BOB DYLAN : LIVERPOOL 2024

 

Disc One (52:34)

  1. All Along The Watchtower
  2. It Ain't Me, Babe
  3. I Contain Multitudes
  4. False Prophet
  5. When I Paint My Masterpiece
  6. Black Rider
  7. My Own Version Of You
  8. To Be Alone With You
  9. Crossing The Rubicon

Disc Two (49:40)

  1. Desolation Row
  2. Key West (Philosopher Pirate)
  3. Watching The River Flow
  4. It's All Over Now, Baby Blue
  5. I've Made Up My Mind To Give Myself To You
  6. Mother Of Muses
  7. Goodbye Jimmy Reed
  8. Every Grain Of Sand

Label : no label

Venue : M&S Bank Arena, Liverpool, England

Recording Date : November 3, 2024

Quality : Audience Recording (A+)

Concert Review (Flaggin' Down The Double E's) : Liverpool! Just like I pictured it. Brick row houses and everything. Social media posts remind me that it was three years ago this week that the Rough and Rowdy Ways tour began in Milwaukee, a night that will be hard to top for sheer excitement. And now, here I am, heading to another joint as the tour becomes, in its final stretch, Rough and Rowdy 2.0. I found myself fascinated by Liverpool. The city is a strange mix of Pullman, the “fancy factory town” an old robber baron built in Chicago, and Brooklyn. It’s bustling, and feels far larger than Milwaukee, a town with a similar population and working-class reputation. I had something called a sausage barm at a shop with a surly owner and listened to the chimes of an enormous church. As I was walking around to see where The Cavern was, my Tempest shirt was spotted by a few fans who hustled me into a pub, where we chatted, watching a Dylan tribute act that did songs like “Is Your Love In Vain,” and guzzled beer. Too much beer. As we walked to the venue they showed me sites like the old White Star Line offices, where the people gathered for news of the Titanic. As I walked to the long security line, I heard an astonished Ian Gallon call out my name—what a swell hobby this is, where we can fly 3000 miles, make new friends, and run into old ones! I hadn’t followed the recent tapes too closely, and jet lag hit me right as the show began, so I experienced my first Rough and Rowdy 2.0 show through a haze of beer, sleepiness, and a distinct need to pee. “Watchtower” was such a new arrangement that I almost thought it was going to be “Things Have Changed.” It sounded like Bob was playing guitar in the early songs. There was no audible piano, just a Bob-like guitar bit, though I couldn’t see him behind the piano (later reports confirm he was indeed playing guitar back there). In a “full circle” sort of thing, now that Bob is seemingly on the last leg of Rough and Rowdy Ways, he’s back to doing several songs center stage, like on the very first leg, though he’s not quite as animated as he was in the beginning, when he would walk in a crouch like a cartoon character going on safari. And the “center stage” parts don’t seem to last as long; after a verse or two he’s back at the piano, and often leaning his elbow on it as he sings. I was reminded of those Charlie Brown comic strips where he and Linus wax philosophical while they rest their elbows on some random chest-high brick wall. The leaner, rougher band (and somewhat rougher voice) makes for a very different experience than the tight, spooky spring shows, and takes some getting used to. So did the venue; the arena in Liverpool is by far the largest venue in which I’ve seen a RARW show. Between the huge hall and the jet lag, I felt like I was watching the show from a far greater distance than I really was. There were some clear highlights. A sparse and gorgeous “Key West” stood out, after which Bob said he wrote it at Ernest Hemingway’s house (and something like “I think there’s a bit of him in that song, I don’t know but I suspect,” though the words were lost in the echo of the hall.) “Baby Blue” abandoned the recent arrangement that called to mind the guitar in The Beatles’ “In My Life,” and instead went into an arrangement similar to the summer “Can’t Wait” but more like the version from Shadow Kingdom. The show continues to evolve! What a fascinating progression it’s been, as these songs reveal layer after layer over these three years. Of course, leave it to Bob to abandon a Beatles-like arrangement as soon as he gets to Liverpool. Bob moved to center stage and nearly danced for the beginning of “Desolation Row,” with Jim Keltner laying down a barrelling drum part. The percussion on the great Unplugged version sounds like a pony clip-clopping across cobblestones as it leads you through Desolation Row in a carriage. Now it’s a whole team of horses charging through. I thought of Dylan’s ‘97 interview in which he said the “slow train coming” was still on the way, but going like a freight train now. The crowd was mostly sedate, certainly not as enthusiastic as they were singing along to the busker doing “Like a Rolling Stone” outside afterward, which made me think that many of them had come expecting a show like you’d get from Paul McCartney, or Mike Love and the Beach Boys of Theseus, recreating the old hits so you could sing along. In a large arena, it’s a given that thousands of people expected that sort of show, and were bound to leave disappointed no matter how great the show was on its own terms. But they were brought to their feet by the harmonica solos in “Every Grain of Sand.”