Bob Dylan's "Hard Rain"

I love everything about Hard Rain, both the movie and TV show. The observation about The Clash upthread is a good one. Totally punk.

Also agreed that "Shelter From The Storm" is the highlight. Blood on the Tracks and Desire are where I became obsessed with Bob, and this version of "Shelter" is where I became obsessed with Bob's live reworkings. "Shelter" was (and is) my favorite song BoTT, and there are days when I think this one is better. It's like the song was filtered through Desire, burst into flames by sparks from an electrical fire, then stomped out by a dozen pairs of boots. In a good way.

I know that this thread is more about the album than the TV special, but I was all over it. Bob made the cover of TV Guide that week! I love the way the cover emphasizes that this isn't the Bob Dylan you remember.



There had also been an ad pimping it before then.



Also, re sponsorship, I'm pretty sure it was Craig. They were all about the celebrity endorsements. I have a bunch of their ads scattered around my hard drive, but here's a tw0-fer:



The other reason I remember this -- and admittedly, could still be wrong about it-- is that among the ads that aired during the special was one for an 8-track tape player (I think, although it could easily have been a cassette) with a slogan I DEFINITELY remembered as a teen: "Slip it in."

Then again, I also vaguely remember some overlap between Pioneer and Craig. Perhaps one you can enlighten me.

Me too. Especially the piccolo/reggae reworking of "Knocking On Heaven's Door" with the "Mama, wipe the blood offa my face, I can't see through it anymore" verse I first heard on the Rolling Thunder tour....

 

I saw the broadcast and bought the LP the day it came out. I've always considered HARD RAIN a weak album. I dislike the way some songs gradually lose steam, stop for three beats, then pick up again. Those arrangements fail to generate drama or excitement and it's just not clear to me what the hell T-Bone thought he was doing. I dislike the leering sneering redux of "Lay Lady Lay" although it seems to be at the emotional crux of the shows. The band, called Guam, does nothing for me. What I like about the 1976 tour of the south and southwest is Dylan's scorched, scorching slightly unhinged vocals and Scarlet's underused violin.

Audio from the TV broadcast version is on a legit CD called Bob Dylan Live In Colorado. I bought mine on amazonU.K.

I would like to see HARD RAIN expanded to CD length. Single CD. No doubt there were additional songs or a longer tape that were considered before they settled on the single LP. Give us that. Alternatively, I've heard all the existing audience tapes and a couple of soundboard tapes from the tour, and there is plenty of good material to pick and choose from. The tour started out folksy and sweet, and then gradually became more punk and dissonant as Dylan grew more bitter and angry. The emotional arc of the tour makes it very interesting, despite the fact that Guam play like rank amateurs.

 

The front cover photo is from the World Tour 1978 which was a very different thing, musically, but the tracklist is from the 1976 TV special:

Live in Colorado 1976 by Bob Dylan: Amazon.co.uk: Music »

There is also a vinyl edition.

 

Dylan's people should talk to the Rolling Stones' people. They've been doing a successful DVD/Blu-ray series for over a year now.

The glitch was fixed and replacement CDs were sent out by request. I don't know if it's still possible to get a replacement at this time, but someone here may know

 

Rob Stoner's bass playing behind the,

"Down the highway, down the tracks, down the road to ecstasy"

line in Idiot Wind is extraordinaryly good. If I played nothing else from the album, I would play that.

Philip

 

Thanks, but not really fussed as I have the UK CBS cd from years' back. I'm thinking just how much a collectors' item the glitchy one will be in years to come ?

 

Shelter From the Storm is amazing, my friend I watched the show on a dinky b&W TV in college. At first, we didn't know what song he was playing, but then it hit us. At tehe end, my friend turned to me and said 'I think Bob is a little angry'.

 

Man, I just don't hear that AT ALL. All those glorious, tender lines -- "Whatever colors you have in your mind / I’ll show them to you and you’ll see them shine" -- are still there, plus a bunch of new ones. I absolutely adore the new verse, with the lines

"Why don't you know you got nothing to prove
It's all in your eyes and the way that you move
Forget this dance, let's go upstairs"

That "nothing to prove" line is one of my favorite themes of his, stretching back to "I got nothing more to live up to" and forward to "Only a fool here would think he's got anything to prove."

I don't think it's a line of arrogance. Certainly not sneering. In context, it might be seen as seductive or cajoling, depending on whether you think he's trying to provide assurances or feeding her a line -- but this remains one of the most open-hearted, non-cynical things he's ever written. Maybe the ONLY open-hearted, non-cynical thing he's ever written. And to my mind, moreso in this rendition with those added lines than ever.

I understand why people think of Bob as angry, especially when hearing "Idiot Wind", but I just think of it as raw, and writ large. It's true in "Shelter From The Storm", which isn't angry in the least to my ear.

"Oh Sister" is actually thematically very close if not identical to "Lay Lady Lay" in its open-heartedness plus that creepy but awesome incest/religious overlay , but srsly -- "One Too Many Mornings", "I Threw it All Away", and ESPECIALLY "You're a Big Girl Now" -- how much more naked has ANYBODY been on stage than these? Talk about knife in his heart, suicide all over the stage!

