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Copyright 2005 Newhouse News Service
All Rights
Reserved
Newhouse News Service
March 4, 2005
Friday
SECTION: ENTERTAINMENT
BYLINE: By KEVIN O'HARE; Kevin O'Hare is
music writer for The Republican of Springfield, Mass.
BODY:
DVD SPOTLIGHT
"Bob Dylan World Tours 1966-1974: Through the Camera of Barry
Feinstein" (Music Video Distributors) ONE STAR
Buyer beware. This is not some long-lost video featuring a wealth
of rare concert footage from two of Bob Dylan's most legendary tours.
Instead, it's the beyond compulsive "director" and
Dylan impersonator Joel Gilbert's bizarre look back at those tours,
primarily through his interviews with a couple of people who were close to
Dylan during that time. Barry Feinstein, the tours' photographer, does
show plenty of his rarely, if ever, seen photos of Dylan from the period,
but as an interview subject he's dry, boring and long-winded. Yet he's the
highlight of this two-hour montage.
Elsewhere,
Gilbert plays the part of an obsessive fan on the edge of sanity. He's
quite convincing in that role, wandering around Woodstock, N.Y., trying to
lead people to believe he is Dylan, looking through the windows of the
house where Dylan and the Band recorded "The Basement Tapes" and even
trying to re-create the singer's infamous 1966 motorcycle accident. Since
there was no way Dylan would ever give this guy the rights to use his
music, the soundtrack throughout is provided by Gilbert's own Dylan
tribute band, which attempts a series of weak instrumentals that are
apparently supposed to sound like Dylan, or maybe the Band. It's
ghastly.
It's also just really weird, so weird it
could eventually earn camp classic status. Thankfully there is some brief
comedic relief as Gilbert tracked down the only Dylan fan who might be
more fixated than he is the exquisitely disturbed, self-proclaimed
"Dylanologist" A.J. Weberman, who made a name for himself while regularly
harassing the folk/rock legend even going through Dylan's garbage in the
late '60s and early '70s. A.J. hasn't been heard from much during the past
few decades so it was kind of intriguing just to see he's still alive and
still as neurotic when it comes to Dylan as he ever was.
LOAD-DATE: March 7, 2005
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