Here's a short review of last night's first show at Le Grand Rex in
Paris. Stage setup as usual, which in this beautiful venue looks even
better. Show starts right on time, the french audience being unusually
disciplined in taking their seats. Setlist as expected. The first two
songs (Watching The River Flow and Most Likely...) a bit ragged round the
edges. From the moment they get into the Rough and Rowdy songs everything
falls into place. This is a crack band, everybody playing so well,
following Dylan's every word. Much has been said about Dylan looking
frail, shaky at times. Judging from the vocals throughout the evening this
couldn't be further from the truth. The man is sharp, the voice very
strong and he clearly loves what he's doing.The singing was excellent
throughout the evening. Communication on stage is limited to a slight nod
here and there. Several times Dylan presents himself center stage, looking
proud and happy, striking this funny pose with one hand on the hip, like a
gunslinger in the old west... Charley Draytons drumming is superb, at
times reduced to almost nothing, other times strong and giving the songs
the pulse they need without overdoing it. Fantastic. Britt and Lancio on
guitars are masterful, playing around each other, complementing each other
so tastefully. Tony Garnier holds it all together as usual, taking the
role of quarterback, and Donnie Herron must be one of the best sidemen any
band leader could hope for. I just wished his steel work had a little more
room in the mix, which, by the way, was great. A word about the piano
playing: I'm glad Dylan quit the guitar noodling a long time ago, but the
piano playing was at times a bit too much. It would be kind to call it
adventurous, sometimes it was just downright bad and irritating. To be
fair, there were songs where the piano was great, like Key West,
Multitudes, My Own Version of You and others. Some of the quieter songs
were among the best I've ever heard Dylan sing. You can tell that he's
into the new stuff and that he wants it to be heard. He gives these songs
everything he's got, and we all know that's a lot. There were some nice
suprises with older stuff. Gotta Serve Somebody and I'll Be Your Baby were
so exciting with the new arrangements, phrasings and lyric changes - just
amazing, really. In short, if you have the chance to see this tour, by all
means, go!

Paris I. October 11.My day starts with a visit to the garden of my
couchsurfing host. We are in Vitry-sur-Seine south of Paris. Almost the
country.Then I take the metro 7 to the Grand Rex.It's a mess :
construction work all around and the street almost blocked. I wonder where
they will park the buses. (Only Bobby's bus will be on the street).I just
walk the streets around and have a lunch all by myself.With all the
Bobcats in town I feel....lonely...and more ...But I'm here for the Bob
Dylan show.By 6 pm I bump into "security Bob"????Somehow I'm happy to see
him and we shake hands. I ask him if he's back. He says no just for
tonight (or maybe Paris?). I ask about Barron. He says he is not on the
tour(which I know :) ). "Retired?" And he says "no, just not on
Tour."Fine. Shortly later "security Bob" takes position with other
heavy guys around the back stage door. Fans are already packed there.A
black car arrives but...empty.They dropped Bob somewhere else. Previously
I saw Donnie getting in by a side door....(btw. Donnie was wearing a mask
the entire show).Who knows?I have a ticket tonight and an extra to sell. I
sold it for face value to two Fans who look like "trump's" but they do
have money :)Other people come to me and  ask for my name. Some buy
my paintings.Thanks good Samaritans.I surely do appreciate! :)I say hello
here and there but don't drink or eat.I'm a bit autistic (if not totally
sociopath) and hate the crowd:(I get in the venue. Better in than out :(Of
course the Grand Rex is class.Nothing to do with the sport arenas we had
so far.Already the atmosphere is serious but "bon enfant".The prices of
the tickets surely make a selection.I'm on the floor. All the way back. On
a strapontin. Why they have those kind of seats? Mystery:)The guy next to
me is ....British. Not the only one tonight. We have an assembly of
international Bobcats.The show is at 20.30. Why? Another Bob Dylan mystery
to solve.The patrons respectfully took their seats on time. Meaning they
know the Bob Dylan policy.And probably the setlist:)Bob , on time, walks
straight to the piano.The public is up.The sound will be perfect (for my
seat) after the third song.The audience has a good attitude : respectful
and also enthusiastic.The applauses and the cheers are at the right time.
The Frenchies do understand English.  :)Bob can feel it and moves
center stage five times for what seems a long pause.He's wearing a red
shirt.Half of the crowd is up, each time.(I am).The harp on "I'll be your
baby tonight" brings a round of applause but so other songs like "Key
west". "I've made up my mind to give myself to you". "Serve somebody".
Excellent tonight.Bob misses a bit of lyrics on "I'll be your baby
tonight". And at one point his voice 'cracks'.But he rapidly recovers.No
harp on EGOS but a good version.No extra piano tonight, just pure
lyrics.Well! Compare to Krefeld? The show was probably close to perfection
in Krefeld but tonight the general atmosphere , decor and public, was much
better.I give the medal to the Frenchies.Vive la France :)After the show
Fans packed by the backstage door. And for what I heard Bob did smile and
saluted the crowd. Who could believe it?I wave buy to "security Bob". We
have known each other for so long!I feel a bit nostalgic :(I say thanks to
Jason. Also around for a long time.I try to socialize but definitively not
my cup of tea.I walk to the closest metro to catch line7, all the way to
'Villejuif Louis Aragon'.My couchsurfing host is waiting for me to open
the door. Nothing is really free : I don't have the permission of after
midnight:) :)Bob was happy so.... I'm happy too.Best show so far.See you
tomorrow! 

