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:

Olga

Just watched it – brilliant, all sung in a bluesy style, amazing!

Dw

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

Helen

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

Richard

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.

Cin

Pure genius!

Pete

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

Proof of why so many of us misunderstood the idea behind Bob’s new show… and all you Mr and Mrs Jones’s should apologise, cos you don’t know what’s going on … do you?

See pictures below Bob’s video … top mags were right to be wrong!

Now nobody has broken any laws here … but to borrow another song (not by His Royal Bobness), all you social media twit-teraties who have insulted me and so many others, read ’em and Veep!

Yes, many people – just like me – believed that on July 18^th we were going to be treated to a live-stream of a Bob Dylan concert. (AND BELOW WE PUBLISH THE REASONS WHY).

But back to the ‘concert’ – brilliant, we thought. Stunning we shouted. 80 years old and Bob’s taking modern technology by the throat and throttling it for his fans!

But he isn’t, is he?

No. He isn’t.

Well, that’s the perceived wisdom at the moment in the shadowy kingdom of Mr Dylan.

As far as anyone knows, it’s going to be a video recorded a few weeks ago – and you are being charged $25 a pop to watch it.

Forgive me, just as a bit of a meander, but, if a million people buy tickets there will $25million dollars to be divvy-ed up in whatever legal way it is to be shared. And I’m sure Bob’ll make a few quid too … good on him.

To meander a bit further though, what if two million or three million people put their hands in their pockets?

Well, everybody will be doing very well indeed for streaming a ‘old’ video won’t they!

Oh yes, they will.

However, my real dissatisfaction over this whole thing, is that’s it’s another of show of the arrogance of the scoffing keyboard warriors.

That’s what’s got up my nose.

If these people stood in a pub – or a bar – or even at a bus stop – sniggering at the people around them, diminishing their intelligence, snorting at what they perceive as naivety, they’d likely get a p*nch!

Well, this is my metaphorical p*nch to all you swaggering slobs of the hi-tech highway…

Yes, you were right – but a lot of people quite possibly a bit more able to understand the subtleties of copywriting and ‘dicky’ (that means not very well in English and has nothing to do with what you are thinking) content – created by design or accident – also misinterpreted what was being told to them.

So, Mr and Mrs Jones, you might have got it right, but you were also completely wrong and pompous and ignorant and insulting with it too.

So, just so you know what’s happening here, we’ve got some screen shots of leading publications that misunderstood what ‘what it is’ and some of the words that led to this confusion!

(Oh, by the way, the reason I put a * in the word p*nch is because the robots who run social media and allow pompous idiots to attack anybody they want to with vitriol and misspelt words, might consider the real word an inc*tem*nt to vi*l*nce!),

And it isn’t, it’s a metaphor.

VEEP boss is part of this quote … “
How the enigmatic Nobel Prize winner intends to perform his “Shadow Kingdom” livestream, his first broadcast performance since his “MTV Unplugged” special in 1994, is still anyone’s guess.”

Veep and Bob’s publicists have, one way or the other, mislead the public … and I believe it matters.

Yes, it is true that a stream can either be live or recorded but the answer here is blowing in the, well…

I am shocked – and I hope I am wrong!

I have loved his Royal Bob-ness for decades and been lucky enough to write about him for newspapers and magazines for just about as long.

And I have always trusted him as a true artist. A man not unimbued with guile and and the odd beer, a man with flights of fantasy about his parents, his youth and his background, but never-the-less a man with integrity and genius.

And then this happened – his people put out a promo clip of his upcoming streaming concert, Shadow Kingdom.

Yes! A promo!

And it’s him, I’m sure, in a concert hall on a relatively crowded stage, in front of an audience. He is singing a beautiful version of Watching the River Flow…

But Your Royal Bob-ness, we shouldn’t be watching anything flow from a concert that doesn’t happen ’til mid this month!

Yes it is true that a stream can either be live or recorded but the wording of this whole thing is misleading …

It was first rumoured last month – just after the announcement of the streaming show – that the concert won’t be a live stream but was “recorded in May at a small venue in Santa Monica.

I took the rumour with a grain of sand, of course.

But we have to admit, very little is known about his streaming concert on July 18th on Veep.

