Is Bob Dylan overrated?

This has the '74 tour w Band adds he mentions above, recordings not on Before The Flood--- More ads than usual popped up when I clicked the download link, but then I saw it was indeed downloading the music file (FLAC, even, like my choice for the xpost Not At Budokan stash):
https://dylanlive.substack.com/p/before-the-flood-ii-electric-boogaloo?s=w

Bob Dylan and his Rolling Thunder Revue entourage – including Joan Baez, Allen Ginsberg, Roger McGuinn, Kinky Friedman, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, and Mick Ronson – arrived in Salt Lake City, Utah on May 25, 1976 to play the final show of their all-star caravan tour at the Salt Palace arena...
It was a night filled with unique moments for Dylan: the only time in his entire career that he performed the nine-minute Blood on the Tracks epic “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts,” the first rendition of “Gates of Eden” since 1965 and, according to one contemporaneous report, a performance of the Desire deep cut “Black Diamond Bay,” which has never been played before or after.
Dylan is returning to Salt Lake City on June 30 for a show at the Eccles Theater, and a group of hardcore fans are using it an excuse to join forces and reach out to anyone that might possibly have a recording of the show via a new website and social media campaign.

Bob Dylan gets an electric toothbrush pic.twitter.com/EwnFcxuhrv

— Peter Stone Brown Archives (@ArchivesPeter) July 2, 2022

Caption contest?

Rod Stewart's party at the Greenhouse in Los Angeles, CA on March 17, 1975
Sara Dylan (standing), Paul and Linda, Gregg Allman and Cher, and Bob Dylan pic.twitter.com/hWXJDiOvkS

— Pat Thomas (@PatThomas1964) July 6, 2022

Easily the strangest, most compelling Dylan gig I’ve seen.

The pink-dressed woman in the luxury box dancing arrhythmically for the entire show added a bit of extra Black Lodge surreality. pic.twitter.com/l1oaVEFaPe

— the Heat Warps (@theheatwarps) July 6, 2022

xp SARA: Bob, I’m sorry Linda spilled her tequila from the round you bought the table, but you know that’s what happens when a vegetarian ends up with the worm in her glass.

I'm probably not going to spend that kind of money on that kind of show, but there's some good stuff here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hOlNMUoZAo

Some of these bootleggers, they make pretty good stuff.

We ain't paid no whisky tax since 1792

when he finally goes in for trivia night, and the table is taken, and he says the spot is special because he lost someone to brain cancer, and then the random guy immediately indicates that he, too, recently lost a loved one to brain cancer - he mentions it twice - and the trivia obsessed guy just completely ignores it as he takes the table...

that was gold. was "make up story about brain cancer" on the flow chart? he seemed to go to it immediately as his rock solid excuse

"Take---that--thing---outta your mouth. You stink. No more for you tonight." https://t.co/nx3lRvQxWw

— Don Allred (@0wlred) July 28, 2022

and we have to celebrate the 50th anniversary of this classic Dylan look at the same festival pic.twitter.com/WpWzvIaQcF

— Tyler Wilcox (@tywilc) July 16, 2022

xpost just now noticed, with pic bigger on here than Twitter, that she's got something lit too (and blowing smoke in his face), but it's maybe her first cig of the evening since dinner, and not hanging out of her face like his. Either that, or hers is a joint, aromatic, not bad muffler farts, like my Dad's cigs, also ca.'62, like this photo.

Re: Tyler's tweet, I wonder if Dylan got recognized when he was out on his own looking like that?

seems like his disguise didn't quite work

https://preview.redd.it/wihjphwuzec01.jpg?auto=webp&s=ea09910b7328ae1773e40a2ac2a44b935cacc3f1

"I keep telling you people, I'm Dob Bylan! Now leave me alone!"

Writing Gordon Lightfoot by Dave Bidini of the Rheostatics takes the 1972 Mariposa Festival as its focus. Bidini gave a talk about the book at a local library, and he described his interview with Bruce Cockburn, whose Mariposa set was curtailed when Neil Young wanted to play:

COCKBURN: I was pretty pissed off when I had to give half of my set over to Neil Young.
BIDINI: Sure, but in retrospect, forty years later, it's pretty cool, right?
COCKBURN: No, I'm still pissed off.

well yeah

Everyone else was fine with it.

Can we talk for a minute about "The Hurricane"? For one of his best loved songs, it's got some of his worst rhymes. I mean, come on, Bob. "Eye/guy"? "Paradise/nice"? "Jailhouse/mouse"?

Oh yeah.

"That son of a bitch is brave and gettin' braver
We want to put his ass in stir
We want to pin this triple MURRRR-der....
on HIM!
He ain't no Gentleman JIIIIIIIIM!!!"

ugh

Fucking terrible.

xp love how he sings that.

