Dallas, Texas-February 21, 2008

 

Review by Steinar Daler

Bob was ON from the very start in this very nice venue. Pill-box was fine and It ain't me babe too. 

Watching the river flow was very good - great singing and the band really swings. 

A bit sad that Bob put down the guitar after the 3 first songs, but anyway his guitarplaying or pianoplaying do not add much to the music. 

His voice was fine all through the concert and Danny was the guitar maestro tonight. I have seldom seen him so much to the front.

 Girl of the north country  with Bob on harmonica and Rollin' and Thumblin' were solid too and Workingman's blues one of the highlights tonight. 

Beautiful singing and great phraing. High water was as normal with maybe Donny's banjo not load enough in the mix. 

Spirit on the water was another highlight, extraordinary singing by Bob in my ears. Can't wait was next up and had a new arrangement. 

The melody sounded allmost like High water and was not too sucsessful. Highway 61 was as we heard it before and solid as usual, Positively 4th street as well.

 Honest with me was also as usual - boring. Nettie Moore was of course fine, but not as beautiful as before. 

The change of mood between the verses and the choire was missing - defenitely not an improvement. 

Summer days was uninspired and I feared the Bob had finished his energy for tonight, but he finished of the main set with a really fine Ballad of a thin man. 

Best version I have heard in years. His phrasing and singing was perfect. Ancors without LARS and Watchtower were also great. 

Both Thunder on the mountain and Blowing in the wind were good to hear. Overall a good solid concert. 

What I will remember best was Wokingman's blues and Thin man - really great and for sure I will remember Danny's guitarplaying. 

Never heard it better. Bob looked in good shape and for the one who wonders, he is still wearing the same white hat, but there is no longer a flashy ring on his hand.

 I'm looking foreward to the next two concerts and hopefully a lot of different songs.  

Hello ! I´m Back

 "Everybody must make a decision in their hearts about how they want to live"

Neil Young

Canadian folk rock legend Neil Young said he has lost all hope that music can change the world, as he presented a documentary about his 2006 anti-war concert tour at the Berlin film festival on Friday.

"I know that the time when music could change the world is past. I really doubt that a single song can make a difference. It is a reality," Young told reporters.

"I don't think the tour had any impact on voters."

But the silver-haired frontman of the sixties supergroup Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young nonetheless dealt US President George W. Bush a stinging, back-handed insult and said his own "naive" urge to make people think remains intact.

"What is wrong with George Bush? That would take a really long time. Let's talk about what is right with him, it is a much shorter answer.

"He is a very good physical specimen. He shows that a man his age can stay in physical condition," said Young, who is 62.

He made no distinction between the Vietnam War, during which CSNY first earned their reputation as political activists, and the US-led war in Iraq which their tour condemned with songs like "Let's Impeach The President".

"It is all the same war and it hurts everybody. It's a wrong way to solve a problem," he said, adding that Americans were deluded if they thought they were liberating Iraq.

"We just don't have to go and spread democracy around the world."

Young said he deliberately included interviews with unimpressed critics and soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan in the documentary of his band's "Freedom of Speech" reunion tour, which earned them both praise and death threats.

"Otherwise I thought it would just feel like a bunch of old hippies. And nobody would care. I would not, I would have left," said Young, who directs his films under the pseudonym Bernard Shakey.

"I wanted to serve the people who came to see the shows, to serve the soldiers who fought in the war and to serve the people who started the war. It sounds naive but everybody has to make a decision in their hearts about how they want to live."

"CSNY: Deja Vu", which borrows its title from an album the band released in 1970, had its world premier at the Sundance Film Festival in January.

It is screening in the Berlinale Special section of the Berlin festival, which has this year made music a headline act by bringing The Rolling Stones, Madonna and rock poetess Patti Smith to town.

Martin Scorcese's Stones concert film "Shine A Light" opened the festival with a bang on Thursday night and the Oscar-winning director said he wanted to pay tribute to the vintage rockers as they had inspired his work from "Mean Streets" through to "The Departed."

Coming days will see screenings of Madonna's directorial debut, "Filth and Wisdom," movies about Sudanese hip-hop artists and Argentinian tango and "Om Shanti Om", the Bollywood song and dance blockbuster.

Patti Smith will attend a screening of a documentary on her career and play a sold-out concert on the festival sidelines.

