October 19, 2018
Review by Eric Diamond
The Never Ending Tour reached the lovely outdoor amphitheatre in St
Augustine Florida
on a balmy Friday evening. The band is decked out in silver sparkle suits
with black shirts; Bob resplendent in all-white suit, white boots, bolo tie with
white ivory pendant. The opening recorded classical music peaks and blends
into Things Have Changed. Stu Kimball, the customary acoustic guitar player,
is not present. Bob has moved out of the Frank Sinatra era, but retains the
precise phrasing and directness, and a crooner attitude.
Every one of the twenty songs has been re-arranged, both from the original
recordings, and other recent re-arrangements. About seven have updated
lyrics as well.
For connoisseurs of tight bands, this band is as tight as one gets. There
are precious few solos beyond Bob’s exquisite harmonica on Simple Twist
of Fate. The band plays through the song forms with subtle rhythmic shifts
en masse, like a school of fish shifting direction. Charlie Sexton
expresses his mastery via chord forms and stripped down licks. The more
delicate tunes are revved up to a swampy second-line mid-tempo gumbo, and
the pumping rockers are leavened to a jump blues or jitterbug patina. Like
A Rolling Stone features a hushed and whispered vocal section in the second
half of each verse, easing back on the throttle then cruising forward with gusto.
Michaelangelo was asked how he could sculpt something so magnificent as
the Pieta. He reputedly answered: ”Easy…I chipped away all the stone
that was not the Pieta”.
Bob Dylan chips away all the extraneous pieces of the rock concert art
form, leaving the solid, mountainous core, melding workmanship,
craftsmanship, with intense mastery and masculine warrior-statesmen
gravity.
The songs are tied together with drone and rhythm interludes, to make one
long song, spanning the epochs of Dylan’s largesse. Listen to Dylan
doing Roy Orbison do Bob Dylan, and Ray Charles, Elvis, Frankie, Bing
Crosby and all the crooners, The Ventures, Muddy Waters, and at times like
Neil Young playing “Don’t Worry Baby” (Beach Boys). Bob trusts the
songs, the polished gemstone of his nightly format, and his
realer-than-any-legend realness. Americana, blenderized and Dylanized.
Does he comment upon, or respond to, our troubled world? The concert lands
upon Gotta Serve Somebody (new lyric: “you may be a lawyer on the
Supreme Court”); Blowin’ in the Wind; and Ballad of a Thin Man; less acerbic,
more world weary, but unrelenting regarding the ineffable interplay of good and
evil through history.
People travel to spend a moment in the presence of their guru; I am
restored by being in the presence of artistic greatness. A Dylan concert
is the apotheosis of the concert form. He is seventy-seven years of age,
and so has gifted us with his gift for fifty seven years. I close with
gratitude and wonder, calmed, enriched, re-humanized, after another
supreme two hours at the feet of the song Master.
Click Here to return to the Main Page |
page by Bill Pagel
billp61@execpc.com
Current Tour Guide |
Older Tour Guides |
Bob Links Page |
Songs Performed |
Set Lists by Date |
Set Lists by Location |
Cue Sheets |