Review by S.K. Nielsen
Bob Dylan took the torch as blue contemporary artist back in 1963 fifty years ago.
No paper or critic has yet mentioned the fact during his European tour although
Dylan right now plays the piano so blue that some critics see it as a fault. No it is
not. The mighty master of mindblowin' blues might not always know the meanings
of his poems; but he certainly knows his song well before he starts singing.
As eyewitness in audience with his loving audience last night in Copenhagen, I'll
try to give my humble credit and thanks.
What an offer, what a life Bob Dylan and his never ending, caring band has to give
and live! Leavin' Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen and Germany next, hidden in a big,
black Austrian bus just seconds after leavin' the answer blowin' in the wind with
us, the audience standing, stamping our feet, clapping our hands, yelling out loud.
Yet still, it is clear, why he just have to continue. 'Cause who is out there to take
his tortuous torch? Dylan took it from Pete Seeger 50 years ago - and thank God,
Pete is still with us also - but who is here to take Bob's torch? No one!
Ok, John Mayer played at another gig in Copenhagen last night too, drawing a great
crowd - bad coincidence for a lover of blue. But where is the contemporary poet
with lyric that blows our blues away, if not for you, and you know it's true?
He or she is not there yet. That is why Dylan has to keep going, listening to us, his
lovin' audience who can but only cry out loud with the crier in Copenhagen: "We
love you!" Yes we do. And we love lovin' you always, all ways. Love Sick is our
name. Long and wasted years our song - you know what it is all about.
Joni Mitchell may envy the character Bob created. She certainly deserves much
credit and is loved too. But the difference, that Joan Baez spotted early on,
between the master joker & thief and the rest, lies in the non-understandable
truth, the collective self written lyrics, that not even the writer fully comprehends -
words walked beside fountains of nearly equally non-understandable forcefully, blue
notes. Fifty years, ladies and gentlemen!
Tangled up in blue was never amplified so blue, as Dylan demanded it done from
his piano this time around. The wind howlin' all along the Watchtower were never
hammered out more brutally blue, than Dylan did it yesterday just before the
master joker, the bard of bards ended his play with a no-nonsense, anniversary
edition of Blowin' in the Wind, that for who knows how many roads, times and
deaths made it impossible for us, his lovin' audience in audience, to sing along.
This is not our fate.
Southerly, southerly now Dylan's blue wind blows his band and bus on their
European tour before ending up westward bound in the Royal Albert Hall, where
princes kept their view. The Hall that Dylan left almost fifty years ago wondering
why the booing audience ever bought their tickets.
You are a walking antique, Dylan wrote then. And sang in Copenhagen yesterday.
Thank You So Much!
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