Stuttgart, Germany (17-Jun-91)

I needed to watch this. Yes, it was painful, but for me I need to see ALL of Bob even this and his broken trust with the audience. I love him even more. I kept asking to myself what, what what's wrong Bob?!?! Maybe I am off base but perhaps Bob was a tad tipsy. I COULD BE DEAD wrong! Bottom line: Painful but necessary watching.

D623.su PLUMBING THE DEPTHS

The makers of D623.su have obviously gone to a lot of trouble in preparing this disc for release. Its menu has four pages and each one, on opening, plays a complete song from Vienna (VA) 24.8.97 – LARS, Tough Mama, Roving Gambler and Cocaine, all sounding fine. Stuttgart audio and video are also both consistently good throughout. What a pity, then, that all this effort is wasted on presenting for our delectation so abysmally poor a performance. A laughably shambolic opener sets the pattern. Though recorded on the set-list as New Morning, I doubt that one in ten of the audience that night could have named it for money. After a few toots centre-stage on his harmonica, D goes to sit bemused at his keyboard whilst behind him guitar and drums thrash out a rhythm. He plays a series of chords, looking this way and that, but with no attempt to sing. This goes interminably on for four minutes before D gets up, walks back, puts on his guitar, shambles back to the mike and graces us with a "vocal" in which discernible words shine like flowers in a wasteground of slurs and mumbles. This lack of lyric command is one of the themes of the night – thus we hear "Must be some way outta here said the joker to the thief; many here among ...er ... feel er... er..." Too much confusion indeed. Singing Pill-Box Hat he seems incapable of finishing any line. He’s as well-acquainted with his songs tonight as with the German language, which he mangles – Donka-shayne! Donka-shayne! – in classic if-it’s-Tuesday-it-must-be-Stuttgart tourist style. BD’s Dream, noted on the set-list and keenly anticipated, is a trashy unfeeling performance, four verses of seven, dashed off, worthless. Wiggle Wiggle, a song he appears uncomfortable in singing (as well he might), he makes no more than a token effort to put across. Everything Is Broken, another third-rate song, gains currency here due only to its patent relevance to the predicament of the hapless artist himself, and what’s broken, we surmise between mutterings of tools and switches, is the compact between singer and audience; worse, between singer and song. (I'll know my song well before I start singing - remember that, Bob?) Between this man and his self-respect just now there clearly yawns a gaping chasm, with the road back, you feel, 10,000 miles through the mouth of a graveyard, a dangerous road, a road probably beyond his failing strength to travel. I Believe In You, a song he usually sings well, with passion and conviction, and the type of sustaining song that might help him on such a journey, tonight is abject. He won’t go for any notes and falters on the melody. Tuneless harmonica starts and ends a sorry performance, after which he smiles, in embarrassment, surely? After a lumpen, uninspired H61, complete with unconvincing posturing from D, What Good Am I cuts right to the bone. In a darkened hall, alone and bowed, the singer stands before his crowd. Seemingly unable to carry a tune or deliver the simplest lyric, his voice asks the title question even as, in the very act of its asking, it’s answered – and answered in terms of unspoken truth the stark nakedness of which make you shiver. At song’s end, wolf at bay, he sneers this: What good am I? What good are YOU?! Silence.

Because it’s so well shot and recorded, the temptation to view this pitiful fare is strong. There’s an undeniable fascination in seeing this enigmatic man’s public abasement, his self-inflicted humiliation, this dark night of his soul. D on this night appears to think that all he need do is turn up and act the part of Bob Dylan for 90-odd minutes to fulfil his part of the singer-punter bargain. Or, knowing otherwise, that’s what, for reasons best known to himself (or maybe not?) he chooses to do. In the time this DVD catches him, he’s drifting very far from the shore. You may sympathise with his self-evident plight. If you’re a fan, you may even feel some tiny catspaw of guilt concerning the small part you yourself played in putting him where we see him. If it’s Bob Dylan you revere, you’ll probably want to see this recording. If, on the other hand, it’s his work you cherish, then do yourself a favour and pass it by.

THANKS B
STARS Two

(Note: for a much better show from this period, try D377.su)