Bob Dylan
\nAdelaide Entertainment Centre
\nAugust 30.<\/p>\n
Murray Bramwell<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not just the times that are a-changing. Things<\/i> have Changed. Bob Dylan is back on stage in Adelaide and his opening song, Academy Award winning theme tune to the 2000 film Wonder Boys<\/i>, tells us \u2013 \u201cPeople are crazy, times are strange\/I\u2019m locked in tight , I\u2019m outta range\/ I used to care but things have changed.\u201d Except, with Bob, the more things change, the more they also stay the same.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s been locked in tight for a long time now. The so-called Never Ending Tour (a tag he himself ridicules) began in 1988 and notched up 2000 concerts by 2007. Seven years, and hundreds of performances further on, and Dylan is now 73 and still on the road. Still hidden in plain sight, still that Alias character from Sam Peckinpah\u2019s western, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Dressed in a broad brimmed hat and black and grey patched suit Dylan has become the song and dance man he once whimsically called himself. The songs are drawn from the deepest wells in popular music. And the dance, well, he\u2019s got some moves, you might call them a sardonic, slow jive.<\/p>\n
Dylan doesn\u2019t play guitar nowadays, instead it\u2019s piano, not that tinny electric from last tour, but a half size grand. Or else he stands at the microphone and croons wolfishly, biting at the lyrics here, gliding lightly through the octave there. His voice is gravelly, sometimes it sounds utterly shredded, but often he moves it with startling invention and with such emotive phrasing that you have to catch your breath.<\/p>\n
The set continues with \u201cShe Belongs to Me\u201d \u2013 from Bringing it All<\/i> Back Home<\/i>, 1965- transition folk rock: Highway 61<\/i> to arrive in a few months and the thin wild mercury sound of Blonde on Blonde<\/i> the following year. The band is relaxed \u2013 bassist Tony Garnier is settling back. Dylan\u2019s longtime MD, he doesn\u2019t have to explain the ways of God to the other musicians any more. On this year\u2019s tour the set list is tight and relatively unvarying. The band is well-rehearsed. No more having to guess which song Bob has launched himself into, re-engineering the tempo and the intro.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s got everything she needs, she\u2019s an artist, she don\u2019t look back.\u201d Charlie Sexton is playing some sweet phrases on lead, but it is Dylan\u2019s haunting harmonica, clarion from another century, which reminds us that it is not quite fifty years since many of us bought that album, and marvelled at \u201cMr Tambourine Man\u201d and \u201cMaggie\u2019s Farm\u201d, and even more at \u201cGates of Eden\u201d.<\/p>\n
After \u201cBeyond Here Lies Nothing\u201d, it is on \u201cWorkingman Blues #2\u201d where things really start to lift. Dylan\u2019s voice is surer and the latter day, hard-luck lyrics have a post-GFC edge to them. He\u2019s standing at the mic \u2013 in fact there is a cluster of four of them, designed, you start to think, to obscure Dylan\u2019s face; like the strange, shadowy stage lighting which was intriguing for those us in the front rows, but baffling, and at times frustrating, to some of my friends seated much further back. But that\u2019s Bob \u2013 locked in tight, outta range – hidden in plain sight.<\/p>\n
The little-known \u201cWaiting for You\u201d, another movie soundtrack song, gets the cowboy waltz treatment. Donnie Herron on pedal steel, Bob on piano \u2013 it is the first of several wistful ballads. The mood changes with the jaunty \u201cDuquesne Whistle\u201d and the mephistophilean \u201cPay in Blood\u201d, both from last year\u2019s Tempest<\/i> album.<\/p>\n
The first half closes strongly \u2013 with a slowed down, expertly phrased reading of \u201cTangled Up in Blue\u201d, the band playing melody with an almost modal insistence, Bob adding more heraldic harmonica, to be followed by \u201cLove Sick\u201d, his bitter blues. Sexton supplies the keening lead, while the excellent Stu Kimball\u2019s rhythm guitar has a relentless dread to it. This is from Dylan\u2019s late masterpiece \u2013 Time Out of Mind<\/i>, shades of W.B.Yeats\u2019s Last Poems<\/i> : The Circus Animals\u2019 Desertion, Crazy Jane on the Mountain and Why Should Not Old Men Be Mad? <\/i>
\n <\/i>
