Melbourne, Australia (19-Aug-07)

D782 MELBOURNE REVISITED #8 & 21

Melbourne, Victoria, Australia's second city, has figured on Bob's itinerary eight times over the years. In all he's played 21 concerts there (with Sydney still just ahead on 22) ranging from six in a week in April '92 to one-off gigs in 2001 and 2003. In August of 2007 he performed twice there in three days and what D782 brings us is a nicely rendered two-cam mix of the second of those shows, minus its Thunder/Watchtower climax.

In fact, it's quasi two-cam, because the centre camera (see second screenshot for its view) stops shooting on the 70 minute mark after which the film is carried by the left-side elevated cam alone. But its line into keyboard Bob (third screenshot) is full-on so that's okay. Very dark I Believe aside, picture quality is consistently good (with frequent fine interludes) such that visually D782 disappoints in just one respect, and that's the Disappearing Den factor. Watching this DVD, you'd be forgiven for thinking the band on stage was a five-man outfit, for, despite two cameras in operation, Mr Freeman remains just about invisible throughout (watch close for the briefest of glimpses in H61 and Summer Days only). To be fair, he's just about out of reach of the left-side lens, but even when he plays a sweet minute-long solo in Deal, the centre cam ignores him completely, which is a shame. The DVD has a title screen (first screenshot) and is fully chapter-marked, but lacks any kind of menu, which is another surprise. The top-notch upgraded audio track is flawlessly synched.

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No-one who's heard the recording is likely to have forgotten Bob's first (April 1966) Melbourne visitation. Alone on stage, tuning between songs, with a beguiling mix of gentle mocking irony and hazy doped forbearance he drawls:

This used to be called Visions Of Johanna. Now it's called Mother Revisited ... Well, this isn't, this isn't my guitar. It could go out of tune all the time. My guitar got broken here in Australia and, uh, I had to borrow this one. This is a good guitar but, you know, it's a folk music guitar ... Folk music guitar ...

Blink. 41 years on, half a lifetime - indeed, for Robert Johnson, Hank Williams, Arthur Rimbaud, Phil Ochs, David Blue, Dylan Thomas, Bob Marley, Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, Martin Luther King and many others, a whole lifetime and more. And D? Still on the road, still heading for another joint, still keeping on keeping on, still elementally the same enigmatic, unfathomable man, though in significant ways (ways to do with Texas medicine for a start, not to mention the accumulation of four decades of life experience, including becoming a grandpa nine times over) not the same man at all. No interminable tuning tonight, no Mother Revisited (though Sydney, three days earlier, did get Visions), no whacked-out Vega-to-Earth pronouncements - in fact, with the band intros missing from D782, no spoken word of any kind. But then, back in 1989, he told USA Today's Edna Gundersen:

It's not stand-up comedy or a stage play - it breaks up my concentration to have to think of things to say or to respond to the crowd. The songs themselves do the talking.

And to the same reporter a year later:

People can learn everything about me through my songs

so why need he speak* as well as sing? We get, rather, the sort of hit-and-miss performance recent tours have taught us to both expect and accept: thus Me Babe an understated gem but D a bit off with its lyric; JLAW comfy and snug as a favourite old sweater; Deal exquisitely played by the band but marred by D's mannered, burlesque, self-indulgent vocal; Pages, despite some arresting both-ends harp, a pale shadow of the sublime Wellington 2003 take (see D061.hq or D671), antipodean pearl to this one's pedestrian plod; Spirit clammy and cold as a dead fish. But Ain't Talkin' is sound and McTell stands out, a song perfectly suited to its singer - a troubadour who's paid his dues and a certain price in the process, but grown canny along the way, older but wiser, lined but sage, well enough schooled in his craft to do more now with less, as in his autumn years for as long as he wishes to prevail he must.

With the encore songs missing, D leaves us with an I Believe In You* that delineates clearly both what's lost (for he can no longer infuse his lyric with the intensity of naked zeal - see D001.sf, for example - he once could) and what, until he's gone (because he sings it anyway) will never be lost. Old or young, then or now, truly one of a kind.

