(As a side note: Dylan is always interesting to catch live, but on occasion you’ll be treated to something truly special. Recent Boston-area shows provide a good sample of the range of performances he and his bands have offered. In general, stadium shows—Agganis, Pawtucket—are serviceable and competent, but theatre or club dates much better. If you missed the Avalon '04 or the Orpheum '05 shows, you missed moving—and rare-as-hen’s-teeth—live versions of “Blind Willie McTell,” “Hazel,” “Lenny Bruce,” and “Tomorrow is a Long Time.” And for odd behavior, there was the truly insane, you-had-to-be-there show at a Harvard gym in 2005.)
Here we have a dazzling version of “High Water” (Ontario, 2003) with all kinds of fun guitar interplay; an unplugged “Ring Them Bells” (from the 1993 “Supper Club” show in New York, another obvious contender for “Bootleg Series” release as a whole); and a 2002 “Lonesome Day Blues” that is very representative of much of his current live sound: gritty, more-than-half-spoken, howling, slurring, menacing, boastful, all topped with mock-theatrical emoting.
The most remarkable live recordings here are fairly straightforward renditions of traditional material. “Cocaine Blues” (Vienna, VA, 1997) is reinterpreted as a cousin of “Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright” and “Mama You Been On My Mind,” with a great slide guitar part crossbreeding the folk and country traditions. And the Carter Family’s “Girl on the Greenbriar Shore” (from a 1992 French show) shows that the mature Dylan finally has the voice and authority to fully back up his youthful coffee-house repertoire.
Serve God and be cheerful
The 2-CD version ends on an elegiac note, with “Cross the Green Mountain,” from Ted Turner's Civil War film Gods and Generals. The lyrics begin with a monstrous dream of apocalypse (yes, more dreams for Dylan’s ongoing series, going back to his first recordings), but then strangely turn into a meditation on mortality. There’s an self-composed epitaph in there, and for a moment, you forget that this is a record most likely compiled by a business manager; you forget about the $129.99 and the hardcover book of pictures of singles covers from around the world. The song tricks you into thinking this is Dylan talking to you and you alone, telling you big things about how to live the righteous life, and how he wants to be remembered. The familiar voice rises above the martial fray of strings and drums and speaks to posterity, borrowing a pious motto from the obscure poet William Newell:
“Let ‘em say that I walked in fair nature’s light
And that I was loyal to truth and to right.
Serve God and be cheerful, look upward, beyond
Beyond the darkness of masks, the surprises of dawn”
Like poor Joan Baez jilted in Don't Look Back, like the naive peaceniks who embraced him in the Village early on, like the Woodstock hippies who organized a festival in his backyard to make him come out and play, like the sad yuppies at the shows today who don't take “Everybody Must Get Stoned” at its most literal and think the grimacing old devil is howling about doobies—like all of them you want to surrender and be fooled by this man into thinking “Cross the Green Mountain” means much more than it did over the end titles of Ted Turner's cinematic apology for the Confederacy. You also really want to believe that Tell-Tale Signs as a whole is a statement for the ages from the artist himself and not a really nice double (or triple) CD-R from the Malibu Mafia.
