DVDylan ID: D365
Recording type: Mixed
City/Venue: Barcelona, Hamburg, Munich, Nice & Rotterdam


EUROPE '84:
General Comments: A great year of performances by Bob. Some of the footage here looks a lot like some of the photos from the Real Live album but the performances here are mostly better than you will find on that set. For the Rotterdam concert (as Jim50 has already pointed out), it's well worth your while tracking down the sound upgrade - D512.su - a must-have!
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BARCELONA: Nice collage of thru-the-years Dylan over some very powerful performances. Great solid version of Like a Rolling Stone, followed by a sublime version of Tambourine Man sung by Real Live era Dylan. Another faithfully haunting tune is Don't Think Twice, it's alright in which you can see glimpses of the old Dylan of the 60s if you look really closely.
Nice powerful version of Blowin' in the Wind with great lead guitar backing supplied by a cool looking Santana (what happened to him?). Both Dylan and the audience really seem to get into this one. Dylana reminds me of Pete Seeger here - getting the crowd to sing along with/instead of him.
HAMBURG '84
Nice-sounding Like a Rolling Stone but pity the band muffs the ending, probably due to Bobby's vague signaling. Mick Taylor sounds great here though.
Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll: One of the most brutally-direct of Bob's protest songs along with Hurricane and Masters of War - right up there among his most poignant. Mental note and flashbook: I do remember Bob saying at some '66 press conference that ALL of his songs are protests songs - "every single one of them" - although this might be him just choosing to be dishonest with the press (see 60 minutes interview for details). The Washburne acoustic sounds pretty good here to me for a guitar that's often put down, joked about and criticized.
Blowin' in the Wind: Great version with Baez and Santana, followed by a nice rockin' version of Tombstone Blues.
MUNICH '84
Another great version of Blowin' in the Wind with Dylan-Baez-Santana - not quite as good as the previous one though I believe.
ANTOINE DE CAUNES INTERVIEW: very insightful.
Dylan seems very open and accessible - most of the interviewer's questions are good (not like the stupid MTV reporter who thought Jakob Dylan (formerly of The Wallflowers) was Dylan's nephew instead of his son). In this first Dylan exclusive interview with French television, Dylan talks about modern music and how important film clips are to sell records. Dylan's comments on surrealism and how he fell into it naturally and his interest in French poets (Rimbaud, Apollinaire and Verlaine (the last not mentioned in this interview)) are all very interesting (especially to French fans I assume).
ROTTERDAM
Acoustic numbers are listenable. Other than that, forget about it.
Track down the sound upgrade for this one: D512.su

VERDICT: Three stars - would be an easy four if the Rotterdam sound upgrade was included instead.
Big thank you to Baggy for this one!

Reviewed by Blackburne on 07th January 2009