Bob Dylan seems to be permanently on the road these days and this summer he's touring Europe once more. Hop Farm Festival in the UK saw him perform half the set playing grand piano which put an entirely new edge to his set of classic songs.
The songs are a challenge for those not use to his delivery these days but it has to be said the man has found the perfect antidote to the dreaded audience sing-a-long which seems to be de rigueur at modern gigs. He basically alters the delivery and phrasing to such an extent absolutely no one can predict how it goes and at the same time breath new life into an old song that he must have sung a thousand times.
This harks back to a time when buying an album of an artist was just the first step in knowing their music, the second was how the artist interpreted that work live. It just made you come back for more.
Here's Dylan doing All Along The Watch Tower in Bonn, Germany this year.
It's an audience shot video so it does have the usual camera mangling but the sound is good enough and you do get to see a shot or two of the man that changed 20th century music. Magic stuff.
