Kerkrade, Netherlands (19-Mar-95)

The film-projector menu screens are always fun. Heads, distance, and camera shake have few problems. The camera goes off-track during Tambourine Man, and LRS had to be finished with stills from the concert, but the camerawork is otherwise consistent. Bob and John Jackson get most of the screen time, with Tony next, and the others hardly any. The hall seems to be a little smoky; that lends nice atmosphere to the visuals, but it also seems to have made it hard to focus precisely. The whole show is a little fuzzy-not distractingly so, but fuzzy.

The performance is wondrous. Bob sings 7 of the songs without a guitar, and he sings this night with such careful craftsmanship; one highlight leads to another, and another. And, harmonica on 5 of the first 7 songs! If it had better focus, I'd be asking for a number higher than 5 to rate this show. What a performance; what a performer.

Highlights:

Lay Lady Lay is evocative. He stretches out some syllables (“stay awhiiiiiile”) to emotional effect. The harmonica comes out again. It's nice, and fairly long-always a treat.

Bob on guitar for Watchtower in a fine version, with lead breaks that evoke the song’s mysteriousness. During the vocals the instruments are unusually subdued and softened, displaying the extra care Bob puts into the words on virtually every song in this show.

JLAW; Bob is clearly trying to communicate with the audience through the song. The song has some soft staccato phrases, and the drawn-out ending syllables during the last verse are moving. A night of special performances continues, and it’s only the 4th song.

I failed "Can you guess the song from the intro?" on Tangled. I thought that the set list must be wrong. Here come the opening words, and he's off on another sterling rendition. There's a rapid-fire vocal delivery while the instruments punch out a sparse tune. I think this song is consistently sung too fast, but this one works. On this night, he's not just trying to make it different, he's trying to make it better. The rhythm drives the song, and it’s fast-maybe even faster than usual. Frequently the fast pace makes for a flat song, but not this time.

Next, and harder on the guess-the-song game , comes I'll Be Your Baby Tonight. Rather than the lazy country song it was, it’s a somber, blues-ish performance. Not bad, but odd. It sounds like it was written for Time Out of Mind. (And the harmonica again- with 2 interludes this time).

Tambourine Man without Bob on guitar just seems wrong, but oh, I love this performance. It is movingly crafted, and marred only by the taper losing track of where the camera’s pointed for awhile. For me, it’s hard for modern performances of some of his oldest songs to improve on-or live up to-the quality of the original album or early concert versions. But this is a wistful, tender, thoughtful, and altogether superb version. The harmonica is lovely.

Masters Of War is another jewel. It sounds like he’s really addressing the masters of war, rather than singing to us about them. 2 nice mandolin breaks.

Don't Think Twice is another of those older songs which hasn’t sounded so good in updates. This fine, faithful rendition retains the regret and wounds of the original, yet has some of those creative phrases that we seek (why else own so many renditions of his catalog, if not for the unique flair, the new wrinkle he adds to the meaning of the song on this night compared to that night?). The Long lonesome road has those deft touches that can still thrill us.

Bob sings Dignity, a new song then, bending low from the very front of the stage, singing directly to the front rows. But it’s the first miss of the night due to poor articulation, especially early in the song and when his vocal was softer. Too bad; he seemed to put real effort into the vocal, and it could have been such a special thing.

This version of Maggie's Farm is particularly rhythm-driven, with nice, growling lead interludes. It's almost standard fun, but the luster of special performances is somehow on this one, too. I don't often enjoy Maggie's Farm anymore, but I like this one quite a bit.

The encore, Like A Rolling Stone, is another song this night which benefits from a slower pace. It begins quietly; rather than shouting at Miss Lonely, Bob seems to be having a conversation with her in the room, and that restraint continues until the second chorus, which turns up the heat a notch. The third chorus raises it even higher, and he's not talking politely to someone in the room anymore. Again, during the verses, he's coaxing more meaning out of the words with every specially-crafted phrase. The "never compromise with the mystery tramp" lines carry real meaning this night, as Bob and the band finish this great show with an encore that is by no means a "by-the-books" afterthought. A fine ending to a special night.

This sound upgrade raises the rating of this audience recording to a '5' imho. Hence, this "review" is submitted in order to move D085.su up in the "Highlights" list and the un-upgraded disk (D085) has been lowered to a '4' in order to lower it a bit.

It really is a great show folks. Go for it!

