I know my red wine) when Elvis Costello joined Bob Dylan onstage for the first encore Monday night at the fabulous Fox Theatre, and the two delivered a magnificent rendition of the Dylan/Richard Manuel chestnut "Tears of Rage."

The artists have been performing in tandem for the past month or so, but until the St. Louis concert they hadn't shared the stage. How fortunate that I happened to be in town to catch it!

Costello's opening set was brief but powerful. (The man has stage presence like Chris Carpenter has a cut fastball.) But Dylan and his five-piece backing band -- Tony Garnier (bass), George Recile (drums), Stu Kimball (rhythm guitar), Denny Freeman (lead guitar) and Donnie Herron (pedal steel, lap steel, mandolin and strings) -- tore through a seventeen-song set that careened from Sixties gems ("Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat," "It Ain't Me, Babe," "Highway 61 Revisited," "Ballad of a Thin Man") to the cream of his more recent catalogue ("The Levee's Gonna Break," "Things Have Changed," "Ain't Talkin'").

The final encore paired the shambling blues masterwork "Thunder on the Mountain," from last year's Modern Times, with longtime concert staple "All Along the Watchtower."

Now that is what I call a double-play combination.

Dylan completists can look here for the setlist in its entirety. Costello setlist can be found here.

Baseball completists can look below for the double-play combos I've managed, year by year:

1979 CHW
Alan Bannister
Greg Pryor

1980 CHW
Jim Morrison
Todd Cruz

1981 CHW
Tony Bernazard
Bill Almon

1982 CHW
Tony Bernazard
Bill Almon

1983 CHW -- 99 wins; first division championship
Julio Cruz
Jerry Dybzinski

1984 CHW
Julio Cruz
Scott Fletcher

1985 CHW
Julio Cruz
Ozzie Guillen

1986 CHW
Julio Cruz
Ozzie Guillen

1986 OAK
Tony Phillips
Alfredo Griffin

1987 OAK
Tony Phillips
Alfredo Griffin

1988 OAK -- won ALCS
Glenn Hubbard
Walt Weiss

1989 OAK -- won WS
Tony Phillips
Mike Gallego

1990 OAK -- won ALCS
Willie Randolph
Walt Weiss

1991 OAK
Mike Gallego
Mike Bordick

1992 OAK -- won division
Mike Bordick
Walt Weiss

1993 OAK
Brent Gates
Mike Bordick

1994 OAK
Brent Gates
Mike Bordick

1995 OAK
Brent Gates
Mike Bordick

1996 STL -- won division
Luis Alicea
Royce Clayton

1997 STL
Delino DeShields
Royce Clayton

1998 STL
Delino DeShields
Royce Clayton

1999 STL
Joe McEwing
Edgar Renteria

2000 STL -- won division
Fernando Viña
Edgar Renteria

2001 STL
Fernando Viña
Edgar Renteria

2002 STL
Fernando Viña
Edgar Renteria

2003 STL
Bo Hart
Edgar Renteria

2004 STL -- won NLCS
Tony Womack
Edgar Renteria

2005 STL -- won division
Mark Grudzielanek
David Eckstein

2006 STL -- won WS
Aaron Miles
David Eckstein

2007 STL
Adam Kennedy/Aaron Miles
David Eckstein

He's Back!!

This much is true: A new Bob Schneider CD called The Californian will be released on August 8. And if you've been to one of the Austinite's shows, yes, you've heard him play the album's title track before ("Superman can go kiss my ass/I'm half nitroglyc, half fiberglass..."). But halfway through Schneider's last St. Louis show, a fellow we know made a bet with one of his buddies: that a third fellow -- who was drunk and had taken off his shirt and was attempting (unsuccessfully) to dance without falling down -- would, in the next five minutes, remove his shorts as well. Didn't happen. The two-and-a-half-hour set of Schneider standards and unreleased material was punctuated by two song requests from audience members, each of whom inscribed said request upon the accepted medium, a crisp new $20 bill. Afterward, the stage long since darkened and the crowd long since sent home, there occurred an otherwise inexplicable upsurge in couplings. Men and women, women and women, men and men. (Perhaps even women and men and women.) Strangers and friends. Touchings were gentled, gasps emitted, pleasures loosed, babies conceived. Yes, it¹s all true -- except that last part, which is a guess not based on the solid bedrock of statistical analysis but on the ineluctable logic of the heart, which, though faint and fleeting, is more reliable than any compass ever designed by man's hand.

9 p.m. Saturday, July 8. Blueberry Hill's Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Boulevard, University City. $15. 314-727-4444.

