Besançon, France (04-Jul-94)

COMME CI, COMME CA
Just watched this one last night.
GENERAL COMMENTS: Starts off with some pretty shakey, shoddy camerawork but improves progressively throughout. Great acoustic set - far superior to the electric set in terms of sound quality and performance. Lady Came From Baltimore and Tears of Rage excellent.
SOUND: Average but very low - I found I had to turn this one way up to hear it properly until the acoustic set where the sound suddenly dramatically improves.
CAMERAWORK: There are essentially three things that detract from this DVD and one of them is the overall camerawork (although in some parts it remains very steady and consistent). From about halfway into the concert onwards our taper stays pretty much on the money, balanced and focused although a little unimaginative with panning and zooming at times but hey then again none of us are pro-shooting cameramen! Having said that, our taper DOES provide some nice shots here - look at some of the shots at the end of God Knows - nicely done!
The second problem is with the large number and length of the still shots. Any veteran dvdylaner will be all too familiar with the still shots but if you happen to be a short-tempered Aries like myself, then you will also find too many of them to be annoying after a while.........Finally, the sound is just average until I'll be your baby where it gets much better.....
PERFORMANCE: Performance-wise it's not bad. Pretty typical for this period in Dylan's career. The real stand-out performances on this disc are the acoustic ones: 1) Lady Came From Baltimore (fantastic! almost redeems this concert) 2)Masters of War 3)Mama, you've been on my mind (really good but still prefer when he does it as a duet with Joan Baez) and 4) a very powerful version of Tears of Rage (this one's electric).
VERDICT: In my book, I can only recommend this one to the solid, stolid, hardcore, diehard fan (and especially to fans of this era). I relatively enjoyed this DVD but it's not quite good enough to recommend going out of your way to get your hands on except for two redeeming factors: An excellent exquisite rendition of Lady Came From Baltimore (and a rare one at that) and a very impressive Tears of Rage. I wanted to give this 3.5 stars but as there are no halves here and it doesn't quite deserve a 4, three stars it is........
THANKS OWING TO: Can't remember who but you know who you are and thank you!