RUNNING TIME 100:55, all songs (#1-15 of 17) complete.
THANKS Greg + disc author + all tapers.
STARS The complacent claim made above on behalf of this DVD is that if you only get one fan-shot 2007 show, this probably ought to be it - but, for me, the superb D756.su still sits in that chair, brushing aside the challenge of this pretender with some ease. Having said that, D782 rewards time spent in its company too - but no menu, no Freeman, no encore all count against it, thus a fussy four.

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* For more on raps, see D047 review.

* It was on a Sunday ...

D sang I Believe In You just three times in 2007 - in Orillia (Ontario) and Albuquerque in July, then here in Melbourne in August. Is it coincidence that all three performances were on a Sunday? Or that, of the song's last seven performances going back to April 2005, six have been on a Sunday? Given its unambiguously devotional cast, surely not. But, with that in mind, now re-read the two Gundersen quotes above. Pause for thought?

DISC: 782

SOUND & IMAGE: 2007 has turned out to be a rather well documented year for Dylan fans in both DVD and audio. This labour of love brings fan-generated DVDs to a new level of professionalism. The two camera mix is generally smooth and although there is some difference in the colour tones, the viewing is always pleasing. The first two songs suffer very slightly from some brief ceiling gazing but this does nothing to mar the enjoyment of the general sharpness and fullness of the images and the quality of the shooting – which is without obstruction and superb. Sound is sweet and rich.

RUNNING TIME: 100 minutes.
Band intros and encore missing (Thunder on the Mountain & All Along the Watchtower).

PERFORMANCE:
For Never Ending Tour show #1972 Bob and band are in fine form. Minor criticisms include rather perfunctory playing from the band and a gravely voiced Bob on the opening Leopard Skin Pill-Box Hat and some mumbled forgotten lyrics on the second number Don’t Think Twice. Memory lapse notwithstanding, Dylan leans into the mike and almost whispers the lyrics of Don’t Think Twice, an affect that changes the erstwhile acerbic tone of the song to a bitter-sweet lament.

Watching the River Flow, the last song with Bob on guitar, suffers from some minor up-singing at the end of a couple of lines and a rather growly voice, however about half way through his vocal picks up and he appears more at ease with the guitar. He’s taken to wearing the guitar slung low; a stance that often gives an impression of playing with the instrument rather than playing it. Although the rather recent re-introduction of Bob on guitar, at least for a few numbers a night, is most welcome, it’s strange to see him so uncomfortable with the instrument. Will we ever see an acoustic set again or is this just a prelude to other shifts and changes?
With Just Like A Woman Dylan switches to keyboards. He sings the song slowly and almost menacingly with each word of the chorus spat out. Dylan once referred to this song as “a frightening song” and tonight it is indeed that. For a “sweeter” version see D784 just 8 nights before in New Zealand.

Rollin’ & Tumblin’ is the night’s first song from Modern Times. Clearly energized by the new material Dylan and the band roar into the song. Dylan’s vocal is spot on and we see the first of his on-the-toes dancing at the keyboards. There is some nice interaction between Donnie on mandolin and Dylan. Smiles all round at the end and we are immediately treated to another Modern Times song, When the Deal Goes Down, with clear, almost sweet vocals. In many ways Dylan’s voice is shot, but interestingly so, and in spite of the obvious wear and tear of years of a hundred-plus concerts Dylan can still sound tender. There is a lovely pedal steel break and the “transient joys” lyric is sung with real emotive force. Next is a rhythmically fractured and powerfully played Highway 61. From the energy of the playing and the vocal it’s difficult to believe that Dylan has played this song over 1300 times in concert. It’s one of the night’s many highlights: the dark menacing tempo nicely juxtaposed with Bob cutting loose and dancing at the keyboard. Song finish and grins all round are indicative of some lovely band interaction and an old favourite given new life!