It is said by those more in the know than me that the Royal Bob of Dylan hasn’t played Watching the River Flow live since 2014.

Well, he has now hasn’t he! But when? And has he actually managed to time-travel to July 18^th and then come back again?

But the releases from Bob’s people say categorically ‘a streaming concert will take place next month, Dylan’s first performance since December 2019, when COVID curtailed his Never Ending Tour, which began in 1988. Billed as “Shadow Kingdom,” the show will be performed in an “intimate setting”.

And so many people, like me, thought they were going to their lounge for a live show! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!

We’ve tried to get hold of Bob’s people – Press office – and yep, they ain’t talkin’ – Covid blues again I guess!

Well correct me if I’m wrong Mr Jones, but if it’s not a live stream, then it’s a video! And an expensive one at that – $25 a pop!

You’ll have to supply your own seats, your own popcorn, your own viewing facilities and your own make believe that that’s Bob there on your telly, live.

And don’t forget that Bob had to be tacitly aware at least of the so-called pranks Scorsese stuffed into his seemingly brilliant but stupidly flawed Rolling Thunder Review.

1. Sharon Stone didn’t have an affair with Dylan when she was 19

2. Retired Politician Jack Tanner is actually a Robert Altman character

3. Filmmaker Stefan van Drop doesn’t exist

4. Jim Gianopulos was never a concert promoter

Why? Why! It didn’t enhance the film! It wasn’t funny! It was just stupid!

So, has anybody got any rational explanation for this latest he’s not there mystery? Or is Bob’s streaming concert taking place in another lifetime, one away from me and you?

I think I’ll just download a video…

#livestream ‘bobdylan #shadowkingdom #rollingthunder #scorcese

Well the future for me is already a thing of the past

His Royal Bobness is doing it again… embracing new technology when most people of his age are embracing a cup of Horlicks!

Tonight’s the night for his online concert on Veeps.

Called ‘Shadow Kingdom’ it will see Bob in an intimate ‘club-like’ setting and it’s only going to cost you 17 pounds! That’s 1980s UK prices and this time he’ll be in your lounge! Albeit on the telly.

It’s actually his first concert performance since December 2019, after his planned tours were cancelled due to the Covid It will also be Bob’s first performance since the release of ‘Rough And Rowdy Ways,’ which hit the Top Ten in 17 countries, and hit #1 on Billboard.

“It’s an incredible honour and a high point for us all at Veeps to have the opportunity to be working with Bob Dylan, and to be a part of what is sure to be a truly special and historic performance, not only as professionals, but as music fans too,” said Joel Madden, co-founder of Veeps.”

Tickets went on sale at 9:00AM PT on Wednesday 16 June at bobdylan.veeps.com.

Veeps is a direct-to-fan experiential platform, custom-built for artists, by artists. Founded in 2017 by Benji and Joel Madden, it is the music industry’s leading, premium live-streaming platform. Since then, Veeps has hosted hundreds of live-stream shows and events, in partnership with Live Nation, Veeps continues with a mission to power artists in the most critical early stages of their development, all the way through the biggest, most important moments of their careers.

#dylan #veep#newliveconcert

Loads of Dylan tales inside …. new links every week! Come inside and spend an hour by the fireside with the man of our centuries …

See full poem/lyric inside

BOB Dylan says that ‘everyday memories grow dimmer’… and somewhere in his great archive of scribblings, there is a short tome which, to all intents and purposes, seemed to be relegated to his long-forgotten back roads.

It is a short poem dedicated to the 1969 Isle of Wight festival. A jotting which, as far as we know, neither Bob nor anybody else had taken any interest in for close on fifty years.

But one thing most people do know is that the Isle of Wight wasn’t one of Bob’s most memorable hours. Some would say it was a part of his career many would like to forget.

Including him.

Not only was it his first real live performance since 1966, it was supposed to be an inspirational family holiday to the heart of Tennyson country, a midnight outing for his new crooning country voice and a public revaluing of his once incendiary, but now fizzling, career.

Sadly, very little went right … his son, Jesse, was taken ill on the cruise from the US and Dylan and his wife, Sara, were advised to get him to hospital, as soon as possible. And the 17^th century country manor house his family were staying at turned out to be ‘haunted’.

Maybe ther were skeletons out in the rain!

