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Dylan re-invented
Font: * * * * BRENDAN KELLY, Montreal Gazette
Published: Thursday, November 09, 2006
Bob Dylan is all about re-invention. Always has been. Famously he’s confounded folks for four decades by changing personas – from the earnest protest folkie to the plugged-in rock star to the born-again whiner.
And his shows, from the earliest days, have also been about re-inventing his phenomenal repertoire. That spirit of never resting on his laurels is what set last night’s Bell Centre concert apart from 99.9 per cent of the arena rock shows out there.
But it’s also what made the gig so frustrating.
When the radical re-working of the classics worked – like on the stirring power-chord-laden revamp of Tangled Up in Blue – it was a thing of beauty. But when it didn’t, which was maybe half the time, it was a bit messy.
Take A Simple Twist of Fate – please.
Even the most casual Dylan fan knows this Blood on the Tracks track is one of the Big Dyl’s finest moments, a wonderful little slice of acoustic charm. But last night, Dylan and his five-piece band turned the song into a rocking soul number and it was clearly a case of trying to be different just for the sake of being different.
In fact, the whole Dylan-at-the-keyboards thing strikes this critic as a similarly perverse tactic. He didn’t touch a guitar all night, staying behind his electric keyboards throughout, but his keyboards were mixed way down in the sound so you could barely hear it.
It’s a safe bet that the 11,750 rather vocal Dylan fans on hand at the Bell Centre would beg to differ and certainly there was plenty to be vocally enthusiastic about last night. Dylan has said this is his best backing band ever, but that’s just not true.
That would be The Band, thank you very much. But this outfit is one rocking ensemble, led by Denny Freeman’s intense lead guitar work and layered with Donnie Herron’s theatrics on the pedal and lap steel.
When it suited the material, the band and Dylan made a perfect match, like on a jagged-edgy Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again or a positively violent Highway 61 Revisited. Those two were as good as it got last night.
But some of the songs just cried out for a quieter less rhythmic treatment, like Senor, which suffered from the heavy rocking approach. The one song when the band did finally slow everything right down, a just-lovely pure slice of country version of Girl From the North Country, was simply sublime.
As usual, Dylan didn’t bother with even the pretence of small-talk and he kind of looked like some mad musical scientist crouched over his keyboard. His phrasing on almost all of the songs was notably different from the original recordings and, again, that was a bit of a hit-and-miss proposition.
His most inspired moments, by far, were the times, too infrequent, when he let the keyboards go to wail on the harmonica.
Foo Fighters opened with a well-received set of mostly acoustic versions of their tunes which was reasonably entertaining but hardly life-changing.
bkelly@ thegazette.canwest.com
© Montreal Gazette 2006
[ November 09, 2006, 07:50: Message edited by: Jesse -Joe ]