Yeah, always liked the music, but words have always been somewhat problematic, as some noted when it first came out. Here's what I eventually came to, and added to a blogpost about seeing Renaldo and Clara, with some other updates:

2015 update from something written for somewhere else:

I was just thinking today of how few white music stars have written songs criticizing the way police and prosecutors treat black people. "Hurricane" was one star taking up the cause of another, as was pointed out at the time of its release---but that's yet more baggage pulled along with "This is the story of the Hurricane," the continuing through-line: even if he's got the means and acquires big name support, and the case gets thrown out---so, try, try again, if you've decided that you must make an example of him. The song covers the part of the process that had already happened by 1975, and of course he ended up spending decades in prison, despite the Madison Square Garden benefit, despite much long-term grassroots support thereafter. Not to say he was an angel, not to say he was even innocent, necessarily---but when the rest of the prosecution's case(s) fell apart, they went back to the race card: if nothing else, he was *motivated* to avenge the recent death of another black man, by killing whites. This argument was thrown out of court, and---despite any headline-grabbing aspect of Dylan's motives, despite the rich male sneering at "Miss Patty Valentine," other stuff---the song's point seemed sharper than ever. "The trial was a pig circus" that kept coming back to town, and "he never had a chance"---to avoid the re-tries, not for a long, long time.
(And the section of Dylan’s ”Hurricane”-ear travelling documentary-sketch mix Renaldo and Clara, in which black citizens of Newark comment on and argue about the Carter case on the street---I’ve never seen anything else like that in a movie*. (Dylan’s earlier “George Jackson”, with its highly- unusual-for-197i mix of black-associated gospel voices and white-associated steel guitar (long before the Sacred Steel movement was known by most), and “Sometimes I think this whole world/Is one big prison yard/Some of us are prisoners/The rest of us are guards” seems much less problematic than some of “Hurricane”’s lyrics. But still.)

"Hurricane" is my favourite Dylan track (and Desire for fav album) but not because of the lyrics. Which probably alone indicates I'm very distant from Dylan's work.

It's got its strengths, especially as a track. And it's not like a lot of other chart toppers were pushing political songs, esp. re race, at that point in the early-mid-70s.

How much of "Hurricane" came from Levy? I know some believe he really pushed for narrative or dramatic songs given his theatrical background - "Joey" may be the worse example but then again I do like "Isis" and "Black Diamond Bay" a lot.

Another reason Claudia should write a book, though some attorneys might not agree.

The live version of "Isis" from the Biograph box set is smoking.

Oh yeah.

"That son of a bitch is brave and gettin' braver
We want to put his ass in stir
We want to pin this triple MURRRR-der....
on HIM!
He ain't no Gentleman JIIIIIIIIM!!!"

ugh

― birdistheword, Thursday, July 28, 2022 3:23 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Sorry, but this is awesome as is his delivery throughout most of the song.

More specifically, I've always found thrilling that little downshift he does from the aggression and anger of the first quoted line (and the line that precedes that) to the sneering of the next two lines quoted.

I should clarify, I like his performance on "Hurricane" - there's so much momentum that even when the bad rhymes go flying by, it never sinks the track because Dylan's still barreling down this long story. I don't think it's a great song, but I think it's a great track because of the way Dylan delivers it. (I probably shouldn't have exaggerated how he sung those lines just to draw out the rhyme more.)

The live version of "Isis" from the Biograph box set is smoking.
very true

a stellar song, hilariously rocking

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92FsJVK04WM

from the "this song is called IsizZSSZZss" you know it's going to be good

Bob's phrasing on both Hurricane and Isis make the songs work, stating the obv but he's one of the best to ever do it, so playful, so funny, sharp

so while we're at it the "potatoes" in Million Dollar Bash also a prime example
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGUQgty1e3g

but yeah on one hand Hurricane is great and cinematic, what an opening, but some of the writing is awful clumsy, oh well

worst narrative song in the catalog: Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts

So wrong

Very wrong

I haven't weighed in yet? Pity. He's not the most overrated. He's the worst ever of all time.

bzzzzt

worst narrative song in the catalog: Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts

Wow, that is very surprising. I think it's one of his best "story" songs.

It just doesn’t make sense, I mean, what were all these people doing in a low-rent town with only one diamond mine?

There was quite a haul in the bank vault.

The socioeconomic effects of a town dependent on a single diamond mine is too complex for me to untangle.

on its own, i enjoy Lily, but it's my least favorite on Blood on the Tracks, and also the longest track at nearly 9 minutes. Idiot Wind is nearly 8 minutes long, but you barely notice it because it's Idiot Wind. also, for the longest time my Blood on the Tracks playlist subbed in Up to Me, one of my favorite dylan songs, for Lily, and it somehow made the album even better!

"Idiot Wind" is a masterpiece on every level.

I was never that big a fan of Lily, I thought it a dumb genre exercise like Rocky Raccoon, until I realized it is v much of a piece with the narrative of Tangled up in Blue and other Dylan songs (i.e. three or more romantic characters with an uncertain shifting viewpoint).

I forgot, I didn't like "Lily" either until I heard the NY version, which becomes this very intimate bit of storytelling - I love how that last verse comes across on this version. I can't find the original mix, which is a shame because it really needs that ambience that was added, including the right touch of echo, but here's the raw, bone-dry mix from the box set:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=achOGc4iKIo

I've also always found Lily more "impressive" than a song I could actually enjoy/engage with; will check out that mix.

FWIW: https://www.reddit.com/r/bobdylan/comments/cldhti/blood_on_the_tracks_test_pressing_cleanest/

But two warnings:

1) I actually don't like how the RSD release was mastered, it sounds a bit bright and strident - the previous bootleg of a clean, original acetate was much warmer and more balanced EQ wise.

2) The RSD release was also poorly pressed so you still have these weird bits of distortion caused by things like non-fill, which kind of sounds like a zipper

Oh yeah, this is much more "engaging" way of performing the song...

"Isis" can be a lot of fun live---look up bob dylan isis live 1976 and you get quite a few, duh---always liked this '75 one from Renaldo and Clara, with the facepaint, big hat, mom jeans, gestures, v. authoritative, barks: "to wash my clothes DOWN." Reminding me in a way of "Clothes Line Saga."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqR3w2_m0u4