25 Years Ago Today: The NeverEnding Tour Begins
It's been a while. Sorry about that, folks. I'll to be back more regularly. Here, to mark the 25th anniversary of the NET, is the "local" newspaper review of that opening concert. Not the most enthusiastic review, of course. But things got better quickly. There were two photos with this article when it ran in the paper, but I haven't been able to turn them up. Review is copyright 1988 San Francisco Chronicle
Bob Dylan Goes Through the Poses
Joel Selvin, The San Francisco Chronicle, June 9, 1988
Bob Dylan makes attitude part of his artwork. From the studied insolence of "Bringing It All Back Home" to the harsh romanticism of "Blood on the Tracks," he always gets across more with a flowing undercurrent, a tension beneath the specifics, than anything explicit.
But Tuesday at the Concord Pavilion, what Dylan displayed most of all was a nonchalant indifference that expressed very little other than that the magic is wearing mighty thin these days, perhaps even for Dylan himself.
Certainly the popular appeal no longer remains what it once was. Not only did little better than a half house turn up at Concord, but plenty of seats remain unsold for shows tomorrow at UC Berkeley's Greek Theater and Saturday at Mountain View's Shoreline Amphitheatre.
None of his albums during the '80s has hit the Top 10 and, where the release of a new Dylan album once qualified as major event, his latest, "Down in the Groove," slipped into the stores in the past couple of weeks with a barely a whimper.
The performance he gave, hardly more than a dozen songs in the 70-minute set at Concord, was no more than cursory. Not even the appearance throughout the brief concert of guest guitarist Neil Young could whip up any excitement. The crowd only took to their feet at the final moments of "Like a Rolling Stone," just before Dylan left the stage to return with an encore of "Maggie's Farm."
Backed by a quartet that included Young, guitarist G. E. Smith from the Hall and Oates band, bassist Kenny Aaronson (who looked like a refugee from the Stray Cats in his slicked-back pompadour) and veteran session drummer Christopher Parker, Dylan stumbled through the music. There were ragged endings, a sloppy mix and a tentative, uncertain ensemble sound not helped at all, undoubtedly, by carrying an unrehearsed guitarist like Young. Smith shouted out chord changes and directed the band with constant hand signals, but chaos nonetheless prevailed.
Dylan, for his part, mumbled lyrics, never dug into his songs with any kind of feeling and generally tossed off the tunes like he could hardly wait to get out of there. He spoke nary a word to the audience other than a quick introduction of Young and one thank you when he returned for the encore.
His anti-show business sentiments notwithstanding, Dylan also did himself serious injustice in the program selection. Outside of an opening pair of "Subterranean Homesick Blues" and "Absolutely Sweet Marie" and the two closers, he stuck to an undistinguished lot of songs drawn from throughout his career.
He trotted out "Man of Constant Sorrow" from the first of his more than 30 albums during a three-song acoustic segment in the middle of the show, reworked "Gates of Eden" toward the end and offered "Gotta Serve Somebody" from his gospel period, just before playing "In the Garden," one of his most biblically drenched songs from his obscure second Christian album, "Saved." He handled "You're a Big Girl Now" from "Blood on the Tracks." And as for recent material, he tried "Driftin' a Little Too Far From Shore" from his 1986 album, "Empire Burlesque," but little else.
Standing pigeon-toed and knock-kneed, his wooly mane tousled by the breeze, he strummed guitar, looking confident and relatively poised but failed utterly to appear as if he cared in the slightest about what he was doing. Smith and Young scurried around behind him, holding frequent consultations during songs and trying mightily to keep things together, while the booming bass and busy drumming took the forefront of the instrumental sound. One meager spotlight served to dim the shadows created by the heavy-handed back lighting, but Dylan still managed to perform the entire set in relative darkness.
It may have been a personal appearance by one of rock's immortals, but the show offered nothing more than his physical presence. He boasts one of the deepest repertoires of great songs anybody could claim but roundly ignored the cornerstones, other than the obligatory "Like a Rolling Stone" (John Cougar Mellencamp gave a far more intense and heartfelt reading at his recent Bay Area concerts). There were no particular highlights or dramatic moments, just a flat, uninspired - almost rote - recitation of inconsequential selections.
