New Song Kick-Starts Dylan Tour
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Not only did Bob Dylan include his great, new song “Things Have Changed” in both shows Friday at the 1,200-seat Sun Theatre in Anaheim as he launched his spring tour, he turned it into the dramatic high point of the evening.
That’s news, given the mercurial singer-songwriter’s habit on tour of downplaying or ignoring recent material in favor of whatever nugget from his vast repertoire appeals to him at the moment.
With its recurrent line “I used to care, but things have changed,” the song he wrote for the new Curtis Hanson film, “Wonder Boys,” is cut from the same cloth of profound disillusionment as most of those on his watershed 1997 “Time Out of Mind” album.
Pairing it near the end with “Not Dark Yet,” a “Time Out of Mind” song that’s also on the “Wonder Boys” soundtrack, Dylan delivered a one-two knockout wallop. Emotional consciousness was quickly restored with a heart-jolting version of “Highway 61 Revisited.”
He’s using the same understated but resourceful four-man band that toured with him for most of last year and once again they began the shows acoustic then went electric, and mixed cornerstone Dylan hits with the occasional obscurity, and spirited bluegrass, country and rock covers.
Dylan, 58, appeared truly energized at touring again after a three-month break, and that news couldn’t be better.
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