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24/11/2005

London show number four: a mixed bag

Wednesday night’s London show – number four of five – was a mixed bag.

Dylan was, once again, in good voice, and the band introduced a musicality I hadn’t seen before at a Bob show – seeing a Zimband mastering grown-up stuff like improvisation, and subtly changing both dynamics and tempi, was a welcome surprise.

The 17 track programme, lasting a shade under two hours, had no fewer than a dozen gems from the Dylan songbook – Maggie’s Farm, Stuck Inside Of Mobile, LARS and Watchtower for the rockers; poignant ballads like Hard Rain, She Belongs To Me and Hattie Carroll for the more sensitive souls.

Other highlights were Shelter From The Storm, Most Likely You Go Your Way, and Positively 4th Street – positively the nastiest put-down song ever written. A passionate High Water underlined Dylan’s prescience; he may not be a seer, but he’s certainly had an uncanny alignment with the Zeitgeist for the last 45 years.

Though the show was loaded with well performed classics, the flow was interrupted by evenly spaced longueurs, notably Down Along The Cove, Million Miles and Cry A While. All vaguely interesting, if inconsequential; none sufficiently engaging for live performance. The questionable sequencing meant the gig failed to ignite, or build; it never became anything other than a series of – mostly enjoyable - disparate vignettes.


Gerry Smith

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