Tuesday 14 October 2008

Bob Dylan at Newport 1965

Very few artistes have made long-lasting impressions on me. One of them is Bob Dylan whose music is evergreen. I never tire of listening to this old man and his old stuff from the 1960's. When I was in Petaling Jaya last weekend, I picked up three DVDs, this one among them. It showed snippets from his performances at the Newport Folk Festival from 1963 to 1965.

The 1963 and 1964 sets were exclusively acoustic. Just Dylan on his guitar and harmonica. But the ground-setting performance was in 1965. For the first time, Dylan plugged in before a live audience and played three songs with the Butterfield Band (sans Paul Butterfield but with two legendary names: Mike Bloomfield on guitar and Al Kooper on organ). Two songs were featured on this DVD.

This historical performance so shocked purists that Dylan received a fair amount of cheers and jeers. Later, he had to be coaxed back by Pete Yarrow (of Peter, Paul and Mary fame) to appease the crowd with some acoustic numbers. It's all there in the DVD. Interesting.

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