Bob Dylan: "Trouble No More 1979 - 1981" - The Bootleg Series Vol. 13

Has this been discussed yet?

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"The beaten path" sounds like an awesome title to bs13!!!!!

 

Bob Dylan, The Beaten Path - Exhibitions - Halcyon Gallery »

An art exhibition.

 

Thank you. Getting ahead of myself...

 

If they listen to me and include the Street Legal sessions in the Gospel set, they can call it "Eden Is Burning"...

 

Perhaps today's 10/10 on Pitchfork might push the BOTT release up the line!

 

Let's hope!!!

 

Hey Sean..did you get this via "extraordinary" sources, btw?

 

yummy

 

LOL -- no, I actually don't even have a copy of the show ... just the few tracks that were on bob.com all those years ago. But my memory of it is VERY strong....

 

So I suppose I have those, too.
Do you recall which songs are?

 

I Am The Man, Thomas (a) (R. Stanley)
Song To Woody (a)
It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) (a)
Ring Them Bells (a) (Larry on pedal steel)
Visions Of Johanna (a)
Hootchie Cootchie Man (Willie Dixon

 

Thank You so much

 

I should really track down that entire show. Bob played a great "Blind Willie" -- a "wish list" moment for me, certainly -- a bunch of cool covers, and was in great voice throughout.

 

Or perhaps The Heathen Path?

 

Doesn't he? Isn't that been Joel Berstein's job for the last number of years?

 

The 1999-2000 shows were really great. I've got one from Portsmouth that's amazing.

 

I was at that one too. Sort of a surprise to see Bob make his way back to arenas, but I guess the double bill with Phil allowed him to pull that off.

 

If by "entire show" you mean "entire show", Phil's set is easily found online.

 

I came across a review of this set in Jersey, 11-13-1999:
[TOP]


Review by Peter Stone Brown

On October 17, 1981, Bob Dylan played his first concert at what was then
known as the Brendan Byrne Arena which was close to brand new at the
time which the out-going governor of New Jersey in an act that appalled
and nauseated just about everybody named after himself. No one called
it the Byrne Arena and now at the end of the 20th Century where
everything is named after a corporation, it is the Continental Airlines
Arena (I believe its second corporate name) which is only slightly
better than the Pepsi Arena or the National Car Rental Center which
doesn’t even sound like an arena but a parking lot. I am convinced that
in the next century we will soon see cities and third world countries
taking on corporate monikers as well and soon the only way anyone will
know where they are is by what zip-code or area code which will probably
be corporate as well. Either way, that particular arena will always be
the Meadowlands to me.

The huge Meadowlands sports complex is built on a murky swampy bit of
Jersey desolation, a sort of non-place rising out of nothing a bit North
of the Mordor flames beneath the Pulaski skyway between Newark and
Jersey City and between the more or less upscale North Jersey suburbs on
the road that leads to the Lincoln Tunnel. The whole area has long been
rumored to be a Mafia burial ground and some people insist that Jimmy
Hoffa is part of the Meadowland’s foundation.

Bob Dylan’s 1981 concert at the Meadowlands was a monumental occasion,
and I still consider it and probably always will in the top five Bob
Dylan concerts I’ve seen. A 28-song show that found him fully
resurrecting his older songs after two years of doing exclusively
“gospel” material. He had one of his greatest and most professional
bands featuring the stellar rhythm team of Tim Drummond and Jim Keltner
and for the fall leg of the tour, none other than Al Kooper himself on
keyboards who was only too happy to revisit his original organ parts on
“Like A Rolling Stone” and “I Want You.”

Dylan was animated and in great humor that October night. Starting to
introduce the band he said, “I wanna say hello to Mr. & Mrs. Kooper out
there tonight. This is uh, their son.”
Kooper who was I believe wearing a football or hockey helmet
acknowledged the applause. Dylan, wearing his famous Wayfarer shades
the entire show had lots more to say: “I’ve never seen no place like
this before,” as 20,000 people cracked up. “I went into the dressing
room and my mirror was black.” “There’s a lot of famous people here
tonight. I just want you to know that you may be sitting next to
somebody (in his most classic Dylan inflection) famous.” “There’s a lot
of people from Rolling Stone here tonight. After the show, they’re
gonna come backstage and interview me, then I’m gonna interview *them.*
And before “Gambling Man,” which the trio of back-up singers sang,
“Isn’t there a gambling town around here somewhere? What’s the name of
that place? Atlantic City?”

