littlemaggie wrote:
I haven't seen any shows from this tour, and I won't be. The last show I saw - at the Albert Hall, with Dylan performing a similar set that mainly comprised a mixture of recent Dylan songs and crooned 'standards' - was incurably lifeless.
The dull plink-plock of Dylan's off-kilter piano playing doesn't help, of course: pretty much every song performed by Dylan at the piano exudes minor key miserabilism. No song ever gathers pace, ebbs and flows, or forces itself into my attention through its musical propulsion. Song after song just sits there, or rather lies there, somewhere in the distance; possibly alive but more probably dead; never gaining enough of my attention to persuade me to find out.
And when he steps away from the piano, when things should improve musically for his absence from that instrument and his increased attention to his singing, the deathly tone remains. These songs are so dead they are beyond resuscitation, and Dylan's throaty attempts at them only heighten the morbid atmosphere. The whole thing is so completely lifeless, so relentlessly joyless, so utterly depressing.
Is there any way back from this? Is this how Dylan intends to play out the remainder of his career? God, it's all so awful.
Thanks for this. That's 100% how I have experienced the shows in recent years. Every now and then the old spark returns (Mainz 2015 for example, when it was actually fun to guess what they would do in the second half) or Düsseldorf 2015, which for inexplicable reasons was fabulous despite no obvious changes.
Johanna Parker wrote:
No love, it does nothing for me anymore. You don't have to understand, friebnds still. Happy for anyone who still likes it. Wish they could explain why.
I feel the same way - and I also feel that none of the explanations from people who seemingly enjoy the shows don't work for me. I just assume that people who praise the shows may lack perspective and have never seen Dylan put on a really great show, with great songs (of his own!), great dynamics and lights! Real lights! Maybe even (some) banter. Or they might not have a lot of experience with live music outside of seeing Dylan and think it won't get better than this?
Like JP, I'm happy for anyone who pays increasingly more and still get their money's worth, but it honestly puzzles me how anyone could actually believe that Dylan and the band are killing it at these snoozefests.
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