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Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan albums, Bob Dylan Concerts

Mar 01: Bob Dylan recorded Live at Budokan in 1978

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budokan

March 1: Bob Dylan recorded Live at Budokan in 1978

This is where it started for me.

I am pretty drunk now, but maybe that makes me more honest and more direct about my thoughts about Bob Dylan’s slated live album, At Budokan. I think it has been undeservedly put down by critics and the public in general. It is a good live album!

It was my first real meet with Dylan, my friend Ståle had borrowed it from one of his brothers, he left it at our house and it stayed there for several years! I loved it from the start, I didn’t know what Bob Dylan was all about, I just knew that I liked the album, all of it!

“A lot of the older songs sound changed just for the sake of tinkering. Many of the more recent ones, like “Oh, Sister” and “One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below)” and “Shelter from the Storm,” are vastly improved, as if, when they were first recorded, they hadn’t been fully thought through. “Is Your Love in Vain?”, by no means the prettiest song on Dylan’s much-underrated Street-Legal, is prettier still.”
– Rolling Stone Magazine

I have read about it since, in several books and many web-sites, I understand that I’m not supposed to like this album, and still I love it.

I love every take, I know all the songs and I cannot understand how Dylan could better these incredible performances? It is a laid-back masterpiece.

Bob Dylan at Budokan is a live album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on April 23, 1979 by Columbia Records. It was recorded during his 1978 world tour and is composed mostly of the artist’s “greatest hits”. The performances in the album are radically altered from the originals, using the same musicians that backed Street-Legal, but relying on a much larger band and stronger use of brass and backup singers. In some respects the arrangements are more conventional than the original arrangements and the album was criticized for being so. At the same time that it was criticized for being too polished, it was criticized for being too sloppy. For a few critics, such as Janet Maslin of Rolling Stone, the differences between the older and newer arrangements had become less important.
– Wikipedia

Live at Budokan on Spotify:

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February 27: Bob Dylan Just Like A Woman, Atlantic City 1999

bob dylan 1999 atlantic city

Nobody feels any pain
Tonight as I stand inside the rain
Ev’rybody knows
That Baby’s got new clothes
But lately I see her ribbons and her bows
Have fallen from her curls
She takes just like a woman, yes, she does
She makes love just like a woman, yes, she does
And she aches just like a woman
But she breaks just like a little girl

Copa Room
Sands Casino
Atlantic City, New Jersey
27 February 1999
Early show

  •  Bob Dylan (vocal & guitar)
  • Bucky Baxter (pedal steel guitar & electric slide guitar)
  • Larry Campbell (guitar)
  • Tony Garnier (bass)
  • David Kemper (drums & percussion)

Queen Mary, she’s my friend
Yes, I believe I’ll go see her again
Nobody has to guess
That Baby can’t be blessed
Till she sees finally that she’s like all the rest
With her fog, her amphetamine and her pearls
She takes just like a woman, yes, she does
She makes love just like a woman, yes, she does
And she aches just like a woman
But she breaks just like a little girl

It was raining from the first
And I was dying there of thirst
So I came in here
And your long-time curse hurts
But what’s worse
Is this pain in here
I can’t stay in here
Ain’t it clear that—

I just can’t fit
Yes, I believe it’s time for us to quit
When we meet again
Introduced as friends
Please don’t let on that you knew me when
I was hungry and it was your world
Ah, you fake just like a woman, yes, you do
You make love just like a woman, yes, you do
Then you ache just like a woman
But you break just like a little girl

-Egil

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February 27: Bob Dylan Love Sick, Atlantic City, 1999 (video)

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bob dylan atlantic city 1999

I’m walking through streets that are dead
Walking, walking with you in my head
My feet are so tired, my brain is so wired
And the clouds are weeping

Did I hear someone tell a lie?
Did I hear someone’s distant cry?
I spoke like a child; you destroyed me with a smile
While I was sleeping

This is indeed a GREAT version.

Copa Room
Sands Casino
Atlantic City, New Jersey
27 February 1999
Early show

  • Bob Dylan (vocal & guitar)
  • Bucky Baxter (pedal steel guitar & electric slide guitar)
  • Larry Campbell (guitar)
  • Tony Garnier (bass)
  • David Kemper (drums & percussion)

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February 20: Bob Dylan Martin Bronstein Interview, Montreal (audio) 1966

bob dylan on the phone - 1966

MB: Do you consider yourself a poet or a songwriter?
BD: I don’t consider myself either one of those two things. I did when I first heard the words, you know, of course – “songwriter” – you hear that when you’re very young. “Poet,” I never heard that word really. I never really could think of myself as such until I came to New York and then for a while I did think I was a poet, but I don’t consider myself anymore from seeing all the rest of the people who’re called poets too and I just don’t like to refer to myself as a poet because it puts you in a category with a lot of funny people, you know

Place Des Arts
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
20 February 1966

  • Released in the UK on ON THE CREST OF THE AIRWAVES VOLUME ONE, Music Melon MMLTDBOX12, 13 February 2012.
  • Released on The Classic Interviews 1965-1966, Chrome Dreams CIS2003, 19 May 2003.

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February 20: Bob Dylan at the Grammys 1991

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bob dylan 1991 grammy

To see and hear how the band looked and sounded in February 1991, you just need to view television footage of the Grammy awards ceremony from New York on the 20th , when Dylan was given a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Dylan’s appearance caused a media stir par excellence on two counts. Talking point one was his performance; number two was his acceptance speech.
–
Dylan performed his damning anti-war3 indictment, “Masters Of War” – a striking choice given that the Gulf War was still going on and hawkish jingoism was rife. However, since he chose to sing it without a pause for breath, and backed by this hapless/hamstrung band, no-one who did not already know the song would have got the message. In fact, many who were familiar with the song did not even recognise it. Not only did Dylan’s nasal passages sound blocked (he later revealed he’d had a cold) but it seemed he had swallowed a burst of helium before starting to sing. Some observers thought he was singing in Hebrew. The tuxedoed crowd looked on in utter bewilderment. The next day’s newspapers marvelled how only Dylan had performed a song with any meaning and purpose, but then, being Dylan, he had made it completely incomprehensible.
~Andrew Muir (One More Night: Bob Dylan’s Never Ending Tour)

Bob Dylan receives his Lifetime Achievement Award. The award is presented by Jack Nicholson.

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