Ever since I've been interested in Dylan (and that's a long, long time), people have commented that they can't understand the words or that he can't sing - or both - but especially that he can't sing. It comes with the territory now. I know there are singers who are pitch perfect, who hit every note spot on and enunciate the words clearly but that's not necessarily what I look for. They have to be able to put over the song, to transcend what I might call the mechanics of performance. Opera buffs will tell you that, in the purest of senses, Maria Callas was not that good a singer but she invested the character she was portraying with believability, projected the emotion the song demanded and she commanded the stage and that venue for the time you were there. I'm not opera buff at all, so can't judge, but that's what I've heard tell.
At the same time, I have attended Dylan shows that I have thoroughly enjoyed (both its low points and its high points) but, when I've heard a recording afterwards, I find it hard to accept that I could have enjoyed any of it, that I could have enjoyed being there so much. There is both an objective level and a subjective level to this.
And, over the years, I have been fortunate to attend some Dylan performances acknowledged to be among his best in the last 20 years. I can point to performances, both live and in the studio, that really took my breath away but ....
.... putting all that aside, there is no doubt that, in recent years, Dylan's voice has suffered significantly. People who have attended recent shows say that, on the whole, it's been a turn for the better. I don't know and I'll wait until I attend the Bournemouth show before I pass judgement.
As for MK, I've responded well to the recent concerts - with both slower and up tempo numbers, briefer solos, the addition of the fiddles, the citterns and the uilleann pipes and the generally more relaxed feel to the concerts. I wish MK would mix things up a bit more, that the performances were a bit less predictable and that he wouldn't use the same comments and jokes night after night - in short, a bit more spontaneity wouldn't go amiss. And I would like to hear even more radical rearrangements of some of the songs and I am referring to some of the old war horses in this respect. Sometimes, it seems that MK feels he must give his audience things in the show akin to the old DS style or, perhaps he thinks, he'll lose his audience base. Yes, MK has moved on from his past and I respect that but he could try to find something different and something more within his old songs and try to bring those elements out. If he is half the performer I know him to be, he will take his audience along with him, with little difficulty, and he will respond well to the challenges this approach presents. Leave the DS stuff to The Straits and move on.
MK fans will be familiar with his contribution to Dylan's SLOW TRAIN COMING album. So often in the music press and in the media generally, we hear about the huge change that Dylan wrought with his "electric" performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. Less often mentioned are Dylan's concerts in the year or so after the release of SLOW TRAIN COMING. He played concerts without a single song from his past, none of his well-known songs, not a single one. He only performed songs from SLOW TRAIN COMING and from the forthcoming SAVED album. He did so despite a sometimes hostile reaction from some in the audience, despite the poor reviews and despite some people apparently walking out of his shows (probably a bit overplayed in the press). Sometimes, a performer like Dylan (and like Knopfler) simply has to step out a little and, as the now all-too-familiar phrase goes, move out of their comfort zone. Is Knopfler really challenging himself now?
A FINAL NOTE: When Dylan played in London in 1978 (before SLOW TRAIN COMING), he had a new arrangement of "Blowin' In The Wind" of which I wrote that it was clearly a heavenly wind blowing now. I am not pretending that I could predict the way he was moving but it wasn't a complete surprise.
