I've always been a bigger fan of Bob Dylan's electric music than his earlier folk material. That's probably for two reasons. One, I was raised on a diet of lush popular arrangements which, over time, morphed into a love of drums, guitar and bass rock & roll. And two, by the time I got around to listening, the revolution as Bob sung it was no longer in the air.
Dylan's earlier accoustic folk never really "spoke" to me. That doesn't mean I think it's tosh, mind you, just that it came around well before I did and spoke to a whole other generation. A generation way more interested in that airy revolution.
Based on Bootleg 6, though, the guy could perform. With just a guitar and a microphone (excluding the Baez assists), Bob had this Philharmonic Hall audience eating out of the palm of his hand.
The added bonus for us "younger" Dylan fans, reared on years of Surly Bob (I've seen him live three times and never heard him speak), is that he's bantering with the audience. Maybe it's just schtick, but he's funny and he's enjoying it.
A terrific chronicle (Ho Ho) of where it all kicked of for one of the most significant figures in popular music.
Live 1964, recorded on Halloween night at New York's Philharmonic Hall, is Bob Dylan's first all-acoustic live record, and is most noteworthy for its gooey formative circumstances: This is pre-Dylan Dylan, an impeccably recorded portrait of the guitar-toting folk singer, the giggling, sheepish heir to Woody Guthrie's dusty proletariat throne, a Dylan who had yet to wail electric at Newport, convert to Christianity, or write and star in Masked and Anonymous. Charming and curiously personable, Dylan seems deliriously comfortable on stage, engaging an appreciative audience (no hollers of "Judas!"), even enlisting their help with the first verse of "I Don't Believe You", asking, after a bungled opening, "Does anyone know the first verse of this song?" Featuring only longtime-cohort Joan Baez (who appears on four tracks) and his own harmonica and guitar, Live 1964 is a spare, earnest portrayal of neo-Dylan-in-training, a man who, having long mastered one form, is just a few years away from revolutionizing another.
AGB Rating - Distinction
Standard Hungbunny Dylan response #675.
Posted by: hungbunny | 19 January 2005 at 23:42
Check.
Posted by: Tony.T | 20 January 2005 at 14:37