BOB DYLAN & HIS BAND
The Met Philadelphia
Philadelphia, Pennsyvania
2018-12-03
(Monday, December 3, 2018)
This is a SPOT recording (thanks again as ever) and the equipment used was:
Core Sound High End Binaural (HEB) DPA 4061's with Edirol by Roland R-09
Edited with Magix Audio Premium
http://expectingrain.com, thanks to c_wms for the information
ExRain > blog > Transmission 2.94 > iMac (macOS10.14.2 Mojave) > xACT 2.47 (ffp st5)
> Transmission 2.94 > share
01. Things Have Changed
02. It Ain't Me, Babe
03. Highway 61 Revisited
04. Simple Twist Of Fate
05. Cry A While
06. When I Paint My Masterpiece
07. Honest With Me
08. Tryin' To Get To Heaven
09. Scarlet Town
10. Make You Feel My Love
11. Pay In Blood
12. Like A Rolling Stone
13. Early Roman Kings
14. Don't Think Twice, It's All Right
15. Love Sick
16. Thunder On The Mountain
17. Soon After Midnight
18. Gotta Serve Somebody
(encore)
19. It Takes A Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train To Cry
20. Blowin' In The Wind
Bob Dylan - piano
Tony Garnier - bass
George Recile - drums
Charlie Sexton - lead guitar
Donnie Herron - violin, banjo, electric mandolin, pedal steel, lap steel
This was the 84th and last gig for 2018.
A SPOT RECORDING
111 mins
Here's the final recording on this very fine tour. There are other recordings and just as soon as his transfusions finished Spot and I will get on with things. As you are sure to enjoy this I don't need to prattle on. Just grab this sucker and enjoy!!
Spot and I thank you for the fine comments and thanks. We have no issue with these recordings being placed elsewhere, after a week, if we are credited and would prefer not to see remixes, but thats up to you.
The Caretaker
Thanks everyone.
rsx
---
opening night with Bob Dylan the-met-philadelphia 2018-12-03
https://www.mcall.com/entertainment/lehigh-valley-music/mc-ent-bob-dylan-review-the-met-philadelphia-20181204-story.html
Friday December 7, 2018
Lehigh Valley Music The latest from the Valley music scene
Entertainment Lehigh Valley Music
REVIEW: Bob Dylan, playing opening night at Philly's new The Met, shows he and venue have a lot of great life ahead
Inside The Met Philadelphia for opening night with Bob Dylan
(JOHN J. MOSER/The Morning Call)
Philadelphia�s newest music venue, The Met Philadelphia, once was the biggest, most prominent opera house of its kind in the world before the style of entertainment went out of vogue and it was left to continue on.
The Met reopened Monday after a $56 million refurbishment that restored it to its former glory. But it was more than just a reminder of how illustrious the building once was � it was a demonstration that it has far more life ahead.
Much could be said for the act that re-opened The Met.
Bob Dylan in file photo
Bob Dylan in file photo
Bob Dylan more than 50 years ago also was on the cutting edge, creating virtually single-handedly the folk-rock genre and rightfully called the voice of a generation.
Dylan also seems to recently have returned to a place of esteem: His most recent albums have given him his longest-sustained run of Top 10 discs since the mid-1970s, and in 2016, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
But it was the 77-year-old Dylan�s performance at The Met was not only a reminder of his formal glory, but also showed how relevant he remains, and how his creativity continues -- successfully.
Dylan said nary a word to the crowd all night. He opened with �Things Have Changed,� the 2000 Academy Award-winning song from the movie �Wonder Boys,� and it was a warning that he has changed both from the social icon of the �60s, and from the late-career low of just a few years ago.
Standing at the piano, his singing was strong and animated, enunciating and with true vocal inflections instead of the uninspired sing-song technique he employed a few years ago.
It got a huge cheer from the sold-out crowd of 3,500, as did several songs through the 20-song, hour-and-50-minute show, which was front-loaded with classics.
On �It Ain�t Me, Babe,� he even added texture to his voice, belying complaints he can no longer sing. Even on the roaring blues rock of �Highway 61 Revisited� (kudos to Dylan�s now well-road-seasoned band) he sang with emphasis.
�Simple Twist of Fate� was slow and carefully delivered, as if Dylan was recounting an actual affair. It also was the first song on which Dylan played harmonica � among just five or so songs on which he did so.
After such a strong start, the mid-section of Dylan�s set explored more of his relatively more recent catalog. A boogie-rocking �Honest With Me� from 2001�s �Love and Theft� featured more real singing � and clearly Dylan was having fun, swaying to the tune behind his keyboard.
On a spooky �Scarlet Town� from his 2012 disc �Tempest,� Dylan stood in the middle of the stage, holding the mic stand in one hand, and rasped out the words. It was another of those that got a big hand.
But the best � indeed, perhaps the best of the night � was �Cry a While,� also from �Love and Theft.� Dylan�s band � led by guitarist Charlie Sexton and longtime leader bassist Tony Garnier � were burning with intensity as the singer snarled out the lyrics and snapped his head to the drumbeat of George Receli.
