DVD Compilation #03

Excellent compilation from this essential series. Get em all.
Try not to think about it too much. Just sit back, and enjoy one of the (not)strongest periods of Dylan's career.
Great sources, captures, and production of course.

D013 EARLY EIGHTIES

D013 is another of those discs with something of an identity crisis. Part historical document, part entertainment package, it ends up not quite either one or the other. By chance, the disc’s contents fall exactly into two 53 minute halves and the second of these, comprising the Barcelona ‘84 footage, Live Aid and Farm Aid, is very watchable - also, provided you can dig Live Aid, thoroughly enjoyable too. But no DVD that includes six Blowin' In The Winds (several Santana-ridden to boot) deserves too much praise. I think if there’d been another at Farm Aid that would have been TV, player and disc out the window, and possibly me soon after.

Peace Sunday starts with Baez bringing on "Robert". This 13 minutes of 1982 footage is easy on the eye, but sound is poor. God On Our Side is snipped in three places, most noticeably at the end (closing punch line lost). Pirate Looks At Forty sounds like the kind of song you ought to like, except that it’s difficult to discern just what it’s supposed to be about. Then there’s Wind #1. On to 22 minutes of Italian TV coverage of Verona ‘84. Lovely close pro-shot footage of D singing Times is spoiled by bad sound. Watchtower, LARS and Wind #2 suffer similarly - good pics but sound poor-to-grim. Four or five minutes of press-conference footage is over-dubbed in Italian so that nothing of the original exchanges can be heard. (Note: this Verona footage can be found in much better quality on both D247 and D725.) On to Hamburg and 18 minutes from German TV: Wind #3, end of LARS + band intros then finally first reward of this disc - a fine Hattie Carroll (first verse missing) in good aural/visual shape. Wind #4 plus a truncated Tombstone Blues close this chapter.

I suppose you can understand why it’s the same songs every time. You can imagine each local producer, his largely non-D audience in mind, issuing his orders: Bring me Wind, Stone, Watchtower... and, er, what else has he done?? No surprise, then that first up on Spanish TV is another LARS. But from now on sound and image are first-rate, so suddenly even this is much more the ticket. What’s more, it’s followed by an absolute treat - a fine performance, beautifully filmed, of T Man, complete and very special. Then, for good measure, a full Don’t Think Twice before - can you guess? - yes, Wind #5, but electric this time and sounding considerably better, with D in playful mood, singing verses to the crowd’s refrain.

Live Aid shows what happens when a man gives his address out to bad companee. A hyper Jack Nicholson introduces "one of America’s great voices of freedom" who appears alone, but looking about him in some anxiety. Eventually two scamps scurry on to join him... You know the rest. It’s been 15 years since I last saw this and it sounds better - or maybe that should be clearer - than I remember. D gets too little contribution from the aptly-named Wood and too much from Richard. His comments after Hollis Brown remain - Farm Aid or no - as inappropriate now as they were in 1985. Ship is ragged and Wind (Wind #6!) worse still, with the "transcendent" (Nicholson) D losing heart before our eyes. After a verse or so of the group-hug We Are The World he scuttles off the stage in senses both literal and metaphorical, having just, in a great many minds across the global TV Nation, burned bridges that will never be repaired.

You feel the strength of his Farm Aid performance derives at least in part from his sense of needing to set matters right. After the Live Aid debacle, Bob is really up for this. It was him who set this bull loose and he rides it for all it’s worth. He’s word and tune perfect. The band, too, have every song down pat. After a two and a half minute start-cut Shake (with opener Clean-Cut Kid not broadcast) he shares two duets - I’ll Remember You and Trust Yourself - with Madelyn Quebec (his mother-in-law to be). Since she has no more than a passing acquaintance with either lyric, her floundering contribution to proceedings is quaintly funny. Bob, though, guides her through with effortless good cheer. The set's second cover Lucky Old Sun is another very regrettable video absentee before a predictable Maggie’s Farm finish. And if you think that last pick uninspired, D can surely be forgiven for, remarkably, when Times/H61/Blowin'/LARS/Heaven's Door would have been the "safer" option, every other song performed here at Champaign was a debutant, never played live before - and when was the last time you could say that of a Bob gig? (1979’s Saturday Night Live - D187 etc - and first Fox Warfield show, maybe?)

Don’t expect to much from the first half of this disc and the second is sure to please.

THANKS M
STARS Three

I love this disc. Lots of great footage from the 1984 tour plus two of my fave Bob TV appearances: LIVE AID and FARM AID I.
Never really have understood the negative responses to the LIVE AID performance. My only complaint is that I would have loved to have heard Ronnie & Keith singing a little background.
And FARM AID I? Bob rocking out with the best band of his career. These guys fit each other perfectly! (Wish he would've left the female chorus behind though!)