Dylan's Christian period

Xxp MY GOD THEY KILLED HIM

good to seem some stadows material in there
yeah and a couple from Stadows In The Night II: Still Stadowy

JEFFERSON TURNIN OVER IN HIS GRAVE

just put on side 2 of Saved and maybe it's just the holidays but sounds pretty good to me! remembered this as a total dud...

I love how "In the Garden" is as much about Dylan as Jesus

it's certainly not abt Mel Gibson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCRFeRyfJW8

anyone know who's drumming?

It's not Stan Lynch?

I guess it must be - was that an entire tour with Petty & Heartbreakers backing Dylan?

Not 100% sure, but obviously from that video you can see Petty and some other Heartbreakers, and I just glanced at Behind The Shades and some other books and it seems to be the case. And Stan didn't leave the band until much later.

SO much oPRESSion
can't keep TRACK OF IT NO MORE

how many 60s dinosaurs went into the 80s as cleareyed as "well i dunno which is worse / doin your own thing or just being cool"

SO much oPRESSion
can't keep TRACK OF IT NO MORE

― denies the existence of dark matter (difficult listening hour), Friday, February 26, 2016 4:37 PM (39 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this makes me of think of dylan keeping a spreadsheet of forms of oppression and needing to hire interns to update it

for one of his list songs

Doctor, can you hear me? I need some MEDICAID!!!
I seen the kingdoms of the WORLD and it’s makin’ me feel afraid!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0J3Y5s_kfo

Just stumbled over this reappearance of the Toronto 1980 show. Much improved quality!

Also, thanks to all in this thread who convinced me to revisit this so-wrongly-dismissed era.

the sermon around the hour twenty mark and the blistering song afterwards...I just love seeing him so unjaded

yeah, such an intense performance overall.
was just revisiting this early take of "caribbean wind" which isn't quite there, but is nice nonetheless
https://vimeo.com/66756497

http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/no-man-righteous-dylan-and-pseudoconservatism/

time is forever just running out … The apocalypticism of the paranoid style runs dangerously near to hopeless pessimism, but usually stops short of it

...

a fear of the end-times quickly becomes indistinguishable from a yearning for them

...

the various songs yield an exhaustive, Whitmanesque catalog of villains

but enough about 60s dylan

ew rob horning

YA HEAR THAT, ROB HORNING??!?

Has anyone here been discussing THE BOOTLEG SERIES VOLUME 13: TROUBLE NO MORE?

yep quite a bit in the Dylan bootleg series thread

everyone loves it and is baptised in the blood of the lamb

Bob Dylan: The Bootleg Series

im going to see the "trouble no more" film tonight!

jealous!
i love the lord & these live albums

jesus christ & bobby dylan are my reconciliation

I DON'T CARE ABOUT ECONOMY

I DON'T CARE ABOUT ASTRONOMY

"Ain't No Man Righteous" is such a jam.

aw man the "slow train coming" in this is MEAN

that and "what can I do for you" were the highlights

there really should be a Mavis thread, but anyway:

First, they couldn't settle on who has to sing the line "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse." "He said, 'You're going to sing it this time. I did it for you last time,' " Staples recalls. "I said, 'You didn't do it for me. It's your song!' " And with the song's seven verses, Staples, 78, had trouble getting the lyrics straight. "I asked him, 'Do you have a teleprompter?' He says" – she drops her voice to Dylan's guttural rasp – " 'I'm too cheap to buy a prompter, Mavis.' I told him, 'You can buy one for me, Bobby!' "

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/mavis-staples-second-act-bob-dylan-jeff-tweedy-w517080

He and Staples had a fling in the Sixties, with Staples famously rejecting his marriage proposal.

If this information is “famous,” I never heard it before!

was dylan sober from drugs and alcohol during the christian period?

maybe for a minute, but i think he got back into it pretty quick.
was just listening to the 1981 live performances on Trouble No More — really wild vocals from Dylan, like an attempt to create a whole new style for himself.

