{"id":1344,"date":"2016-12-02T15:49:13","date_gmt":"2016-12-02T20:49:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/?p=1344"},"modified":"2016-12-02T15:49:13","modified_gmt":"2016-12-02T20:49:13","slug":"new-release-roundup-bob-dylans-real-royal-albert-hall-new-eps-from-permit-and-the-adventures-of-the-silver-spaceman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/2016\/12\/02\/new-release-roundup-bob-dylans-real-royal-albert-hall-new-eps-from-permit-and-the-adventures-of-the-silver-spaceman\/","title":{"rendered":"New Release Roundup: Bob Dylan’s Real Royal Albert Hall, New EPs from Permit and The Adventures of the Silver Spaceman"},"content":{"rendered":"

1. Bob Dylan<\/a> \u2013 The Real Royal Albert Hall 1966 Concert<\/em>
\nSo you don\u2019t have the money for the full 36-CD set of Bob Dylan: The 1966 Live Recordings, released last month. And you already have the \u201cRoyal Albert Hall\u201d show from the Bootleg series (the one during which a fan yelled \u201cJudas!,\u201d and which was actually from the Free Trade Hall show from Manchester, England and was mislabeled for years as an actual bootleg before Dylan released it himself). Today, you have some middle ground to work with, because Dylan has released a double-disc set of The Real Royal Albert Hall Concert. Following the format of the shows form the \u201966 tour, the first disc is Dylan solo, and the second is Dylan electric, backed by future members of The Band with Mickey Jones subbing for Levon Helm, who had gotten tired of being booed and went to Houston to work on an oil rig. <\/p>\n

Listening to this show, it was easy to hear what Dylan was after. The acoustic renditions of “Vision of Johanna” and “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” are fine and engaging. And you barely notice there’s a crowd until they erupt in applause for the closing number, “Mr. Tambourine Man.” But that’s where Dylan was. The second disc is where he wanted to go. That opening blast of sound on “Tell Me, Momma,” the way he sneers the verses — if he’d released ten years after they’d have called it punk. You can feel how loud these shows must have been. Dylan and the band ride these songs like a machine, turning “Baby, Let Me Follow You Down” and “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” into a glorious soul-stirring racket. On the second disc, it’s clear there is an audience present, and Dylan is in fine sparring form. He’s not necessarily trying to quiet them down. When they get loud, he eggs them on, saying, “These are all protest songs, now, come on.” Later, he seems to isolate a particular heckler, though it’s hard to make out what was being shouted, Dylan responds by saying, “Why don’t yo come up here and say that?” <\/p>\n

The standard history of The Band is that backing Dylan on this tour gave them the platform establish their own reputation on Big Pink<\/em> a couple of years later. That’s all fair and true, but it’s fair to say Dylan got a sizable return on that investment in these shows. Rick Danko provides the foundation on bass, a sturdy jumping off point for the rest of the band (even Jones, at some points). Richard Manuel on piano is part of that rhythm section, too, though you can hear step out on occasion. Garth Hudson provides the classic Dylan organ sound. And if you forgot that Robbie Robertson was once a prized gunslinger, here’s your reminder. He would sublimate his guitar playing with The Band for the sake of the song. But the object here is to be loud, to smack the audience around a little and wake them up from the reverence they showed in the acoustic set, and Robertson is the prime mover in that effort. If you picked up the companion disc to Robertson’s memoir, Testimony, you heard a bit of this on “Rainy Day Woman #12 & 35” from the ’74 tour and on the Hawks tracks. But it’s even more up front and raw on the Albert Hall disc. If the object was to shake up his audience, Dylan could not have found a better band. <\/p>\n