Note for note and over five decades later, Power recreates an iconic 1966 concert.
WORDS Ninette Paloma
Cat Power tugs at an unruly sleeve. She fans her sheet music and looks on with amusement as a tech hand fusses over her microphone. When the lights finally dim and the introductory chords of a bare guitar fills the stage, she leans into her gravelly voice and acknowledges the Santa Barbara crowd: “She’s got everything she needs, she’s an artist, she don’t look back.” Power’s gaze softens, and the weighted melancholy of Bob Dylan makes its entrance.
By now most of us have heard about the prickly reception Dylan received during a string of UK concerts in the spring of 1966; the chorus of boos that ensued during the second half of each performance when Dylan would switch over from acoustic to a raucous electric sound with the help of his touring band the Hawks. The heckling would hit an all-time high at the Manchester Free Trade Hall with an audience member bellowing “Judas!” just before Dylan brakes into a defiant rendition of “Like a Rolling Stone” – forever memorialized in a bootleg recording that would erroneously come to be known as 1966: The Royal Albert Hall Concert.
Song for song and over five decades later, Power stepped onto the actual Royal Albert Hall stage in a brilliant recreation of that pivotal concert, releasing the live recording and kicking off a Cat Power Sings Dylan worldwide tour that included a March 6 performance at the Lobero Theatre.
If the prospect of restaging the historic concert of a Pulitzer-prize winning songwriter seemed like a daunting task, Power didn’t really let on. Known as much for her dagger-like delivery as for her vulnerable disposition, she brought an intuitive delicacy to “Visions of Johanna” and an aching, slow-burn cadence to “Desolation Row” while also managing to weave dignity into “Just Like a Woman” where Dylan never bothered to. Cradled by little more than her guitarist and six looming stage lights, Power tapped into the casual earnestness of a 1960s folk song with all of the multi-hyphenate emotions you’ve come to expect from an artist who can “take the dark out of the nighttime and paint the daytime black” without a hint of remorse. By the time the rest of her bandmates picked up their instruments to light up the stage for the second set, Power had already hit an electric stride, purring through “Tell Me, Mamma” and “Baby, Let Me Follow You Down” with burning abandon. She slapped her thigh and let her cutoff sweatshirt slip absently past her shoulder as the snare drum for “Like a Rolling Stone” kicked the audience into high gear. One by one, people leapt into the aisles and jumped to their feet, echoing the familiar lyrics and visibly entranced by the heat bouncing off the proscenium. That’s the power of Power.
