Positively Bob Dylan

Bob is currently touring Europe again. In six weeks he will have played 30 venues in 16 countries, all the way from Iceland trough Scandinavia, Central and Eastern Europe, Italy, and Spain to Portugal. For the first time Bob is going to play 11 concerts in one country - Spain, where he opens his tour at the Zaragoza Expo 2008. He also has recorded a new version of “A Hard Rain’s A Gonna Fall” and participates in the international promotion for the event.

In case you are not one of the lucky fans who got the chance to get a ticket for one of the current shows, I found this great audience recording of the Helsinki show on June 1. Each song is provided as a separate video consisting of the recording and overlayed images.

The set list:
Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat (song comments)
Lay Lady Lay (song comments)
Rollin’ and Tumblin’ (song comments)
Visions of Johanna (song comments)
Things Have Changed (song comments)
The Levee’s Gonna Break (song comments)
Tangled Up In Blue (song comments)
Watching The River Flow (song comments)
Every Grain Of Sand (song comments)
It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) (song comments)
Nettie Moore (song comments)
Highway 61 Revisited (song comments)
Spirit On The Water (song comments)
Summer Days (song comments)
Ballad Of a Thin Man (song comments)
Thunder On The Mountain (song comments)
Like a Rolling Stone (song comments)

Bob seems to have found his RTR hat again. In a series of recent gigs he was seen wearing a hat that looks like the one from the 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue tour. Keep on keepin’ on, Bob - it still fits!

Check out Bob’s latest performance of “Lay Lady Lay” at the House of Blues in Dallas on February 23, posted by sonsofjah on youtube:

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.