Bob Dylan at Budokan

why's he got a low mic for an electric guitar

that's for his penis

The penis of a generation ...

I imagine he switched to acoustic during the set

Steven Soles gets the acoustic credit, tho

like i said guys

The first Dylan album I ever heard, funnily enough, so it means a lot to me. Voted Mr Tambourine Man. I love the flute on this.

the freeballin bob dylan

Everybody Must Get Boned

lolz

"say hello to my lil' friend"

I acquired this album this week and am so excited to listen to it, finally. Between this and the later 80s albums, it's the final frontier of my Dylan fandom. It's really long though! 22 songs, almost 2 hours. I just started listening to it; see you on the other side.

Three songs in, this is totally great; like the Rolling Thunder arrangements in propulsiveness, but Bob singing is gentler, less overpowering. He's riding the arrangements rather than barnstorming them. This would be a great party disk.

"Ballad of a Thin Man" isn't a favorite of mine, so the arrangement here was an appreciated change of pace. The "reggae" take on "Don't Think Twice" was great, with the flute more the song's center here than the well-worn lyric. "Maggie's Farm" was not great, but it's fine; I tend to prefer it the dronier versions and this was trying to be inventive instead. "One More Cup of Coffee" was also ok; I'm not a big Desire-era fan (yet) and this seemed up to the usual standards so no prob. "Like A Rolling Stone"...good but what's sinking in is how hard it must be to play the same damn songs every night for years and years without going nuts. When I teach the same material twice in the same academic year I get tired of it. For Bob it's "Like A Rolling Stone" every night on tour. At the time of Budokan that's almost 15 years, and he was on tour a lot of those years, massive tours. The organ on "Like A Rolling Stone" is kinda cliche but it's carrying the song's momentum more than the lax drumming or Dylan's tired vocal. I dig the sax doubling the sax's flourishes. So far Steve Douglas is the star of this album for me.

oooh Dylan hits a fantastic chord on the "Napoleon in rags" part; I'm guessing it's by chance but it's excellent.

Apologies for the liveblog but wtf, it's 10:30 in Europe on a Sat. morning with like 15 people logged in and no other activity on here so no one should mind my keeping this thread at the top of SNA right now.

The stretch from "I Shall Be Released" through "Simple Twist of Fate" is really lagging wrt energy. They should have mixed a rocker in here somewhere. The arrangements are sleepy, at least as I can hear them; the drums are way back in the mix, and Dylan is too high for the slack vocals he's giving. But "Watchtower" is coming up and maybe this will be the rebirth.

You're almost tempting me to buy this one, Euler! And I still haven't picked up Before the Flood yet....

And it ends with a hilariously flubbed opening to "The Times They Are A-Changin'". This was an enjoyable listening, though obviously slight. I liked the Lovin' Spoonful-like arrangement of "All I Really Want To Do". The second half needed more flute: that was really the draw to me of the first half. So I'll vote for "Love Minus Zero/No Limit", one of my favorite Bob songs and the flute on the take here is hilarious and lovely. But the exhaustion is evident in the vocals here throughout. Bob is speeding toward Tucson.

"Is Your Love In Vain" is such a weird, problematic song, but it's pretty at least. The songs from Street Legal are fun to hear live later on. "Changing of the Guard" is sort of a runaway freight train. And "Senor" is usually prefaced by a weird, surreal monologue. Dylan actually got into talking to the audience in 78, telling sorta Boss-like stories before songs. He really was, in an odd way, kind of reaching out to his audience during this time -- and typically, that wasn't really what his audience wanted!

I really like Street-Legal! I don't know any boots from this era (post-Rolling-Thunder to Christian period), though; recommendations?

I should track down a copy of Renaldo and Clara.

