Album Reviews

Dylan's Halloween '64 performance before an adoring Philharmonic Hall (currently Avery Fisher Hall) audience waited forty years for release but remarkably, here it is in the digital age, still available in the LP format, sumptuously packaged, mastered and pressed for Sony by Classic Records.

Sounding as if he was playing an intimate downtown café instead of a newly opened, swanky classical music concert hall, the 23 year old Dylan wows an adoring crowd with a mix of familiar and new material, segued by good-natured banter, asides and a few miscues that, in retrospect, hold almost as much interest as the music itself.

When he takes the stage before launching into a “The Times They Are A-Changin,'” the crowd almost gasps in anticipation. He segues into “Spanish Harlem Incident,” and then stops to tune and introduce “Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues,” which CBS executives wouldn't allow him to sing on The Ed Sullivan Show after hearing it in a rehearsal just prior to airtime. Dylan wouldn't compromise and didn't appear on the show. As we later learned, the studio version was cut from Freewheelin'-well most pressings, anyway.

When Dylan speaks, and especially when he laughs, you can taste the adrenaline. He delights in his cockiness, and the audience's laps it up. They've come to revel in the familiar, certifying their hipness by singing the opening line to familiar lyrics, almost before Dylan can get to them, and to celebrate their hero's newest creations, but if they were there for a didactic sermon, they didn't get it. If they were there for an affirmation of their faith in Dylan's greatness they got it. After all, among the new songs he introduced that night was “Mr. Tambourine Man,” though a few in the audience were already familiar.

Dylan's purposeful, yet playful performance hasn't lost any of its power, now seen as a piece of history. Context only adds to the excitement. It had only been two years since his debut album of mostly covers and the singer, his guitar and harmonica could sell out a large, prestigious hall like Philharmonic.

The story is better told in Professor Sean Wilentz's liner notes. He was there and he's a better writer, but it doesn't take a historian to understand this performance's place in history: it's beyond Dylan's rough-edged downtown days and before his motorcycle accident and the many faces of his odd re-inventions. His album, The Times They Are A Changin' had been released earlier in the year and how right he was, even if he couldn't begin to imagine how. It was enough that he was.

Seventeen songs, some familiar and some new comprised the set list, Dylan delivering them with a clarity of purpose, yet an effervescent lightheartedness that his motor cycle accident seemed to drain out of him. Joan Baez joins him on four tunes.

The recording is about as honest, transparent and three-dimensional as you could possibly hope for, with the worst part being the audience sound. It's kind of hollow and after the fact. But who cares? Dylan sets up shop in three dimensions between your speakers, and though the hall's reverb time is fast, it sets up a nice acoustic, creating a three dimensional image of the fourth dimension troubadour. Columbia originally planned to issue this when it was first recorded, so the recording was not an afterthought: most likely it was to three track. Classic spreads the 17 tunes through 6 sides, avoiding the inner grooves, thus making it easier to track and less susceptible to the sibilent mistracking many complained of on the Royal Albert Hall box.

The packaging is everything you'd expect: a full sized, perfect bound booklet printed on thick semi-gloss stock containing Wilentz's learned annotation, and a collection of marvelous photographs not suitable for shrinking down to CD booklet size. Each of the 3 LP jackets features front and rear photos also best seen as 12x12s. You also get a reproduction of the original concert promotion poster (prices $4.50, $4.00, $3.50, and $2.75) and it all comes in a box featuring a full color, full sized portrait that lets you know just how young Dylan was, and how long ago it was. This set brings it back to life brilliantly. You'll get your money's worth first play through, but as I've discovered, there's no end to how many times you can relive the performance and discover new things about it, and yourself.

I'm sure Greg Calbi did a great job on the CDs, but your only true choice is this 3 LP set produced for Sony by Classic Records. The packaging, mastering and pressing quality here are what the LP was and is all about: something worth owning, holding, reading, touching and of course playing. It's not cheap, but buy yourself a well deserved gift. You won't regret it. At one point Dylan tells the crowd “It's Halloween. I have my Bob Dylan mask on. I'm masquerading.” That's how it's been with Dylan throughout his career, only here, it seems as if for most of the night, he's got the mask off. Why this wasn't issued as planned in 1964 or '65 is a mystery to me. I'm thankful it's here now. Listen to Dylan sing "With God on Our Side," and you'll wonder whether 40 years has passed.