Review provided Alistair Hunter BOB DYLAN @ The El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles, Thursday 12/18/97 Again the great intimate venue. A very lively and eager audience. Sheryl Crow is onstage "I'm Sheryl...I'm opening for Bob...and I'm damn glad!". Her band is two guitars, mandolin, keyboards, but it will later feature Sheryl on harmonica, keyboards, and accordian and even the band will swith a bit. This is the former back up singer who clearly has energy, experience, pipes!, and dogone good mike technique. She is seasoned, confident, and experienced. She knows what she is doing and just does it. Some of the songs..."Heaven's Gate"; "Leaving Las Vegas"; "Rosaline"; "Run Baby Run"; "It Don't Hurt"; "Tearing Us Upart" ; "Everyday Is A Winding Road". By far she is the "hottest" opening act so far. The other thing that is cool about Sheryl is that she and her entire band come back off stage right to watch and "dig" the entire Dylan performance The audience is clearly primed for Bob. But where the heck is he? He is at least 30 minutes late, but the polite and appreciative audience cheers him as he hits the stage in his grey suit and black tie. You kinda sense that he has "an attitude". And "Maggie's Farm" is out there. There is a genuine sense of excitement. From here on in each song tops the other and this is the most outstanding evening of the entire Bob Dylan Festival so far. This is the day that Robert Hilburn's LA Times review "Freewheeling Dylan Shows He's Again Where It's At: With Beck as his opening act, the veteran troubadour finds his focus in an inspiring set" has hit the streets. Hilburn has acknowledged that Dylan is fully involved, with clear vocals, a stellar performance, and as usual not wedded to the original versions of the songs. Hilburn expresses his disappointment that Dylan has selected songs that "interest him..."rather than placing them in any dramatic context" AND is critical that more could have been drawn from the new "Time Out Of Mind" album...especially the 16 minute "Highlands" and "Not Dark Yet". Hilburn misses the entire dramatic structure that Dylan has set up. It is clear that he is rotating eight songs an evening. And this will turn out to be a very special evening indeed. At one point I wanted to shout out..."Play whatever you damn well want Bob !!!!!!!!! ". I didn't have to. He does. And tonight you see him actually consulting with the band after "Tangled Up In Blue", , and again after "Blind Willie McTell". Another factor may be that the brilliant new guitarist Larry Campbell is probably still learning some of these songs. There is no question he is being blown away onstage when he and Bob get into things. His eyes are wide and he gets a big grin, shaking his head. Later, when Dylan introduces him he says.."This is not Robbie Robertson. Somebody asked me....Oh. And this is Bucky Baxter... the former mayor of Bloomsfield, North Virgina". "I Want You" (what a surprise!); "Born In Time"; "Can't Wait" (solid); "Silvio" (better and better!) ; "Stone Walls And Steel Bars" (traditional acoustic...damn!); "Mr. Tamborine Man" (an acoustic masterpiece!!!!); "Tangled Up In Blue" (the acoustic highlight that knocks out the entire audience); "It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry" ( this is a result of the consultation...one of my favorites and the best version I've ever heard him do) ; "Blind Willie McTell" ( after another cosultation...and stronger than any other night...there is electricity here!); "'Til I Fell In Love With You"; (encore) "Like A Rolling Stone" (another consultation and featuring 'The Dylan Had Shake'); "It Ain't Me Babe" (acoustic wonder!); "Love Sick" (this is better and better and a key song of the new album...hot stuff!); "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" ....This is the all time finale. Bob has faked a final encore and does this song to close out the night. The lights are on again. The back of his jacket is showing his sweat. He's earned it. From the first song tonight he has been 'The Travola Dylan' . By this time he is fully 'The Animated Dylan' ...he is mugging the audience and milking each and every one. It is like he is reaching out and making eye contact. He knows exactly what he is doing. I teel yah this guy is in danger of getting a whiplash from jerking his head around. Did I really see him "moonwalk"? Alistair (Al) Hunter *********************************************************************** Review provided by Tim Whittome As I hadn't expected to either see Bob Dylan whilst staying on vacation from London with my fiancee in Los Angeles, still less to actually get a ticket once I realized as late as December that he was actually going to play in LA whilst I was still here, the excitement and expectation was all the more intense when my fiancee, Amy, turned up one day with a ticket as a Christmas present. That she had found it from an 'unknown source' known to specialize in such matters made the nervous anticipation all the more intense, but here I was for the Thursday show (18th December), sandwiched midway in Bob's residency here. Meanwhile, Robert Hilburn had given a slightly tentative review of the first show and someone on the Bob Dylan userlist had complained that the sound was indecipherable and muddy. Long term followers of Bob will of course realize that such signs are either often misappropriate to the eventual personal experience, or are amusing more for what they reveal of the reviewer. One could spend endless hours musing over whether their day been a bad one leading up to the show or whether they had arrived with a barrel of expectations only to have them surely dashed on Bob's unpredictable anvil? I had tried to ignore my own clamorous expectations and the comments of those further back along the line, but as I stood to the side with a clear view of the raised stage and as close to Bob as I have been in years, it was clear from the fractured but tender blast of 'I Want You' that we could be in for quite a show. 