BOB DYLAN AT THE GRAND REX: PARIS, 11 OCTOBER 2022Rough and Rowdy Ways tour - named after his most recent album from 2020 and scheduled to stretch from 2021 to 2024. This gig was actually my first opportunity to sample this tour, and before reviewing the concert as such I would like to make some general
The splendid decor of the Grand Rex venue in Paris, with its gothic and arabesque adornments recalling an Edgar Allan Poe interior, provided a fitting setting on 11 October 2022 for the first of three Parisian shows on the European leg of Bob Dylan’s
The setlist is appended to this review as it was on 11 October, though my comments here will concern the entire tour so far. It is far from being arbitrary: indeed, it has obviously been very consciously constructed. It features nine (originally eight)of the ‘new’ album’s ten tracks, the only one left out being ‘Murder Most Foul’, the sixteen-minute epic about the Kennedy assassination, presumably on grounds of length. These nine songs are complemented by seven (briefly six) older Dylan
The selection of ‘old’ songs might have appeared eccentric to some. This is no greatest hits selection, far from it – as commentators have inevitably observed, no ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’, no ‘Like a Rolling Stone’. Nor is any particularalbum privileged, with the only two songs from the same album – ‘Watching the River Flow’ and ‘When I Paint My Masterpiece’ – being from a compilation (More Bob Dylan Greatest Hits, 1971). Of the remaining Dylan compositions retained, the
To return to Paris, it is gratifying to signal that the collective atmosphere in the packed-to-capacity concert hall was extremely warm, convivial and sympathetic to a Dylan who was visibly in a good mood and obviously relishing the songs. His deliverytended to separate the songs’ lines and phrases into fragments, a technique which may be related to his age but which has the virtue of capturing phrases for reflection. This technique arguably did not take too well in his delivery on the opener, ‘
As the evening unfolded, the musicians’ performance was invariably superb, and Bob Dylan’s, though variable, at its best plumbed uncanny depths. After ‘Every Grain of Sand’, sections of the public cried out for an encore – a wish not granted,but nonetheless it was clear that artist and audience had enjoyed the spectacle to a similar degree. The Grand Rex had witnessed a fine and moving evening, and of which – for time passes – we, Bob Dylan’s audience, may not see the like again.
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SETLIST (same for all this tour so far; songs from Rough and Rowdy Ways (2020) in italics)
Watching the River Flow (More Bob Dylan Greatest Hits, 1971)
Most Likely You Go Your Way (and I’ll Go Mine) (Blonde on Blonde, 1966)
I Contain Multitudes
False Prophet
When I Paint My Masterpiece (More Bob Dylan Greatest Hits, 1971)
Black Rider
My Own Version of You
I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight (John Wesley Harding, 1967)
Crossing the Rubicon
To Be Alone With You (Nashville Skyline, 1969; rewritten)
Key West (Philosopher Pirate)
Gotta Serve Somebody (Slow Train Coming, 1979)
I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You
That Old Black Magic (Fallen Angels, 2016; Sinatra cover)
Mother of Muses
Goodbye Jimmy Reed
Every Grain of Sand (Shot of Love, 1981)
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