At the same time America was spooked because their wayward son had dumped them for a field in a farm in a place called Wooton. Bob had basically crapped on his own doorstep in Woodstock…

Raymond Foulk, of promoters Fiery Creations Ltd, said at the time: “The Americans are a bit upset at Dylan appearing in Britain and not in the States. We have already had many applications from America for tickets, and some people are chartering planes to fly over specially for the concert.”

Then there was apoplexy as it was rumoured that Dylan might appear at Hyde Park.

But on the night of his performance things just got worse. More than 100.000 people had crammed into the arena to see the troubled troubadour – and he turned up two hours late.

And far from being the wild bellowing Byron-esque poet of rock Dylan was a diminutive figure in a white suit (apparently because he thought he was going to the Isle of White). And he was humming a croon instead of coruscating the throng with his rasp of the desert and rattle of the mountains.

“Hello. Great to be here,” he said with a smile after his soft-shoe shuffle of an opener.

The performance ended shortly after midnight. Dylan had been on the stage for just an hour. After repeated cheering and whistling he returned to perform for another 10 minutes.

Then it was all over. Dylan was paid about £35,000. His set list had consisted of low-key understated performances of songs like She Belongs To Me, I Threw It All Away, Wild Mountain Thyme, Quinn The Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn), Minstrel Boy and Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35. To many it was a disastrous performance. But somehow it had made such an impression on Bob himself that he wrote a poem about it all …

It reads:

Echo of the North Country

Hard ‘n tuff old land

Worn by weather rock ‘n sand

like folks who live there

Mong the broken stone

the gravel ‘n the grime

growing all alone

sweet as Celandine

flower like the girl

who waits

for a lover gone f shure

Fabled beauty he relates

Sends back love

And nuthin’ more

Two years ago he sent the words to be read out at the Million Dollar Bash — the event hich marked the 50th anniversary of the festival and was heard exclusively for the first time on Saturday, August 31.

Ashley Hutchings read out the poem as his band, Dylancentric, played the intro to their version of ‘Girl from the North Country’. He also noted that both the song and the poem were inspired by Bob’s high school girlfriend Echo Helstrom.

Echo, the Duluth native known to Bob Dylan fans as likely the prime inspiration for the 1963 song “Girl from the North Country,” died just before the event at age 75. Helstrom grew up with Dylan — then known as Bobby Zimmerman — in Hibbing, The two had a high school romance that earned Helstrom musical shout-outs from Dylan when he was still a teenager.

Helstrom’s relationship with Dylan, and her likely influence on his iconic song, was revealed in 1971 when writer Toby Thompson published the book Positively Main Street, a chronicle of his pilgrimage to Hibbing to explore Dylan’s roots. He spent intimate time with Helstrom, who said she was confident the song was about her and not a Minneapolis girlfriend, given lyrical references like the repeated mention of a “borderline.”

There’s no question Dylan was much taken with Helstrom, escorting her to prom and writing in her yearbook, “Let me tell you that your beauty is second to none. Love to the most beautiful girl in school.” Dylan even mentioned Helstrom in his memoir Chronicles Vol. 1,  remembering that they’d listen to old Jimmie Rodgers 78s together.

Dylan and Helstrom were outsiders together, and a former owner of the Dylan-themed restaurant Zimmy’s told the Star Tribune that Helstrom relished the attention the high school sweethearts ultimately gained through music. “For her it was like sticking it in the eye of all the people in Hibbing who criticized them and were mean to them when they were kids.”

#bobdylan #dylan #he;strom #isleofwight #wooton #1969 #whitesuit #theband

Could this be Dylan’s lost show? The Hammersmith Odeon 2004?

We know that the Never Ending Tour hit Finsbury Park in London that year and His Royal Bobness played an almost completely oldies show. The set-list included  Down Along the Cove, Maggie’s Farm and It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue

And that year many said that it was all over for him too, after his magnificent return to critical and public acceptance with Time out of Mind.

The problem was old Bob had decided to re-establish his career using what is probably one of his most bizarre voices ever. It was coruscating, harsh and often sounded like nails scrapping a blackboard.

Personally, I loved the way he was performing vocally. It was yet another in the catalogue of Dylan’s voices.

