Bob Dylan And The Band / 69 - 70

Sorry, this certainly doesn't earn its five stars on the strength of the musical quantity or quality we get from Bob. I give it five stars because it is an historic Dylan document that really fills a rather large hole in his musical timeline. The thing is, sure, he's had a few extra hours of sleep the night before this show compared to the '66 tour, and he doesn't look quite so near the edge (ledge?), but this is still Bob. And I am not merely referring to the fact that it is the same human being. Look closely at the mannerisms on stage at IOW. Especially when he cups his hands around the mic on Highway 61, this is the same guy - still reflecting as accurately as he knows how, through his music, exactly where he is at that moment. Sure the music is not as edgy, propulsive, cohesive, as when these men set up onstage three years ago - but to expect it to have been given the different circumstances would be silly. Think of the contast between Bob walking through the airport with his entourage in Don't Look Back vs the news reel of him escorting his pregnant wife down that same walkway this go round. Nuff said.

On a side note it is interesting to watch how much farther the band sail as a unit on the subsequent 1970 songs when they are a single democratic entity as compared to 1969 when they were there primarily to back the man who showed up for one last encore to tip his hat to the lost legions of the '60's whom he had led out past Desolation Row in search of those Visions of Johanna...

Thanks for your generosity Marc.

Don't be fooled by the rating, I'd have given this 5* even if the cameraman had used a beer bottle for a lens. But no, it's a bit better than that, though not the film I was hoping for/expecting.
We've been teased these last 30 odd years with the snippets released on the couple of newsreel shots, the "Made in Sweden" one even shows a second camera filming it. But surprise, this is a pro-shot from a third camera on the other side of the stage, still B&W and a bit dodgy sound, but if you ignore the less than perfect picture(a fair bit less) absolutely essential.
Essential, maybe more from the date/context rather than the performance. It's never been of my favourite Bob sets. My cousin gave a tape copy of Led Zeppelin III just right after it came out. My first L.Zep. But his LP had a scratch on side 2, Immigrant Song was badly shortened; "I come from the land of ice & snow, where the midnight sszzzzzzzuuuummmm", and out to the end.
I've never been able to listen to that track since without feeling that somethings 'wrong', it's too long, too many words...
Maybe Bob's IOW is like that, it was one of my early boots on tape, a dull, whiney sounding performance, and though I've collected countless upgrades since, that first introduction still sits there in the back of my mind, colours my perception of the concert. This video does sorta redress the balance a bit, seeing it maybe Bob wasn't as bored/going through the motions as I'd always assumed. well OK, "I pity the poor immigrant" is still dire, but the other cuts are not too bad at all.
The fillers ? The J. Cash show is is excellent quality, but we've seen it all many many times before, you'll soon hit the Skip button.
The Band at the Syria Mosque, a nice Pro-shot, but I suppose it's down to whether you like Band or not. I don't, they do nothing for me. Doubt if I'd have any of their stuff if it wasn't for the Bob connection. In a sense like the G.D. not 'bad' but just leave me cold. (I can hear the Lynch-mob gathering now, maybe if I form the half doz. G.D. albums I do possess in the shape of a cross.....)
If I do survive the night, let's hope I don't have to wait another 30 odd years for the rest of this or the other Pro-Shot IOW films to surface. Must be out there somewhere.

D673 OH, THE SUMMERTIME ...

The summer of '69. Two Americans set footprints - and a Stars and Stripes - on the moon and the whole wide world is watching. Then half a million others descend on Woodstock, New York state, drawn by Baez, Sly Stone, Hendrix and The Who – or maybe just that intuitive sixth sense that whispers "event". But though the gig, probably not coincidentally, takes place right in Bob's back yard, and though The Band, too, are on the bill, the Main Man himself declines to appear. Instead, he and Sara cross the water – indeed, twice, if you count the Solent – so Bob can play before a relatively modest two hundred thousand at the 1969 Isle of Wight Pop Festival. He'd last played in the UK three years before, signing off with a snarling, on-the-edge Rolling Stone that apparently (see Eat The Document or No Direction Home) not everybody liked. 39 months and a black night crash on and here he is singing it again - the same song, except it isn't, by the same guy, except he isn't. For gone are the corkscrew curls and gaunt wasted beauty of "the hippest person in the universe" (Michael Gray) and gone is the seething, maelstrom music of that very other time. In its place, though fronting essentially the same group of players, a folksy, white-suited Nashville Skyline Bob delivers pap – George Hamilton IV Sings Dylan, you know the kind of thing – you'd generally run a mile, maybe more, to avoid. Or so it seemed at the time. Four songs from this set have long been officially available on Self Portrait and if LARS '66 wasn't everyone's cup of meat, the '69 shocker it morphed into goes only to prove that, though some of the people can be part right all of the time, when you're a Dylan fan, things are never quite that simple...


Great to be here! Sure is!

D knocked off seventeen numbers in under an hour this August night, including a lovely acoustic Wild Mountain Thyme and an interesting It Ain't Me, Babe, both sadly absent from D673. Neither do any of the Self Portrait cuts significantly feature. But we do get to see four complete other songs - a mellow I Threw It All Away, a spunky H61, then cacophanous versions of Mornings and Immigrant that with good audio would have come across no worse than shrill but, dogged as here by increasingly assertive gremlins, make instead decidedly uneasy listening. These four songs together run just thirteen brief minutes with, tagged on behind, an eighteen second one-line fragment of Minstrel Boy to close. The source film is not the high quality colour one from which the BBC and others have previously drawn handsome silent snippets - that camera was stage right whilst this is left and not entirely steady (though not bad). It's of note that the songs we see were not consecutively performed but lifted from three separate places in what we can only hope is a complete, continuous film. I'd like to say that the four minutes of contemporary newsreel footage – mostly black and white, dated and indelibly of its time – is more than filler, but... Arguably the most arresting sequence here is the 45 seconds of pro-shot silent film that introduces the menu page.



Isle of Wight '69 has always been an important chapter in the long and fascinating Saga Of Bob – a saga, happily, still being written - and this DVD allows us a fleeting glimpse back (that's 37 years back) into the how, what and why of the bygone past. When you look back further still to '66, or a few years on to '75, this late sixties/early seventies interlude looks ever more strangely improbable, though a necessity, perhaps - a restoration - for all that. As for this billet-doux, though tantalising and frustrating in equal measure, still the partial, teasing peek it grants is more than many of us hoped or expected ever to get, thus for its surprise emergence we must be thankful. Musically bland and crude by turns but historically significant beyond a doubt, it's served up in off-pristine but still impressively good quality (video better than audio) with bonus side-dishes (see top of page) old and new. But half a missing link? (Less than a quarter, in fact.) Oh for the elusive remainder! Oh for that Wild Mountain Thyme!

THANKS (as ever) Black Cat
STARS Three