\n\u201cHigh Water (for Charley Patton)\u201d opens the second half. Featuring Donnie Herron on banjo \u2013 alas, volume not high enough in the often bass heavy mix. Dylan makes the lyrics echo with prophetic import, just like it is so easily done, out on Highway 61.<\/p>\n
Returning to Blood on the Tracks<\/i> for a deftly simple twist on \u201cA Simple Twist of Fate\u201d again he adds crooning harmonica highlights. The band regroups for a thumping version of \u201cEarly Roman Kings\u201d \u2013 Early Roman Hoochie Coochie Men, more like. Listen to Kimball\u2019s driving chords, George Recile\u2019s dead-arm drum and Bob barrel-housing the piano, it is drawn from the clear springs of Muddy Waters, and is a reminder that Dylan has always played great blues.<\/p>\n
With the sprightly string band melody of \u201cSpirit on the Water\u201d Bob tells us we can have a very good time and with the creepy ballad, \u201cScarlet Town\u201d and its grimly hypnotic banjo riff, he reminds us that the world is also too much with us – and it doesn\u2019t wish us well.<\/p>\n
Perhaps though, it is the melancholy of regret that falls most heavily on the night. In \u201cForgetful Heart\u201d (why can\u2019t we love like we did before ?) Dylan takes the schmaltz of a cowboy ballad and, accompanied by Herron\u2019s mournful violin, turns it into something far less generic. Instead it sounds heartfelt, personal, as if he is running out of aliases, and certainly running out of time.<\/p>\n
It is the same with his closing song, again from Tempest<\/i>, the slow strummed, half-crooned, half-spoken \u201cLong and Wasted Years\u201d. \u201cFor one brief time,\u201d he dreamily recalls, \u201cI was the bang for you. Maybe it\u2019s the same for me as it is for you.\u201d Sexton plays his trickle-down riff over and over as Dylan, still masked by shadows and microphones, delivers like a disembodied voice on late night country radio \u2013 \u201cso many tears, so many long and wasted years.\u201d<\/p>\n
The encores follow briskly. \u201cAll Along the Watchtower\u201d \u2013 Businessmen they drink my wine, ploughmen dig my earth – has long been his anthem, gloriously reframed by Jimi Hendrix, but long since reclaimed by Dylan and his band – with its rousing guitars, paused for Sexton\u2019s duet with Dylan\u2019s rhythmic piano, before Recile\u2019s drums roar back into urgent warning \u2013\u201coutside in the distance a wildcat did growl \/Two riders were approaching, and the wind began to howl.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for the whole tour, \u201cWatchtower\u201d is twinned with \u201cBlowin\u2019 in the Wind\u201d, Dylan at the piano, his weary vocals turning the earnest exhortations of his most famous protest song into perplexed questions that seem lost in time and context. Things have changed. Without the guitar, Bob Dylan is no longer the folk troubadour. Now he\u2019s the Lonesome Hobo, the Wicked Messenger, the Jokerman \u2013 take your pick.<\/p>\n
For his loyal audience, ageing with him, he is a Beckettian figure of rebuke. Alone and remote in his eccentricity and his undoubted genius, he has long told us he is not the one we want or need. Yet we still yearn for his approval, his benediction. People ask \u2013 did he speak to the audience ? What performer, after all, does not warmly acknowledge his or her fans, admirers, cult followers ? But of course he didn\u2019t speak, except to announce the interval. Mr Godot is not coming today or any other. In his concert, with a masterful band, Mr Dylan has given a great deal of himself, but, as always, he is hidden in plain sight. He\u2019s locked in tight. Things have changed. And nothing has changed at all.<\/p>\n
Published The Barefoot Review<\/i> online, September 3, 2014.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bob Dylan Adelaide Entertainment Centre August 30. Murray Bramwell It\u2019s not just the times that are a-changing. Things have Changed. Bob Dylan is back on stage in Adelaide and his opening song, Academy Award winning theme tune to the 2000 film Wonder Boys, tells us \u2013 \u201cPeople are crazy, times are strange\/I\u2019m locked in tight , I\u2019m outta range\/ I used to care but things have changed.\u201d Except, with Bob, the more things change, the more they also stay the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,5,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-31","category-archive","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2429"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2430,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2429\/revisions\/2430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}