Review provided by Eduardo Bueno Bob Dylan played a very nice concert tonight in Porto Alegre, in a small club (for 1,800 people, but probably there weren't no more than 1,500 there -- it was sold out anyway. The real good thing about it is that the place -- famous for being awfully full in other historic nights, as Deep Purple, last year : 2.200 people in a tinny room --, happilly was "breathtable"and not totally packed, if you know what I mean.... So everybody could enjoy. And specially Bob, who was in really good mood, smiled few times, dance his strange dance and JUST DID IT playing the guitar several times during the show. The guys in front of the stage could be as close as two feet from the man. And he LOOKED to everybody right in the eye! That was one of the best things about this unique Porto Alegre night. Bob's mood. The show was scheduled to start at 10 PM. But in Brasil EVERYTHING usually starts at least an hour later. In Opinião Club (the place that held the show) many concerts often start TWO hours in delay. So it was really a surprise when Dylan - with the same silver jacket and black pants, with silver details along the legs, and the black boots of the Grammy night-- went on the stage, with his touring band, five minutes BEFORE 10 PM. Man, really strange (and good, and nice) to the braziliam crowd. He opened with a fair version of "To Be Alone With You". Not wonderful, but quite allright. It was followed by a regular version of "I Want You". The words were difficult to understand and you feel as if Dylan and the band were still warming up. Well, they where: right after that, they dived into a torrid version of 'Cold Irons Bound' proving that, for the second time in it's history the Grammy, did it right (The first was when they gave the award for "Gotta Serve Somebody", eh,eh, maybey I'm kidding...). Anyway, the live version was much better than the one in the record (it means, the one which received the prize...). The show could start to go right to the top right then. But the 'fourth' song was, well, "Positively 4th Street". In the beggining, something was missing. it sounded like "I Want You", in a weird kind of way. But then, in the second half, things started to go to the right places. Then, the last verse -- , you know, THAT ONE, "Yes, I wish for just one time you could stand inside etc..." -- was sung in a wonderfull way, and sounded as full of irony and of a strange kind of despair as it should. Then, 'Sylvio". It was my first live "Sylvio "ever, and I have to confess that I could never guessed how HOT and cool, and rocking and rolling that song could be. It was the first real first class moment of the show (in spite of "Irons Bound" have beeing so good). The audience went crazy, Bob and the band kept the rhythm for more than seven minutes. By the end of it, Dylan did the LEAD guitar, dance in his strange way and faced the audience in the eyes for a long time. I don't really know the name of the first acoustic song of the night. It wasn't Bob's. It was a cover, full of ancient echoes of the Appalaches, Dylan sounding like old man of the mountains. I guess the refrain said something like "I live my life in sorrow... cause ( well I don't know, maybe "my love ones are dead" or something like that) It also said something about a willow tree ( but it was NOT the song recorded in "Good As I Been To You"). I hope you can guess which song this one is, Bill. You or somebody else. Sorry about that, folks. The second acoustic song was "Don't Think Twice, It's Allright". Well, it started as if the band were playng in a luncheon on the side of a dusty backroad. At the beggining of the song, you could almost hear the flies flying over half empty tables shared by just-splited lovers of this imaginary out of place restaurant of the mind. It was alright, but, anyway, there was something missing both in the way Bob was singing as in the way the band was playing. But by the begining of the second half of the song, thou, everything was fixed, and the song just did justice to itself, in inspite of the "a little too gay"country sound of this arrangment . Not the best version ever, but a quite good one in the end. The third and last acoustic song of this part of the show was "Tangled Up in Blue". I particullary didn't falled in love with this Porto Alegre version. But something definitly happened with Bob since the moment he started to play it. He looked as if he was feeling REALLLY GOOD. He looked right into the eyes of several people during all the song. He was almost smilling, he was daincing, he was obviously in love if his own song, THIS particular song. I already heard many