The show I've listened to the most is at the LA Forum - this one: http://bobsboots.com/CDs/cd-o26.html Way more passionate performances than Budokan and the band sort of seems to have figured its sound out ... Still kinda Vegas-y day-glo arrangements, but Dylan brings an edginess to the proceedings.

btw I found that LA show but I haven't listened to it yet; it's still too soon after the marathon Budokan session earlier. But the reviews sound good! And that show is just two days before the San Diego show with the thrown cross, and four days before the Tucson show. So it should be a fascinating listen.

holy snap dragons euler's busted out his ruler and measured this one up! and i thought no one was hitting this shit! damn, dude. i think as you have elaborated above that this recording is too long and sorta front loaded.

but it's a crazy change of pace to be sure

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

jeez, talk about taking revisionism a step too far, guys. btw, this was Bob's Alice Cooper phase, right--wonder if he beheaded any treacherous wymens during the show? and who the hell are those ungodly hacks backing him on this shite? wait...i don't think i really want to know. bet the dressing room blow wuz gud back then, tho. "the answer my friend is blowin' up my nostril ($100 bills, y'all!)...the answer is blowin' up my nostril.

"

taking revisionism a step too far, guys
???
i don't get it

I believe he means "at the time, everybody knew this album sucked" which I think it more or less true provided you put quotes around "knew"

I remember being 14 years old, buying this album from the local "punk" store (boy, was I going to get a schooling from the owner), really digging the lyric sheet, hanging up the poster, and hating the music. When a friend drunkenly broke one of the LPs, I wasn't even mad. You've got me curious. I'm just not sure how curious. Self-Portrait doesn't sound as bad. Street Legal is much better in its remix. Maybe it's time to revisit this one.

what J0hn said.

(not that i'm exactly accusing anyone here of such a serious breach in challops etiquette or anything. just sayin'... is nothing sacred?)

xp

in no way am i putting across any sort of revision regarding the "quality" of this recording. i just think it's a wacky album and perhaps worthy of discussion for the mere fact of it's oddness. i mean i had it on and lol'd at some of the sounds b/c they are so unexpected.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Ten votes!

What a dreadful record! Please spend your time instead on the Bob Dylan and The Band record Before the Flood, which is just great!

i'm not exactly a revisionist on this album -- i don't listen to it very often. but i guess it's interesting conceptually.

yeah i don't think anyone's going to go the mat for Budokan being a "great" Dylan album or anything, though there's good music on there. But the fun thing about being a Dylan fan (at least for me) is all the weird twists and turns his career takes. Who would've imagined that he had this sort of album in him?

whoa dudes! tied for first place here is "love minus zero/no limit" and "don't think twice it's alright" each with 2 votes. then in a miasmatic 6-way tie for second place oh who fuckin cares right?

Ten votes! I'd'a been eleventh, but I just got this record today (on account of this thread reminding me I've never heard it - it, and about five other Dylan albums).

And I would've been the twelfth ifn Spotify hadn't had all the Dylan albums taken down. I couldn't be bothered to go upstairs to get the album.

I think I have a soft spot for "I Want You" off this, but I wanted to check.

No revisionism here either, but I really liked this album when I got it for Christmas when I was about 14 or so (1982ish).

i voted for one of those don't think twice's... Didn't think it was going to come joint first. Do quite like that rendition, I just have to forget there was any other versio first.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2011-04/06/content_12275940.htm

He admitted that he doesn't even like Dylan's music. "His coarse voice sounds like a broken gong and the arrangement of guitar with harmonica can irritate those who are not used to it." Nonetheless, he downloaded Dylan's major albums for a quick brush-up.

Even Bob Dylan isn't widely accepted in China. Many people think his music is too old and historical, while only a few truly understand the essence of his folk songs, said Zhang Yiming, event and media director of China Arts and Entertainment Group. But Zhang had no doubt the tickets would sell out, as more and more white-collar workers are willing to pay for an arty-crafty party.

"For China, Dylan is a 70-year-old young stranger," music critic Zhang Xiaozhou said.

"Due to a wide historical time lag between China and the West, his live show is a new lesson for the local audience to catch up with rather than a nostalgic party. For a very long time, he only existed as a hollow and vague fairytale symbol in the Chinese mainland and is taken as a tag for old-fashioned folk songs."

"How does it feel/to sing your song .... like a broken gonnnnng!"

whoa
To my fans and followers
Allow me to clarify a couple of things about this so-called China controversy which has been going on for over a year. First of all, we were never denied permission to play in China. This was all drummed up by a Chinese promoter who was trying to get me to come there after playing Japan and Korea. My guess is that the guy printed up tickets and made promises to certain groups without any agreements being made. We had no intention of playing China at that time, and when it didn't happen most likely the promoter had to save face by issuing statements that the Chinese Ministry had refused permission for me to play there to get himself off the hook. If anybody had bothered to check with the Chinese authorities, it would have been clear that the Chinese authorities were unaware of the whole thing.

