Dylan Tribute at the Barbican
Posted by: O on 28 September 2005
Did anyone go to this? I was really disappointed by most of it. They punctuated the acts with readings from ‘Chronicles’, which, whilst highlighting Dylan’s brilliance, also inadvertently served to demonstrate the lack personality and intellect in most of the people on the stage! The worst thing was that each act played only 2 Dylan songs and then one of their own, which left the whole thing smacking of self-promotion. Billy Bragg kicked off with some really downbeat Bob numbers, and his own song was just awful, a hackneyed, mawkish and over-earnest dirge referencing “innocent children” and “warmongers”! Yuck! Martin Carthy again picked the most depressing of Dylan’s songs to play, before launching into a dire cover of ‘Scarborough Fair’ which he managed to murder by never quite hitting the high note on the word “sage”. Willy Mason was too young – his between song patter was interminable and embarrassing, in fact at one point he forgot what he was saying and just stood there in complete silence, as the audience grew ever more uncomfortable. Things were rescued slightly by the appearance of Odetta at the end of the first act, who was marvellous, her only misstep being a gospelised rendition of ‘Hey Mr Tambourine Man’ that drew it out to epic lengths, silly for a song with no musical variation to speak of.
The second act started well, Liam Clancy and his brothers finally managed to inject some energy and humour to proceedings, telling great yarns about Dylan and playing barnstorming covers of his songs (trust the Irish to pick things up a bit!). They then played ‘Those Were the Days my Friend’, which was written by one of the regulars at an old Irish bar Dylan used to hang out in, and was their favourite song to sing at the end of the evening. Robyn Hitchcock and Roy Harper were just dreadful – I’ve heard of Hitchcock before with no real point of reference but he was terrible, arrogant and odd, like a mutant, unrealised Bowie… Roy Harper was as bad, he played only one Dylan song before setting off on a diatribe about “our boys” winning the cricket (had nobody told him he was playing a Dylan tribute??) and playing a song of his own about the sport – and throughout this song the image of his own CD was projected onto the backdrop of the stage! By this point I felt I could have been sitting watching a load of self-indulgent self-congratulaters playing dull songs at an open mic. The saving grace was KT Tunstall, who played a fantastic “Tangled up in Blue”, with the famous loop pedal much in evidence, and at last - a band! A really good band at that, with a brilliant rhythm section. She followed with a good version of ‘Simple Twist of Fate’, and one of her own, which I forgave in this instance as it was actually a good song. But overall, I thought it was a really poor effort at a Dylan tribute by a group of people most of whom (on last night’s evidence at least) weren’t fit to cobble his boots.
O
The second act started well, Liam Clancy and his brothers finally managed to inject some energy and humour to proceedings, telling great yarns about Dylan and playing barnstorming covers of his songs (trust the Irish to pick things up a bit!). They then played ‘Those Were the Days my Friend’, which was written by one of the regulars at an old Irish bar Dylan used to hang out in, and was their favourite song to sing at the end of the evening. Robyn Hitchcock and Roy Harper were just dreadful – I’ve heard of Hitchcock before with no real point of reference but he was terrible, arrogant and odd, like a mutant, unrealised Bowie… Roy Harper was as bad, he played only one Dylan song before setting off on a diatribe about “our boys” winning the cricket (had nobody told him he was playing a Dylan tribute??) and playing a song of his own about the sport – and throughout this song the image of his own CD was projected onto the backdrop of the stage! By this point I felt I could have been sitting watching a load of self-indulgent self-congratulaters playing dull songs at an open mic. The saving grace was KT Tunstall, who played a fantastic “Tangled up in Blue”, with the famous loop pedal much in evidence, and at last - a band! A really good band at that, with a brilliant rhythm section. She followed with a good version of ‘Simple Twist of Fate’, and one of her own, which I forgave in this instance as it was actually a good song. But overall, I thought it was a really poor effort at a Dylan tribute by a group of people most of whom (on last night’s evidence at least) weren’t fit to cobble his boots.
O