Dylan

“Absolutely Sweet Marie” came on in the car yesterday and I cranked it up, the way it just careens along, it’s like the band are riding flat out alongside each other and grinning.

Not strictly necessary o course, but v. fun:
Jason and the Scorchers, "Absolutely Sweet Marie" (original studio version, haven't checked the live ones yet)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKqQJuJqN6Q

Dylan is playing new songs every night (usually two) and they are covers with some relation to the city he's in. He opened the tour in Kansas City and played Wilbert Harrison's standard "Kansas City." In St. Louis, he bookended his show with two Chuck Berry covers ("Johnny B. Goode" and "Nadine"). And last night in Chicago, it was "Born in Chicago" (probably in tribute to the Paul Butterfield Blues Band as it was the opening track of their debut and Dylan famously recorded and performed at Newport with its members) as well as "Forty Days and Forty Night" by Muddy Waters.

Saw him tonight. No surprise covers unfortunately. But I loved the new version of Key West that he did. He closed with Every Grain of Sand and it was one of the best live versions I’ve ever heard.

i will be seeing Dylan in Springfield, Mass in a couple weeks and I will be satisfied with nothing less than a medley of musical numbers from The Simpsons

He covered Leonard Cohen's "Dance Me To the End of Love" in Cohen's hometown of Montreal the other night.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPAVmw94Zds

Picked up the new book from the archive yesterday, Bob Dylan: Mixing up the Medicine, and based on a quick flip through it looks like a great trove of stuff I haven't seen before. Enjoyed the Lucy Sante piece from it that Dow linked in another thread.

Glad you liked it: https://lithub.com/how-bob-dylan-blurred-the-boundaries-between-literature-and-popular-music/ ("Not my title!" LS sez)

Last night's show at the Beacon Theater opened with a verse from Billy Joel's "New York State of Mind." Then towards the end of the show, after introducing his band, Dylan said, “Jann Wenner is here tonight. He was kicked out of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. We don’t like that. We’re trying to get him back in.” Yeeesh.

Next month is 50th anniversary of the 1974 tour. I’m completely unfamiliar with this era—is Before the Flood the best document of the tour, or is there an individual show/bootleg compliation that’s better?

My short answer would be that it’s the best available and best sounding representation we have.

Long answer:

The tour was more interesting at the start because the setlist wasn’t set in stone and had a number of surprises. The first show above all had the most (and welcome) surprises, opening with “Hero Blues,” unveiling a few more songs from Planet Waves (nearly everything from that album was eventually dropped from the tour after a few weeks), the great lost outtake “Nobody ‘Cept You” (one of my favorites) and for the only time of the tour, Dylan plays on a Band number, playing harmonica on their great cover of “Share Your Love with Me.” If I could have one show in pristine sound, it would be that tour opening show - I hope a soundboard recording was made but I have my doubts one exists anywhere. That’s the problem with the early shows - they may be more interesting, but they mostly exist as audience recordings and can be rough listening. A soundboard or PA feed was recorded on January 14 but by then the setlist was becoming much more standardized with much fewer surprises. However Dylan’s singing wasn’t quite as mannered as it would be in the final two weeks when he was shouting more and more with less nuance in his phrasing. Unfortunately those later shows are the only ones that were professionally recorded. The upshot is that the Band played better as the tour went on and come off great on the final two shows performed on Valentine’s Day - selections from those shows dominate the official live album. Frustratingly, the final show had the tour’s only performance of “Mr. Tambourine Man” which was dedicated to Sara (her favorite song) but it was not included on the official live album.

“Professionally recorded” meaning multi-track recordings

Thanks! I’ll check out Before the Flood and the opening show—I’ve heard enough Dead AUD tapes that maybe I won’t mind so much.

i'm blanking on where I read this, but i want to say there are more multitracks of the 1974 shows in the dylan archives ... maybe i dreamt it. some of the soundboards are decent (oakland, NYC). will be interesting if they do anything to commemorate the 50th anniversary — with Robertson's recent passing, seems like a good time?

it's really too bad there isn't a concert doc of this tour, though — I feel like the energy would suit itself to that format ...

However Dylan’s singing wasn’t quite as mannered as it would be in the final two weeks when he was shouting more and more with less nuance in his phrasing.

yeah, as loved as Before the Flood is - I can't really stand Dylan in that mode, such a waste

even Levon gets a bit shouty on some of the Band things, but that said I've always loved Dixie here

The shoutiness totally works for me, Dylan's and Levon's. I prefer several versions here to the originals, even: for inst, the original "Don't Think Twice" sounds fussy faux-hillbily compared to the reggae-oid "someone to give his ha!-ha!" heartiness on the electric set, while the solo acoustic has him flashing back (or experiencing a Blood On The Tracks-related?) mixed-up confusion, like, what just happened? What did she do? Should he even be leaving, and anyway where is he going? But he's going alright, and "Don't think twice it's alrieeet---" Also the jittery raspy proto-rap of "It's Alright Ma." which Lester Bangs compared to Paul Newman in Robert Altman's Buffalo Bill Among The Indians, Or, Sitting Bull's History Lesson: the return of the battered Americana hero "in full scraggle." One of the great arena rock albums of the 70s, esp. by older guys, in there with Rock N Roll Animal(although I've played BTF a lot more than that) and Van Morrison's It's Too Late To Stop Now (almost too sensitive at times to qualify for "arena," but the overall effect of the 2-LP is v. powerful.) I know we all hear what we hear, but gotta say that.

Sure, would love to hear a 50th Anniversary expansion, with or without audience tapes, esp. of songs not on Before..: whatever, bring it on.

your enthusiasm makes me want to revisit this, and I'm down for an official release of more tapes

I've had a good bootleg recording of October 17, 1987 for years - Dylan's backed by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers and IIRC the 1987 tour is held in higher regard than their 1986 tour together.

This show is supposed to be the highlight, and amazingly TWO different amateur videos exist of the concert, both from very different angles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXbDllRrT5k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pja9JSWE0Fk

Should mention, Roger McGuinn makes a guest appearance for "Chimes of Freedom" during the encore, then later George Harrison pops in for a guest appearance.

(Should also mention the sound on the camera close to the stage is abysmal.)

Awhile back there was a discussion on Dylan's heavy drinking during the '80s and I think I was trying to remember where it was well documented. I just stumbled on this paragraph from Clinton Heylin's bio:

By 1987, his drinking had again begun to get the better of him and when Kurt Loder arrived in Jerusalem on September 7 to interview him for a special twentieth-anniversary issue of Rolling Stone, he proceeded to sit through the interview drinking Kamikazes like they were Kool-Aid. Two days after he predicted tomorrow might be his dying day, an almost totally incoherent Dylan fell out of his chair after a hotel piano jam had found him hamming it up on ‘You’ve Got a Friend’ and ‘I Left My Heart in San Francisco.’ He was consuming up to four Kamikazes or, later on the tour, Kahlúa, cream, and cognac, before each show. That he could even stand some nights qualified as some kind of achievement. Journalists at the shows couldn’t resist commenting on his shuffling demeanor, referring to his new image as the death-mask look.

Hey, Kamikazes! Those used to be my pleasure, er, downfall

Reminds me of a scene in a Tony Tyler book where an intoxicated Dylan, backstage in '66, pours so much cream or sugar into his coffee that it overflows onto the floor.

Random Internet story: https://www.instagram.com/p/C4JiGvzOY6P/

Incredible arrangement! What a fey trickster, he's clearly having a ball with it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZB7QJjqmL0

I love Bob.