Young, who managed the quirky feat of singing every line of dialogue in his 2003 film "Greendale" said music was a "primal subject" for the movies.

But the genre has changed little in his time, he added.

"I have not seen tremendous growth, any evolution really. From the Sinatra years, The Who's 'The Kids Are Alright' ... directors have always made films about music culture. There have been some great ones though."

 

Denny Freeman - Bob's best guitarist ever?

Dylan sideman Denny Freeman is worth the whole ticket
By BRAD BUCHHOLZ

Bob Dylan is about to hit the stage — and I’m really excited about this show. Not so much ’cause it’s Dylan; I’ve seen him several times over the years. I’m more excited about seeing Denny Freeman play lead guitar.

(Dylan’s band will be performing at the Ryan Center at the University of Rhode Island with Elvis Costello and Amos Lee on Saturday.)

You say you don’t know about Freeman? Well, you’re in for a treat. The man’s an exquisite p_layer_ — more about _style_ and tone and taste than sheer speed. Freeman loves chords, and space. He has a broad range of tastes: jazz, silky ballads, surf music, ’60s wah-wah pedal. And he has a great ear for the blues.

Freeman is a charter member of the Austin blues scene. The Vaughan brothers have known him as a friend, a bandmate, a roommate and mentor.

Freeman lived a blues life for a long time, playing music at night, doing construction work during the day. When he first got to Austin in 1970, Freeman and his blues buddies from Dallas — Jimmie Vaughan, Doyle Bramhall, Paul Ray — played in a dive for a payday of beans and chicken wings.

He has been playing with the Dylan band since March 2005.Freeman is all over Dylan’s latest record, Modern Times, which definitely tips its hat to the blues of Muddy Waters and Memphis Minnie on several cuts. He’s never overbearing, though. Freeman knows how to do sly and spare and subtle.

“Denny is a great accompanist,” his friend Paul Ray was saying not long ago. And he should know, having fronted a band called the Cobras that featured both Freeman and a very young Stevie Ray Vaughan. “Most guitarists can’t resist that urge to play all over you. But not Freeman. He knows where the spaces are.

“Denny was never the kind of p_layer_ who is into trading licks with other guitarists, either. He never tries to outdo someone. Because in his own (quiet) way, he outdoes them anyway. A lot of times, with the Cobras, we’d really be cooking, and I’d try to make him play one more round on the solo. He’d kind of wink, say no, that’s all I’ve got.”

Dylan’s live sets are very polished and professional, you know, but there’s a lot of room in them for Freeman to shine. Fans old and new are going to enjoy “Rollin’ and Tumblin,’” often played as an encore, on which Freeman and fellow guitarist Stu Kimball let loose on a wild, slidy blues ride.

Bitten by the music, Freeman caught the blues at age 12, around the birth of rock ’n’ roll, while living in East Dallas. It started innocently enough: He’d go to parties, play spin the bottle with friends, listen to 45s on the record p_layer_. Older kids began to expose him to do wop, the Clovers, the Drifters.

“And at about that time, Little Richard and Chuck Berry and Fats Domino started coming on the radio,” Freeman said to me years ago. “I thought to myself, ‘Wow. What’s happening here is a whole new world.’ All of a sudden, instead of playing _base_ball and shooting baskets, all this wild (black) music was going on in my life.”

“Me and my friends would ride the bus to downtown Dallas on Saturday afternoon, go to the pawn shops and the record stores. We’d buy three 45s for a dollar and stuff.”

As Freeman got older, he got into jazz — “the only guy I know who bought jazz singles,” says Paul Ray. “Blue Note jazz singles” — fell in love with Cream, marveled at Hendrix, got into surf guitar. Freeman’s sensors, then and now, were wide open to all guitar sounds.

If you want to know Freeman’s heart, check out any one of his five solo albums, the first released in Austin, the more recent ones after he moved to Los Angeles for a while in the mid-1990s.

The guy loves to play, in the most childlike sense. No final bow in sight. Freeman has recorded with Taj Mahal and Jennifer Warnes and Jimmie Vaughan, played with the cream of the Austin blues divas, written country music that no one has ever heard. He turned 63 this year — and in so many ways, his career has never looked brighter

Bob At Beach

Austin City Limits- USA Fall Tour 2007

Drawings by Bob Dylan

CHEMNITZ, Germany - An exhibition of a unique collection of artworks by Bob Dylan, including variations of previously published drawings and sketches, has opened at a museum in this eastern German city.