A special Bob Dylan show tonight at Le Grand Rex, an old cinema which
I’d heard was a unique venue. Somewhat more capacious than I’d
thought, where box seats might be the interior is decorated with a kind of
fantasy opera house stage set - vaguely Italianate rooftops and fanciful
turrets, capped off with a ceiling of twinkling stars. When he takes the
stage the surge of excitement and warm appreciation is nicely effusive,
and will remain so throughout, even if you sense a scattering of people
who weren’t expecting the Rough and Rowdy Ways songs to predominate
(sometimes in already significantly rejigged form). I’m high on the
balcony which actually gives a relatively decent view of Bob, stationed as
he is behind an upright piano. Occasionally when he turns to look at Tony
Garnier, the light catches his face and picks out his features. Four or
five times throughout the performance, Bob potters out from behind the
piano to take the applause, and adopt humorous preening gestures -
adjusting his jacket, fussing with his hair. 
 Many highlights, and as ever not necessarily the ones I was anticipating.
 Black Rider is spine-tingling. And in I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight,
 suddenly he’s taking a harp solo that keeps flowing, absolutely
 glorious - I had to shut my eyes. In When I Paint My Masterpiece,
 everything’s gonna be ‘so doggone diff’rent’’. My Own Version
 of you crackles with its rich imagery - that cypress tree, Shakespearean
 references seeming well-embedded. I’m struck tonight by how many
 mountains and suns there are in the Rough and Rowdy Ways songs. If there
 are moments when Bob seems to be taking it steady and conserving his
 energy, these are very occasional. My distinct impression is that he’s
 in such command of the material, reshaping it in the moment, each line
 unspooling with, as Cy Twombly once said in relation to his drawn line
 ‘the sensation of its own realisation’. I’m smiling throughout -
 the show is a wonder. 

(Translated from French to English)

At 5pm, we are a handful of fans around the tour bus parked on boulevard 
Poissonnière, in front of the Grand Rex where the evening concert will take 
place. But Bob is playing tricks! In truth he is not in the bus. He arrives at
6:30 pm in a private car. While the security service pretends to secure the 
space between the bus and the artists' entrance of the Grand Rex, he 
passes behind our back, surrounded by two people, wearing a grey hooded 
jacket, so that nobody has really seen him enter the concert hall. Respect!
The concert was magnificent, full of emotion, in a really warm atmosphere. 
Standing ovation after each song and when Bob leaves his piano to come 
and greet the audience from the middle of the stage. He is dressed in a 
red shirt and his traditional black suit. His voice is very warm, he modulates
it to his liking. Between his piano playing and his voice, it is the perfect 
agreement, that the band sublimates by its presence at the same time 
solid and discrete. Tony Garnier is in charge and Charles Drayton is on a 
cloud. With Donnie Herron, the complicity is wonderful.
The setlist is th
e same as every night, but with each concert, Bob actually reinvents 
himself. He is still here in Paris for two more nights. I'll be there again on 
Thursday to listen to him and say hello. And if he passes me once more in 
the back, brushing me, as it was the case this Tuesday evening, I will 
shiver without asking anything more!



Sergenery Bon

The splendid decor of the Grand Rex venue in Paris, with its gothic and 
arabesque adornments recalling an Edgar Allan Poe interior, provided a 
fitting setting on 11 October 2022 for the first of three Parisian shows on 
the European leg of Bob Dylan’s Rough and Rowdy Ways tour – named 
after his most recent album from 2020 and scheduled to stretch from 
2021 to 2024. This gig was actually my first opportunity to sample this 
tour, and before considering the concert I will make some general 
comments on the setlist, which has scarcely changed since the tour began.

