Bob Dylan – Blame it on Rio Review

An early appearance in the year for Bob Dylan meant travelling to Rio and continuing the Never-Ending Tour. That tour is no joke. He did not stop and still is not stopping. Blame it on Rio is a wonderful recording because like many who feel their first foot forward had best be a good one in the New Year, an on-edge Dylan provides a glistening set filled with hits from thirty years of work. Twenty-one songs from an early gig in 1990, plenty of hits and even an Empire Burlesque feature which, just five years on from the album’s release, felt like a wet blanket thrown over the fire of a greatest hits show. No wonder Dylan amplified and changed the best of his material, he played it enough for it to lose the spark. This show, Blame it on Rio, has a heavier construct to it. Harsh instrumentals, loud and uncanny live experiences which see Dylan push for that sonic reinvention once more.  

Rough and bold, booming rock focus hears Dylan adapt his folk classics to an unrecognisable mess of heavy electrics. Maybe those protestors back in the 1960s had a point. This feels more like a soundcheck than a live show and yet here we are, slick guitar solos and an ugly rattle through the post-1990s boom of contemporary rock and roll. It affects Blame it on Rio massively, and we cannot blame the country for this change of instrumental direction. And yet it brings out the best in the likes of All Along the Watchtower. There is a constant boom to the instrumentals here, which is close to ear-piercingly loud, drowning out Dylan in the process. But when he cuts through and provides some sudden, sharp turn of vocal delivery it is hard not to notice the charm of this set. A truly mixed bag but the highs of All Along the Watchtower or Highway 61 Revisited are hard to ignore.  

As out-there as some of the instrumentals may be, crushing any potential for sound quality along the way, they do maintain an enjoyable swing. It is the fundamental change to known songs which keeps Dylan relevant – it happened with Budokan 1978, and it happens here too. A dislike of the wholly left-field changes is to have a closed mind. Open yourself up to Blame it on Rio and it becomes a frankly unbelievable, if uneven show. Some songs are left in an unrecognisable state, but is this not the point of a live experience? For those with their ear firmly nailed to Dylan’s discography, pieces like Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again will turn the fundamentals of the song on their head. And such is the reinvention, the process of finding a new groove in an old sound, which Dylan does time and again.  

Blame it on Rio is such an occasion and where better to do it than the turn of a new century? His skill on stage here is often reduced by the noise and clattering instrumentals, but some have suffered through worse sound quality than this for later moments. There is a fundamental lack of sharpness to this set, an almost intentional openness to see where these songs can go. With a new rocker-like focus, Dylan is given a chance to play around with a country rock swing which brings Maggie’s Farm and Mr. Tambourine Man back from the brink, into a new instrumental structure that relights the fires which got Dylan to this creative streak in the first place. Better arrangements were on the horizon, a rebirth in the studio with Time Out of Mind was not far off either – and these would change his sound once again. Blame it on Rio has a lot going for it if you can get through the rough start.