We did go there this year under a different promoter. According to Mojo magazine the concerts were attended mostly by ex-pats and there were a lot of empty seats. Not true. If anybody wants to check with any of the concert-goers they will see that it was mostly Chinese young people that came. Very few ex-pats if any. The ex-pats were mostly in Hong Kong not Beijing. Out of 13,000 seats we sold about 12,000 of them, and the rest of the tickets were given away to orphanages. The Chinese press did tout me as a sixties icon, however, and posted my picture all over the place with Joan Baez, Che Guevara, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. The concert attendees probably wouldn't have known about any of those people. Regardless, they responded enthusiastically to the songs on my last 4 or 5 records. Ask anyone who was there. They were young and my feeling was that they wouldn't have known my early songs anyway.

As far as censorship goes, the Chinese government had asked for the names of the songs that I would be playing. There's no logical answer to that, so we sent them the set lists from the previous 3 months. If there were any songs, verses or lines censored, nobody ever told me about it and we played all the songs that we intended to play.

Everybody knows by now that there's a gazillion books on me either out or coming out in the near future. So I'm encouraging anybody who's ever met me, heard me or even seen me, to get in on the action and scribble their own book. You never know, somebody might have a great book in them.

Thanks Bob.

"Tarantula" is the greatest.

so weird to read something by bob that is not particularly eccentric or obscurantist.

btw this album = one of dylan's weirdest pieces of concept art?

it is a weird record, that's for sure. something a little grotesque about it. not a bad thing. i listened to a paris 78 show recently and it was great, really overripe, this almost absurdly passionate performance from dylan. this era really seems more like performance art than the rolling thunder tour when i think about it. something overly theatrical/artificial about the whole endeavor.

i think there is a cheerful irreverance to the way dylan deals with his classic material in this record that is exciting, and not just in an academic sense: i listen to this all the time. does anyone else love -- not like -- this album?

i dunno about love, but i do like

i had a friend in college who treated this like some kind of straightforward live greatest hits thing

he showed me his copy, and i was like "doesn't that have a terrible temptation?" and he was like "naw, man, look it's got all these great songs how could it go wrong?"

which is a reaction that still befuddles me, even though i've come around to enjoying the nutty rearrangements of his old material on this record

it's like if you're a dylan fan how do you not notice how WEIRD the arrangements on this record are?

maybe he was tone deaf?

i ran into that guy in an ice cream shoppe a bunch of years later but i didn't ask him about this album

he also argued that bruce springsteen's voice was an "acquired taste" which seems like a weird thing to say since gazillions of people have evidently acquired it

boy slayer at budoDAN

terrible REPUTATION i mean

autocorrect wtf

The Terrible Temptation of Bob Dylan, by Griel Marcus -- coming to a kindle near you summer '14.

Bob Dylan's Ice Cream Temptation, coming badly photoshopped to a thousand Chinese kiosks near you summer '14.

"The burlesque emperor of ice cream" could be a figure in a dylan song

I feel like if I cross the threshold of teaching myself to like this album, I won't have any tastes left and will just think everything is the same

haven't seen a lot of footage of this band, but this is pretty sweet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rROFTCcIaZI

I feel like if I cross the threshold of teaching myself to like this album, I won't have any tastes left and will just think everything is the same

― huun huurt 2 (Hurting 2), Monday, May 6, 2013 9:54 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha maybe that explains my friend described above.

i've thought about this too, not necessarily re. this album

is there a point in which we've pushed our tastes so far that we have embraced everything.

my answer is usually

a) no

b) that wouldn't be so bad, anyway

it would be a good thing. taste is tyranny. it's what prevents us from judging idiosyncratic works of art by the terms they set for themselves because we try instead to think about whether or not they conform to this already existing set of criteria. part of the reason this album, specifically, is one of my favorites is because it is totally, shamelessly tasteless.

but that is its own set of (extrinsic) criteria, no?

i think there are two reasons to dislike something. 1.) it fails at what it seems to be trying to do. 2.) what it is trying to do is stupid. neither of these things has anything to do with "taste," per se, which implies a more rigid standard for what is and isn't a valid artistic aim than "not stupid." this album isn't stupid, i don't think. in terms of the albums where dylan is trying to make people wonder wth he is thinking and suspect he is fucking with them, this is the best because it is so polished and well-executed.

well its criteria, but it's more open ended than the concept of taste implies because it accepts that something can be good because it violates our conventional sense of what "goodness" entails re a live album (restraint, fidelity to the original recordings, etc)

maybe this is just a discussion of semantics. the word taste seems restrictive.