The opening act, U2-ish Welsh rockers The Alarm, gave a more emotional performance during an opening set of Dylan-derived, new wave rock that was hardly anything out of the ordinary. At least they put their heart into their part of the show, more than Dylan could say for himself.
Dylan used to matter. His records all made personal artistic statements that had a kind of integrity rare in the pop music field. Even as he began to churn out a steady stream of minor albums, he could be counted on for the occasional gem. His concert Tuesday seemed to say that he himself can no longer tell what is special about his work.
Showing posts with label Project Rebecca. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Project Rebecca. Show all posts
Friday, June 07, 2013
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
48 Years Ago Today: The Lost Bob Dylan TV Broadcast
The more one roots around in 1960s sources, the more things you can turn up that aren't well-reported, or even reported at all. A few years back, I found a listing in the New York Times for an unknown New York City benefit concert with both Bob Dylan and Cecil Taylor on the bill. And I dug around a bit more and managed to exchange emails with another performer who'd been on the bill, who confirmed that the show had indeed taken place and that Dylan had performed (although, unsurprisingly, she didn't recall many details).
But this was one that took me quite by surprise. A 1963 TV broadcast of a Joan Baez concert with a "special appearance" by Bob Dylan. A concert whose date hadn't even been pinned down by those of us who obsessively try to document Dylan's every public moment. And, maybe, only maybe, the live debut of a just-composed Dylan song.
In August 1963, Dylan was accompanying Joan Baez on her concert tour around the northeastern United States, emerging after intermission to play a short solo set, then joining Baez for several duets, usually if not always on Dylan compositions. He squeezed his own recording sessions in on off days, when the tour was near enough to New York City. On August 10, they appeared in Asbury Park, NJ. Then, on August 11, Baez was booked into the Oakdale Musical Theatre in Wallingford, CT. Here's a newspaper ad for the show.
Yes, you're reading that right. Baez and Dylan, on an almost-double-bill with "Mr. Showmanship," Liberace. Twenty years before the Letterman TV show where they actually shared a stage. Somehow I doubt there were many folks who caught the afternoon spectacle, caught a quick dinner nearby, then came back to see Joan and Bob. (So far as I know, nobody had confirmed the date for this show, perhaps not even the location. Heylin and Bjorner have it a few days later.)
The Dylan legend goes that, at some point during this August week, Dylan and Baez arrive at their New England hotel, only to have Bob denied a room over his typically scruffy appearance. Baez threatened to leave with him (presumably taking whatever passed for the tour crew with her), and the hotel relented. This is a pretty good fit, and I've even seen reports that place the incident in Connecticut. As you can see from the newspaper ad, the hotel that lodged the Oakdale performers wouldn't have been expecting a fellow of Dylan's sartorial habits.
Dylan was said to have been enraged at the hotel's treatment of him, and his creative blood ran hot. He quickly put together a response, the legend goes, performing the song at the evening concert. The song is "When The Ship Comes In." Baez almost confirms the account in her memoirs, saying "that evening, by the time the concert was over, he had written an entire song called 'When Your Ship Comes In.' It was outraged, vengeful, strong and lyrical." She doesn't actually say he sang it at the concert, though; but why else might she know he'd finished it by the end of the show?
It's possible, maybe even likely, that this isn't the date. Dylan and Baez may have played another Connecticut date two days later, and at least one Massachusetts date before the week ended. A bit more telling, the next day Dylan was Columbia's studios recording new songs, but "Ship" wasn't among them. Maybe Dylan didn't think he was finished with it yet. He didn't record it until September, after playing it at the March on Washington at month's end.
Lots of maybe's there. Here's something definite. The concert was videotaped for a September TV broadcast. (There's a slight chance it was filmed, but it's not likely.) RKO General, one of those wonderful 1960s proto-conglomerates that supplied movies, TV programs, and tires, had begun building up a library of pop/folk concert recordings for the TV stations it owned and, I think, for theatrical distribution after the TV broadcasts. (They didn't have a national network of stations, and the ones they controlled were mostly in smaller markets; they were trying to do the same thing with sports events.) Their music library began in 1962 with a Kingston Trio concert, and possibly a "soundtrack" LP. I haven't tracked down any others yet.
