Bob Dylan - The Bootleg Series, Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live, 1966: The "Royal Albert Hall Concert"
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Free Music Notes for The Bootleg Series, Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live, 1966: The "Royal Albert Hall Concert"
Free Music Review: JUDAS!!!
Hit: 5 Stars
What comes out most surprisingly here is how Dylan, for all his famous causticity, is obviously unsure of himself and genuinely dismayed by the response he's getting. At times he almost seems to be begging the audience for just a little kindness and consideration.But oh boy do I relate to that crowd! I despised Dylan for going electric! I'd much rather have spent the next 30 years sitting at his feet with my legs crossed and a look of blissful awe on my sappy upturned phizog...
The BBC played some of the songs from this tour (from Glasgow, I believe, with the Scottish audience MUCH more creative in their lack of respect), with me literally cradling the radio in my arms, only to recoil in horror as he systematically destroyed songs that I had come to think of as oxygen for my brain...
'Nuff of that nonsense. I bought this album for the acoustic CD, of course. I played it exactly once, let it gather dust, and eventually gave it away to a dyed-in-the-wool acoustic Dylan fan (whom I have never again fully respected).
The electric set is ... well, electric! There are rough spots, no doubt due to the Hawks, fresh from "Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks," adjusting to their new Master, and yes, there is just a little too much of Robbie Robertson's rather sterile "virtuosity," but 35 years later I finally discovered just what oxygen actually IS.
Go ahead: play the acoustic Holy Grail of "She Belongs to Me", but then immediately follow it with the ex-acoustic "I Don't Believe You." If the utterly-jarring transition doesn't make you throw up all over your beads, then you too will have finally joined the 20th Century.
Einstein, Turing, Von Neumann, Gorbachev, Dylan...
Free Music Review: Both Sides of Bob Dylan
Hit: 5 Stars
What a stunning concert this is! The first disc, if you didn't know is Dylan, his acoustic guitar, and his harmonica. The songs he performs are not those from his "protest" days, but come from Bringin' It All Back Home, Highway 61, Blonde on Blonde era. While he performs, you could hear a pin drop, the audience is so deathly quiet. The termination of each song is met with vigorous applause. Dylan is at his best! You get the feeling that he is warming up the crowd for the electric set that is soon to come, especially with his final song of the set Mr. Tambourine Man. He seems to be spitting out the words of the chorus...amazing. The electric set (disc two) is no less intense, especially considering the tension you feel coming from the audience. It's almost as though they cleared out the first group and brought in a bunch of rowdies. At the end of each song, the applause seems just as strong as with the acoustic set, but the natives are restless between the songs. I know it made me feel uncomfortable for Dylan's sake. Of course, I believe this reaction only encouraged Mr. D. He and the Hawks just crank out rock and roll. Of the two discs, one is not better than the other. They are classic in their own right. As I mentioned, it's as though two separate gigs took place on two separate nights. I think the first part of that last statement is true. This IS Bob Dylan at his best, especially when you compare it with his and the Band's Before (or is it After) the Flood. A 50-plus page booklet comes with the set, which makes for great reading while enjoying the music. And for those of you who think Dylan's voice spoils his lyrics, maybe you ought to stick with John Denver!Free Music Review: The most essential live recording in rock history.
Hit: 5 Stars
That pretty much sums up why you should get this album. It's a turning point in American (and all of) music. Throughout their 1966 tour, Bob Dylan and the Hawks (who'd later become the Band) had been facing hostile crowds every night, playing amazing electric sets that were the subject of boos, jeers, and mocking slow claps. They won over some fans but the folkies' reaction to Dylan plugging in was bad enough every night to cause the original drummer to quit. This culminated in the show at Manchester, England. The music itself is amazing. Bob's solo acoustic set is well-received, and deservedly so. The versions of Visions of Johanna, Mr. Tambourine Man, and Just Like A Woman are mind-blowing, while Desalation Row's wordplay offended some of the folkies, but its delivery was approved. Then the Hawks come out and Dylan grabs his electric six-string, and all hell breaks loose. The songs are still amazing. Leopard-Skin Pillbox Hat, Tell Me Momma and Ballad of a Thin Man are all booed but you can hear the music clearly which is a good thing. The guitar licks and riffs Bob and Robbie Robertson tear through wrote the book on rock n roll. Then it happens. Before the last song, a folkie in the balcony screams "JUDAS!". Bob, ever defiant, tells him "I don't believe you, you're a liar", and tells the band "play f*ckin loud*. The snare drum cracks to bring in Like A Rolling Stone. This is one of the best versions you'll find of maybe the greatest songs ever. The impassioned vocal from Dylan, Robertsons riffage, the entire band delivers in protest against the protesters. And rock has never been the same. Everyone should hear this great document of the beginning of modern musicFree Music Review: Dylan's "Wild Mercury Sound" Unleashed
Hit: 5 Stars
The legendary status of this recording is well-deserved. What you get to hear is not just one of the finest artists of a generation at the peak of his creative powers....it is no overstatement to say you actually hear the sound of a world changing. Nothing in the field of popular culture would ever be quite the same after this. Dylan had, of course, beeen outgrowing his iconic "protest/folk messiah" tag for some time; "Bringing it all Back Home" had shown the way he was heading and the movie "Don't Look Back" indeed showed a Dylan hungering to move forward - just see how he gazes like any rock-crazy kid at the electric guitars in a London shop window "They just don't have guitars like that back in the States.." It should have come as no surprise when Dylan finally unveiled his "Wild Mercury Sound" in these historic 1966 concerts, but the sheer intensity of his performance, even more than the sonic assault of the band's volume, was just too much for most people to handle. Hence we get the amazing "Judas!" sequence as the climax of Dylan's running battle with an audience which had become somthing akin to a hostile mob. There is such (entirely valid)artistic anger on the second disc that it makes the forced aggression of punk rock sound pathetic by comparison. Dylan fights, and though he wins, you've got to think that coming off his Triumph motorcycle the hard way (as he did soon afterwards) must have seemed painless by comparison. Whatever, this is history, it is fascinating, and the quality of sound on both accoustic and electric sets is astonishingly good. One of the few records to truly deserve the term "essential".Free Music Review: The Litmus Test
Hit: 5 Stars
Like most dedicated Dylan fans I have my copy of a real bootleg of this upcoming release. There's something a bit poignant about knowing that what was a relatively private pleasure for many years will now see the light of mass-market day. Listening to this show, which truly lives up to the legends surrounding it in every way, on a murky and mysterious counterfeit tape is in some ways the only proper way of hearing it. The hostility between Dylan and the Hawks (later the Band, and never better than they would be on that night)on stage and their audience, heckling, stomping, clapping to throw the unbending Bob off his new game, takes on a force of its own on the bootleg version, settling like a thick English fog over the music. The only way for the musicians to cut through it is to call on their reserves of stage and street smarts--the drums are doom itself, Rick Danko's bass thuds away like a hard heart, Richard Manuel's piano kicks like a mule in a the proverbial china shop, Garth Hudson gives free rein to his joyous yet sinister carnivalesque keyboard, and of course Robbie Robertson and Dylan fight it out for bragging rights. It's a draw on most songs--Robertson matching Dylan's words with his own solos, the most anguished and angry sounds to come from an electric guitar, Dylan coming right back with his harmonica's metallic menace and the howling frenzy of his vocals, a man who knew he would never go further into himself or further away from his audience. Yes, the greatest and most indispensable sixties rock there is, and the true litmus test not only for Dylan fans but for those who truly understand rock and roll and what it should mean.