Peter Viney's Blog

Bob Dylan & His Band
Bournemouth International Centre (BIC)

Thursday 4th May 2017

SET LIST

Things Have Changed (Wonder Boys OST)
To Ramona (Another Side of Bob Dylan)
Highway 61 Revisited (Highway 61 Revisited)
Beyond Here Lies Nothing (Together Through Life)
Why Try To Change Me Now (Shadows In The Night)
Pay In Blood (Tempest)
Melancholy Mood (Fallen Angels)
Dusquesne Whistle (Tempest)
Stormy Weather (Triplicate)
Tangled Up In Blue (Blood On The Tracks)
Early Roman Kings (Tempest)
Spirit On The Water (Modern Times)
Love Sick (Time Out of Mind)
All or Nothing At All (Fallen Angels)
Desolation Row (Highway 61 Revisited)
Soon After Midnight (Tempest)
That Old Black Magic (Fallen Angels)
Long & Wasted Years (Tempest)
Autumn Leaves (Shadows In The Night)

encore
Blowin’ In The Wind (Freewheeling)
Ballad Of A Thin Man (Highway 61 Revisited)

BAND

Bob Dylan – vocals, piano
Tony Garnier – bass guitar, acoustic bass
George Receli – drums
Charlie Sexton – electric guitar
Stu Kimball- electric guitar, acoustic guitar
Donnie Herron – pedal steel, mandolin, violin

Never say “Never again” though I have twice over Bob Dylan. We can be grateful that his tours usually include Bournemouth, not that it’s a good venue for sound. The set list, looking over recent shows, appears unusually fixed.  The only choices are To Ramona v Don’t Think Twice, and I Could Have Told You v Why Try To Change Me. Tempest is the most favoured album, with five tracks … apparently a positive for me. Highway 61 Revisited gets three visits, and sadly, Blonde on Blonde none. Only one song, Tangled Up In Blue, between 1965 and 1997’s Love Sick. Tracks from the last five Sinatra / Fifties era albums Shadows In The Night, Fallen Angels and Triplicate 3 album set are carefully interspersed with earlier, but mainly 21st century, songs. You can have too much of Sinatra covers. Triplicate as a title still irritates my language nerve. If it was Triplicate it would be three copies of one record, not a triple album.

My feelings on the recent albums, including the dire Christmas set, are generally negative. No, almost entirely negative. Bob Dylan arrived for me in 1963, and annoyed the hell out of my parents’ generation as I played him non-stop. Dylan was OUR music, and I still can’t take him singing THEIR music. I’ve gone with him through most changes … I loved Bringing It All Back Home, Nashville Skyline, Self Portrait, Street Legal. OK, I really loathe Saved more than any other album, but generally I’ll listen to whatever he’s doing. I’ve learned to appreciate Sinatra (he was “the enemy” in 1963) but I don’t like Bob doing Sinatra. I find the last three mainly depressing. I consider Bob Dylan to be the late 20th century equivalent of Shakespeare. He’s lived a lot longer. If we imagine Shakespeare continuing to live and work an extra 20 years to 1636, then what would audiences have thought if he’d stood up and done Chaucer or extracts from Medieval Mystery Plays instead of his own superior material?

I’m seeing him in my home town, where I spent hours in the disreputable The Stables coffee house putting Like A Rolling Stone on the jukebox. I half-hoped to see some of my fellow wastrels of 52 years ago at the concert, but this isn’t “The Bournemouth Concert” so much as “the whole of the South of England’s only concert.” My seat was a long way back, high up in the terrace and to one side, in spite of obtaining “Best available” in the first five minutes of booking.

“Best available” – a long way back and to one side.

I was also irritated by “Doors open at 7 pm” on the ticket when the show started at 8 pm. It was after all, reserved seating only. I was worried in a notoriously bad hall, to see the sound board at the side of the stage, not out in the audience as normal. However, sound was much better than previous Dylan here, although below the ultimate standards set by Paul Simon, James Taylor or Leonard Cohen. But (I know this will annoy fans) his band’s sound isn’t up to those standards either, which would be arrangements rather than playing ability. These guys are all brilliant musicians. My greatest joy of the Songbook albums is how much they’ve done with five musicians, but the competition has twice as many on stage. And it does sound better.

The Paladium shows in London a few days earlier achieved stellar reviews, saying it was the best Bob Dylan had been in years. I doubted it, but I agree that it’s true. The set had (what appeared to be) old style cinema spotlights surrounding the musicians, and stuck to amber backlighting hues. They used near total blackout between each song, with Bob alternating between baby grand piano, and standing holding a mic at 45 degrees in fifties crooner style. Mostly its two guitars, pedal steel (or mandolin), bass, drums and piano. Bob didn’t touch a guitar all evening. The biggest shock for me was that all the Great American Songbook covers made perfect sense in the context. To me, Dylan’s voice was mixed a little too low in the soundstage on most songs, but when the drummer switched to brushes or padded sticks, and we had acoustic bass, for the Songbook numbers, his voice was comparatively higher in the overall mix.