As usual, Dylan drastically rearranged several songs � and not always to their benefit. The jauntiness of �Make You Feel My Love� and �Pay in Blood� actually detracted from their sentiments of heart-rending and threatening, respectively, though the former still was a nice song nicely performed, and was saved by a stinging harmonica.
One of the most changed arrangements was that of his biggest hit, �Like a Rolling Stone.� It was a startling change � unsettling at first. But after Dylan delivered the lyrics �your last meal� and �everything you could steal� with such a meal snarl, the audience was clearly with him.
On more than a half-dozen songs, Dylan stayed seated at the piano, barely visible. But that didn�t mean he didn�t deliver vocally when he did. One of the night�s absolute best was a very slow �Don�t Think Twice, It�s All Right,� which Dylan turned into a tale not of revenge, but of regret, largely piano and voice before a great harmonica. The crowd gave it a partial standing ovation.
Not every song was that good. On the slow �When I Paint My Masterpiece,� Dylan briefly lapsed into that sing-song, though he rescued it with his harmonica playing. A slower �Tryin� to Get to Heaven� and �Love Sick� didn�t stand out.
But �Early Roman Kings� was a straight-up shot of blues, and �Thunder on the Mountain� a good boogie rocker on which the band was turned loose � even for a drum solo. At the end of �Soon After Midnight,� Dylan was even crooning.
Dylan closed the main set with another song that was drastically rearranged: �Gotta Serve Somebody,� perhaps the best-known song of his late-�70/early �80s Christian period � was a retro-rock workout on which Dylan also wholly rewrote the lyrics as a new list of vocational possibilities. But like �Like a Rolling Stone,� it won the crowd over, and Dylan sauntered to center stage for the applause.
That gave The Met its first standing ovation.
Dylan opened the encore with a real chestnut � another blast of blues with the �Highway 61 Revisited� song �It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry.�
And then he closed with a drastically rearranged, piano heavy (with added violin) �Blowin� in the Wind,� which got another standing ovation.
The Met�s restoration is stunning, opulent in every way. It�s easily the most beautiful theater in the region, and its acoustics are great. It�s likely to have years of great shows ahead.
And Dylan was equally stunning. With a career that has lasted so long, been so significant to music and meant so much to so many, it�s hard to imagine he, too, has so much life left.
But opening night was a triumph for Dylan, as well.
jmoser@mcall.com
Twitter @johnjmoser
Copyright � 2018, The Morning Call
---
bdreview 2018-12-03Philadelphia https://michaelsauve.com
https://michaelsauve.com/2018/12/03/now-its-your-turn-you-can-cry-a-while-bob-dylan-at-the-beacon/
Now It�s Your Turn, You Can Cry a While � Bob Dylan at The Beacon
December 3, 2018 / Mike Sauve
Before discussing how Bob Dylan sounded at the Beacon Theater this past week, let�s talk about how does it feel to see Bob Dylan in New York City in 2018.
And before I can describe how does it feel, I need to put my own capacity for feeling into context. I live immoderately and immodestly. I subject captive audiences in Uber pools to long bouts of pressured speech about my enthusiasm for Proust. I tip service providers, at best, erratically. At a hotel bar after the concert I shouted pseudo-intellectual opinions concerning the concept of nonlinear causality at a neuroscientist for 45 minutes. I then boasted to the beautiful English girl whom we were all trying in vain not to love (the one who looked like Rita Hayworth and laughed so sonorously that a train would cry) how I was in fact smarter than the neuroscientist, but then the neuroscientist was standing right beside her, and the neuroscientist just looked as though he felt deeply sorry for me. All of this is to say that, overtly, I do not always present as the most empathic individual. Less charitable parties might even remark that I bare a troubling resemblance of affect to the fictional Patrick Bateman of American Psycho notoriety. But let me tell you what happened at the Beacon on Saturday night. During Simple Twist of Fate, the young woman sitting beside me, a stranger, started to cry. I had but a moment to think, �Ahh quixotic youth!� and then Dylan broke into one of those harmonica solos in which he channels every fibre of his being, what is sometimes called Pure Dylan, and then I too started to cry. I�m not talking a single tear running down my cheek. I�m talking about gasping for breath and snot running into my mouth, all while concerned and embarrassed New York men in the vicinity were palming me their drink napkins in lieu of Kleenex. Just as I would regain my composure, the girl would lose hers again, and that would set me off, and this continued well into the next song. In one of those perfect moments of synchronicity borne of a life of intemperate Bob Dylan enthusiasm that song was one of Dylan�s late-period comic masterpieces, Cry a While.
And nor was I the only grown-ass man on the fringes of the night, fighting back tears that I couldn�t control. I met a man of high spirits who I took to calling �late-period Orson Welles,� after he�d made it clear that ball-busting was not just acceptable but required. This bro-iest of bros admitted gleefully that he�d been, �Crying like a little bitch,� throughout the entire Friday performance. And of course in a classic New York swerve even this stereotypical Irish bastard turned out to be a playwright of serious renown.