Yes, it sounds a bit odd. Why would a movie/TV studio, even one once owned by Howard Hughes, be producing higher-cost original programming for its motley set of off-network TV stations that typically ran the "Million Dollar Movie," reruns of shows that had already worn out their welcome on the networks, and knockoffs of syndicated shows like "Highway Patrol"?
Because they were running the world's first pay-per-view TV operation, in 1963, in Hartford, Connecticut, home of Wallace Stevens and the world's largest collection of actuaries. Really. I'm not making this up, even the part about the actuaries. Here's the ad that ran in a local newspaper.
That's right, the TV station, WHCT-TV, channel 18, "Subscription TV," had an audience of only 3400 customers. And the "subscription" in the name was misleading. It was actually pay-per-view.
The local newspapers took the ads, but they didn't review the program. It ran twice, so far as I can tell, on Sunday, September 15, and Thursday, September 19. On 9:00 Sunday night, it went up against "Bonanza," "The Real McCoys," and the 1960's version of "Law and Order," called "Arrest And Trial." Ed Sullivan had been on the previous hour on CBS; his musical guests included Connie Francis, Jan Peerce, Xavier Cugat, and Abbe Lane. Yes, ladies and gents, we're in the pre-Charo era here. On Thursday night, at the same time, it went up against "Dr. Kildare," "The Jimmy Dean Show," and "Hazel." ("Hazel" is still running, in reruns, of course, on something called "Antenna TV" on Sunday mornings, at least in the US. It makes "Jersey Shore" look like "The Sopranos.")
Who knows how many of the 3400 customers Channel 18 had tuned in for Joan and Bob? It doesn't seem to have been very many. RKO wanted to build a library of programs it could run on its other stations, exhibit in theaters (this was still the era when neighborhood theaters were almost as common as neighborhood full-service grocers, and third-, fourth-, fifth-run movies popped up in brief runs. You could seem them in color there. Not like those third-rate black-and-white TV broadcasts), and otherwise exploit to death.
It looks, unhappily, like that didn't happen with "An Evening With Joan Baez." It never hit the theaters. There's no indication it ever was broadcast again, either in Connecticut or on any of RKO's other TV stations, or anywhere else. Maybe the videotapes survived, and are sitting in a vault somewhere. But you'd think somebody would have noticed by now. RKO's film library has been sold and resold, carved up and, for a while, scattered, and the original TV shows probably went with it. In the US, Time Warner now holds most of the rights to whatever's survived. Internationally, the rights are even more scattered, country-by-country; Silvio Berlusconi may hold the Italian rights and such. Is he a Bobcat?
But let's be realistic. Most 1960's videotapes were wiped and reused. There's a better than-average chance that "An Evening With Joan Baez" survived, especially if RKO managed to sell some international broadcasts. But it's not likely.
So there we have it. A Joan Baez/Bob Dylan concert, recorded in 1963 by a major studio for a TV broadcast. And it's just evaporated. No reviews. No reports of what was in it. Nobody remembers seeing it. Nobody even remembered that it happened. The great pay-per-view TV experiment of the 1960's sputtered out by the decade's end, a quite dismal failute, with WHCT sold to a crazy preacher named Gene Scott. (That guy made Glenn Beck look like David Brinkley. Maybe David Brinkley on crystal meth, though.)
Who knows? "Folk Songs and More Folk Songs" turned up after 40 years. Maybe there's a kinescope. Maybe RKO filmed the show and made prints; in 1963 they'd supposedly switched from videotape to film for the sports events they added to their library. I'm not holding my breath, but if people start looking around for this in video archives and such, who knows.
The more one roots around in 1960s sources, the more things you can turn up that aren't well-reported, or even reported at all. A few years back, I found a listing in the New York Times for an unknown New York City benefit concert with both Bob Dylan and Cecil Taylor on the bill. And I dug around a bit more and managed to exchange emails with another performer who'd been on the bill, who confirmed that the show had indeed taken place and that Dylan had performed (although, unsurprisingly, she didn't recall many details).