My comments here will concern the entire tour so far. It is far from being 
arbitrary: indeed, it has obviously been very consciously constructed. It 
consists throughout of seventeen songs and currently features nine 
(originally eight) of the ‘new’ album’s ten tracks, the only one left out 
being ‘Murder Most Foul’, the sixteen-minute epic about the Kennedy 
assassination, presumably on grounds of length. These nine songs are 
complemented by seven (at first eight and later briefly six) older Dylan 
songs and one cover version (briefly two and later changed). The two 
classes of song (from the ‘new’ album/not from it) are carefully 
interspersed so that no more than two of the Rough and Rowdy Ways 
songs or two of the ‘old’ songs are performed sequentially: alternance 
rules, and the message is surely that the old complements the new and 
vice versa. There have been very few changes since the tour began. 
Over time so far, we have had ‘Early Roman Kings’ from 2012’s Tempest 
edged out by the new album’s ‘Crossing the Rubicon’; the Sinatra cover 
‘Melancholy Mood’ substituted by ‘That Old Black Magic’ from the same 
stable; and, very briefly in California, for three shows, ‘Every Grain of Sand’ 
surprisingly replaced as closing number by a cover of the Grateful Dead’s 
‘Friend of the Devil’. For the rest, the keyword is continuity: the setlist 
is a work of art.

The selection of ‘old’ songs might have appeared eccentric to some. 
This is no greatest hits selection, far from it – as commentators have 
inevitably observed, no ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’, no ‘Like a Rolling Stone’. 
Nor is any particular album privileged, with the only two songs from the 
same album – ‘Watching the River Flow’ and ‘When I Paint My Masterpiece’
 – being from a compilation (More Bob Dylan Greatest Hits, 1971). Of the
remaining Dylan compositions retained, the oldest is ‘Most Likely You Go 
Away (and I’ll Go Mine)’ (from Blonde on Blonde, 1966); the best-known
‘I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight’ (from John Wesley Harding, 1967); the most 
controversial ‘Gotta Serve Somebody’, from Dylan’s religious period (Slow 
Train Coming, 1979); and the best ‘Every Grain of Sand’, also from that 
period (Shot of Love, 1981), but on a whole other poetic level. This 
leaves the particular case of ‘To Be Alone With You’, from Dylan’s 
‘country period’ (Nashville Skyline, 1969), rewritten to the point where 
it comes over as virtually a different and more complex song. Virtually all 
the ‘old’ songs have undergone, to a greater or lesser degree, lyric 
changes which are not necessarily improvements, the outstanding and 
fortunate exception being an effectively unchanged ‘Every Grain of Sand’.

To return to Paris, it is gratifying to signal that the collective atmosphere 
in the packed-to-capacity concert hall was extremely warm, convivial and 
sympathetic to a Dylan who was visibly in a good mood and obviously 
relishing the songs. His delivery tended to separate the songs’ lines and 
phrases into fragments, a technique which may be related to his age but 
which has the virtue of capturing phrases for reflection. This technique 
arguably did not take too well in his delivery on the opener, ‘Watching 
the River Flow’, where the phrases seemed more like bleeding chunks, 
but was better integrated in the immediately following numbers and 
allowed some precious deliveries of key phrases like ‘The city of God is 
there on the hill’ (‘False Prophet’) or the Shakespearean ‘winter of my 
discontent’ (‘My Own Version of You’). At the end, ‘Every Grain of Sand’ 
– in itself one of the best songs he has ever written – was performed 
with a declamatory energy that provided a remarkable culmination to the 
evening. The song which received the strongest ovation of recognition 
was the familiar ‘I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight’, but ‘new’ numbers including 
‘I Contain Multitudes’ and ‘Key West’ were also greeted with strong 
applause, indicating that those present also knew and valued the recent 
material and saw Dylan as no museum-piece.

As the evening unfolded, the musicians’ performance was invariably 
superb, and Bob Dylan’s, though variable, at its best plumbed uncanny 
depths. After ‘Every Grain of Sand’, sections of the public cried out for 
an encore – a wish not granted, but nonetheless it was clear that artist 
and audience had enjoyed the spectacle to a similar degree. The Grand 
Rex had witnessed a fine and moving evening, and of which – for time 
passes – we, Bob Dylan’s audience, may not see the like again.