Reviews

First, thank you, mr. Dylan. And if anyone has ever any more doubts  about
mr. Dylan's vocal capacity, tonight's show closing Ain't talking  was the
clearest and softest sung version imaginable - superb.

One gets the message: sugar baby, go on down the line... you've done 
without me for all these years, might as well keep going on...you want  to
make it  better, but you end up making it a thousand times worse...

But: you, too, were and are remembered always; just took a while to be 
reactivated. there  is only here and now.

Set list discussion is not my thing, but the show seemed to be in two 
halves. The first reflective, the second rocking, and closing with 
reflective, although Nettie Moore as a reflective interlude was also 
superb in the second half.

Sound was good: beautifully refined on the soft numbers (Mr. Kimball  and
Mr. Heron were wonderfully audible) and the rocking numbers just  rocked.
The organ was also often clear.

The Viennese were not to be confined to their seats after Hwy 61: all 
stormed the front, and there was nothing to be done. It seemed that 
everyone ON stage enjoyed it as much as the spectators - about 10.000 
fans.

A most fruitful event, given that there was a beautiful Irish girl of  23
who just came special to this event to see her first Dylan concert;  a
pregnant woman so radiant that it made the lights dim; and a  wonderful
seat neighbor from Columbia named Esperanza, here on an  atomic council
mission (!)- the gentelest soul met in a long, long  time, who just heard
about the concert today at lunchtime...

Great job of the band, especially on Beyond the Horizon, John Brown, 
Ain't talking, Nettie Moore, High Water, and on and on, and if i  could, i
would hear you every night.

thank you to all and good night.
sincerely Iris Seifert on European travels

Leonard Cohen, the famous Canadian Singer, in one of his songs sings the 
line: "Is this what you wanted, to live in a house that is haunted by the 
ghost of you and me?" It was this Song that crossed my mind last week, 
when we were on our way to the Bob Dylan concert.

What was to be expected from this concert? Should we expect the same 
old songs, that have made him famous and have become so invalueably 
dear for some of us, or do we concede to him a natural development and 
are ready, to accompany this development and hear the new and modern 
Dylan? Can we inflict on him singing these old songs, presumably performed 
a thousand times, with the same passion and truthfulness as then, songs, 
which have become part of the lives of innumerable people, with all their 
associated memories and dreams and expectations and transfigurations? Is
it this, what we want? To live with the shadows of the past?

My daughter had provided me with information on the songs he was usually 
presenting at the tour, so I already knew they were mainly new songs, but 
also some of the old ones, for which I actually wanted to attend the 
concert, and that, too, was the case in Vienna.

Although there weren't any of his slowly mellifluent, endlessly marvelous 
ballads, none of his phenomenally eternized songs like Blowing in the Wind, 
The Times They are a-Changing, Like A Rolling Stone, Shelter from the 
Storm, One too Many Mornings, oh dear - even the sound of those titles 
makes you sentimental - and though he gave the few old songs a new 
and fresh and modern touch, I won't complain.

The concert was, one could say, perfect. The musicians played impeccably, 
Bob's voice was exquisitely good and melodious, the cues were attuned, 
the clothes were cool (all musicians in a grey suit and grey hat, he 
himself in black trousers with red stripes on either side, black 
hat) - flawless on the whole, completely structured through and 
through, everything went like clockwork. Really professional, I'd 
wanna say - a thoroughly successful evening.
 
But:
Is it this, what we wanted?

Wolfgang Unterwurzacher