versions of this wonderful song (among everybody's TEN BOB'S FAVOURITES, no?) that sounded much better TO ME. But I never saw or heard (and than imagine how he was looking while singing) I never heard or saw HIM enjoying this song as much as he did in Porto Alegre. He sang it word by word (a very "straight" version of the lyrics, no changes, the "regular"lyrircs from "Blood on the tracks", nothing like the Bootleg Series version or "The Real Live" version). The old fans and the (several) ones who realized which song it was, they went out of theirs minds. It was a very nice moment. (I guess was I the only one who tought it could be ...ok, ok, "a little" better. Anyway, I guess Paul Willians would agree with me in this speciffic opinion, if he were here). Then, "Memphis Blues Again", a funny, light, fast version. You could see that Bob was still under the spell that caugh him during "Tangled". He was ... young, and bright during the whole song. The crowd felt it and the sheers didn't stoped while he was stucked inside Mobile... The tenth song was a marvelous version of "This Wheels of Fire", Not so much for the singing in the beggining of if. Bob sounded a little off time and didn't did it really well, specially during the first refrain - "this wheels shall explode". The band and the music was wonderful since the very beggining. But, amazeling enough, the band managed it to make it even better each second. Then Bob "found"his time and started to s-p-e-ak de words in THAT way that you know. And then, started to PLAY THE GUITAR, man, but REALLY play. All of a sudden, there we are in Big Pink, it's the summer of 67, and Opininao becames the old good basement. I kept on wondering why he didnt sung it THAT SAME WAY in Woodstock/94, since the song was born there.... "Wheels" lasted for more than 10 minutes ( almost 12, probably 11) and those wheels REALLY burned down the road. Spinning speed music. Greil Marcus should be there to listen to it, and so the late John Baldie. Well, I did my best, thinking about them. And, since the wheels were really burning all that asphalt, there we drove on a SPETACULAR version of "Highway 61 that rocked the house and put everybody to dance (you know, brasilians really DO DANCE, even rock crowds, that hated samba). Bob really acted in a funny, enjoyable way, playing, and bending his knees by half way, and bitting his tongue, and looking straith to the audience, walking from the right side of the small stage (no more, probably less than 35 feet wide) to the left side. The band went crazy with him, they tried to look his fingers, but he kepping moving, Tony Garnier pulsing his bass madly, and the drums making it sound like pure dinamite. Wow, a trully great performance! Then, the band and the old guy left for I probably less than 5 minutes. They came back really soon and got into a acoustic, touching, torching version of "It Aint' me, Baby". The lyrics were wrong, at least for this time: It WAS HIM that WE WERE LOOKING FOR. And he showed up. He did'nt act naughtly, as he does so many times. He gave what the crownd want and even "allowed" the people to sing along with him the "no, no, no"part (which sometimes he sings in such a way that you just can't follow him, as he did in Woodstock/94). Then, the peak of the night, at least to me. "Love Sick" in a spooky, dense, tense, deep, bluesy, smoked, version. Wow. It was, I swear, better than the Grammy version (in spite of the fact of that one being SO good, as e\we saw on TV). It was a long, sometimes slower other times vigourous and faster, version of a new Dylan's masterpiece. Had enough? No? So take this full of swing and "young" happiness version of "Rainny Day Women". Well, everybody must get stoned. Several of us were - with or whitout it, since the music was enough to make us fly. 23 minutes past 11, after 14 songs and 1h23min of showtime, the guy and the band just left. In a few days from now, they will be in Rio de Janeiro and then in Sao Paulo (800 milles north of Porto Alegre), playing with the Rolling Stones -- again. But then, it will be in two giant stadiums, not in a small nice place were you can SEE the guy (and, much more important than this, at least this nite, HE can see that the audience has a face and, sometimes, all that he sees are not just dark eyes). So, everybody went home happy after being stoned by blastering music and torch tough songs and nobody gave a fuck about the fact that Porto Alegre - unlike Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo and Rio - won't see Dylan with the Stones. EDUARDO BUENO, Porto Alegre, Brasil
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