The next three gems Blind Willie McTell, My Back Pages, and Honest With Me showcase Dylan as a master of phrasing; the lyrics of all three songs are almost spoken with the vocals punctuated by the music. This sets up a marvellous kind of dialogue that enables such powerful lines as “power and greed and corruptible seed seem to be all that there is” and “equality I spoke the words just like a wedding vow” to hit home with full force. There is some lovely banjo from Donnie in Blind Willie and Pages finishes with a beautiful harmonica solo from Bob. Great stuff!

Spirit on the Water brings us to another Modern Times highlight with the question asked and refuted – the disapproving roar of the audience to the “over the hill line” is becoming a standard - clearly by this stage we are all havin’ a whomping good time! Stuck Inside of Mobile is delivered in a forceful, jaunty, manner which is very enjoyable but I can’t help thinking of the masterful and joyful performance of this song on D197.su2 of 2001.

With Ain’t Talkin’ we move into different territory altogether. The dark twin to Time Out of Mind’s Highlands, Ain’t Talkin’ is a bitter-sweet meditation of yearning and eventual loss. A silent witness walks through a fractured landscape of pain and little redemption whilst still understanding the heart’s ability to burn and yearn. Tonight the song is beautifully paced and the emotive force of the delivery unsurpassed.

The tempo picks up with a joyous Summer Days, a dancing Bob and a song that everyone clearly enjoys playing. I Believe In You, the final song on this disk, is perhaps the highlight of a night replete with gems. This performance acts like a bookend to the wonderful Saturday Night Live version of 1979; here Dylan emphasises the anthemic quality of the song; indeed it’s sung like a prayer. His voice is a little tired at first but lifts with the unfolding of the song. The chorus is a powerful statement of belief and resolve and Dylan’s performance here reminds me of his riveting version of Sam Cooke’s A Change is Gonna Come on D008.su. The dramatic abrupt closing on “They ask me how I feel, and if my love is real” is a fitting end to a very fine performance – the question becoming rhetorical.

HIGHLIGHTS: Rollin’ & Tumblin’, Highway 61; Ain’t Talkin’, Summer Days, I Believe in You

COMMENT: The most vital experience of music, for the artist and the audience, is located in the moment of its performance. No matter how faithful to the recorded version (the orthodox version) an artist tries to be, the song is always somehow rendered anew in the living act of the moment. Bob Dylan, the performing artist, is an exemplar of this observation. If there is a motto to Dylan performances then it has to be “make it new!” New in the sense of alive in the moment, living. Not something that is canonized and codified. He has become the elder statesman that, as a twenty year old, he aspired to be. Completely at home on the stage he draws out the multiple dimensions of his songs by melodic re-structuring and semantic re-inventing. Both old and new material thus feels immediate and fresh albeit sometimes downright strange. It has been said that Dylan de-constructs his songs in performance but in essence he does more that this; he re-invents meanings and re-imagines protagonists. Each performance is a tribute to the astounding depth of his back catalogue. I attended both Melbourne concerts and, for example, he didn’t sing Blowin’ in the Wind at either and I would hazard a guess that no one missed it. Can one imagine a Who concert without My Generation or a McCartney concert without Yesterday?

However the golden time, the summer days, as Jim50 puts it are over. The mercurial alchemy that produced albums like Freewheelin’, Bringin’ It All Back Home, Highway 61, & Blonde on Blonde in dizzying sequence cannot be repeated but what we are seeing now is a kind of renaissance in performance; an artist that is aware of his limits but not bound by them. Making comparisons between different stages of an artist’s work is always a tricky business, as is his wont Dylan has a rather idiosyncratic take on the process:

"You know, comparing me to myself is really like, … I don’t think it’s fair to compare this album [here he is speaking of Love & Theft] to other albums … I’m still the same person. You know, like Hank Williams would say, my hair’s still curly, my eyes are still blue. And that’s all I know.”

THANKS: As always to the people who tape and edit these shows.
To CatBlack for submitting this gem and to Jim50 for his inspirational and erudite reviews and the review template.

STARS: For quality of production and performance: Five. An absolute must-have.