Expecting Rain

I was listening some of the performances from the tour of 1966 and it occured to me that bob never got abused or booed by the audience during the acoustic portion of the shows, this seems odd to me as the songs he sings are still a long way lyrically from what an audience that viewed Bob primarily as a topical songwriter would expect. Why is it that he often gets a rapturous reception during the acoustic section of the show for songs that, it would seem to me, should have been as controversial as the electric ones?

I think just the fact that the second half was electric is what made them angry.

Audiences are mostly like trained monkeys. After the first couple shows where people booed for the 2nd half everybody was ready to boo for the 2nd half. If the first couple audiences had booed for the first half and thrown mango slices for the second, all the audiences would have.

It is weird to think that they didn't even enjoy it to some degree. Or they did and just act pissed to represent the folk community. Even folk purists should've gotten a kick out of that.

A lot of them must've enjoyed it, but since they'd gone with the specific intention of booing so they booed. I suppose if people have paid to go in and boo they're going to boo.

Yeah... Again; People just ain't no good...

The other problem they encountered was delivery. I mean those old buildings with such miserable acoustics.

The sound quality was really really bad when the band came on.

Those great globes worked ok for simple strings, I guess, because they'd had those back in the Elizabethan and Victorian times when they were built.

I remember in the huge complete 1965 or 1966 bootleg box set there's a live version of "Desolation Row" being played for people who are hearing it for the first time. The audience starts laughing in the first verse and then laughs a bit louder and louder through the whole song. Very odd, but understandable as one possible response to the absurdist lyrics. Real disorienting to hear today.

You're not kidding...
They proabably sat through the acoustic songs thinking, this is nice.. the songs are good, the lyrics interesting, the performance captivating.. and then the electric set came out like a bull in a china shop. Loud and abbrasive, crappy sound system, wash of echo/reverb because of the room, and then Bob started yelling his head off and blowing that harmonica.

Some were offended because folkboy was gone, some didn't know what to make of it, but I'm sure there were some who loved every minute of it. I'd love to read a modern-day account of one of those shows from a forum member who was there. Anyone?

Somewhat similar to the audience reaction during Dylan's live debut of 'Abandoned Love,' during his surprise appearance at a Ramblin' Jack Elliott coffeehouse gig in NYC. I'd imagine people were just giddy from seeing Dylan in the flesh, in such an intimate setting; otherwise, their laughter at the relatively personal and sober lyrics seems incongruous.

I agree with the interpretations posted above, and would also add that, while the electric set was snarling and wild, provoking perhaps a similarly bawdy response, the first half is spectrally sparse. It would take a brave soul to interrupt a performance like 'Visions Of Johanna,' even if it was nothing like they'd heard before and frightening in its departure. Of course, only with communal support could somebody challenge the electrified '66 Dylan and his gunmen.

it does seem as though bob antagonised the crowd a bit.........let's them get more restless between songs in the electric set-until he gets a reaction...then mocks the most outspoken. not that there's anything wrong with that.

I've heard of that performance. I wonder what Dylan thought of the laughter. It's strange because the album version ends up being very somber (but beautiful).

My guess is that he was a bit unsettled by it.

When the filmmaker Frank Capra made his film "Lost Horizon" he, and the various studio execs, felt is was the greatest film ever made, perfect, spiritually aware, brilliant. They had one test screening and early on the audience started to laugh, and they kept laughing louder and louder from start to finish.

Capra went into the lobby and vomited on the floor.

The original version was over 3 hours long. Capra went back and stuck the credits at the start of the third reel and took the first two reels and threw them into the incinerator and burnt them. The film opened and nobody laughed anymore.

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The only other concert I can recall with that sort of confrontation between audience and performer was the tour Phil Ochs did around 1969-70 with an electric band, wearing a gold lame suit Alan Ginsburg had given him, and playing Merle Haggard and Buddy Holly songs.

That one I saw at a club in Philadelphia. The audience shouted out the titlesd of his old protest songs and were actively booing by the end of the show.

The difference between Phil and Bob is that Dylan didn't release his booing concert until 40 years later, while Ochs released "Gunfight at Carnegie Hall" in 1970, the worst selling record ever on A&M.

Phil wasn't better than Bob - nobody is - but he was braver.

An interview I heard with one of the alleged Judas shouters (I forget which one) showed that for them the greatest problem was almost that the material was Bob's old songs, and some kind of perceived desecration of them by the electric band, rather than the new material being played.