Everything here is rejigged magnificently, more or less in keeping with the style of the engrossing Rough and Rowdy Ways – minus the album’s proliferation of piano. New arrangements are no novelty in this artist’s vast body of work, but tonight’s tunes bear little resemblance to their recorded forebears. Watch the trailer for Bob Dylan’s Shadow Kingdom.ĭylan plays fast and loose with his own work, too. A US Dylanologist, Scott Warmuth, runs a forensic Twitter feed dedicated to how Dylan may – ahem – acquire inspiration for his lyrics and his visual artworks from all sorts of places, from Henry Rollins to art catalogues (“overlaps in intertextuality”, Warmuth calls them). Love and theft are two concepts that sometimes elide in Dylan’s modus operandi. But in a blog post, the journalist Richard Williams suggests that the live stream’s aesthetic might be inspired by the 2017 stage musical Girl from the North Country, based on the songs of Dylan, which met with the musician’s approval. Everything here is rejigged magnificentlyĬertainly, these scenarios recreate the vibe of the sleeve art of last year’s Rough and Rowdy Ways. Tonight’s tunes bear little resemblance to their recorded forebears. But on a radical rereading of I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight, he allows the camera to come in very close indeed. The speakeasy gives way to black-and-white checked linoleum with what looks like a boat sail behind Dylan. For an artist so wedded to the idea of the troubadour life, it’s significant that these are 11 stagey tableaux filmed by director Alma Har’el, employing several different set-ups. To add to this mounting sense of artistry bound up with no little artfulness, Dylan’s performance isn’t live. What Was It You Wanted, for one, dates from 1989’s Oh Mercy. But some of the songs Dylan plays tonight don’t quite fit the bill. Billed as The Early Songs of Bob Dylan, and teased by a snippet of the rarely heard Watching the River Flow, this set finds Highway 61 Revisited revisited a few times. He is, of course, an inveterate trickster.
ALL MY MOVIES LIVESTREAM SERIES
Best of all is his poignant drawl on a sensational What Was It You Wanted, a series of accusatory questions that stress how slippery knowledge is. Tender on Queen Jane Approximately, sneery to the verge of self-parody on Tombstone Blues, his vocals become arch on the playful To Be Alone With You. He hasn’t performed in public since his Never Ending Tour hit a hiatus in December 2019 his last broadcast performance was in 1994. It’s the dive bar of dreams, where Dylan is in excellent voice, his instrument clearly benefiting from the enforced break from active touring. A ventilation duct blows tinsel streamers. Wherever we are, whenever we are, the atmosphere is on point. There is no such club in Marseille, but there was one in Philadelphia in the 60s, notorious for a racketeering scandal, according to one US Dylan-watcher. The credits thank a certain Bon Bon Club, Marseille. Some nicely turned-out punters sit at tables nursing tumblers of drink and smoking like it’s mandatory: the luckiest extras in film. It’s not a concert, but a heady simulacrum of the perfect gig. Originally available to rewatch for just 48 hours after broadcast, you can now still buy the stream until 4am Monday 26 July (expires 8am). And so begins Shadow Kingdom – an enigma wrapped in a visually stunning conundrum masquerading as a livestreamed performance: Dylan’s first. Not Dylan, commanding the stage at what looks like a prohibition-era speakeasy, nor any of his four-piece band: masked, young, diverse. But no one is playing harmonica – at least not visibly. A t the start of When I Paint My Masterpiece, the first song of Bob Dylan’s live stream, you can hear a mouth organ.