I could identify the screeching of iron ore factories, the coldness, the hoarseness of the vultures in the barren lands, the voices of the old men on the stoops of a little Minnesota town. He was projecting his art with a voice parched by age and design.

But more than anything else he seemed to be living up to the accusation that he simply couldn’t sing. And in the concerts I saw at that time he appeared to want to prove it.

As he thumped away discordantly at his piano and croaked like a prehistoric bird circling above his audience – often tucked away to the side of his stage wherever it was – he was cold like iron, bound up in a musical experiment of alienation.

I loved it!

But 2004 isn’t as well chronicled as much of his career is. Perhaps it’s because of his vocals at the time…

Here a professional musician, with a pedigree going back decades, gives his impression of Dylan back then.

But he is also convinced that he saw him perform in 2004 at the Hammersmith Odeon. Or the Apollo.

So, did anybody else see Bob perform in either of those that year? And what did you think?

Has that show been indeed erased from the world’s digital memory? Or has Andrew Brel’s just grown dimmer with time?

Andrew was born in 1960 in Johannesburg to Greek parents. He grew up in the Apartheid years of South Africa before moving to England at the age of 24. After 29 years in London working as a musician, producer and author, Andrew moved to California and never looked back…

He writes: I learned music by listening to Bob, growing up in the 70s.

 Of course it was clear from the first album, the eponymously titled Bob Dylan in 1962, Mr. Z  was a remarkable singer even as the majority in my peer youth in South Africa rushed to explain he ‘couldn’t sing properly’.   

That first album with John Hammond was recorded in two sessions. Dylan with two mics, guitar and voice.

17 songs.

At the end Hammond asked if he wanted to redo any. “Can’t see myself singing the same song twice.” This remains a constant in Dylan’s recordings and may explain why the vocal tracks have dated so well. One take beginning to end. No cut and paste.

I never got to see Bob live in his peak years although I knew every album intimately. When I was a gigging musician I often played Dylan songs.

Then in 2004 I was invited to see him At the Hammersmith Odeon. How exciting. A favourite performer at a favourite venue.

The show began with Bob behind a keyboard – on one side of the stage – posing Little Richard style. Center stage was a red Stratocaster on a stand lit by a spot.

The first 20 minutes did not include one song.

Cacophonous loud noise is the musical summary.

I quickly concluded he was challenging the audience. Seeing whether the adoring packed house would notice if he just mumbled senseless word salad wavering in tone between a semitone sharp and flat with each phrase.

Deliberately.

All delivered against any recognizable meter. Jarring to the ear and the sensibilities. The shows tension built as the tuneless noise continued while the waiting hopeful looked at the red Stratocaster waiting for Bob to leave the keyboard pose and take up the guitar and start a song from his catalogue. To kick off the real show. This noise was just for fun. Surely.

Around the forty minute mark people started leaving.

The crowd was divided. Many applauded each sorry end to what I hesitate in calling a song in that it had no song like qualities, leaning instead towards Bob bashing out chords with no relation to each other on a Rhodes type keyboard, while the band played whatever thought came to mind within a limited set of opportunities determined by skill, or its absence.
By the hour mark perhaps half the room had emptied. A steady trail to the door looking confused and disappointed. The performer must have noticed, but did not waver in his commitment. “Are you having fun yet.”

I thought it was quite incredible.

That this truly great artist who could at any time have played any one of a hundred songs that would have given him the populist applause any lesser artist would die for elected instead to show that as a performer and artist, tonight he was going to try something different.  

“You know who I am, right?”

I especially liked his choice of drummer that night.

A player of limited skill at best who at one point simply ran out of beans with all the thrashing taking a two minute time out from his contribution to the cacophony in order to catch his breath.

Not that any of the other players seemed to notice.

There were no players on the stage to elevate the musicality with a solo of any merit. Just four guys bashing away independently. Bobs association with the best players of the era in his various bands was – for tonight at least – giving an opportunity to the unremarkable.

Bobs mumbling was mostly indistinct throughout but I remember making out the occasional phrase like “I’m just making this up. As I go along. It makes no difference.”
It was the only time I saw Bob live.

I left the Odeon that night blown away by how he had managed to reinvent himself in performance in a way I could not have foreseen.