The three of us and countless others were moved this way because Bob Dylan has become Great Again. Of course you can argue that Bob Dylan Never Stopped Being Great. As a wool-dyed Dylan apologist I have made this very claim, repeatedly. But right now�he is singing. Singing. Singing as only Dylan can. Remember that old bootleg, Nobody Sings Dylan. The part that�s left out is ��like Dylan.� The joke is that it doesn�t need to be said.
I credit his turnabout to the latest trilogy of cover albums. The two early 90�s albums of Americana covers led to the creative resurgence that birthed Time Out of Mind through to Modern Times, but also, depending on your interpretation, a five- to ten-year run of shows that were often total barn-burners. Now the Sinatra-inspired albums have reminded Dylan how to croon. The addition of these tin pan alley standards had improved his shows immeasurably in recent years. No longer did it feel like a monotonous ZZ Top cover band fronted by a rapping, shouting, and disengaged Tom Waits. There was a new sonic variety, but also a performative one. He would leave the organ to duck-walk and preen centre stage. Since Bob Dylan is among the funniest people in the world, the reintroduction of his comic sensibilities into the shows cannot be understated. Even better, it occurred to Bob that he didn�t need the standards anymore. He could preen and croon on songs like When I Paint My Masterpiece and even Like A Rolling Stone.
Casual Dylan fans are often shocked when I tell them I�ve been to eighteen shows. Doesn�t get you a lot of cred in New York City, however. 300+ was the highest total I heard. A guy in his mid-30s (hereafter referred to as The Great Man) like myself had been to 90. (He was the partner of the Rita Hayworth woman, incidentally. It was out of respect for his greatness that we were all doin� our best to deny her Hayworthian effects upon our collective sensorium.) But for the less hardcore fans, it�s important that Like a Rolling Stone be performed in a memorable way. Maybe some of them are assholes singing along to show they know the words to one of the most iconic songs of all time. But those assholes must have cared deeply about Bob Dylan at one point. So they deserve something substantive in the LARS slot, as we assholes of a more elitist ilk call it.
Did I mention that I like to drone on about Proust? What makes Proust so rewarding is that you have to work for it. Pages and pages and pages are concerned with the trivial minutiae of French society and how Monsieur du Charlus eats his soup or some shit. But it�s these long stretches of inanity that imbue the beautiful passages with their power. So all those 2009 shows when Bob plunked away at his stupid circus organ (or Instrument of Torture) have given this resurgence its depth of meaning. That ominous Ballad of a Thin Man that was too often the lone high point of that darker era is gone from the set list, but each and every person capable of truly caring knows that Something is Happening Here. Bob Dylan is back motherfuckers. He�s like a fighting rooster again. Increasingly, he even kind of looks like one. So let�s get 27 drinks at The Dublin House. Let�s weep openly and fall into each other�s arms.
Cockfighting.jpg
And when Clinton Heylin is one day replaced by the writer who can appreciate the contemporary Bob Dylan experience, I will read of these Beacon shows in her books knowing that I bore witness to my time period�s northeastern leg of the Rolling Thunder Revue, or this epoch�s Judas Concert that wasn�t really at the Royal Albert Hall. When I consider my brief interaction with the history of Bob Dylan, I will think of the Irish playwright pounding me on my already-compromised kidneys. I will think of the feats of strength that The Great Man and I engaged in, just moments after meeting ourselves, to provide a physical run-off for our spiritual cups that had runneth over. Out of respect for The Great Man I will try not to think of any individual smiles that may have evoked the highway blues from any 1940s screen siren-resemblant persons lest I become too inappropriately reverential. I will however think of weeping beside my seatmate and understanding the exact depths of emotion she was experiencing, which was one of the more profound experiences of my life.
I�ve yelled this into your ear long enough. It�s time that I should be Bringing It All Back Home Again. Have you heard the Good News? It�s that Bob Dylan, who both the religious scholar Seth Rogoyov and I believe is a genuine prophet of God, is Back in the New York Groove. And nothing compares to seeing Bob Dylan in the town that birthed Bob Dylan. The Great Man said that as a Brit, he understood Visions of Johanna in a new way once he was able to walk the streets of Greenwich Village and set his eyes on that crummy little hotel over Washington Square. The Great Man and I speculated on what Bob Dylan would be like if he didn�t make it to New York at the exact time period he did. But not possible isn�t it? As Bob Dylan has said, he was ready for New York.
Did I mention that, in addition to Proust, I like to yell about nonlinear causality? It�s the idea that an effect needn�t follow a cause, meaning the future might be capable of influencing the past. You can imagine how much this proposition must have annoyed the neuroscientist: but humour me. Maybe all those real tears cried at this miraculous run of 2018 shows were part of what brought Bob Dylan to New York in 1961. Though The Great Man and I wouldn�t be born for another twenty years, nor the tearful girl in the abutting seat for another thirty, maybe he was coming for us.
Images for all shows as well as full size images for this show.
Images for this show:
