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Balc. L20°
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| DVDylan ID: | D502 |
| Recording type: | Audience |
| City/Venue: | Hammersmith Apollo, London, England, UK |
| Date: | Monday, 8th February 1993 |
Never-Ending Tour Concert #459
- Pretty Peggy-O [cut]
- All Along The Watchtower
- Tangled Up In Blue
- Under The Red Sky [cut]
- Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again
- She Belongs To Me
- Tomorrow Night
- Jim Jones
- Mr. Tambourine Man
- Don't Think Twice,It's All Right
- Cat's In The Well
- I And I
- Simple Twist Of Fate
- Highway 61 Revisited
- Ballad Of A Thin Man
- Everything Is Broken [cut]
| Number of discs: | 1 |
| Running time: | 01:52 |
| Video standard: | NTSC |
| Authoring: | DVDs with menu and chapters are circulating |
Standalone NTSC transfer
Two performances captured on this DVD display just how erratic these Hammersmith 1993 shows could be (see also D501, D503, D504, D505, D506):
Tangled Up In Blue starts out OK with Bob puffing a few harmonica notes. Then this continues... And continues... Bob has a sip from his cup and then wanders around the stage a bit with his guitar. He doesn't start singing the first verse until nearly three minutes into the song. The singing is decent enough but tonight this great song feels underwhelming. After about five and a half minutes there's an instrumental break that lasts for rather too long. At about five minutes in there's another instrumental break: the song is really losing momentum now. Bob can't seem to find anything new in this great composition tonight. The harmonica is brought out again as the song nears the 10-minute mark. Much of the music drops away and it seems to be just harmonica and drums for half a verse. We're now 11 minutes in and Bob looks around uneasily, and starts bringing the song to a close.
Mr Tambourine Man, on the other hand (the one that's waving free), is a slow-building treasure. Sadly the first few lines are missing from this DVD, but it's immediately clear that we are now watching a more engaged Bob Dylan. Things get noticeably more animated at about one and a half minutes in, Bob sounding excited by this wonderful song once again. Then he sings 'I'm ready to go anywhere' with great stress on the 'anywhere' – you hear the full possibility of that word and what it means. He sounds like he believes it: this land is your land, this land is my land. After an escalating harmonica solo at about three and a half minutes in, he hits the last verse. The singing is uneven here but not careless, and 'one hand waving free' is great (suddenly plunging down an octave on the 'free'), as if Bob is surprised at the direction the song is taking him. It's a song about freedom, after all. And the momentum of the performance really seems to be carrying Bob along, without it ever feeling rushed. The final 'following... you!' is utterly triumphant, and the song swings home with great, circular harmonica loops.
Reviewed by Stephen66 on 21st January 2008