Positively Bob Dylan

A clip of Todd Haynes’ upcoming biographical Bob Dylan movie has leaked on YouTube. The 90 seconds long video features Cate Blanchett (!) in the role of Bob Dylan driving in a car with Mike Bloomfield in 1965, when Alan Ginsberg drives by for a short conversation. The clip was shot in authentic “Don’t Look Back”-style B&W and you can even see the time code below.

The Harvey Weinstein production shows episodes out of Bob Dylan’s life from the early 1960s onwards. Dylan is embodied by 7(!) different actors, including Cate Blanchett (1960s) and Richard Gere (1970s).
The movie is named after a song recorded in 1967, “I’m Not There” from the legendary “Basement Tapes”. It will open in cinemas in autumn 2007.

> Official trailers

It was a unique experience for 800 lucky fans to be privileged to see Bob Dylan play a rare club gig at the Debaser in Stockholm. Dylan and his “Modern Times” touring band (Tony Garnier, Stu Kimball, Danny Freeman, George Recile, Donnie Herron) are currently touring Europe for a number of concerts in Sweden, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and France.
While the live audience is happy to see Dylan playing his Fender guitar again, those fans who did not have the chance to grab a ticket are being surprised by a number of good-quality bootleg audience recordings of the first shows. So far it seems that Dylan performs more new songs than usual after having released a new studio album. Apart from the always very loose selection of classics and live rarities (”Cat’s In the Well”, “Country Pie”, “Tears of Rage”), this time Dylan’s setlists also included the new “Rollin’ and Tumblin’”, “Thunder On the Mountain”, “When the Deal Goes Down”, “Nettie Moore”, and “The Levee’s Gonna Break”.
It’s the simple fact that every live performance differs from the previous one, and the audience never really knows what to expect both in terms of the setlist and the way of interpretation of that wild selection from the Dylan repertoire, that still entertains and keeps the audience coming and coming again. Just like a bottle of good red wine, the fascination with Bob grows everytime you experience him - live or on record.
In June 2007 Dylan and his band will return to the US and Canada.

> Official Tour Information

For the past three years Dylan was rarely ever seen performing on stage with a guitar. The typical set-up was him playing on the left side of the stage standing in front of a keyboard, the other musicians on their usual spots. Only for two or three occasions a night he moved into the center of the stage to play his harp.
Something is happening and we don’t know what it is, do you Mr. Jones? Why is he exchanging his guitars for a keyboard? The most likely reason is that Bob might be suffering from arthritis. Also his sets are no longer than 90 minutes, about 30 minutes less than a usual rock concert. But what’s “usual” in the world of Bob Dylan anyway? Isn’t it the variety of styles, performances and interpretations of songs that fascinates us the most? And having heard a few of his latest live sets, he seems to enjoy the jam-session like stage set-up. There is no electric and acoustic set anymore and his set-list mainly includes songs from the mid-60s and his latest two albums. Bob might not be a piano man like Billy Joel or Elton John, but the new arrangements are interesting to an audience that has heard the songs a million times and thinks to know them by heart.

As a local newspaper reports, Bob Dylan and “five unnamed musicians” rehearsed new material at the Bardavon Opera House in New York State, where also Lou Reed and David Bromberg will perform this week. Dylan is said to have played for several hours a day without break from January 31 to February 3. Recording sessions take place these days in a yet unspecified Manhattan studio.
It is very likely that this will bring up Dylan’s first new studio album in five years (since “Love & Theft” in 2001). The most recent new song appeared last year on the soundtrack album to “North Country”, “Tell Ol’ Bill”.