BOB DYLAN : PORT CHESTER 2017

BOB DYLAN : PORT CHESTER 2017 - 1ST NIGHT

Disc One (68:20)

Things Have Changed
Don't Think Twice, It's All Right
Highway 61 Revisited
Beyond Here Lies Nothin'
I Could Have Told You
Pay In Blood
Melancholy Mood
Duquesne Whistle
Stormy Weather
Tangled Up In Blue
Early Roman Kings
Spirit On The Water
Love Sick
All Or Nothing At All

Disc Two (38:44)

Desolation Row
Soon After Midnight
That Old Black Magic
Long And Wasted Years
Autumn Leaves
Blowin' In The Wind
Ballad Of A Thin Man

Label : Uxbridge

Venue : Capitol Theatre, Port Chester, New York, USA

Recording Date : June 13, 2017

Quality : Soundboard Recording (A+)

Review : Dynamic remaster of a mono soundboard recording, probably ripped from an mp4 recording of the pro-shot video feed in the lobby/bar area. Uxbridge immediately made a nice bootleg of this recording. Instantly this becomes the best 2017 document we have. This is unreal good.

Concert Review (Boblinks) : Going to see a Bob Dylan show in the year 2017 (or as Bob would have put it on his radio show, and perhaps the excellent and wonderfully idiosyncratic Nobel Lecture he just recorded) ‘in the year twenty and seventeen’ is something strange, wonderful, and as it should be, always a little surprising. Going in, one starts doing the math, as in ‘wow, my first Dylan show was 39 years ago!’ In recent years, the setlists have been much more static. This was the first show of the tour so there was perhaps expectation that there might be some big setlist surprise. There wasn’t, though some of the arrangements are brand new. As in recent years, there were six or so ‘standards’, most recorded at one point by Frank Sinatra (but many others too) all throughout the show, and for me, those were all highlights. I’m definitely ‘two thumbs up’ on his recent ‘Sinatra standards’ phase. The small-band arrangements of these mostly-classic songs somehow manage to echo a much larger orchestra, but stripped down to something intimate, coupled with fantastic ‘make-every-word count’ singing from Bob. Put it all together and you have several riveting, time-stops-on-stage moments built in to the show. Those familiar with the setlists from the past year will probably not see much variation. Compared to the show I saw last July, this was a similar but not identical setlist. The opener, as he’s been doing for many years now, was a somewhat growlier-then-usual ‘Things have changed’ and it seemed like they were getting the sound together for that one. Second song was an effective, straightforward ‘Don’t think twice, it’s alright’. Highway 61 was done without any lengthy blues jamming and was also straightforward and effective. I liked ‘Beyond Here lies nothing’ when I first heard it on the album, and the first few times live- but by now it seems to be a bit ‘same old-same old’, to be honest. All in all, the first four songs were fine, but didn’t jump out at me as something wildly special. The first real highlight for me was the fifth song, “I could have told you”, which is featured early in the new album “Triplicate”. Bob’s singing on this, and every one of the ‘standards’, was emotional, respectful of the song and went right to the heart of lyric every time. These are true ‘singer’s songs’ where oversinging/over-emoting would ruin it, playing too ‘cool’ wouldn’t work either, and one has to really ‘live’ the songs as you sing them. Bob seems even more comfortable with these songs then the last two times I saw him deliver any of this material (Bethlehem PA in July 2016 and Beacon Theater NYC in December 2014). That image of him center-stage, holding the mic stand sideways, staring into the middle distance while the band watches carefully, is going to stay for a while. Brilliant. The next song, ‘Pay in Blood’ with its almost-Shakespearian lyrical violence, was a nice contrast. His delivery of this has gotten smoother and is a long way from the roughness of the album version. During this song and some of the other “Tempest” material, I thought of the recent Nobel lecture he just recorded and released, and how many of the lines from Tempest echo some classic literature he discusses there (‘been searching for my family for 20 years’ from ‘long and wasted years’ must have been influenced by a reading of the Odyssey, perhaps? ) Melancholy Mood, another (and more obscure) standard dating to about 1940, was next, and it was a pleasure watching the band stretch out on the long intro ‘verse’ which used to be standard in big-band arrangements, the singers only coming in in the second half of the song. This band just gets better and better, and from where I was standing on the floor (about one or two people back from the front at worst, and by the end of the show ‘on the rail’) I could see all the subtleties of Receli’s drumming and the fine playing by the rest of the band. Duquesne Whistle had that long old-timey ‘Louis Armstrong-meets-Bill Monroe’ intro, and after that it was business as usual. I wish the vocal was a little louder on that song and perhaps a few others, however- some of the lines were a little buried. Next up was another big highlight, what the kids today would say was a “dramatic af” version of “Stormy Weather”, with that out-of-time intro, much like the excellent version on “Triplicate”. And next was one of those strange moments that we as Bob Dylan fans live for, something familiar yet new, where you can say ‘there he goes, shattering everyone’s expectations again’. It was the familiar-to-even casual Dylan fans song ‘Tangled Up in Blue’. Rather than the arrangement he’s been giving it the past few years, however, he completely changed the music, with a different set of chords (mostly going from the 1 to flat V11, or in layman’s terms from, say, G to F again and again, and again,… and again) with some embellishments, while he delivered the lyric clear and sharp. It’s somehow, once again, reborn as a very different sounding song. I’m not sure this version totally ‘works’, but in a sense, watching something hot off the presses and so experimental, it was thrilling all the same. He seems to be sticking to the same lyric rewrites he’s been singing for the last few years, too, which I’m sure throws off many causal fans. I want to hear this version again, and it was surprising and new. Next up were two songs that were not high points for me- a somewhat rearranged version of “Early roman kings’ that I felt lost a lot of power and just was not special or odd enough in its new incarnation. I’m not a huge fan of “Spirit on the Water” though he does deliver it effectively, and seems to be engaged in the song from beginning to end. ‘Love Sick’ was very good, though perhaps not quite as intense as some other versions I’ve seen. “All or nothing at all’ was swinging and great fun. Then came another huge highlight, perhaps the one place where the band seemed levitated several miles in the air- a raging and wonderful ‘Desolation Row”. There was so much happening in this song, the committed vocal by Bob, the little vocal syncopations he would give it, which the band would echo, the little piano riffs Bob played which the band would also throw back to him, all in a glorious feedback-loop circus frenzy that made this feel like one of the best versions I’ve ever seen him play. From there, “Soon after midnight” felt fine, but much more pedestrian. “Long and Wasted Years’ had Bob center-stage, pacing up to the front of the stage, giving it his all in a committed, ‘wait till you hear this’ fashion. (I’m still not a huge fan of the song itself, however). Sandwiched in the middle between those two was a swinging and playful “That old black magic” and Bob and the band had great fun with it. A dramatic “Autumn Leaves” closed the main set. In the encores, “Blowin in the wind was heartfelt and straightforward. The closer, “Ballad of a Thin Man”, was wonderfully spooky and powerful as always. Perhaps it was a tad less powerful then some of the prior versions of it I’ve seen him do, but it was a great closer nevertheless. And there ya have it, another year, another version of Bob, another wonderful show.