For that matter, I've never been a fan of "Idiot Wind", but when he gets to what I think of as the climax - "WE are idiots babe" -- it's never been clearer that he means "we". This is the first version where I really got the vulnerability of his position. On Blood on the Tracks, it sounds too much like a finger-pointing song (never my favorite Bob). Here, even with an overkill arrangement (which I merrily concede), it sounds like he's drowning.

So I'd go completely in the other direction and say that the hardest part of listening to this album is that its heartbreak can be exhausting. Even at 51 minutes, that's an awful lot of time to be steeped in someone else's pain, even moreso here than Blood on the Tracks. These tracks are bloodier still.

All of which is to say, sure, if you don't like the sloppiness and yelling, no doubt. It's sloppy and Bob yells plenty of it, a stark contrast to how nimble his voice had been for the last few albums before this. But I think that the contrast plays into the rawness and directness of the performances. It sounds like he's playing for keeps.

Out of curiosity for folks still on this thread 10 years after yikes: definitely the oldest thread I've posted on in a while), when's the last time you listened to it? I listened to it twice through yesterday, and have spent this morning listening to the songs I've mentioned a couple more times. It's really been these past few listens that have really driven home for me just how -- in traditional Bob contradiction -- epically intimate these performances are.

 

Agreed, but IIRC, Baez did not appear on any of the Hard Rain LP tracks due to contractual reasons.

 

I've had the CD for a few years now...it has never made much impact on me. Indifference is not am emotion (or lack of emotion) I associate with my reactions to Bob Dylan, but I fear it applies in this case. I can't honestly remember anything about it, other than thinking it sounded rough....

 

But this album:

https://www.discogs.com/Joan-Baez-How-Sweet-The-Sound/release/2788823

features their performance of I Pity The Poor Immigrant at least.

 

I don't know if you've read Paul Williams' book 'Performing Artist Vol.2', but that made me listen to the album differently. He puts it up there with Dylan's greatest achievements, and makes a very good case.

'Stuck Inside Of Mobile' will forever be my favourite version of that song (as much as I like the original).

 

I've heard criticisms that this album (and tour in general) pales in comparison to the 1975 tour, but I've yet to get that Bootleg Series edition, or indeed any exposure to that year's concerts. I did much earlier hear the concert that Ringo sat in on (in pretty poor quality, but even then the sound and arrangements intrigued me) and I found Hard Rain to be a powerhouse. It's raw intensity is not too dissimilar from the energy that Dylan had been conveying 10 years prior. The guitar work, both from Mick Ronson and Bob, give this album such a straightforward rock edge, to powerful effect.

It doesn't hurt that I'm a big fan of Blood On the Tracks and especially Desire, of course!

 

The album is great, but the TV special is really awkward. I can't imagine how that footage could have translated into good TV - Dylan seems so disconnected from that enormous sea of an audience, even though the music is a bunch of searingly emotional performances, cut together quite strangely.

Hard Rain is the height of Dylan's re-arrangements of songs being able to actually equal or better the originals. After that, re-arrangements are usually interesting, but these have such fire to them it's as if they're totally new songs.

 

And only 33 years later! Looks like a nice comp, though — thanks for the tip.

 

Listening to the Australian LP now. The sound on my LP is very brittle and "middy" with a high pitched noise through-out "Stuck Inside" . Not sure if this is just the pressing or how it's meant to sound.

I have a soft spot for this album and would be up for a remixed CD/Blu Ray (full concert) edition.

 

The UK CBS vinyl edition was better than either the Australian or US. The CD edition is better still - less of the high pitched noise and less midrange.

 

The Rolling Stone cover picture at #39 looks like it was shot in a curious place.

Can any singer sneer better than Dylan? And is Hard Rain his sneeriest album?

 

No and Yes.

 

My well worn vinyl copy recently played.

 

I love this album, definitely in my top 5 live albums of all time list.

Idiot Wind is the definitive version of one of my very favorite Dylan songs, I can't hear it enough.

 

I'm sticking with my "least cynical, most vulnerable, more hurt than angry" assessment. I adore this.

I also found, a year after the TV Guide cover I posted above, a much better scan of the cover, as well as the accompanying article, which had been his first interview in 7 years!

These come courtesy of a fan site for 60s teen supermodel Colleen Corby (especially Seventeen magazine) whose career stretched into the 70s (especially JC Penney catalogs). This has nothing to do with that, but for some reason or another, the anonymous keeper of Colleen's flame has also kept this, which is awesome. I love the internet!

The interview itself probably deserves its own thread. I hadn't read it in years (maybe even since the original, I'm not sure), and I'm really delighted by it. He's very open, self-deprecating without being a show-off about it, and lays out a lot of themes that would be guiding the rest of his life and career in ways that I don't recall from earlier interviews, which were often just plain hard to get through.

Maybe it won't change your mind about the special or the album, but it's still a nifty read.







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Thanks for scanning and posting this interview which I remember from when it was new. I have a copy on my Dylan shelves in a dust-free mylar cover that I never, never open. Of course, when Dylan says "I'll be writing some new songs soon ... which will be up to a whole new level" he is referring to Street Legal (1978 release).

When the special aired in the NYC area, Lily Tomlin's voice-over interrupted "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" saying that if anyone misses the next program "they'll have to wash their first-born's hair for thirty days and thirty nights" or something like that. Quite a put-down. What a nasty to thing to say while the special was still airing.

 

I think it's one of his best live albums, though I tend to like all of them to some extent. I agree Rob Stoner is great on all these songs.