But this was one that took me quite by surprise. A 1963 TV broadcast of a Joan Baez concert with a "special appearance" by Bob Dylan. A concert whose date hadn't even been pinned down by those of us who obsessively try to document Dylan's every public moment. And, maybe, only maybe, the live debut of a just-composed Dylan song.
In August 1963, Dylan was accompanying Joan Baez on her concert tour around the northeastern United States, emerging after intermission to play a short solo set, then joining Baez for several duets, usually if not always on Dylan compositions. He squeezed his own recording sessions in on off days, when the tour was near enough to New York City. On August 10, they appeared in Asbury Park, NJ. Then, on August 11, Baez was booked into the Oakdale Musical Theatre in Wallingford, CT. Here's a newspaper ad for the show.
Yes, you're reading that right. Baez and Dylan, on an almost-double-bill with "Mr. Showmanship," Liberace. Twenty years before the Letterman TV show where they actually shared a stage. Somehow I doubt there were many folks who caught the afternoon spectacle, caught a quick dinner nearby, then came back to see Joan and Bob. (So far as I know, nobody had confirmed the date for this show, perhaps not even the location. Heylin and Bjorner have it a few days later.)
The Dylan legend goes that, at some point during this August week, Dylan and Baez arrive at their New England hotel, only to have Bob denied a room over his typically scruffy appearance. Baez threatened to leave with him (presumably taking whatever passed for the tour crew with her), and the hotel relented. This is a pretty good fit, and I've even seen reports that place the incident in Connecticut. As you can see from the newspaper ad, the hotel that lodged the Oakdale performers wouldn't have been expecting a fellow of Dylan's sartorial habits.
Dylan was said to have been enraged at the hotel's treatment of him, and his creative blood ran hot. He quickly put together a response, the legend goes, performing the song at the evening concert. The song is "When The Ship Comes In." Baez almost confirms the account in her memoirs, saying "that evening, by the time the concert was over, he had written an entire song called 'When Your Ship Comes In.' It was outraged, vengeful, strong and lyrical." She doesn't actually say he sang it at the concert, though; but why else might she know he'd finished it by the end of the show?
It's possible, maybe even likely, that this isn't the date. Dylan and Baez may have played another Connecticut date two days later, and at least one Massachusetts date before the week ended. A bit more telling, the next day Dylan was Columbia's studios recording new songs, but "Ship" wasn't among them. Maybe Dylan didn't think he was finished with it yet. He didn't record it until September, after playing it at the March on Washington at month's end.
Lots of maybe's there. Here's something definite. The concert was videotaped for a September TV broadcast. (There's a slight chance it was filmed, but it's not likely.) RKO General, one of those wonderful 1960s proto-conglomerates that supplied movies, TV programs, and tires, had begun building up a library of pop/folk concert recordings for the TV stations it owned and, I think, for theatrical distribution after the TV broadcasts. (They didn't have a national network of stations, and the ones they controlled were mostly in smaller markets; they were trying to do the same thing with sports events.) Their music library began in 1962 with a Kingston Trio concert, and possibly a "soundtrack" LP. I haven't tracked down any others yet.
Yes, it sounds a bit odd. Why would a movie/TV studio, even one once owned by Howard Hughes, be producing higher-cost original programming for its motley set of off-network TV stations that typically ran the "Million Dollar Movie," reruns of shows that had already worn out their welcome on the networks, and knockoffs of syndicated shows like "Highway Patrol"?
Because they were running the world's first pay-per-view TV operation, in 1963, in Hartford, Connecticut, home of Wallace Stevens and the world's largest collection of actuaries. Really. I'm not making this up, even the part about the actuaries. Here's the ad that ran in a local newspaper.
That's right, the TV station, WHCT-TV, channel 18, "Subscription TV," had an audience of only 3400 customers. And the "subscription" in the name was misleading. It was actually pay-per-view.
