#! rnews 4141 Path: news.demon.co.uk!dispatch.news.demon.net!demon!feed1.news.erols.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!paladin.american.edu!auvm!AOL.COM!TIMHRK Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU Newsgroups: rec.music.dylan Message-ID: <970503204329_-1299754593@emout08.mail.aol.com> Date: Sat, 3 May 1997 20:43:30 -0400 Sender: The Bob Dylan Discussion List From: TIMHRK@AOL.COM Subject: SUPPER CLUB REVIEW Lines: 63 Xref: demon rec.music.dylan:55914 November 19, 1993 Pop Review: Dylan Displays His Staying Power By JON PARELES n a whim backed by logistical muscle, Bob Dylan slipped into New York City this week for four shows in two nights at the Supper Club in Manhattan. The tickets were free to fans who heard a radio announcement and braved long lines; the overjoyed audience became extras as the shows were filmed for purposes yet to be decided. At Wednesday's late show, the final one, Mr. Dylan strolled on stage with his band, took off his cowboy hat and picked up his guitar. And for a little more than an hour, he performed with a fire, tenderness, playfulness and ornery charm that have surfaced only fitfully in recent years; he didn't hold back his smiles. For those who have heard him mumbling his best songs or reducing their melodies to one note, the concert was a welcome reminder that one of America's greatest musical minds is nowhere near retirement. Mr. Dylan has just released "World Gone Wrong" (Columbia), his second recent album of traditional songs performed solo. The set on Wednesday included songs from both albums, as well as selected older songs like "Queen Jane Approximately" and "Lay Lady Lay." They were all reshaped by Mr. Dylan and a limber four-man band that was part country, part folk-rock. And Mr. Dylan not only sang with careful attention to every phrase, spontaneously transforming every line, but also played plenty of acoustic lead guitar. Mr. Dylan's recent solo albums bring him back to the kinds of songs that first inspired him: rural blues and ballads that commemorate ordinary people with resonant but plain-spoken poetry. They're songs about love, death, war, poverty, desolation and faith, and they seem to have recharged Mr. Dylan. He sings like his folk sources, disdainful of well-tempered tunings, full of breaks and rasps, at once stylized and natural; a true American syncretist, he has pulled together blues and country and gospel styles to sound both deeply rooted and utterly individual. And on Wednesday night, he made all of his idiosyncrasies say something. A low, scratchy voice brought bleak resignation to "Delia"; talk-sung verses gave "Tight Connection to My Heart" the ease of conversation. "Queen Jane Approximately" moved from humble but knowing understatement to dramatic, octave-plus leaps. The oracular pronouncements of "Ring Them Bells" (from the 1989 album "Oh Mercy") had an unswerving confidence; the down-but-not-out come-ons of "Ragged and Dirty," the first song, were sly and jaunty. The band -- dressed in identical double-breasted suits with burgundy shirts -- gave each song a cheerful, unobtrusive lift. "Jack-a-Roe," a modal ballad from "World Gone Wrong," had an intricately plinking arrangement, including a banjo, that recalled Pentangle; "Weeping Willow," a song Mr. Dylan has not recorded, was a finger-picked country-blues. Bucky Baxter, on steel guitar and pedal steel guitar, traded pealing solos with Mr. Dylan's spunky acoustic guitar leads, which were part melody, part riff. Mr. Dylan's song choices moved from earthly love and its complications to a sense of redemption, from "Lay Lady Lay" to "Forever Young" and a crowning "I Shall Be Released." "Forever Young" was something like a benediction to a crowd whose ages ranged from the 20's to, apparently, the 50's; "I Shall Be Released" was forthright and determined. But Mr. Dylan didn't treat the songs with any sort of muted reverence; he rasped, he syncopated, he moved from defiance to gentleness. His improvisations remade his own songs and the traditions they came from, helping his audience to rediscover them one more time.