Dylan's Christian period

i dl'd something recently that was a SF show from 1980 w/ Jerry Garcia sitting in on a few tracks. Haven't listened yet, but a cool setlist. I'll see if I can dig up the link for it.

I'll highly recommend this 1979 show: high energy, great guitar work (I guess by a guy from Little Feat?).

yeah, it's a cool band - spooner oldham, jim keltner, tim drummond ... buncha top notch 70s session dudes.

Euler did you find this online somewhere or is it a physical boot?

If it's online, please point us in that direction.

I checked Dime, it's there but there are no seeders at the moment.

http://www.dylannl.nl/Live-1979/1040-1979-11-16-San-Francisco/View-details.html

Thanks Tyler!

that site is sort of weird to navigate, but it's pretty comprehensive

I'm currently reading Volume 2 of Clinton Heylin's Songs of Bob Dylan, and I'm at the Born Again part. That era makes for pretty samey reading, but I was shocked at how little I knew Slow Train Coming and especially Saved. I'm incapable of considering Shot Of Love with anything approaching objectivity as it was my first Dylan album and I loved it then and still. I put Saved on for the first time in years yesterday, and man, it is great.

There was talk of one of the gospel gigs being recorded for a potential live album release, it's bootlegged as Rock Solid and was recorded in Toronto 1980. From everything i've read about them, the Warfield shows could come up with an outstanding Bootleg Series between them.

yeah, I got it online; tyler's link looks good! I might try the other Warfield shows too; reading around, they're evidently legendary, and I can see why: the one I was writing about yesterday is smoking.

Thanks Tyler/Euler!

Okay, this is great

Yep this boot is amazing. The band is so good that when the gospel stuff finishes i'm getting pretty bored by the solo acoustic Tambourine and Times.

aaaaactually these songs are from a different show aren't they?

Yes! Those "bonus tracks" are from a 1976 show, btw.

i did think he was being surprisingly fan friendly with that hit filled encore

kind of rad that dylan's most famous "christian" song is pretty much the sleaziest sounding thing he's ever written.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FavBDpg91gA&feature=related
especially this version. the tuxes add a certain something.

who is that on the axe? that's some hair! also Crosby is shaking some mad tambourine

think that's fred tackett from little feat...he was dylan's live guitarist for the gospel years i think...

I remember Gotta Serve Somebody and Precious Angel playing on the radio when I was fishing around 1980. I haven't heard either since, but I remember them very clearly. Found the former heavy handed sermonising, but compelling, and precious angel delightful.

just watched that clip of the sleaze, jeez yes, women in cages. playing in tails gives it real bite.
Relistening to Precious Angel, the verses lack urgency, just that up and down dylan vacuum cleaner thing, but chorus remains sweet gospel heaven

amazing clip, nice find tyler

sooo... how do Saved and Shot of Love compare to Slow Train Coming? Do they have a similar sound? It's funny to me how exhaustive all the wikipedia entries for Dylan's other albums are, and then you get to those two and there's, like, a paragraph. Finding youtubes for this material is proving difficult, but I'm curious to hear them...

saved seems more... christiany. sonically. i think because of the nature of some of the songs? whereas slow train seems a lot more blues-groovy.

i've only just started listening to these myself, and they're just so bizarre, sometimes, it's fascinating.

Shot of Love is slapdash and stupid, in the ways that count and the ways that don't ("Lenny Bruce" is one of his worst). I love "Every Grain of Sand" and "The Groom..." but I suspect a remastering will help me savor "Watered-Down Love" and "Trouble."

If it helps, Bono and Dylan both think the title track is one of Dylan's best.

is that due diligence on your part, to include bono in there rather than omitting to mention him?

Just the facts, ma'am.

If it helps, Bono and Dylan both think the title track is one of Dylan's best.

no, actually that does not help. :)

I just directed a play in which (as the script required) one of the characters did a five-minute dance to "Watered-Down Love." It gets good after the 10th listen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQ9BBwITcO0

that sounds great!

