Precious memories as T Bone marks Bob’s 60s NY town hall concert

The legendary Town Hall in New York is the venue of another tribute by T Bone Burnett to Bob Dylan.

The Oscar and Grammy-winning songwriter and producer, was presenting a concert at the hall to mark the 60 years since Bob first appeared there.

Burnett’s relationship with Dylan doesn’t go back that far, only to the 1970s, when he performed as a guitarist on Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue tour.

Burnett said: “Town Hall has been the location of many fateful moments, and I’m grateful for the invitation to celebrate one of those historic evenings on the 60th anniversary of Bob Dylan’s first concert there.

“He sang 24 songs that night, all of which have been woven into the fabric of our culture. We are going to play a few of those songs, and we are also going to celebrate the sixty years of songs that have followed that night

“As the Town Hall reflects on its role in New York City and the world, we are turning to the great artists and movements that have shaped who we’ve become,” said the Town Hall’s artistic director Melay Araya.

“There’s no one more befitting of celebration than Bob Dylan, whose lyrics have carried us through personal and social tragedies and transformation repeatedly over the last six decades. We can think of no one better to partner with than Dylan’s close collaborator and friend of our hall: the legendary artist T Bone Burnett.”

The Town Hall partnered with the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on the concert, which is the center’s first public event.

A group fighting for the 19th Amendment built the Town Hall as a meeting space to educate people on the top issues of the day. During its construction, the 19th Amendment was passed; the Town Hall opened on January 12, 1921.

THIS IS NOT the first time Burnett has gone back to Dylan’s future … A state-of-the-art recording of Dylan’s Blowin’ In The Wind has been snapped up for almost £1.5 million.

The disc with a difference is the first new studio recording of the song since Dylan wrote it in 1962.

It was sold by Christie’s in London.

The sale exceeded the original price estimate which was set as low as £600,000.

It actually sold for £1,482,000.

T Bone Burnett, Bob’s long-time friend and collaborator, made the disc in March 2021and finally went up as part of Christie’s Exceptional Sale during its Classic Week.

Before the sale Burnett said: “Not only is an Ionic Original the equivalent of a painting, it is a painting. It is lacquer painted onto an aluminium disc, with a spiral etched into it by music. This painting, however, has the additional quality of containing that music, which can be heard by putting a stylus into the spiral and spinning it.”

After the sale he said: “I trust and hope it will mean as much to whomever acquired it today at Christie’s Exceptional Sale as it does to all of us who made it, and that they will consider it and care for it as a painting or any other singular work of art.”

Peter Klarnet, Christie’s senior specialist in Americana, books and manuscripts, said: “We are so pleased with the excellent result this evening for the ‘Ionic Original’ disc of Bob Dylan’s first new studio recording of ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ since 1962.

“To work with such an incredibly important and groundbreaking advance in analogue playback technology is a tremendous honour.

“We are excited that this is just the beginning for this amazing new opportunity for recording artists to work with T Bone and NeoFidelity to reset the value of music.”

This isn’t Burnett’s first foray into audio formats. Back in 2008 he developed Code, a high-fidelity audio technology intended to produce discs with sound quality comparable to studio masters.

Code discs could be played back on any DVD drive. We don’t hear much about Code now, so fingers crossed.

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