| · This Halloween concert, released as a double CD, freezes time between the folky Another Side of Bob Dylan and the blasphemous electrified sound of Bringing It All Back Home, which was a stepping stone to future satanic rock acts like Black Sabbath.
In his milestone book No Direction Home, Robert Shelton, former New York Times music critic and the journalist generally credited with "discovering" Bob Dylan, called this "one of his greatest concerts." The tapes used here sound just a tad clearer than the many excellent underground recordings of Halloween 1964 that began to pour forth in the early-’70s, although some of those old vinyl bootlegs come close. And, of course, unlike most of those old boots, this comes with a purty booklet full of glossy photos.
While previous recordings in this live series document a 1966 concert of Dylan with The Hawks (later called The Band) and his star-staffed 1975 Rolling Thunder Tour, the Philharmonic Hall concert features just the man, his guitar, harmonica and the black hole of the legend that would soon suck him up and make it nearly impossible for anyone to hear just the music ever again.
As a songwriter alone onstage, he does a marvellous job of slapsticking off lines thrown from the audience, forgetting his lyrics and tearing into such songs as "Who Killed Davy Moore?" "Mama, You’ve Been On My Mind" and the oft-censored "Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues" with tender ferocity.
The addition of Joan Baez to four tracks on the second disc knocks this album off the bull’s-eye. The concert was at the height of their romance, and although she was revered as a singer in contrast to Dylan’s regard as a songwriter, her warbling is reminiscent of the hideous mew of wind shoved through a subway grate. That she actually performs a solo version of the traditional "Silver Dagger" while Dylan accompanies her on harmonica will be news to most Dylan fans – for decades, bootleggers have mercifully deleted it from their releases of the concert. Still, their musical affair is the stuff of history, and if you care to rewrite history a little, well, that’s what the program button is for.
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