At the Smith household we have a simple Thanksgiving tradition: the four of us take in an early-afternoon matinee, usually at the Charles Theatre or Senator, and later nosh at the charcuterie board, Caesar Salad or sushi tray that my wife’s prepared. Minimal clean-up, no leftovers cramming the refrigerator or worrying about a dry turkey. This year, the movie industry didn’t cooperate: there was nothing we wanted to see—in retrospect, we should’ve held off on Jesse Eisenberg’s very funny (mostly Kieran Culkin) A Real Pain—so instead we stayed home and watched Clint Eastwood’s Mystic River (2003), a pick that met with everyone’s approval.
We follow suit on Christmas Day, although the late-morning is consumed with opening a bunch of gifts under our glittery and eccentric tree—purchased each year at the local Green Fields Nursery, and trimmed with ornaments that date back to the 1930s, one fat slice of family history that remains in the sunroom for two weeks—and then it’s off to the movies. My son Nicky, who keeps track of releases, reports that we won’t be shut out this year, and the pick is the Nicole Kidman/Harris Dickinson film Babygirl. However, the boys and I will also do our duty and see A Complete Unknown, the Bob Dylan biopic that unfathomably stars Timothee Chalamet as Dylan from 1961-65, ending at the Newport Folk Festival when, in Joan Baez’s words from “Diamonds and Rust,” “the original vagabond” dismayed folk purists by “going electric.”
I dislike Chalamet’s acting and why he was cast for the role is a “complete unknown” to me. It’s another example of Hollywood’s laziness, for the Dylan story was captured superbly by Martin Scorsese’s No Direction Home documentary (2005), and Todd Hayne’s underappreciated I’m Not There in 2007. It’s not new material, and if you can get juiced up by Chalamet singing a slew Dylan songs (not particularly well, going by the film’s trailer), that’s the “mystery tramp” in you, a mystery I don’t expect will be solved for me. Still, as someone who grew up awaiting each Dylan release, my curiosity is piqued, and I’ve read that Edward Norton’s portrayal of Pete Seeger is spot-on, not surprising since his acting skill so outpaces Chalamet’s that it ain’t even funny, you old rummy.
On a related topic, a few months ago I fell for Columbia’s clear-out-the-vault bait and bought the 27-disc set of Dylan’s “Comeback Tour” with the Band in 1974, a 50th anniversary cash bid attempt (although for that much music the $106 tab is a bargain; if you can find it, since it came and went straight to the cut-out bin), and it’s a worthwhile curio. I attended one of those shows—at Nassau Coliseum on Jan. 28th—and while it was thrilling for an 18-year-old to finally see Dylan live, the show was mildly disappointing as he shouted out the lyrics to well-known songs, as if he and The Band had snorted mounds of cocaine before taking the stage, which they probably did.
I didn’t see many reviews of the box set, but one in Mojo was ridiculously exuberant. Grayson Haver Currin wrote: “Punk was properly a few years around the corner. But pairing his relentless sneer and high-volume angularity to The Band’s elemental force that strips so-called Americana down to its components, these shows often feel like a break in the firmament, a shift in the energy, a window into the future.” In reality—despite Dylan’s landmark Blood On the Tracks a year later and Rolling Thunder Revue tour that fall—it was a “window into the past,” as for most of the shows Dylan didn’t challenge his audiences. The tour couldn’t be more different than punk; it was the mid-1970s excess that the Sex Pistols, Clash, Elvis Costello and Talking Heads ridiculed, at least until they became elder statesmen of rock. I remember at the show, when he sang “The Times They Are A-Changin’” elbowing a buddy and saying, “I thought the times already changed!” I’m carping, but never understood why Dylan, after allegedly blown away by Jimi Hendrix’s scorching cover of “All Along the Watchtower,” didn’t play the song acoustically again, foregoing all the subtlety of the original song for electric bombast.
Anyway, on the 27-disc set, the first five shows are better than the rest of the tour, more calm, and with set lists that included songs like “Hero Blues,” quiet, poignant renditions of “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” and “Love Minus Zero/No Limit,” and new material like “Nobody ‘Cept You,” “Hazel” and “Something There is About You.” Curiously, nothing from “The Basement Tapes” is included (I don’t think “This Wheel’s On Fire” would’ve been too obscure), nor early-1970s songs like “Watching the River Flow” and “George Jackson.”
Nevertheless, the collection would make for a pretty good Christmas gift, either for younger people who’re digging backwards into Dylan’s past (although not many of them listen to CDs anymore), or contemporaneous fans like me, who were, long ago, caught up in Dylan’s mystique. And one bonus: none of The Band’s songs are included. I never have to hear “Up On Cripple Creek” again.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023