I won’t be seeing Dylan on his UK tour until Sunday at Wembley Arena, so I asked Damien Love to be a guest blogger and review the show for us. Damien is a veteran Uncut contributor, the author of a great biography of Robert Mitchum and a longstanding Dylan fan.
HAPPENINGS TEN YEARS TIME AGO
February 19 to 25, 1997
Ben Elton hosts the Brit Awards at London's Earls Court, where there are two gongs apiece for Manic Street Preachers (Best Group, Best Album - Everything Must Go) and the Spice Girls (Best Single - "Wannabe", Best Video - "Say You'll Be There"). Geri Halliwell's Union Jack mini-dress gets the lion's share of coverage in the following morning's tabloids, which also report on the group's first album entering the US charts at Number Six. The Bee Gees receive the Outstanding Contribution nod, as a total of 15 awards are given out during the evening, chicken feed compared to...
Leaving aside for a moment the issue of whether an unshown TV special from '68 could capture, as the opening credits suggest, "the spontaneity, aspirations and communal spirit of an entire era" any more accurately than, say, Catweazle or Do Not Adjust Your Set, and regardless of whether you think Beggars Banquet and Let It Bleed are the fulcrum points of a generation or just something that music critics of a certain age should learn to get over, the portents of this cryogenically preserved moment in rock time are undeniable. Look!
The Vietnam war had been over for three years by the time Hal Ashby made Coming Home in 1978. Those who'd survived the combat zones of South-East Asia had returned to find themselves shunned and quarantined, like lepers in their home towns; a living, breathing reminder of a shameful war many back home would rather forget had ever happened. Some of those who came back perhaps wished they'd died out there in the jungles—the paraplegics, the traumatised, forever dreading the nameless, shapeless things that whispered to them in the night.
Released to acclaim in the US early last year, 26-year-old Ritter's debut earned him support slots with Dylan and the admiration of Joan Baez. Now available in the UK, this is softly rolling roots-folk with the warmth of John Prine and a twist of Richard Buckner. Townes Van Zandt and Nick Drake ("You've Got The Moon"; "Drive Away") are obvious touchstones, too, but ldaho-born Ritter's lugubrious stealth is rooted in his own earth, addressing the paradox between the allure of the road and the pull of tradition.
