Looking back today on a memorable concert. I took this as an opportunity to travel to Milan for the first time in my life. Together with a friend, I went to see the city the day before the concert, and of course Leonardo Da Vinci's famous Last Supper, only to wake up the next day after all those miles with such extreme pain in my foot that I had to go to an Italian hospital instead of waiting in line for a good spot in the early afternoon.
In the end, I dragged myself to the second row to attend a great concert.
Below is a great review by Barnaby Nelson on Boblinks:
Having seen the Oz shows earlier in the year I had pretty high expectations for this show, especially given the club venue. There was a slightly late start and we were wondering whether this could mean that a last minute set list revision was going on. Who knows, but the set list was certainly shaken up – Pill box hat, Masterpiece, ‘Till I fell in love w you, Can’t Wait, Levee, I don’t believe you, Visions of J, Forgetful heart. A lyric change during Masterpiece, but I couldn’t quite make it out – during the gondola/ Coca Cola lines. Was nice to hear, especially after having been in Rome for the previous week. Beautiful instrumentation and singing during Visions. He sang the lines carefully in a descending melody line, sometimes extending vowels for a veeeeeery long time. Dylan is clearly fit and in strong voice. He jogged to the keyboard Leonard Cohen style (didn’t think I’d ever write that). Apart from the song selection the thing that blew me away was how theatrically he was performing. For many of the songs he would prowl around the stage (front right, front left, centre, all the way back again) with hand held mic ‘acting out’ the drama of the lyrics with heaps of theatrical hand and body movements and facial expressions. Yes, there’s a bit of Al Jolson about it, a bit of ‘50s crooner, but more than a heavy dose of mad preacherman having a rant. Brilliant stuff. The closest thing I’ve ever seen to this is the footage of the Prague ’95 shows. It was most evident during Can’t Wait, Forgetful Heart, and Thin Man. Can’t Wait featured a final line of about four “I don’t know”s in a row before the final refrain. He was really interacting fully with the audience, who were giving him plenty of energy back. This was definitely a small club setting feel – low stage, not a great distance from the audience. Not quite as close as Mercury Lounge, Melbourne 98 but pretty similar. The very good guitar playing during the Oz tour continued here. He played some nice dirty bluesy licks during ‘Till I fell which got Charlie smiling. There were technical problems – the mic cord didn’t seem to reach long enough, the singing mic and harmonic mic cords kept getting tangled up, he didn’t seem to be able to hear himself properly at times – but this all added to the drama of what was going on and pushed him more into being in the moment. He kept moving the mic stand during the songs, sometimes moving over to sing with the keyboard vocal mic with guitar still strapped on, then going over to Donnie to let loose about the technical problems. For the great people I met on the Dylan trail, enjoy the rest of the shows – looks like a fine vintage.
2011-2012 always get a bad press. Gotta say that I like them. Love the rasp.