In a public service compare-and-contrast exercise, The Irish Times brings you the second Bob Dylan live review in as many days.
The good news is that there is no bad news, that Dylan's superlative performance in the rather more intimate Vicar Street venue last Wednesday wasn't just a serendipitous once-off or a lucky mixture of a maverick talent, gobsmacked reverence and feel-good atmosphere. Hell no, the Dylan we saw here on Thursday evening was just as lean and wiry, and still dancing his pointy let's-do-the-twist dance routine as if he was stubbing out a stubborn cigarette.
It could be argued by those who detest Dylan and who wish to give him no quarter that the only element of his present live performance that carries him across the threshold of greatness is his band. Certainly, they are an extra-strength mixture of a Mar iachi/Americana/rock'n'roll group and as bucolic as a Bearsville/Basement Tapes' out-take, but to place the band beyond the reach of Dylan's influence is, surely, wilfully missing the point.
The fact is, this time around Dylan is at the top of his game: an elegiac version of Don't Think Twice It's Alright, a beautiful countrified lament of Simple Twist Of Fate, the robust rusticity of Country Pie, the desperate gloom of Love Sick, a gentrified Tryin' To Get To Heaven, a twisting, rocking Tombstone Blues.
The end result was a show that was different but pretty much the same: a new selection of songs amidst the likes of Blowin' In The Wind, Like A Rolling Stone, Highway 61 Revisited and Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat. He ended with Forever Young, and not for the first time - to his fans - he actually was.
