BOB DYLAN : BROTHERS IN NOTTINGHAM

  1. Introduction
  2. leopard skin Pill-Box hat
  3. Love Sick
  4. Just Like Tom thumb's Blues
  5. can't wait
  6. Watching The River Flow
  7. Not Dark yet
  8. High Water (for Charley Patton)
  9. Visions of johanna
  10. Highway 61 revisited
  11. nettie Moore
  12. Thunder on the Mountain
  13. Ballad of a Thin Man
  14. all along the Watchtower
  15. Band Introductions
  16. Like a Rolling Stone

Label : BDMK

Venue : Capital FM Arena, Nottingham, UK

Date : October 11th, 2011

Length : 89:26

Quality : Audience Recording (A-)

Review : Excellent audience recording. The Mark Knopfler set comes with this release on a separate disc.

Concert review (Sean Hewitt) : I got into trouble when I praised Bob Dylan's 2005 gig at the city's ice arena in this paper. Loads of you seemed to think I'd lost my marbles. Well, watch out, here I go again. Dylan was electrifying this week, continuing his ongoing experiment of recasting his back catalogue in the style of Chicago blues. What was different was his sheer energy. At times the concert was closer to what you'd expect from the likes of Nick Cave or Tom Waits. The band was dynamite, powered along by George Recile's explosive drums. As always, Dylan played games with the shape and tone of his songs but from the opener - a lively Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat - he was clearly more than up for it, leaving his keyboard and standing centre-stage, sans guitar, for a mesmerising Love Sick, acting out the song with hand movements and, er, strangely demonic grins. I've never seen him like that before. The energy level was maintained for Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues but ramped up still further for Can't Wait, delivered in a pile-driving stop-start fashion. Watching The River Flow provided a bit of respite before the masterful Not Dark Yet, which the singer just about brought off despite the even-more-than-usually shouty, raspy quality of his voice - more suited to the rockier numbers, like the kicking rendition of High Water (For Charley Patton) that followed. Not all the experiments worked: Visions Of Johanna, with brilliantly mad interplay between Dylan's keyboard and Charlie Sexton's lead guitar, and Nettie Moore, a song which can hold huge audiences rapt with its beauty, were spoiled by Dylan shouting rather than singing. The rest of the set comprised surging versions of regular crowd-pleasers - Ballad Of A Thin Man, with a darkly echoing vocal, brought an ovation and a powerful Like A Rolling Stone gave way to a dramatic, dynamic All Along The Watchtower. Then the lights went up and the barmy old genius was gone. No encores! In support, former Dire Straits leader Mark Knopfler - a collaborator on two Dylan albums (he plays lead guitar on Slow Train Coming and produced Infidels) - played a technically brilliant set mostly comprising his solo material. much of which ha a Celtic, folky feel, with great playing by John McCusker on violin and cittern and Mike McGoldrick on flute, whistles and pipes. Former Straits man Guy Fletcher played keyboards and the set ended with two of the band's tunes, Brothers In Arms and So Far Away.