[QUOTE This caper never ever actually worked. Some tried it but were foiled right at the beginning.[/QUOTE] awwww
could you repost them? This is the best I could do with the highest resolution image of it I could find at the time
I'm negotiating for additional photos, hopefully in better quality. I may post more soon. Watch this space.
I'm really down on Trouble No More today. Disappointed in how the contents are selected, organized and presented. Too broad a span of time squeezed into one box, they needed to narrow it down. The music is fine but they still blew it. The most significant event -- the 1979 debut of the gospel songs at the Warfield and the total rejection of his earlier music -- is de-emphasized instead of documented and celebrated. The 1979 tour, same thing. The studio sessions for Slow Train Coming and Saved, same thing. One can't complaint about what's included but what's excluded diminishes the creative arc over the years and the event. Nothing is covered comprehensively. They should have split this box-set up into two or three box-sets or a much larger single box. The 1981 phase doesn't belong here. Except for the DVD which is a monumental screw-up of great material.
I'm not quite as down on it as that, but I do find that I need to split it up differently (into playlists) in order to enjoy the material fully. Ironically, the major gripe I have is one that you dont mention: the lack of a full "Musical Retrospective" show. I think those shows are among the best Bob has ever done. He doesn't quite have his swagger back a la 1981 and there is a freshness in the re-discovery of the old songs. Whether those shows and '81 should even be on the Gospel box, as you say, is another matter!
After a year of performing exclusively the new gospel songs and only the new gospel songs, Dylan began adding his old songs back into the concert setlist in the fall 1980. I was at those concerts, too. November 1979 through the summer of 1980 concerts are the Slow Train Coming / Saved tour and should have comprised one box-set. In the fall of 1980 Dylan started on a new tour. The energy had changed. Shows from the fall of 1980 and 1981 are a Shot of Love tour and should have been a separate box-set.
I griped plenty about the lack of a full concert with the gospel singers in the backpages of this thread and in the Bootleg Series 13: Trouble No More thread, but the latter is locked now or I'd go in and grip some more. Jeff Rosen has been mis-calculating lately.
I can't imagine how much of an audience there'd be for multiple box sets of the gospel era. Virtually no one needs hours of outtakes from Saved, y'know? Maybe one day they'll do a copyright dump of all the studio tapes as a digital thing or something. But it's competing with the mid/late 80's as his worst period.
Yeah. San Diego is ok. Would have preferred something from 81, but Watcha gonna do? The market for this is small.
I’ve been really back into this box and the San Diego 1979 show lately. Part of this has been a process of elimination that kind of led me back to it (though it’s always been a period of playing I’ve enjoyed, certainly spurred on when I saw and loved the June 1981, Poplar Creek, Chicago area show—my second ever Dylan show after Chicago 1978–and the Slow Train release before that.). I’ve played out the Live 1975 Bootleg Series in anticipation of the Revue set. I had been playing the Blood out of MBMT since that came out. I had recently done a deep dive back into Big Blue with the reading of The Thin Wild Mercury Sound book. The Basements are always well-played around here. And I’ve even been revisiting a bunch of 1966 shows I’d given short shift to. It’s a long way of saying I’ve been really back into the Trouble box the last couple of weeks. I agree with the Bard that I made some playlists when the box came out (that I posted) that I really continue to enjoy. But I also appreciate how the set is curated. Most of the choices and versions are just outstanding. And they beg repeated listenings. I also appreciate having these “three” shows from each of the years covered in the box as a sampling (“shows” in quotes given the Toronto compilation). Though of course for me, the more full shows the better. But also agree, given how iconic those Warfield shows felt at the time, that perhaps one of those Musical Retrospective shows would have filled in the picture even more—given we weren’t getting a complete works set. Still: I continue to get a lot of enjoyment from this set and the San Diego show!
I don't agree with a word you've said. You're wrong on every point. The evidence counters your opinions.
The evidence counters his opinions of the relative strengths of different Dylan periods? Perhaps I'm a little slow on the uptake but how does the evidence prove that Dylan's Gospel period was relatively weak?