I’ve been sleeping on this bootleg series set, but will prob’ly have to get it.... I love “Saved” and some of the other stuff from this period.

Discussed this a bit on the Bootleg Series thread. I listened to almost nothing else for a month or two.

I DON'T CARE ABOUT ECONOMY

I DON'T CARE ABOUT ASTRONOMY

― tylerw, Friday, March 9, 2018 5:44 PM (two months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

grain-elevators-are-burstin'

love the Trouble No More set so much.

It's innaresting how angry and uninviting Dylan's version of xtianity is. Like, very little of it is uplifting or rapturous or thankful, a lot of it focuses on the harsh, judgmental end of things, not really the kind of angle that wins a lot of converts.

i always crack up during precious angel, which seems kinda like a tender love song until: "Can they imagine the darkness that will fall from on high /
When men will beg God to kill them and they won't be able to die."

haha yeah that's a prime example

there's still humor poking through, and occasional moments of tenderness and then hey don't forget FIRE AND BRIMSTONE

it's esp jarring because so much 70's pop-Christianity was inclusive and liberal e.g. Godspell, the Good News Bible, the communal "Jesus movement" etc., this is the v much the Reagan-era advent of evangelism as conservatism

but fuck yeah this set kicks so much ass

yeah it does coincide w Reaganism but my memories of the 80s evangelism revival doesn't really fit Dylan either - those guys were transparent hucksters in the faith healer tradition, constantly bursting into tears and dancing and reveling in opulence and the GLORY and btw send money

Bakker, Swaggart, Falwell, Robertson - Dylan bears at best a passing resemblance to those clowns. To a man they projected an avuncular happiness (and venality) that Dylan doesn't go anywhere near.

I probably said it upthread but for a Christian album I sure get cocaine vibes from Trouble No More

def one of the best of the bootleg series, ruined me on the studio albums

xp but I do think it's consistent with the liberal drift at the time though, still righteous but increasingly exclusionary and no doubt some of those SoCal yuppies hit thirty and stayed on for Ralph Reed et al

I've listened to a good number of shows from this period, and I agree with the assessment that the live performances smoke the studio recordings. When i pay more attention to the instrumentalists and the arrangements over anything else, the "Trouble No More" set is much more enjoyable than I'd expect. But eventually one's focus has to shift to the words, as well as Dylan's singing, and I can't say either helped in holding my interest. Sometimes, Dylan sounds re-invigorated in his righteous fury, but this can come on as relentless hectoring after a while. On some of the slower numbers, his voice cracks and breaks apart in a way that's cringe-inducing (see the live renditions of "I Believe in You"). And then there's the words. It's interesting to see Dylan apply the same methods he's always used in writing lyrics to Biblical sources - with each phase of his career, he mines rich new territory for material, whether it's folk songs or poetry or the Bible, and his approach to fragmenting them and fusing them back together in novel, even revelatory ways rarely fails to astonish. But the results here are pretty mixed. Quite a few lyrics, even entire verses, are not just awful but pretty offensive. Check out the title track of 'Slow Train Coming' and the verse about "Sheiks walkin' around like kings / Wearing fancy jewels and nose rings" - fortunately, Dylan dropped this from later performances, but it's there in the earlier ones. FWIW, in at least one case, it took someone else to really elevate a song or two into something truly transcendent. Sinead O'Connor's "I Believe in You" comes to mind - a beautifully fragile and moving rendition was released on one of those 'A Very Special Christmas' compilations (I think the second volume), and far more than Dylan's renditions, it's very moving to hear how religion can be a true lifeline for someone singing that song. (O'Connor's version was recorded soon after she was booed off the stage at Dylan's 30th anniversary concert, an experience that was very traumatizing. Not long after that, she attempted suicide, but even without knowing that, you get the sense she's hanging by a thread in "I Believe in You.")