Bob Dylan: The Fastbreak Tour 1990 (audio & video)
Bob Dylan @ Toad’s Place – Jan 12, 1990
Don’t be bewildered by the Never Ending Tour chatter, there was a Never Ending Tour but it ended with the departure of guitarist GE Smith. [Smith played his last concert with Dylan on October 19, 1990]
~Bob Dylan (Liner Notes to 1993’s World Gone Wrong)
The Never Ending Tour 1990 started off with a leg called the Fastbreak tour where Dylan performed:
Jan 12, 14 & 15 – United States – one small club (Toad’s place) & two east coast colleges
Jan 18 & 25 – Brazil (two giant festivals)
Jan 29, 30, 31 & Feb 1 – Paris, France @ Theatre de Grand Rex
Feb 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 & 8 – London, England @ Hammersmith Odeon
He plays 98 songs in 15 shows, 56 of which were only played one or two times.
It starts in a small club with 700 people, where Bob plays 50 songs in five hours, many of them covers never heard before or since.
On January 12, as a warm-up for two stadium shows in Brazil and ten further dates in Paris and London, he played his first club gig in over twenty-five years, at Toad’s Place in New Haven. The seven hundred lucky witnesses saw this forty-eightyear-old man play for a total of four and a half hours.
Starting at a quarter to nine, with a cover of Joe South’s ‘Walk a Mile in My Shoes’ (‘before you accuse, criticize, or abuse I walk a mile in my shoes’), Dylan finally left the Toad’s stage at twenty minutes past two in the morning, after four sets, interspersed by three breaks of just twentyfive minutes each, having played fifty songs in total, only eight of which derived from his supposed halcyon days of 1963-66.
~Clinton Heylin (Behind The Shades)
Toad’s Place New Haven, Connecticut 12 January 1990
Bob Dylan (vocal & guitar)
G. E. Smith (guitar)
Tony Garnier (bass)
Christopher Parker (drums
The show had 4 sets:
Set
songs
time
I
1-11
55
II
12-20
40
III
21-34
65
IV
35-50
80
1, 4-7, 14, 21, 30, 40 are all live debuts.
Walk A Mile In My Shoes (Joe South) https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/234459473
One More Cup Of Coffee (Valley Below)
Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35
Trouble No More (McKinley Morganfield)
I’ve Been All Around This World (trad.)
Political World
Where Teardrops Fall
Tears Of Rage (Bob Dylan & Richard Manuel)
I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/234459610
It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry
Everybody’s Movin’ (Glen Trout) —
Watching The River Flow
What Was It You Wanted
Oh Baby It Ain’t No Lie (Elizabeth Cotten)
Lenny Bruce
I Believe In You
Man Of Peace
Across The Borderline (Ry Cooder/John Hiatt/Jim Dickinson)
Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat
All Along The Watchtower —
Tight Connection To My Heart (Has Anybody Seen My Love)
Political World
What Good Am I?
Wiggle Wiggle
Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again
Pay The Price (Moon Martin)
Help Me Make It Through The Night (Kris Kristofferson) https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/235382540
After almost four hours of singing, Dylan launched into a stinging Highway 61 Revisited and the wistful Precious Memories, from Knocked Out Loaded.
Finally, after a few false starts, Dylan swung into Like A Rolling Stone, requisite even on such an unprecedented night.
hough his voice was starting to show signs of fatigue from its arduous workout, and the audience was exhausted,
it was a final, exultant moment, releasing everyone for home at 2:30 am.
Dylan is only one year away from his 50th birthday and his 30th year as a recording artist. Yet here he was, in close contact with his fans once again, still experimenting with new songs, still working on numbers he has been playing for decades. It was an awe-inspiring performance, as close to a comprehensive retrospective as Dylan is ever likely to offer onstage.
–Rolling Stone, 8 March 1990
The single weirdest show in Dylan’s career. This four-and-a-half-hour marathon set was a warm-up before the 1990 leg of the NET kicked off. Extreme rarities like “Man Of Peace” and “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine” are mixed with shocking covers like “Dancing In The Dark.” By the end he’s taking requests, and playing whatever the crowd yells for. You have to hear it to believe it.
-Andy Greene (rollingstone.com – May 10, 2011)
—
Recreation Hall Pennsylvania State University State College, Pennsylvania 14 January 1990
10. Gotta Serve Somebody
11. Across The Borderline (Ry Cooder/John Hiatt/Jim Dickinson)
–
McCarter Theater Princeton University Princeton, New Jersey 15 January 1990