Expecting Rain

Just watching the Shelter from the Storm from the Hard Rain TV special. And thinking for the umpteenth time that this performance is simply staggering. Transcendent. I started imagining what it would have been like to have been front row center at that show. How incredible. My thoughts then drifted to one other show (of many) in time warp fantasy that would leave me speechless, which is the Manchester show from 1966. Sitting there, taking in, for example, Desolation Row from the acoustic set. And then later getting my ears gloriously melted in the electric set.

So, if you had to choose (and the magical technology became available), would you rather sit front row center for the Manchester 1966 show or the Fort Collins 1976 show? (Tough tough choice!).

'76.... can I go to Salt Lake City instead? And to Prague '95?

Fort Collins. Though I love all of Bob's facades--testosterone Jesus beats the wispy polka-dot girl.

A very interesting question But for me it is easily Fort Collins

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WHY MUST WE CHOOSE


Seriously, though.......I don't know if I can do it. I guess if I literally had a gun to my head, I would chose Ft. Collins, but just typing that makes me cringe. How could I leave behind that transcendent Visions of Johanna and the beautifully painful Just Like A Woman????? I already want to punish myself. This is why I haven't been playing the album sides game.

this is an early april fools joke ain't it

Impossible decision.

You absolute bastard

Although the Rolling Thunder is possibly my favourite period (not certain about that...) I'd go for Manchester because it was indoors and everyone at Fort Collins got soaking wet - I hate rain, especially outdoors. Plus, great as it was, there are other Thunder shows I'd rank higher. And before any clever dick says it doesn't rain indoors, well it used to at the Lyceum in the Strand when they rolled back the roof. Didn't Bob keep them waiting for hours too? First rule of stardom - make them suffer!

'"Although the band has been playing together longer, the charm has gone out of their exchanges," writes NPR's Tim Riley. "Hard Rain...seemed to come at a time when the Rolling Thunder Revue, so joyful and electrifying in its first performances, had just plain run out of steam," wrote Janet Maslin, then a music critic for Rolling Stone Magazine. In his mixed review for Hard Rain, Robert Christgau criticized the Rolling Thunder Revue as "folkies whose idea of rock and roll is rock and roll clichés."

A better representation of the successful Rolling Thunder Revue would be released in 2002 on The Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Bob Dylan Live 1975, The Rolling Thunder Revue, recording earlier in the proceedings.'

Plus, half-empty stadium, daytime concert, pissing down, no atmosphere, and Dylan with a silly hanky on his head. Give me the nighttime edge and menace of Manchester, May 17, 1966, every time. The front row centre seat would be too ridiculously wonderful to take seriously.

I'd do the '76, just so I could hang around till the show had finished, then I'd hoover up all the blow off the stage.

I gotta say at this point that Hard Rain is some of my all time fave footage - those critics don't know sheet from shinola. I just wish Joan Baez was someone else - even a dalek would be an improvement (with the possible exception of the wonderful Deportees)

Personally I'd even suck their noses......

Don't get me wrong, I would luurve to have attended one of those Renaldo & Clara '75 shows- but I'd still pick Manchester '66.

Fort Collins by a nose full of cocaine.

No they don't.

Paul Williams was a voice crying in the wilderness in 1979 (from Dylan--"What Happened?": One of my favorite albums of his is Hard Rain--a live album from 1976--all about sex and timelessness and living in the moment, rich in musical ideas that might be 50 years ahead of their time.

Maye in 2026 the rest of the world will catch up!

I'd like to go to Manchester too though please.

to make this even harder you should throw in Carnegie '63

ps
Dylan looks HOT in that hanky.

Agreed....that the critics were clueless. If I had thickboy's way with words, I'd say more than a thing or two about those so called critics.

Believe me, they left not a speck and if they did it'd be wet and not so hooverable.

I imagine if you could get hold of a backstage pass, '66 had quite a buffet table smorgasbord of party favors. Psychedelics, opiates, greens, uppers, downers...take your pick.

In honor of the new Hard Rain vinyl remaster rips (freaking glorious), I bumped this poll.

For anyone who hasn't yet voted, this is THE golden one-million dollar question.

Indeed.. Hard Rain for the snarl, 66 for the disdain!

Two epochal performances to be sure, there seems to have been an eeriness to the atmosphere of the Manchester show which would have been great, if not completely pleasant to experience. Plus, it was raining during the Fort Collins show and given that it was May in Manchester it was definitely raining there too, but at least you were indoors - so the Free Trade Hall for me.

It rains indoors in Manchester, as well as outdoors.

Montreal 1975 is the one.

Good idea...or how about a small club in the early days, New York City, where you could buy him a beer after the set?

Having to choose just between the two mentioned, I'd go for Fort Collins. John convinced me: