Essen, Germany (18-Jun-91)

DISC D645.su
SOUND A touch light but still very good.
IMAGE The screenshots look the part and so, in terms of its appearance, does this film, shot from a wholly unobstructed right-centre balcony position. Taper-friendly stage lights ensure warm, natural colours and image quality is clean. There’s no zooming and minimal panning, such that full-body Bob + JJ is the predominant shot with Tony caught now and then and drummer Wallace* 100% lost to view. Sadly, the hand-held camera imparts to this otherwise enjoyable tape a constant tremor - its major flaw.
RUNNING TIME Essen runs 94:25 and the pro-shot bonus (access via text in top right corner of menu screen) an additional 4:00. The original video cuts a minute before the end of Buffalo and re-starts a little way into Baby Blue, but author HW has inserted a blank, black-screen passage to allow Buffalo to conclude in audio only, though, strangely, then not done the same to fill out Baby Blue (presumably because of technical constraints and that a fix has been attempted here at all, rather than just leave both cuts unmended, is praiseworthy indeed).
PERFORMANCE Well now. This gig at Essen was the night after the truly awful Stuttgart debacle (D623.su) and the night before the much better Offenbach (D377.su, D587.su). A missing link, then, of sorts - but which way will it lean? To the better or worse? Future or past? After being relieved to see how much of an improvement Offenbach was over Stuttgart, I’d guessed (or maybe just hoped) that the latter was a strictly one-off aberration. As soon as D steps up to the mike and sings the first few lines of tonight’s New Morning in faltering Chinese, though, you know with sinking heart that "one-off" doesn’t cut it. And so it proves - another long, sad and sorry ride along Bob’s wilderness road, a dark and forlorn place where he can’t sing and doesn’t know or respect or seem even to care about his own songs. The two least bad efforts here are Trail Of The Buffalo (a cover) and What Good Am I?, which pertinent question can but hover significantly this night in the minds of fan and performer alike. In Desperation Row he sings the first, second and last verses but then, from the meat of the song, just one other of seven, all in five strum-dreary minutes. This lacklustre I Believe In You invites the response Oh really? If you like your humour black, there are smiles to be had, as when in Shelter he follows a line of lyric-lapse mumbo-jumbo with Nothing really matters much... or when he sings I’ll remember you ... ... ... (forgets next line). This is more dreadful Dylan. Dylan taking the p*ss. On another night he could get away with This is my ecology song. Y’know we got to work together to save the planet before crashing into Wiggle Wiggle. Here in Essen, though, it just isn’t funny.
COMMENT If you can endure D and Co through to the end, brace yourself for a bonus shocker - a full set of lyrics, a tune, a melodic accompaniment, full respect from a focussed performer for song and audience - that powerfully underlines the pitiful paucity of all that‘s gone before. When Sinéad Lohan can play D off the screen, something’s wrong somewhere.
GRAZIE Viner D1
STARS This is no keeper or sleeper - it's a weeper. D377.su / D587.su from the next night are both much better. Two.

*Ian Wallace passed away two days after this review was posted.