Omega
Post by beth on Jul 10, 2016 1:13:53 GMT -5
(This review/article is in reference to Dylan's concert, Friday, June 8, 2016 at Forest Hills Stadium, Queens. From Esquire, via MSN)
When Bob Dylan walks on the stage at Forest Hills Stadium in Queens tonight, 51 years since he strapped on an electric guitar and played his first full concert in the wake of his career-defining performance at the Newport Folk Festival, he will be no less the contrarian he was in 1965. Then, at 24, he shocked the audience with songs from his yet-to-be-released Highway 61 Revisited. Unlike his contemporaries that tour the globe on greatest-hits victory laps, tonight the 75-year-old legend will more than likely play a set of songs drawn primarily from his 21st Century output, and the two or three songs that he does play from his venerable catalog will be almost unrecognizable to the vast majority of the audience.
On August 28,1965, a year and a day from the time I met him in Woodstock, Bob Dylan gave a concert at Forest Hills Stadium in New York City, where 14,000 people filled the stands to capacity," recalls photographer Daniel Kramer in his photo memoir of his days with Dylan, Bob Dylan: A Year and a Day. "It would culminate in what he had been doing with his music for the past half year-we were about to get the big bang."
In the 18 months leading up to the Forest Hills concert, Dylan had turned the music world upside-down. On the heels of 1963's folk/protest masterpiece The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, in short order Dylan had released The Times They Are a-Changin' and Another Side of Bob Dylan, and he had "gone electric" in March 1965 on Bringing It All Back Home. A month before the Forest Hills concert, in a single week at the end of July, he'd released the groundbreaking hit single "Like a Rolling Stone" and had burned the folk movement to the ground with an electric performance at the Newport Folk Festival, where he was roundly jeered by the purist folkies in the audience-and where Pete Seeger, the godfather of the folk movement himself, had tried to cut Dylan's power with an axe.
While Dylan's legions of fans felt betrayed, Dylan was unbowed. If anything, he was emboldened.
While Dylan's legions of fans felt betrayed, Dylan was unbowed. If anything, he was emboldened.
Members of Dylan's backing band (including drummer Levon Helm and guitarist Robbie Roberston, who would join Dylan on his 1966 world tour and form The Band in the tour's wake) would later recall that Dylan warned them to expect a hostile crowd. Ignore them, he told his band, and play the music they'd come to play, undeterred.
"Bob understood what was going on," Kramer says of his memories of the night. "He told his band, and everyone backstage, that there might be some discontent, but that wasn't their affair-meaning his either-and that they were there to make their music, even if there was a negative response."
As the sun set in Queens, Dylan took the stage in the horseshoe-shaped stadium alone, armed only with his acoustic guitar and harmonicas, to wild, expectant applause. Rumors abounded, in those pre-Internet days, about what to expect in the aftermath of the Newport show, but this was what everyone had come to see: "The voice of a generation."
Dylan opened with the familiar "She Belongs to Me" from Bringing It All Back Home and "To Ramona" from Another Side of Bob Dylan before delivering a searing "Gates of Eden," already the granddaddy of protest songs, to rapturous applause, and "Love Minus Zero/No Limit," both also from Bringing It All Back Home.
the rest
www.msn.com/en-us/music/news/bob-dylans-fans-called-him-a-traitor-51-years-later-he-returns-to-the-scene-of-the-crime/ar-BBu6y93?ocid=spartandhp
When Bob Dylan walks on the stage at Forest Hills Stadium in Queens tonight, 51 years since he strapped on an electric guitar and played his first full concert in the wake of his career-defining performance at the Newport Folk Festival, he will be no less the contrarian he was in 1965. Then, at 24, he shocked the audience with songs from his yet-to-be-released Highway 61 Revisited. Unlike his contemporaries that tour the globe on greatest-hits victory laps, tonight the 75-year-old legend will more than likely play a set of songs drawn primarily from his 21st Century output, and the two or three songs that he does play from his venerable catalog will be almost unrecognizable to the vast majority of the audience.
On August 28,1965, a year and a day from the time I met him in Woodstock, Bob Dylan gave a concert at Forest Hills Stadium in New York City, where 14,000 people filled the stands to capacity," recalls photographer Daniel Kramer in his photo memoir of his days with Dylan, Bob Dylan: A Year and a Day. "It would culminate in what he had been doing with his music for the past half year-we were about to get the big bang."
In the 18 months leading up to the Forest Hills concert, Dylan had turned the music world upside-down. On the heels of 1963's folk/protest masterpiece The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, in short order Dylan had released The Times They Are a-Changin' and Another Side of Bob Dylan, and he had "gone electric" in March 1965 on Bringing It All Back Home. A month before the Forest Hills concert, in a single week at the end of July, he'd released the groundbreaking hit single "Like a Rolling Stone" and had burned the folk movement to the ground with an electric performance at the Newport Folk Festival, where he was roundly jeered by the purist folkies in the audience-and where Pete Seeger, the godfather of the folk movement himself, had tried to cut Dylan's power with an axe.
While Dylan's legions of fans felt betrayed, Dylan was unbowed. If anything, he was emboldened.
While Dylan's legions of fans felt betrayed, Dylan was unbowed. If anything, he was emboldened.
Members of Dylan's backing band (including drummer Levon Helm and guitarist Robbie Roberston, who would join Dylan on his 1966 world tour and form The Band in the tour's wake) would later recall that Dylan warned them to expect a hostile crowd. Ignore them, he told his band, and play the music they'd come to play, undeterred.
"Bob understood what was going on," Kramer says of his memories of the night. "He told his band, and everyone backstage, that there might be some discontent, but that wasn't their affair-meaning his either-and that they were there to make their music, even if there was a negative response."
As the sun set in Queens, Dylan took the stage in the horseshoe-shaped stadium alone, armed only with his acoustic guitar and harmonicas, to wild, expectant applause. Rumors abounded, in those pre-Internet days, about what to expect in the aftermath of the Newport show, but this was what everyone had come to see: "The voice of a generation."
Dylan opened with the familiar "She Belongs to Me" from Bringing It All Back Home and "To Ramona" from Another Side of Bob Dylan before delivering a searing "Gates of Eden," already the granddaddy of protest songs, to rapturous applause, and "Love Minus Zero/No Limit," both also from Bringing It All Back Home.
the rest
www.msn.com/en-us/music/news/bob-dylans-fans-called-him-a-traitor-51-years-later-he-returns-to-the-scene-of-the-crime/ar-BBu6y93?ocid=spartandhp