But of course it was the music that night that was the most important.
Dylan was into singing real high on that tour (the previous June he was
into singing real low). Sitting in the farthest corner of the highest
balcony, literally a dot on a stage that seemed a mile a way he’d cut
right through you with an achingly beautiful “Girl From The North
Country,” and putting such intensity into the bridge on “I Want You”
that every nerve in your body reacted. A slowed-down, spooky solid-rock
that could stir Blind Willie Johnson in his grave and a solo till the
last verse when the bass and drums kicked in “Times They Are A-Changin’”
that instead of being its original call to arms seemed to summon up
everything that had happened in the almost two decades since he wrote
it--the war, the assassinations, the hopes and dreams lost, capped by a
harmonica solo as eerie and lonesome as he’s ever played.

And so I couldn’t help but think of that concert long ago as Seth Kulick
and I hiked across the parking lot next to Giant Stadium going to what
must be around our 30th show together at least. We were sitting in
different places but not far apart. Seth with his brother and I was
with longtime RMD contributer Arnie and his wife whom we just visited.
Arnie’s been listening to Bob just about as long as I have and he grew
up in New York and I grew up outside of New York, and through e-mail
we’ve discovered a shared history of listening not only to Dylan, but
listening to same late-night radio shows and the same concerts and being
in the same room at the same time and here we were after all this time
attending a Dylan show together and I kind of felt like I’d known him
all my life.

And again we were sitting in the back of the hall directly opposite the
stage though not in the highest balcony pretty much surrounded by morons
who talked through Phil Lesh and who talked through Dylan and I couldn’t
figure out why they spent the thirty bucks plus for tickets not to
mention another ten to park to go to a show they evidently had no
interest in whatsoever since they weren’t listening and were barely
watching and were talking about everything but the music. I just don’t
get it, considering there were probably plenty of people who would have
done anything to get a ticket to this show.

Bob Dylan’s second appearance at the Meadowlands seemed to be a
summation of this tour where he has pretty much consistently surprised
and delighted his fans by pulling out all kinds of songs, not just once
a night but several. It could be called the “Anything Can Happen” tour
or more accurately the “Holy ****!” tour because judging by the net that
seems to be most people’s reactions upon seeing the setlists. And so at
this show at a place that is fairly centrally located on the East Coast
that say people in Washington or in Philly or in New England would not
think twice about going to, not to mention all the people in Jersey and
New York, at the largest venue on the tour, he really did seem to have
his fans in mind. And once again I wondered as have others during this
tour particularly is someone keeping an eye on what’s going on on RMD?
Because, at this concert he seemed to be saying, you heard about
“Hootchie Coochie Man?” here it is. You heard about “Song to Woody” and
“Ring Them Bells?” Here it is. Of course I could be completely wrong
about this and no one will ever know.

There is a difference to the acoustic set on this tour. Nothing is
being casually thrown out there. Yes, he may forget lines--but I still
prefer him messing up to using a teleprompter--he way skip verses (which
he’s been doing for years), but he seems to be treating these songs as
something to be cherished. The performances and understated and almost
delicate. There is thought behind the singing and the arrangements and
not just on Dylan’s part, but on the part of his excellent musicians,
even on the songs where all three guitarists are doing little more than
strumming. “Song To Woody” was so quietly and subtly performed that at
first I felt this place is way too big for this to be appreciated.
And I had to doubly concentrate having to block out the talkers around
me.

There was a force and fire to “It’s Alright Ma,” which started out with
just guitars, then the bass than the drums in the best ensemble
arrangement I’ve seen of this song with the borrowed from “Wake Up
Little Susie” riff of course being in emphasized, but not in the
totally overblown way it was in ’78. I saw the very first live
performance of this song in 1964 and it is one that I always want to
hear, one that has great personal meaning for me and one that I consider
one of Bob Dylan’s all-time greatest works. His own “Howl” set to
music. He flubbed the lyrics (and laughed) at that first performance in
New York City what seems both like centuries ago and yesterday, and he
flubbed them last night and I didn’t care then and I didn’t care last
night. Last night’s version, the version he did at Meadowlands in ’81
and that very first version were all great and all for different
reasons.
And the version last night was not the speedy let me get this over with
as fast as possible version that I’ve seen at other shows.

And then the slow steel majestic intro to “Ring Them Bells,” started and
I was happy, not only to hear it again, but happy that my friends Arnie
and Seth and Dylan and Daniela could hear what I heard in Baltimore.
“I’m in heaven,” Arnie said to me as it ended. And so into “Tangled,”
but then another surprise, another acoustic song, “Visions of Johanna,”
which worked much better than it did in the number three slot in
Baltimore, where perhaps Dylan wasn’t quite warmed up enough to sing it
quite the way he wanted to.