D085.su DE HELD VAN HIBBING

Who and what is Bob Dylan? According to Wikipedia, he is:

an influential and popular artist (whose) place in American and European culture in the 1960s through to the present is unique

- a level-headed assessment few are likely to dispute. In 2005 Bono observed that:

underneath all the so-called eccentricity, which I think is just a mask, there's a very true person

- another appraisal that strikes an authentic note. But in 1988, D's good friend George Harrison said this:

Dylan is so brilliant - to me, he makes William Shakespeare look like Billy Joel

and, as the Millennium turned, Poet Laureate Andrew Motion declared him:

one of the great artists of the century.

Personally I don't buy into any of this "greatest living artist" hyperbole, nor even the "spokesman of his generation" tag. Dylan is an enigmatic, knotty, extravagantly gifted man, sometimes insightful and wordly-wise but also capable of very woolly thinking (All that foreign oil controlling American soil... and First step was touching the moon... to quote two examples off the top of my head). He's a magpie (e.g. the Empire Burlesque film dialogue and the Red Sky nursery rhymes) lately turned plagiarist (did you ever stop to wonder why his last album was called Love And Theft? I'll bet Dr. Saga - his principal "victim" - did!). And he never spoke for his generation so much as to it - we listened, we heard and, so profound (in our minds, at least) was the consonance between his world-view and our own that, more or less diligently, or willingly, or slavishly, we've been doing it ever since. Here's someone who says it much better than I ever could:

Dylan is a complex, mercurial human being of astounding gifts, whose purposes are usually ambiguous, frequently elusive, and sometimes downright unguessable. At the same time he is a sort of communicating vessel, open to currents that run up and down the ages quite outside the confines of the popular culture of any given period (Luc Sante, 2005)

And here's another well-informed perspective from long-time fellow traveller Larry Campbell:

There's always been a certain anarchy about … his singing, his playing. There's this bohemian and, later, almost punk sensibility that goes through his thing, you know? And he sort of owns that, and it gives him a lot of leeway to throw precision out the door, because this is what his thing is, and that's what a lot of his following like about him. That and the really high level of poetic expression … But there's [also] a lawlessness and … a visceral approach to the music which is something completely unique … (2008, to Blair Jackson)

So what has all this to do with D085.su? Well, above all else, once all the BS and hyperbole are set aside, this - as Larry sort of said - is what Dylan is: he's a poet and a musician. And where can this poet/musician best be seen? Right here, on DVDs like this one, painstakingly put together then generously circulated by Yassou (for whom great thanks) and others like him. Watch a well-filmed and sweet-sounding Bob, with harmonica but without guitar, deliver Just Like A Woman, or Mr Tambourine Man, or even Masters Of War from this Dutch stage in 1995 and it's impossible not to feel that you're in the presence of something - someone - extraordinary; very special.

(He's) a planet to be explored (Tom Waits, 2005)

He's sort of impenetrable, really (Paul Simon, 1991)

Do yourself a favour: find this DVD, watch it, then watch it again. That's Bob Dylan.

TAK Jesper
STARS Five

This is such a wonderful DVD from one of Bob's best years. Watching Bob sing without his guitar on several songs is very, very moving. He puts a lot of energy into it.
Needless to say, the sound on the sound upgrade is very good. Bob's singing comes through perfectly and there is good separation among the instruments. A little more bass would have been great though. The picture/sound synch is flawless.
The position of the taper is extremely fortunate giving us a good unobstructed view of the band throughout the show.
I'll rate this 4 stars as the tape source used in the transfer is slightly weaker than that of the best of the tour, say, the two DVDs from Birmingham 1995 (D357.su and D359.su). From the fact that it is NTSC (and the show from a PAL region) I guess that is it 1 or 2 copies from the master.
The authoring with the rolling camera motif is very tasteful and is similar to many recent sound upgrades that we have been spoiled with. A big thanks in particular to this person who puts so much energy into these sound upgrades and to everybody else involved.

"Good evening ladies and lentilmen..."

If you're a sucker for the Euro '95 shows, this disc won't disappoint. Bob clearly hadn't fully recovered from his early-tour sickness (coughs and splutters as noted above) but that tender and plaintive '95 voice is right there, particularly in the magical mid-show run through "Baby Tonight", "Tambourine Man" & "Masters of War".

The picture isn't razor-sharp but, all in all, the filmer does a great job throughout - one or two roof-shots but largely steady and unobstructed. The smoky atmosphere and simple but colourful lighting give the whole film a warm & hazy intimacy, even though we never get anything closer than Bob from the waist up. There's not much of the band but the filmer does enough to keep things visually interesting and Bob is just mesmerizing.

The blips that made D085 so difficult to enjoy have completely disappeared and the sound upgrade is spot-on.

This one's as good as the Euro '95 shows come (and there's some stiff competition - Birmingham, Brixton, Cardiff...). Five stars to all involved in performance, filming and sound-upgrade. Good medicine.

Thanks to jman for vining.