Visitors flocked to the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz museum Sunday to see the 170 colored versions of pictorial motifs by Dylan called, “The Drawn Blank Series.”

The exhibit consists of drawings that Dylan produced between 1989 and 1992 and published in a book. Curator Ingrid Moessinger had 332 of the works specially reprinted and painted, and Dylan then selected 170 works for display.

“Bob Dylan selected the works for the exhibit himself,” Moessinger said.

The pictures show scenes from daily life: portraits of women and men, still lifes, cityscapes and other places that Dylan, 66, observed during his travels. The exhibit runs through Feb. 3.

Art historian Frank Zoellner said the works reflect Dylan’s music.

“The landscapes are very peaceful,” said Zoellner, while noting depictions of interiors often lacked a center, giving them a sense of restlessness.

A guiding theme in the drawings are variations of the same motives — much in the way Dylan performs his music, Zoellner said.

“On stage, Dylan never plays any song the same way twice,” Zoellner said.

Bob likes drawing

170 drawings by Bob Dylan go on display

 

'My drawing instructor in high school lectured and demonstrated continuously to "draw only what you can see" so that if you were at a loss for words, something could be explained and even more importantly, not misunderstood. Rather than fantasize, be real and draw it only if it is in front of you and if it's not there, put it there and by making the lines connect, we can vaguely get at something other than the world we know.'

These drawings are sketches for paintings that either never were painted, have yet to be painted (or more likely never will be painted). They are done mostly by pencil, some by charcoal and spotlight and a few by pen. Those familiar with the mediums can easily tell which is which. They were done over a two or three year period from about 1989 to about 1991 or '92 in various locations mainly to relax and refocus a restless mind.
My drawing instructor in high school lectured and demonstrated continuously to "draw only what you can see" so that if you were at a loss for words, something could be explained and even more importantly, not misunderstood. Rather than fantasize, be real and draw it only if it is in front of you and if it's not there, put it there and by making the lines connect, we can vaguely get at something other than the world we know.

BOB DYLAN September, 1994.

Dylan's 'There' found in Neil Young's Lair

Bob Dylan's recording of "I'm Not There" that appears on the soundtrack to Todd Haynes' film sounds plenty different from the version that appears on "Basement Tapes" bootlegs. Thank Neil Young's fanaticism and pack rat mentality for that.
The newly unearthed version clearly has the Band backing him as opposed to the popular bootleg version, a mostly acoustic reading by Dylan with a bit of rhythmic thumping in the background.
"It's pretty much just a sketch," Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo said in an interview for a piece on the soundtrack. "The lyric is open ended. It's hard to tell if (the words) make any sense."  Sonic Youth recorded a version of the song that runs over the end credits.  
Soundtrack producers and Haynes were creating 5.1 mixes of songs and still using a bootleg copy of the tune when the suggestion arose that they find a better copy of the title track.
Joel Bernstein, a rock photographer who has been shooting Dylan and Young since the early '70s, was working with the team as an archivist and he suggested contacting Elliot Mazer. Mazer, who has produced a number of Young's albums, had worked with Dylan's manager in the '60s, Albert Grossman.
After Dylan's period of inactivity following his 1966 motorcycle accident, Grossman began to work on the publishing side for Dylan and started amassing a collection of tapes of songs that were not released over the next several years. Naturally, copies of the tapes were made; the Band's Garth Hudson even brought in a collection for the "I'm Not There" team to sift through.
Mazer, it turns out, had made a copy for his friend Young, who had tucked it away.
Randall Poster says his partner on the soundtrack, Jim Dunbar, "had to be Sam Spade, trying to make all these connections. What helped us get it quick was having the support of the Dylan camp."
What struck recording engineer Greg Calbi, who has worked extensively with Dylan, was the distinctiveness of the version in Young's vault.
"Every engineer who ever got a copy would put their stamp on it," Poster said, relaying Calbi's observation. "It was mutated over the years. We got the raw version."
Coincidentally, Young revisits his unreleased past with "Chrome Dreams II," which was issued last week;