'Maggie's Farm' had been a tentative and poor opener as if Bob had really just 'woken up' not long since and was momentarily confused. He had after all been late arriving at the El Rey and the crowd had become restless. Even the glittering El Rey chandeliers were impatient and like the rest of us had pushed forward with eager anticipation... By 'Cold Iron's Bound', though, Bob had shed whatever remained of sleeplessness and launched into one of the evening's many show stoppers. I had scarcely been prepared for quite the venom, energy and almost violence of this performance as both Dylan and the band shook the El Rey and its chandeliers as each blast cascaded through the whole auditorium and maybe out onto a busy Wilshire Blvd. It was sheer drama, theater and, to listen to, electrifying. People were stunned and tears glistened in the odd eye as Bob wrenched this performance with an energy that looking back on it resembled ISIS from Renaldo and Clara, but which at the time, left me standing and wondering where Bob can get such furor from both at his age and so recently after his near fatal illness. It was obvious that he was actually glad to be alive and poised on what he so often regards as the brittle edge between sanity and insanity - both of which could be seen 'smashing up against his soul' on a night of brittle and charged wonders that alternately broke their chains and borders... 'Born in Time' was sheer relish, all tenderness and remorse having either long since gone, or at least gone for the night but it was great stuff, each word symbolizing a last statement or the promise of a clearer future un-befuddled by past chains. The electricity then poured into 'Can't Wait' and from where I stood, I could see Dylan's face contort into a grotesque mask as he announced to some past victim that it was all because 'he cared'. Perhaps he had recently watched the Phantom of the Opera which is also playing in Los Angeles, but either way, Dylan was showing once more how the writing of so many of his gloomiest songs can actually be transformed into a relish of gleeful self-redemption or the sheer annihilation without compunction of some hapless victim when played live. 'Silvio' remained as 'Silvio' but as Dylan showed little sign of the seeming endlessness of its performance and rigid set-list location down the years, it was forgivable - just! The fire glowered more sweetly during a committed acoustic set and even the old chestnuts of 'Tambourine Man' and 'Tangled Up in Blue' were wonderful, Bob's unique phraseology never deserting him. How different the latter was tonight compared to a few months earlier in London when from half-a-mile back in a dense Wembley Arena, I could only view this as just another song that had to be almost endured in a long line of older hits and worn gems. Dylan was moving well, looked well and was dressed well as if he had just arrived back from the Kennedy Honours or from a meeting with other important world dignitaries - the smart suit belying his younger and more rebellious public appearances. Then it was into a great version of 'It Takes A Lot to Laugh' - perhaps an appropriate song on the night as there was indeed little humour beyond what I would describe as Hamletesque glee and tormenting sarcasm. A restrained but menacingly understated band performance of 'Blind Willie McTell' served to enhance the chill of this brittle tour through the darker shadows of America's past, Dylan clearly enjoying his identification with Willie McTell as well as his knowledge of the roots of so much of his work in both the Blues and the imperfectly painted past that is American history. The main set closed with another stunner from 'Time out of Mind', 'Till I Fell in Love With You'. Again, there was no subtlety but only more glee, but the crowd loved it and bayed for more until Dylan returned with a four song encore of yet more energy and commitment that was nothing less than extraordinary for one of his age and when set against a background of his recent illness. 'Love Sick’ was infinitely better than it had earlier been in London and far less tentative, Dylan having absorbed the meaning and of course the hidden energy of the song's doubt and longing. As is by now customary, the song would end and 'Rainy Day Women' would begin and end with its by now traditional inconclusive and perhaps irritating jamming. Dylan appears to still love this but here we must part company for just one song - only the second of the 16 that were played and which either didn't or still don't work for me. their pointlessness reinforced by their reiteration. However, let not the odd blemish ruin the impression I want to give of a wonderful show, full of the kind of fire I haven't seen from Bob for some time, and certainly not in London just two months earlier. Of course, the unpredictability is why we still all go and still love going to these shows - two months apart, but two performances as different in all aspects as London is nearly 6,000 miles from Los Angeles and moreover a city where people drive on the left whereas in LA they drive on the right. Down the years, there have obviously been many great shows, but whether it was the intimacy of the theater, the fact of seeing Bob in a far off City that I am still getting to know, or the beauty of having a loving fiancee prepared to treat me to a higher than face-value ticket, I do not know, but this was a mesmerizing performance from a performer who can dazzle and inspire as well as frustrate and negate. Truly the air burned.... Tim Whittome
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