Monday, September 03, 2007

Endings and Beginnings



Well Bob has been and gone.

Your puny hu-man language has no words.

MP3: Nettie Moore, Sydney, 15th August.

These were my first live shows since '01 (behind the iron curtain of no-one-good-ever-tours-russia-ness in '03) but they still open and close with two extraordinary moments. Sure, the music in between is ineffable but I go to be In The Presence and the intro and the band farewells are where you find you get those hilarious Bob moments.

The introduction which was adopted a while ago and is taken pretty much verbatim from some newspaper review. Can't remember the name of the journo now, but he wrote a slightly mortified response after it started being used.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,Please welcome the poet laureate of rock and roll,
The voice of the promise of the ‘60s counter culture,
The guy who forced folk into bed with rock,
Who donned makeup in the ‘70s, and disappeared into a haze of substance abuse,
Who emerged to find Jesus,
Who was written off as a has-been by the end of the ‘80s
And who suddenly shifted gears,
Releasing some of the strongest music in his career beginning in the late ‘90s,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Columbia recording artist,
Bob Dylan”

A brain numbing cut and paste job, a collection of cliches hypnotic in their blandness and hilarious when Bob co-opts them to open the show. Heh @ Bob.

Listen: Dylan Intro. (starts about 30 secs in)

And then the line up at the end -- as shown in picture above, taken by my mate Raymond. They just .... stand there, staring at you. A new addition (for me) was the toreador arm Bob sports. Some described it as a royal wave. People whinge that there's no audience interaction. The band comes to the front of stage and just ... stares at you. That's too much audience interaction baby. It does weird things to you.

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