If you're going to allow yourself to dislike something you deem stupid, why not go further and allow yourself to dislike things that you merely find to be uninteresting?

that's fine

i was more talking about how letting go of critical standards, or a sense that you might now in advance how and why something would succeed or fail, would be a good thing.

i'm lost

sorry i am going to drop this because i think it would entail a post that is longer than anyone is willing to read. basically i am arguing for an orientation of openness toward artworks, wherein one lets go of expectations about goodness or badness, at least provisionally, in order to let the work disclose whatever it is it has to disclose. i'm not saying anyone was not doing that or anything, but "taste" implies -- to me -- a "discerning eye/ear" that "knows what to look/listen for"

I think the point here is that if you are a Dylan fanatic the actual quality of the music becomes secondary. What matters is the narrative and Budokan is pretty key in that big ol' story of bob losing his way before finding himself and baby Jesus in a motel room

"actual quality of music"

Maybe it's just my copy, but I hear a strange, high-frequency hiss throughout this LP that's always prevented me from giving it a chance. And I'm very sympathetic to Dylan revisionism: "Self Portrait" is one of my favs.

Try a digital version. My mp3s sound fine. I disagree with baaderonix bc i think this album is pleasurable as a thing to listen to. I also dont think it represents an artist who is lost: dylan has always celebrated the plasticity of his songs and tgis album is just an interesting, well executed instance of this.

I think "cheerful irreverence" is a good description of this record, and the most useful of many possible ways to hear it. Otoh it's not an album I have much interest in listening to again.

I like the thought experiment of playing it for someone who has never heard or heard of Bob Dylan. How would it sound removed from the context of his career?

Treeship - I wasn't really saying that there's no way to enjoy the actual music on this, but rather than if this was a random album by a random souped up 70 rocker I don't think anyone would pay attention. This album is special cuz of the narrative that accompanies it it. Anyway I quite like All I Really Want on this but can't remember anything else

If it was a random album by a random 70s person I would be pretty intrigued about who this dude is who writes complex, evocative lyrics but performs them in this strange lounge style.

that argument has bothered me ever since douglas wolk used it -

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/12979-together-through-life/

The ultimate test of a Dylan album, though, is to try to consider it outside the imposing context of his career--to imagine that the bramble-voiced old dude who co-wrote and sang these songs isn't the man who wrote Highway 61 Revisited and Blood on the Tracks and Love and Theft, but Random Blues Journeyman #843.

like, i don't know how that is even like metaphysically possible, to think of anything bob dylan related as not bob dylan related.

listening for the first time to budokan today i was really struck by the time scale.

you can hear the rolling thunder band on 'live 1975' before 'desire' came out, and they're so great.

then on 'hard rain', 1976, without having looked it up i wouldn't even have imagined they were the same rhythm section (rob stoner on bass and howard wyeth on drums). but it's the same band.

then 'budokan' in 1978, different band, and obviously, difft arrangements. from a different planet.

like, that's music - that you could have that much continuity, and the same singer, and lots of the same songs, in such a short span of time, and have the performances be SO different. how could you leave the performer out of that?

it's a sunny day, and maybe my brains fried from lockdown, but i'm enjoying this a bunch today. the enemy of enjoying Bob has always been people telling you what he is, what his music means, what it should sound like etc. so yeah, Bob trying his best to do Elvis In Vegas is a lot of fun!

A lot of Dylan for me is about the humor (intentional and not) and it doesn't get much funnier than Budokan.

there's a lot of joy in this record, and journos can often hate joy. Bob is meant to be serioues! women have hurt his feelings! he did protest songs! stop having fun bob please!!!

*serious