Lou Majaw performs at the musical nite to mark Bob Dylan’s birthday in Shillong on Saturday. Picture by Eastern Projections

Shillong, May 25: Mr Tambourine Man is known to shun publicity, but what the heck, the times they are a changin’ and a little media attention never hurt anybody.

It’s been 31 years since this picturesque hill station first hosted a Bob Dylan birthday concert, but none of these annual events generated as many audio-visual bytes as the one last evening.

From just another annual local gig, the concert graduated into a high-profile event when television news and music channels, including MTV, vied with one another for the “best shots”, “exclusives” and “special moments” from the six-hour show.

Among those who were present to record the show was Michael Reddy, a US-based documentary-maker from Shillong. He said scenes from the show would be included in his documentary on Dylan.

As the cameras rolled, veteran rocker Lou Majaw’s band Ace of Spades got the audience of Dylan worshippers jiving to some of his finest compositions. Songs like The wild swings, Jibes and A lot of wine transported music-lovers back to a period when Madonna probably hadn’t decided to start a career in singing and listening to Dylan was more than a pastime.

Pleased with the response to the concert, Majaw said: “People here do not like hype but appreciate sensible and special stuff. That is why everyone who loves Dylan was here.”

The 1,000-plus audience at Cloud Nine, which has revived the Saturday concert, included scores of Dylan fans from neighbouring Assam. “The show has certainly come under media glare. It spells hope for future Dylan-related events,” Larsing Ming, the brain behind Cloud Nine, said.

Ming said such events would invariably succeed in Shillong “because it has a music culture and a liking for the Dylan genre of songs”.

Apart from Reddy, a couple of lesser-known filmmakers recorded the show on video. One of them, identifying himself as David, said he was happy to see the annual concert making news “outside the confines of Shillong”.

Majaw was accompanied on stage by Lew Hilt, Nondon Bagchi and Arjun Sen, who are musicians of repute and old friends of the singer.