Dylan's 2007 Australian Tour

Chapter 10

Resplendent in a dark suit, silk tie and wide-brimmed hat, Bob Dylan opened his current Australian tour in Brisbane last night. Despite the legion of labels lumbered on the artist over the years, today Dylan embodies his own vision of a 21st century troubadour. Opening with Cat's in the Well, Dylan still has a spring in his step and a lot of bite in his Fender Stratocaster. Beneath a red velvet backdrop, the initial flurry of tunes included It Ain't Me babe, Tom Thumb's Blues, and Lay Lady Lay.The arrangements saw Dylan toy with any preconceptions of meter and melofy. Moving to the keboard, it was impossible not to ponder the image of the teenage Robert Zimmermann pounding the piano for Bobby Vee. Fast-forward nearly five decades, and Dylan is still a slave to his own vision of reinvention. Behind the keys for the rest of the evening, Dylan brings a primitive energy to the instrument that perfectly juxtaposes the deft swagger of his accompanying band. As we've come to expect, Bob likes to take liberties and, at times, the results were a roaring success. Highway 61 was incendiary. The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll carried a tremendous weight, while the re-invention of Tangled Up in Blue saw the artist alter phrasing, lyrics and plot lines with jarring results. The mood of the audience seemed to support the artist, and why not? If offered the chance to see picasso knock up a painting at the local mall--whether it was good, bad or indifferent, you'd be foolish not to take it. It's the same with Bob. What a perverse treat it remains to see the minstrel deconstruct his own work in front of your eyes and ears. Has there ever been another artist of this stature brave enough to dismantle his or her own myth? His voice might be shot, or maybe this is another new voice? The croak certainly suits his newer material and injects life into ancient melodies. There's no fakery to Dylan: the performance offers a rare beauty that could falter, but succeeds despite itself. Dylan brings to life songs such as Nettie Moore and Ballad of a Thin Man arming them with a sense of the present. There was no acknowledgement of the audience, save for band introductions towards the very end. Deadpan for much of the evening, even Dylan couldn't resist a broad grin at the in-jokes of Summer Days. Witnessing Dylan, with his Lonnie Johnson guitar style and garage band keyboard, you're remindced that this is a man who draws on the wellspring of folk, blues and early rock n' roll. The ghosts of Woody Guthrie and Buddy Holly inform his performance, though the ensuing results are ideosyncratic and pure Dylan. The encore included a fantastic Thunder on the Mountain. By Sean Sennett for Brisbane Courier Mail.

Comment: Australia does not like prophets. When he toured Australia in the 90s, Dylan sometimes disdained to talk to the audience. Was he contemptuous of our superficiality and trivializing irenicism? She'll be right, mate! It's childish in the sense that infants don't want to know first of all, they want to be titillated. "Loquimini nobis placentia"--speak to us of pleasantries--from the Book of Isaiah. Note the pun in Latin between placentia and placenta or umbilical cord. The pleasure principle of modern life is childish. The meaning of life for mature persons is not found in pleasure-seeking but in the cross and our own crosses and how we deal with them, "when the deal goes down--In the still of the night in the world's ancient light Where wisdom grows up in strife."