And then “Hootchie Cootchie Man,” written by Willie Dixon, but as every
Chicago blues fan knows, Muddy Waters’ signature song. And the band was
tough with Charlie Sexton obviously into it and lovingly showing that
he’s undoubtedly spent countless hours listening to and mastering the
sound of who knows how many great Chicago blues guitarists and Dylan did
Muddy proud, singing it straight, singing it true, lining out those
images that stretch from the Delta all the way up Highway 61 to Chicago,
that poetry of the blues, as musicologist Sam Charters once called it.
The only thing that might’ve taken it higher was if Dylan had played the
harp, and while the last thing I would every try to do is guess what
goes on in Bob Dylan’s mind, maybe he just felt (he is a musician after
all) that he could never do Little Walter justice (even though he came
fairly close to getting the Little Walter sound in a few fleeting
moments at the end of “Are You Ready.”

And then even deeper into the blues, all the way down to Georgia for
“Blind Willie McTell,” one of his most remarkable songs. At once, a
tribute to that remarkable blues singer, but at the same time a history
of the South and a history of the world, all the way from New Orleans to
Jerusalem indeed. And I thought of Seth a few sections away finally
after two years of trying and missing seeing this song at last and next
to me Arnie just couldn’t believe it was happening.

And then, even more blues. “Tombstone Blues,” with Sexton again
stepping out, raw mean and nasty, Dylan’s own “Hootchie Cootchie Man”
updated with John the Conqueroo updated becoming a dreamlike John the
Baptist talking to the Commander-in Chief, where the delta has been
replaced by the old folks home and the college. And hearing it, I
remembered way back when Highway 61 Revisited was still pretty new and
Muddy and Wolf and Little Walter were also on the turntable, listening
to that song in some long lost NYC apartment and a friend of mine saying
in reference to the Chicago guys, that stuff is great, but this
(“Tombstone Blues”) that’s our blues.

>From there it was into a shortened version of “Joey” a New York City
song if ever there was one. No, not one of his greatest though one of
his most controversial. Maybe he had the rumors of who’s supposed to be
underneath the Meadowlands in mind. At one point he totally spaced on
the lyrics. It didn’t matter. And yet another blues capped the night,
a joyous rocking “Leopard-Skin Pill Box Hat.”

The encores were, well.... the encores. Phil Lesh came out for “Alabama
Getaway,” (time to hit the bathroom) followed by “Rainy Day Women,” (I
though to myself two parking-lot songs in a row) and the last was the
only song all night where the talkers finally shut up and yet they came
back for “Blowin’” and “Not Fade Away.” And the houselights went down
and stayed down for a long time and we wondered whether he would
actually come back, but it was almost midnight and he’d played for two
hours.

And so, did this match that previous time at the Meadowlands 18 years
ago? It doesn’t matter. It’s another time and in a way another place.
Will this show stay in my mind for almost two decades the way that
concert did? I have no idea. I do know this much: Bob Dylan was being
very generous to his fans last night.


--
"Where the angels' voices whisper to the souls of previous times."
--Bob Dylan
Peter Stone Brown
e-mail: [email protected]
http://www.tangible-music.com/peterstonebrown/

 

Nah - growing up in Jersey, we all called it "Brendan Byrne". Sample conversation:

"How was that Dead show at Brendan Byrne?"
"Oh man, the walls were caving in at one point."

He's right about the rest, tho'.

 

Dylan did play The Meadowlands complex four times between 1981 and 1999.

Three of those were right across the highway at Giants Stadium ('87 with The Dead, '95 two nights opening for The Dead).

He played the arena in 1986 with The Heartbreakers. At that show an audience member called for "Hurricane!" and Bob responded "Hurricane? Do you know what this state did to Hurricane?" and he delivered a lengthy rap about music critics before "Ballad of a Thin Man".

Among my friends, anyway, we called the arena "the arena" no matter what the name was on the outside. Just like there was Giants Stadium and Shea Stadium, but Yankee Stadium was just "the stadium" and MSG was just "the garden".

 

Oh, and Giants Stadium was simply "Giants":

"How was that Dylan/Dead show at Giants?"
"Jerry played pedal steel on Tomorrow Is A Long Time."
"Dude, no way!"
"Way!"

 

Yeah, I think the time before I had seen Bob, it was in a college gymnasium. But he sounded good at the Brendan Byrne Arena that night...

 

I was trying to post a link to the whole show - not the show-opening jam. Oh well!

 

Actually, by "entire show" I really meant Bob's set....