The New York Sun has a good piece today on the Tharp/Dylan musical: Knockin’ on Broadway’s Door. It opens officially in two days. I don’t expect to see it until the second week of November — all going well …
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There’s a whole lot of Dylan live stuff that’s been added and is being added to YouTube. Almost too much to process — you just have to browse through it as you have time. Most of it is obviously in the nature of videos made by hand-held cameras toted by fans, trying to get a view of the stage around people’s heads. Still, the sound is usually quite good and the great performances can come through. I like the one below: Bob singing Song To Woody in Cedar Rapids in the year 2000. As everyone would know, that song was on his debut album in 1962. The way it resonates forty years later is both eerie and poignant. And it’s beautifully played.

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Oh, and what the heck, if you click here you can see another version of Dylan singing the same song ten years earlier, in 1990. It’s an interesting point of comparison. In 1990 Dylan and his band seemed to be bashing through his songs; perhaps aggressively deconstructing them. Song To Woody is a gentle tune by its nature, and this performance of it isn’t too wild, but compared to the treatment it got in 2000, you can’t but notice how rushed it seems.

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