Bob Schneider: Blueberry Hill's Duck Room, April 5, 2006

Bob Schneider has turned over 50 percent of his roster this past year. Lead guitarist Billy Harvey? Gone, replaced by Jeff Plankenhorn. Drummer Rafael Gayol? Gone, replaced by Brannon Temple. (Holdovers: Derek Morris on keyboards and Bruce Hughes on bass.)

Some would point to personnel changes and suspect disarray. Nothing could be further from the truth. Turnover is part of running a business, and business is business, whether you're leading a major-league baseball franchise or leading a kickass rock & roll band.

Turnover, of course, requires a period of adjustment. But it's not necessarily a bad thing that Schneider's well-oiled quintet of twelve months back has given way to a more spontaneous sound. Besides, these guys are consummate pros. In fact, they're no doubt taking the "Bob Schneider discount" to play for his team. We're not talking Einar Diaz here.

I'm not the sort of guy who dances much. But on the way up in my private elevator after the show, I was still singing along.

All I wanna do is rock this motherfucker all night long, y'all
Nonstop till the crack of dawn, y'all
Ass-knocking till you can't go on
Stop over with the goodies and get it on!

(Come on. Everybody's got their thing. Jose Oquendo's is the cleats. And I don't mean his cleats; I mean ALL the cleats. They have to be lined up just-so, outside every consarned locker. Home or road clubhouse, doesn't matter. They have to line up just so. Woody Williams, it was his CDs. Jimmy Edmonds, hair products. Remember George Clooney in that Cohen Bros. movie with his pomade? That's Jimmy.

And don't even get me started about So T.)

Lucinda Williams and Doug Pettibone: The Pageant, March 15, 2006

Have you ever looked at, I mean really looked at the way So Taguchi fills out a uniform? The media guide's got him at 163 but tie me up with duct tape and tickle me silly if he's an ounce over 157.

Can a man be wiry and pumped at the same time? Can a person be in two places at once? If a song is played in Lafayette, can you hear it in Lake Charles?

You could bounce a quarter off his ass.

If I were a meat eater, I'd spread Lucinda Williams on a cracker.

But I'm not, so I don't.

Ghostface Killah @ Pop's, March 8, Year of the Wu

Last night I studied tape from the Dominican/Venezuela WBC game. Not! Rather, I hung on the east side with Pretty Toney, aka Toney Starks, aka Ghostface Killah. After six openers – one of which lip-synched their way out of any credibility they may have started with – Ghost emerged. He once performed behind a ski mask, but last night he had a hat which appeared to be made of bunny fur. (Not something I condone.)

Everyone formed 'W's with their hands, in honor of the Wu-Tang Clan, Ghost's crew. Another Wu-Tanger, Old Dirty Bastard, is dead, and a touching, if predictable cover of "I Like It Raw" followed. Then "Back Like That," off Fishscale, Ghost’s new album, due in stores March 28, a song about love and payback that just may get Ghost the mainstream attention he deserves.

Then, women from the crowd came onstage to shake their cans. Some were African-American, others were Caucasian, and there may have been a Latina. (Sadly, no Japanese.) Ghost did not dance with them, but instead left that task to his posse, or, as Byron Crawford would call them, his weed carriers.

All in all, a very tasteful show. Little, to no shoving. Averaged price beer. Short line for the can.

The Rolling Stones: Savvis Center, January 27, 2006

Many a knee-jerk criticism of the Rolling Stones vintage 2006 begins and ends with the canard that their shows are too tightly choreographed and as such do not allow for improvisation.

The setlist is to live rock as the lineup card is to baseball. You lead off with "Jumping Jack Flash," no ifs, ands, or buts. You close with unmitigated power: "Brown Sugar," "Can't Always Get What You Want," "Satisfaction."

And earlier on, having settled on "Rough Justice" in the cleanup spot followed by the solid "Tumblin' Dice" and then an out-of-left-field move like Tattoo You's often-overlooked masterpiece "Worried About You," Mick Jagger isn't going to pull the concert equivalent of the double switch. He's going to sit down at that keyboard and tell 15,000 screaming fans how he "Just can't seem to find [his] way," is what he's going to do.

For this attendee, the evening's sole weak spot came in the form of a segue midway through the set -- from a Keith Richards solo ("This Place Is Empty") to "Happy," that Exile on Main St. anthem which also features a Richards vocal. But seen in a slightly different light, even that sequence showed impeccable timing: You should have seen the lines form in the men's room as soon as "Keef" opened his mouth.

Here's a stunning statistic for you: Michael Philip Jagger is 440 days older than I am.