Finally, somebody got the master of this all-star concert. If not the master, certainly a low generation videotape. On October 16, 1992 many of the industry's finest across genre's, gathered to pay tribute to ole Bob on this -his 30th Anniversary in the music industry.
This concert has seen the light on a couple of marginal DVD-R releases but they are now nothing more than coasters. Hercules has managed to leverage a super clean looking, and excellent sounding low gen source, providing a very interesting and mostly enjoyable musical ride. It certainly plays like a cable pay-per-view experience with the opening video of the artists arrival to both rehearsals and the actual show, along with some of the meet and greet reactions between the familar faces.
While many of the performances are duets, of sorts, there are solo performances as well. The duets all seemingly work well even though 16 years later you look at the list of artists and go, huh? Sinead O'Connor for instance, or The O' Jays. Strange. And, does Roger McGuinn simply travel the globe looking to find anybody in the music industry who will let him sing Dylan? So, yes there are the predictable participants as well. Standouts include a strong opening set by John Mellencamp with Al Kooper, very cool to help set the mood. Lou Reed is surprisingly strong here as well. My favorites though are the back-to-back mid-set appearances by Johnny Winter doing justice to "Highway 61 Revisited" and Ron Wood's "Seven Days"...and, Neil Young steps up and simply does his thing - really great. Also predictable but nonetheless enjoyable are the closing suite of George Harrison singing "Absolutely Sweet Marie" and the Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers-influenced "Rainy Day Women". What is odd about the finale is that after the whole cast comes onstage to sing "Knocking On Heaven's Door" with Bob, he is left to close with a nice but anti-climactic version of "Girl From The North Country". A cool tune to bring it all back home from where the journey began for Bob - just himself with guitar and harmonica, but it comes off a little weird as the end of the long evening. The rehearsals are a nice touch and gives us some flavor to how nervous everyone really is to tackle the tunes, knowing the man is around - all led primarily by G.E. Smith of SNL band fame and, of course part of Bob's touring band for a few years during the late 80's.
This is a really nice set from Hercules, split on to 2 discs and professionally packaged up for collector's who have a waited quite awhile for just such a documentation to this landmark show.