"Lenny Bruce" is one of his worst
i've listened to this song a lot, just because of its mystifying bad-ness, it's just so completely off the mark that i keep thinking that i'm missing some level of irony or something. but it's just sooooo bad!
as noted above in this thread, the best place to go for this period is the bootlegs.

I'm a fan of his piano playing but he can't do a damn thing with "Lenny Bruce."

Def a subject for further study, yall have me going now (re Dire Straits jibes upthread, did anybody point out that two DS actually played on the thing?) thanks for the link to full-length, primo sound and vision Renaldo and Clara, Tyler. It's in Tyler's doomandgloomfromthetomb.tumblr.com
brothers and sisters, but use the archive, the searchbox sux. The end of the following take suggests how the transition from Before The Flood/ Blood On The Tracks/Rolling Thunder to fragrant evangelism seems more plausible, after seeing the movie, for a mo perfectly sweeter hindsight:
http://thefreelancementalists.blogspot.com/2012/02/renaldo-and-clara-can-this-marriage-be.html

lol true, i cannot figure out why that searchbox function is so terrible.
annoying, just went searching for video of dylan at massey hall in 1980 -- including a crazy-ass sermon about the apocalypse -- and it's been taken down by the web sheriff. damn you, web sheriff!

Ah messed up the link to Tyler's, sorry, try again
http://doomandgloomfromthetomb.tumblr.com/
The full-length Renaldo and Clara seems to be gone from YouTube, "account terminated for repeated violations", there is a 2'25" cur on there, but it's an hour short of the original. Many performances are posted as individual clips. Haven't checked for gospel tour shots. Much later, he was asked if he still believed in those songs. "I do when I'm singing them." Good enough, and should be true of any singer of any song.

Actually, even in the archive, didn't spot your R&C or Eat The Doc links, Tyler--still in there?

oh shit, looks the web sheriff has taken down a ton of the dylan stuff: http://doomandgloomfromthetomb.tumblr.com/post/15030243253/renaldo-clara-you-have-3-and-a-half-hours-to = gone
http://doomandgloomfromthetomb.tumblr.com/post/14920161012/eat-the-document-dylans-hallucinatory = gone
bummerz.

sooo... how do Saved and Shot of Love compare to Slow Train Coming? Do they have a similar sound?

Saved is less polished/produced than Slow Train - almost like a live recording. It's also more straight-ahead gospel in style.

web sherriff seems to be a real dick about Dylan stuff in general

Apparently, Slow Train and Saved were recorded with basically the same band, but for the Slow Train sessions, the musicians learned the songs right before recording them, whereas for the Saved sessions, they were recording songs they had already played on tour for a few months.

http://www.punkhart.com/dylan/sessions-4.html

the last time I listened to these I liked Saved more than Slow Train Coming. I think I like both more than Shot of Love although I like the big hits on the latter a whole bunch. Saved is the most open-heartedly-evangelical of the three & so the songwriting is pretty unique for it: no apologies, no obfuscation (it's not just that it might be the Lord, it *is* the Lord!).

I prefer Saved to Slow Train too. I think it sounds great - musically it's one of my favorite Dylan records, and it has some of Dylan's most unselfconscious and emotional singing. I think "Covenant Woman" is one of his best love songs.

thx guys I think I'll track these down

been on a huge Dylan bender this week

Wow, that "Watered Down Love" clip above got pulled already. #OccupyDylan

All 3 of the gospel-period albums are on Spotify, I think. xp

I'm against spotify but thx

this review is sort of ...mean? ungenerous?

not too far into this album but really dug the version of Satisfied Mind, very Mississippi Fred McDowell

and this review is just fucking ridiculous

That Kurt Loder review of Saved is actually one of the better ones I've read of that album. He's pretty well attuned to the vitality of the music and the possibilities of the style, even if at times he lets the preachiness of the lyrics spoil his enjoyment. I've read some very negative reviews of Saved, calling it perhaps his worst album and saying the band sounds lifeless or dull. Loder is at least a bit more evenhanded. That Wenner review of Slow Train is way over the top in its effusiveness, though that album does have its moments.