The show started on time in blackout with insistent rhythm guitar on its own until the band joined in For Things Have Changed, his favoured opener for some time … Things have changed … Geddit? perhaps. We had a switch to acoustic bass for To Ramona but I felt that the balance and the drumming, though excellent, reminded me of seeing the great American bluesmen in the 60s and 70s with British backing bands. The bands ironed out the vagaries of the old blues guy by steamrollering them into a strong rhythmic pattern, and I felt we had this churning relentlessly through Highway 61 Revisited and Beyond Here Lies Nothin’ – though it suited the latter. This band was pushing rather than reacting.

So it was a shock that when Dylan walked to the centre mic and struck his crooner pose for Why Try To Change Me Now, and the drummer switched to brushes (and later padded sticks) we had Dylan’s voice much more to the forefront … and this is what we had come to hear. Take that as criticism of the sound mixer rather than the drummer.

Pay In Blood from Tempest soon became my favourite track on the album. That’s because the song would have fit on Street Legal seamlessly, and I love Street Legal. The fluid guitar part is a great part of the appeal, but I reckon the Street Legal band would have played it better than we had it tonight. Sorry, it wasn’t as good as the record and it’s the sort of powerful song that should have been better … the issue again was Dylan being lower in the mix.

Which is why Melancholy Mood sounded outstandingly good. I’d been looking forward to Pay in Blood and definitely not to Melancholy Mood, but he was making perfect sense of performing the classic.

Dusquene Whistle got the best recognition applause so far … the distinctive instrumentation did it. It was can’t go wrong.

After just a couple of weeks with Triplicate, dare I say that Stormy Weather is the only track I really like. It didn’t sound as eerie here.

Tangled Up In Blue had ecstatic reviews in London, deservedly. I couldn’t help thinking in the massive applause at the end, easily the best reaction so far, was that not only did he perform it strongly, but it was intrinsically the best composition up to this point.

The first track to get to me on Tempest was Early Roman Kings. OK, it’s Muddy Waters I’m A Man / Hoochie Coochie Man with different lyrics, but it is an outstanding lyric. The solid backing it received here was dead right for the song.

Spirit On The Water was the point where I was grudgingly admitting this was a very good show.

Love Sick, with Dylan on the solo crooner mic again, cemented the feeling. Brilliant.

We were back in the songbook for All or Nothing At All.

Then came easily the highlight of the evening, Desolation Row with sturdy backing and Dylan on piano. I knew every word. A lump came ito my throat and my eyes misted. This one rendition would have been worth the price of admission, and he point where I thought “This should go on a live album.” Very different than the original, but very effective too. I was enjoying the band.

Soon After Midnight is a key track. While it’s from the very strong Tempest album, the musical style is a bridge into that Great American Songbook stuff. It’s soon after midnight and the moon is in my eyes. My heart is cheerful, it’s never fearful … is very much in the area he was about to venture into it. It led into That Old Black Magic, but it worked better.

Long & Wasted Years was Tempest again, and a significant lyric too.

Autumn Leaves saw the band at their best in recreating an orchestra from a five piece with pedal steel. Lots of echo on the voice helped.

Blowing In The Wind. At this point, as ever with encores, dozens of iPhone screens were in front of me. It seems etiquette to wait for the encores.

The first encore was Blowing In The Wind, virtually unrecognisable melodically. Dylan at the piano, but led by loud violin. I wondered why violin had not been used elsewhere in the evening … it was great, and harks back to the Scarlet Rivera days.

Ballad of A Thin Man was the only song from the 1966 tour with The Hawks, and rendered faithfully too, with plenty of passion.

It was a very good concert, the best I’ve seen or heard him since around 1992. That’s a quarter of a century. Phew! I’d say the whole was less flexible than it could have been. The backing was better on the classic stuff than on the more rocking stuff where it was too solid a groove.

The lack of engagement remains a negative. How needy we are. Just the tiny crumb of “Hello” would have pleased. “Hello Bournemouth” would have shown personalization of a sort. “Good to be back in Bournemouth” and we’d have been ecstatic. Paul Simon tells anecdotes about playing here in 1964. James Taylor spent the interval sitting on the edge of the stage signing autographs. Leonard Cohen’s wry humour elevated the shows. Jackson Browne once said he’d spent his two day tour break in Bournemouth before the show and listed the local walks and restaurants he’d loved. I’ll assume Bob was in one of the three top hotels and could afford a sea-facing room. He would have seen the Isle of Wight from the window, an anecdote waiting to be told. Ah, well, it wasn’t. After 55 years, we should know that.