I felt sorry for the sector of crowd who did not understand what they were witnessing. “He really can’t sing” I overheard in the pub afterwards.

The opportunity to be in the same room with the greatest singer songwriter of them all whose legacy needed no repeating that night. This show followed some 30 years of wearing out his voice on the world’s biggest stages.

I get why he wouldn’t want to do “Don’t think twice” with the new talking baritone his range was limited to. That was then. This was now. Just showing up was enough.

A great performer – one of the very best ever – with nothing left to prove.

#bobdylan #dylan #brel #hammersmith #finsbury #dylanlive #apollo #odeon #hibbing #minnesotta #ironore

It’s a year since George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis ‘night’ cop Derek Chauvin.

His death sparked global protests, words of shock and sadness from Bob Dylan and this dramatic picture from a young girl in Slovakia.

Now, Floyd’s name echoes across the world as a symbol of the fight for racial equality.

And police reform.

Sadly though, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act is stalled in the Senate, despite President Biden wanting the legislation passed as quickly as possible. The bill includes a national registry of police misconduct and a ban on racial and religious profiling by law enforcement.

Republicans oppose the bill, which has stalled in a Senate split 50-50 by party.

George Floyd died on May 25 last year after police officer Derek Chauvin handcuffed and kneeled on Floyd’s neck. He was 46 years old.

Chauvin was said to prefer working shifts which allowed him to stalk the streets in the dark.

Dylan said after the killing: “It sickened me no end to see George tortured to death like that. It was beyond ugly. Let’s hope that justice comes swift for the Floyd family and for the nation.”

In another heart-felt tribute this moving portrait of police victim George Floyd was sent to the preservation society by the family of Karin, aged 13, who lives in Stropkov, Slovakia.

Karin was watching TV when a news broadcast high-lighted what had happened to Floyd. “It made her very sad,” a family member said.

”She was thinking about this guy for a few days and wanted to do something so people don’t forget about him.

“She is angry about situation in USA and about racism. She is very young, but understands so much.”

#bobdylan #georgefloyd #senate #Derek Chauvin

Watch the video at the end of this article…. tell us what you think!

A few years ago I worked in radio and had a couple of music shows. In each one I had a joke section where, to great applause, I would introduce: “THE WOOOOORLDDD’S WORSSSST SSSSSINNGERRRR!”

Then we’d play a Bob Dylan song to prove just what a great singer he is! Songs like the live version of When He Returns, Lay Lady Lay, Saro, Drunken Ira Haze, It’s Not Dark Yet, Roll on John… Stay with Me etc etc etc.

Surely, isn’t it time people stopped saying ‘I think he’s a great song writer – but he can’t sing can he!”

Of course he can! He is probably one of the world’s greatest singers! Certainly one of the top three vocal stylists up there with Elvis and Frank!

There is barely a rock singer today who hasn’t been influenced by his phrasing.

Yes Bob Dylan is an unusual singer – in fact forget unusual! There is nobody else like him!

#bobdylan #birthday #japan #orchestra

Scroll down for a series of celebratory stories…

Yep, happy 80^th to Bob, one of the few true geniuses to set the world on fire over two centuries.

In so many ways he’s been a road map through my own piling-up decades … a guide to lifestyle, success, failure, ambitions, creativity, hopes and dreams.

As Bob played his heart out for us all – the soundtrack to our living – we went on to carve careers for ourselves and hunt mammon and security.

But so did he.

And while we got older and made more mistakes, so did he. We got divorced. So did he – the most expensive in America at the time, it cost him £2m.

We may have had our dalliances with drink or drugs or both, so did he. Our careers might have languished in the doldrums.

Well, so did his.

But 60 years on Dylan maintains the true romance of artistry. And while his creativity has allowed him to span two centuries, ours rarely spans more than a few seconds of passing thought.

Thank you Bob. Have a good one!

Over the years I have been lucky enough to review Bob’s work for major newspapers and magazines and I have written about him extensively. It’s been one of the best parts of my writerly career. I met him once too … but that’s another story for another time.

Here are the links to some of the stories I’ve been lucky enough to write about one of the few geniuses who has lasted across one century and another.

CLICK THE PICTURES OR LINKS BELOW TO SEE THE STORIES … HOPE YOU LIKE THEM!

#bobdylan #birthday