We sheltered from the storm as Bob stepped out of the Covid shadows to regain his kingdom
We missed the show! But thanks to everybody who chipped in to tell us how it went!
It took a world pandemic to halt Bob Dylan’s Never Ending Tour. A greasy little spiky bug brought one of the music world’s greatest endeavours to its knees after 33 years.
It began in a pavilion in Concord, California, and went on round the world like a heady dose of blues, rock, country, folk, bluegrass, spiritual and Sinatra-style crooning for 3,066 concerts.
And in 2020 coming up 80 he was all set to fulfil dates in Japan, North American, and Europe.
Then Dylan was off the road.
And so, like ancient troupers, the travelling showmen, the bards and the itinerant actors, he found a way of keeping keeping on.
Once he’d plugged in to electricity – now he plugged in to the cyber world and went global again within a year.
He embraced new technology when people of his age end up embracing a zimmer frame…
Called ‘Shadow Kingdom’ it saw Bob in an intimate ‘club-like’ setting in his first concert performance since December 2019, his first performance since the release of ‘Rough And Rowdy Ways,’ which hit the Top Ten in 17 countries, and hit #1 on Billboard.
So, what was it like?
Well, as a music critic on some of the UK’s top titles and a radio host, I missed it because we got caught in one on Central Europe’s new and scary weather cycles… we had to take shelter from a storm in the High Tatras Mountains.
And by time we finally made it home beneath midnight’s broken toll and majestic bells of bolts struck shadows … the most anticipated concert in our Covid world was over.
So, we asked people on this site to be our reviewers and this is what they had to say:
Just watched it – brilliant, all sung in a bluesy style, amazing!
I loved the selection of materials he chose, the background setting, the audience and smoke filled room. The clock which was broken at 10.12, crooked window shades, bar tables. The two gals at his shoulders with “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” were perfectly poised. All of it was stellar
I really enjoyed the concert I really did however it was advertised as a live stream that was not a live stream that was a video but I love my Dylan and I enjoyed it anyhow a bit disappointed but.
Patricia
Love everything Bob Dylan is involved in
Fun. Lovely sound. Nice to have no drums. Some impressive arrangements. Not much melodic singing? He coulda released excellent recent rewrites of GSS, STOF. Can’t wait to get it on my Walkman.
Pure genius!
The stream was very bad in Dublin on my desktop and we have FO cable
Former newspaper man Geoff Martin, from London said: “Shadow Kingdom is (ironically) a more illuminating and thought-provoking document than footage of a ‘live’ concert could ever be.
“And probably a much more interesting artistic concept for Dylan, who has already given us more ‘live’ performances than he would care to count.”
The Independent newspaper said this: Dylan’s first broadcast performance since 1994,” saw him take a selection of early career deep-cuts back to a monochrome rum shack in 1940s Alabama, backed by a masked, melancholy bluegrass band and watched by tables of disinterested cowboys and soul girls.
And the Big Issue said: “The songs were spectacular, restored and revitalised with the Dylan on display was at the top of his game.”
So, anyway, we missed the Shadow Kingdom, but we’ll catch it later. In the meantime, thank you everybody for taking the trouble to tell us what it was like.
#shadowkingdom #bobdylan #streaming #neverendingtour #veep #brilliant