What does it sound like?:
Ok so confirmed Dylan addict Junior Wells sits down to listen to confirmed Dylan addict Cat Power (Chan Marshall) recreating one of the Holy Grails in the Dylan catalogue Live 66 Royal Albert Hall, which we all know was the Manchester Free Trade Hall show. This will be interesting.
I have stated previously that my problem with so many covers of Dylan songs is they overdo the melody – Make You Feel My Love being a great example. His songs always have strong melodies and I find his voice, the harp they provide some sour to the sweet. Will she sugar it up? Will it be a carbon copy prompting the question, why bother?
I have only seen Cat once, supporting Nick Cave in Sydney. I think it was the same tour where she stopped off and recorded Moon Pix in Melbourne with the Dirty Three. At the show I saw she kept her head down, deliberately shielded her face by her hair and almost ran off stage at the end of her set. Clearly in a bad place ,her presence was the complete opposite of the defiant self-belief of Dylan at this time …”you’re a liar, I don’t believe you”.
To digress, when I lived in Zimbabwe I brought with me a few tapes including a bootleg of a soundboard tape of Dylan in Melbourne 1966 before the European tour. It is the acoustic set and he is pretty stoned and laid back. All those vocal inflections – the stretching, truncating, wavering is now completely embedded in my brain. Albert Hall 66 is very similar and listening to Cat doing those acoustic tracks is weird for me in how she captures all those inflections. As she goes further into the set list she does deviate occasionally but not much. The Melbourne show had wonderful presence ,more so than Albert Hall IMO and, as you’d expect, so does this recording. Dylan’s voice was warm, wonderful in its diction and so is Cat. But where Zimmy goes a bit nasal occasionally, Cat doesn’t. So for all you “yeah great songs, but I can’t handle the voice” out there, maybe this is the record for you. And while the harmonica is very Dylanesque it doesn’t have some of the piercing notes that I think are what people don’t like about Dylan’s playing.
So, onto the electric set. This is where the rubber hits the road. How on earth is she going to match the incredible frisson of Dylan on stage and electric in 66. How will the musicians match The Band ? How will her voice match the adrenaline, the defiance, the self-belief embedded in Dylan’s singing in that famous performance ? Well, she doesn’t and they don’t.
I haven’t found the list of the musicians playing, and sure, they’re fine. But they are not like they are playing not knowing how they will be received, probably bracing for the boos. No excoriating guitar from Robbie, no power and no backing vocals. There’s not a lot of vocals other than Dylan on the original but gee it matters. Every time I listen to One Too Many Mornings I am just waiting for that ‘and a thousand mile BEHIIIIND ! And she/they don’t do it! Listening now I am just getting to Ballad Of A Thin Man and Like A Rolling Stone. Compared to the accusatory Dylan on Thin Man and the crescendo that is Rolling Stone, Power’s version is polite, even sedate. To my mind the earlier electric tracks are superior to late ones.
This is a good record, a lot of people will like it. It’s the sort of record I would put on in company but not if alone. Mike Scott of the Waterboys recounted how they had just done a version of Van Morrison’s Sweet Thing (and pretty good it is too). Van is on the side of the stage and he, bravely, asks George Ivan what he thought of the performance. “Well it’s not as good as the original is it” replied Van. Quite.
What does it all *mean*?
I dunno
Goes well with…
People who like Dylan’s songs but not his voice
Release Date:
Nov 2023
Might suit people who like…
People who like Dylan’s songs but not his voice
Love Cat Power, love Bob Dylan, love the review, Junior. I’ll be digging out the electric show from 1966 and giving it another spin.
Thank you!
Only a few listens in but I think I disagree with you re the electric set. Nothing like the fury and anger of the original but what could be? Instead a fine, if somewhat sedate , backing band which allows Cat to showcase the sheer genius of the lyrics.
I have lot of Ms Marshall and was wavering. I’m not any more.
Yeah I agree in that which is why I said if you love his songs but still have issues then this could be for you.But the band could definitely been hotter. OOAA.
I should have added that she successfully walked the tightrope of making the songs more palatable without losing their potency or turning them saccharine.
Hey Mods ! Can you tack that on !
Seems a bit pointless to me, but it could be a recreation of the Albert Hall gig rather than Manchester as they all sounded very much the same (unless she has planted somebody yelling “Judas” in the audience).
I have the 1966 box set so if I am in the mood for some (slightly) alternate versions I have 23 Dylan versions to listen to. Cardiff is a banger ….
There is a “Judas!”, apparently.
