Reasons to never see Bob at a huge venue:
No Screens. If you’re past the first 30 rows, forget it.
Lousy Sound: It sounded good for Prince… why isn’t it that good for everyone? For the first 4 songs on Saturday it was a hideous fog of bassiness that hovered around the middle of the arena. Then it got slightly, but only slightly, better…
No Danger: From the glorious days of Larry and Charlie and Freddy, where each song threatened to blossom into a trancendental Dead-like jam around some of rock’s most glorious melodies, where have we come to? A texas bar band with a singularly drab lead guitarist. Fire him, now.
Lowest point: After the obligatory encore of Watchtower, a version of Spirit On The Water that sounded to my friend Marcel as if they were “playing Goodnight Ladies at the end of Skegness Pier, only out of tune and out of time”. It was howlingly awful, but the double whammy was a comedy version of Blowin’ in The Wind that seemed based on Stevie Wonder’s, except here fronted by Les Dawson…
Good bits: A lovely playful Like A Rolling Stone, that really worked, with George Recili outstanding, thundering around his kit to kick it off at the beginning of every chorus. A strong somber Ballad Of Hollis Brown. Bob’s harmonica playing, with surprising touches of 66′s ‘cathedrals of sound’ approach…
3 Responses to Bob at the O2: Lowlights
Oh gawd, that bad? I had so gotten into his late-period live shit; those Wembley ’00 or ’01 shows, and Brixton a couple of years later being memorably great shows. And I’m no Dylan fanatic.
Jake and Fred went to see it and had much the same feelings – shame for Fred it was his first Dylan show.
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