If the show didn’t have the playfulness of the song selection and emotion of Madison Square Garden, what it did have was Dylan singing with amazing intensity (especially at the beginning) and not only that, but the confidence to make his voice do what he wanted it to do.
~Peter Stone Brown (boblinks.com)
First Union Center Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 15 November 2002
Bob Dylan (vocal & guitar)
Charlie Sexton (guitar)
Larry Campbell (guitar, mandolin, pedal steel guitar & electric slide guitar)
“Amazing” is the only way to describe the sound quality and the performance on the two nights at Philly’s ‘Theater of Living Arts’. The vocals are powerful, crisp, and way out front. The drums are fat and warm, and the instruments blend to a studio quality perfection. Two highlights are the 8 minute acoustic versions of Tambourine Man and Visions Of Johanna that are as soft and pretty as you’ll hear. The simple, but tasteful aesthetics of the package belie the jaw dropping experience the listener will soon find themselves immersed in. The back lists the tracks, venue and personnel. One of the many highlights of a great tour. The only thing to even remotely fault this great package with is the spelling of ‘Peddler’
–Bobsboots.com
Theater Of Living Arts
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
21 & 22 June 1995
Bob Dylan (vocal & guitar)
Bucky Baxter (pedal steel guitar & electric slide guitar)
From the last (and one of the best) concerts of the 95-tour we get this great version of “Dark Eyes”.
…. and then three nights in Philadelphia (December 15–17). Every night Patti Smith would come on in the middle for the tenth song of the set and they would
share vocals on ‘Dark Eyes’, the acoustic song from
the end of the Empire Burlesque album of ten years
earlier, and which he had never sung live before.
The routine might have been the same every
night but there was nothing routine about it. ….
….but without question live performance brought it
alive, and it was Patti Smith who made it happen.
Here, in the tingling electricity between them as
they traded verses and duetted on the choruses, the song was the conduit of a beauty and excitement it had never possessed.
Many Dylan followers believed that he felt challenged by Patti Smith’s still possessing a fierce anti-showbiz, anti-bullshit credibility that had in his own case been compromised by then: that she therefore kept him on his toes as no performance with his own band alone would have done. As it was, he rose higher than his toes.
~Michael Gray (Bob Dylan Ecyclopedia)
Lyrics:
Oh, the gentlemen are talking and the midnight moon is on the riverside
They’re drinking up and walking and it is time for me to slide
I live in another world where life and death are memorized
Where the earth is strung with lovers’ pearls and all I see are dark eyes
A cock is crowing far away and another soldier’s deep in prayer
Some mother’s child has gone astray, she can’t find him anywhere
But I can hear another drum beating for the dead that rise
Whom nature’s beast fears as they come and all I see are dark eyes
They tell me to be discreet for all intended purposes,
They tell me revenge is sweet and from where they stand, I’m sure it is.
But I feel nothing for their game where beauty goes unrecognized,
All I feel is heat and flame and all I see are dark eyes.
Oh, the French girl, she’s in paradise and a drunken man is at the wheel
Hunger pays a heavy price to the falling gods of speed and steel
Oh, time is short and the days are sweet and passion rules the arrow that flies
A million faces at my feet but all I see are dark eyes