I really enjoyed listening to this album, but I think it’s important to be realistic about what could reasonably be expected here.
The 66 live album is freighted with so much magic and tension that you’re never going to hit that note, no matter who your band are and how well you perform. The audible reverence of the audience on disc 1 as Dylan takes them through his familiar, and brilliant, repertoire. The growing discomfit and anger on disc 2 as he performs his heel turn. It’s such a unique moment that you’re never going to catch that lightning in a bottle again.
What this album provides is Cat Power having a lovely time essaying some of her favourite songs in front of a polite, appreciative audience who are bang up for a bit of shared nostalgia. Taken for what it is, it’s a perfectly good time. It’s like the looking glass version of the 66 album in some ways.
I always find it interesting that actually the acoustic stuff is mainly new or newish songs and the electric 2nd half contains a number of older songs like I don’t Believe You, One Too Many Mornings and Baby Let Me Follow You Down.
I was a young lad who was at the FTH back in ‘66 and what I remember was always helped greatly by acquiring on bootleg of ‘the RAH show’ and knowing it was the FTH show a long time before the release of the tour box set. Prior to the show I didn’t really know what to expect, there were a lot of bearded people and a lot of long haired people* and the atmosphere was, well it was electric, ha ha.
I was wavering about Cat Powers interpretation of this legendary show but you Mr. Wells have tilted my decision, thank you.
The statutory six listens and her version of Visions of Johanna is sending shivers up and down my spine. The best song ever recorded (Tom Waits made a career out of trying to replicate it (and sometimes almost succeeded)) and she gets it to 98.23% near Bob’s perfection.
As for the point @dai – I’ve seen Dylan around 10 times on his Never Ending Journey, some amazing, some plain awful. Just imagine if Bob had done a Bruce and, more or less, kept singing the songs like what he first laid down. I know his voice went many, many years ago but if he had stuck to playing the damn songs instead of reinventing them every bloody time…
Cat makes me think, what if, what if.
And, obviously, she has history
Well ironically on the 66 tour he played the songs the same every night. Maybe that is part of the reason for the later radical reworkings starting at the next live appearances at Isle of Wight.
I have seen a similar no. of NET gigs and while the quality varies dramatically they were also rarely dull. Possibly my favourite was at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 2000 (or 2001) where he played Visions of Johanna, maybe the only time I saw that live.
Bruce generally sticks to similar arrangements once a tour is underway, but he also has form for radical changes compared to the originals.
Bruce’s radical reworking is somewhat different to Bob’s.
What really got my goat with NET concerts was the bozos who started yelling at the start of each song pretending to recognise it when the rest of us still didn’t know halfway through.
I’m not going to claim my fascination with the Cat 1966 is going to last but for me it’s just fabulous to be reminded how absolutely fucking great these songs were.
You really wanted them the same way for ten shows ?
I certainly did not. Being able to recognise 50% of the songs would have been a start.
And as I said at least three shows were magnificent.
@Lodestone-of-Wrongness I have played it a few more times and the clarity of words is indeed remarkable On the electric stuff, it turns out I had misheard some lines for all these years.
All these years “Jump back and run” is what I heard. “Her Jamaican rum” indeed. ..
Really? Always “Jamaican rum” for me. I find it very easy to understand Dylan in this era
“Whisper of escapades out on the D train” was for me “Escapades out on the bee chain”. I was 16 and I was playing Blonde on Blonde on a Dansette….. not many D trains passed through Aberdeen in 1966.
But you had trains, right? We even had them in Wales
Flying Scotsman, Scots Guardsman, Royal Scot, we had them all – never a D Train, whatever that is
Nowadays it would be the D Train bus replacement service, of course, but it doesn’t scan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D_(New_York_City_Subway_service)
Wee Scots lad asks “Where’s New York?”
Just listened to it, over a number of short car journeys. I think it a wonderful snapshot of what must have been a wonderful night, celebrating what must have been the same and more, if likely more challenging to the 66 audience, as Junior sagely comments. I am a fan of Ms Marshall anyway, and fel she has done it proud. Some songs work better than others, in the same way as, through the passage of time, the original. It is hardly a greatest hits. Mr Tambourine Man is my favourite on the acoustic, with Baby, Let Me Follow You Down the best on the flip, a song I always felt somewhat lightweight in its authors hands.
Agree on Baby let me , Johanna for the acoustics for me.
Junior, he right
Author of Baby Let Me Follow You Down? Not Mr Zimmerman (traditional).
Here’s my considered:
https://www.covermesongs.com/
Stunningly good review, most most excellent!
Thank you (blushes)….