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This blogger, Richard Gehr, is not an employee of AARP. The opinions expressed in the blog are not necessarily the opinions of AARP and AARP assumes no liability for the content posted by Mr. Gehr or any other participant

Richard Gehr | November 09, 2007

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The best part of director Todd Haynes's upcoming head-scratcher of a Bob Dylan biopic, "I'm Not There," is My Morning Jacket-singer Jim James's freaky-yet-faithful version of "Goin' to Acapulco" (stream it here). Dylan recorded the song with The Band during their informal 1967 sessions in the basement of the Big Pink house in Upstate New York; Calexico, an Arizona group that effortlessly evoked The Band's shambling gait, accompanies James in the film. James and Calexico's "Acapulco" was also among the highlights of Wednesday night's "'I'm Not There': In Concert—A Celebration of the Film By Todd Haynes" at Manhattan's Beacon Theater. (The show benefited 826 National.)

The conceit of "I'm Not There" is that a half-dozen different actors, including Heath Ledger, Richard Gere, and Cate Blanchett, portray the elusive songwriter at different points in his career. The film's soundtrack strives to be equally unpredictable, with Dylan songs covered by both his contemporaries (such as Richie Havens and Willie Nelson) and by performers a generation younger (like Sonic Youth, Cat Power, and Yo La Tengo). Al Kooper, Joe Henry, Dan Hicks, and other non-sound tracked Dylan fans showed up as well.

I left the Beacon glad to have caught Tift Merritt's impassioned "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall," My Morning Jacket's burning "Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You," and Terry Adams's "Rainy Day Women # 12 and 35." The evening's real showstopper, though, was the Roots, who reprised the 10-minute tuba-meets-Hendrix version of "Masters of War" (stream it here) they debuted at an earlier Dylan-athon. Apart from ongoing sound problems and lyrics challenges (shouldn't memorization be required of tribute acts?), the concert was undoubtedly the place to be for hardcore Dylan fans, even if the recipient of all this adoration himself was elsewhere and, as singer-actor John Doe noted, probably playing a gig. [streams via Hidden Track]

Comments

Ace Cowboy says:

*Richard probably meant to be a good web steward and link to the Hidden Track blog post instead of just offering the streams from the site. I'll help him out:

http://www.glidemagazine.com/hiddentrack/im-not-there-concert-we-werent-there/

11/09/07 02:38 PM

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