The local newspapers took the ads, but they didn't review the program. It ran twice, so far as I can tell, on Sunday, September 15, and Thursday, September 19. On 9:00 Sunday night, it went up against "Bonanza," "The Real McCoys," and the 1960's version of "Law and Order," called "Arrest And Trial." Ed Sullivan had been on the previous hour on CBS; his musical guests included Connie Francis, Jan Peerce, Xavier Cugat, and Abbe Lane. Yes, ladies and gents, we're in the pre-Charo era here. On Thursday night, at the same time, it went up against "Dr. Kildare," "The Jimmy Dean Show," and "Hazel." ("Hazel" is still running, in reruns, of course, on something called "Antenna TV" on Sunday mornings, at least in the US. It makes "Jersey Shore" look like "The Sopranos.")
Who knows how many of the 3400 customers Channel 18 had tuned in for Joan and Bob? It doesn't seem to have been very many. RKO wanted to build a library of programs it could run on its other stations, exhibit in theaters (this was still the era when neighborhood theaters were almost as common as neighborhood full-service grocers, and third-, fourth-, fifth-run movies popped up in brief runs. You could seem them in color there. Not like those third-rate black-and-white TV broadcasts), and otherwise exploit to death.
It looks, unhappily, like that didn't happen with "An Evening With Joan Baez." It never hit the theaters. There's no indication it ever was broadcast again, either in Connecticut or on any of RKO's other TV stations, or anywhere else. Maybe the videotapes survived, and are sitting in a vault somewhere. But you'd think somebody would have noticed by now. RKO's film library has been sold and resold, carved up and, for a while, scattered, and the original TV shows probably went with it. In the US, Time Warner now holds most of the rights to whatever's survived. Internationally, the rights are even more scattered, country-by-country; Silvio Berlusconi may hold the Italian rights and such. Is he a Bobcat?
But let's be realistic. Most 1960's videotapes were wiped and reused. There's a better than-average chance that "An Evening With Joan Baez" survived, especially if RKO managed to sell some international broadcasts. But it's not likely.
So there we have it. A Joan Baez/Bob Dylan concert, recorded in 1963 by a major studio for a TV broadcast. And it's just evaporated. No reviews. No reports of what was in it. Nobody remembers seeing it. Nobody even remembered that it happened. The great pay-per-view TV experiment of the 1960's sputtered out by the decade's end, a quite dismal failute, with WHCT sold to a crazy preacher named Gene Scott. (That guy made Glenn Beck look like David Brinkley. Maybe David Brinkley on crystal meth, though.)
Who knows? "Folk Songs and More Folk Songs" turned up after 40 years. Maybe there's a kinescope. Maybe RKO filmed the show and made prints; in 1963 they'd supposedly switched from videotape to film for the sports events they added to their library. I'm not holding my breath, but if people start looking around for this in video archives and such, who knows.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
48 (Not 38) Years Ago Today
We all (or at least many of us) know about Bob Dylan's appearance at a Joan Baez concert at the Forest Hills tennis stadium, in New York City. It took place on August 17, 1963, and a partial recording of the show, including Baez's solo tracks and two Dylan-Baez duets, but not Dylan's solo songs or the last duet, circulates. One duet, "Troubled and I Don't Know Why," was released some years back on a Baez box set.
Hardly anybody remembers that Dylan himself topped the bill at a "hootenanny" at the Forest Hills stadium a month earlier. Sharing the top of the bill were Odetta and Bud and Travis. I haven't found any accounts of that concert so far, no setlists, certainly no recordings. It probably was Dylan's warmup gig for the Newport Folk Festival a few days later.
Bud and Travis retired long ago, and both have since died. But an interesting relic of their career turned up on YouTube three years ago, a televised cover of "Tomorrow Is A Long Time." It's quite nice. There's also a short introduction where they talk about "Bobby Dylan," which to me makes it likely that this clip comes from 1963, rather than the later date attached to it on YouTube. But that's just guesswork.
If the embed doesn't work for you, this is the basic link:
http://youtu.be/H3yUZOaZICE
There are a lot of almost-forgotten Dylan history and chronology from the early 1960's out there to be found, and sadly fewer and fewer folks who can give us their recollections.of those events. I've turned up a small pile of "vanished" dates (no recordings, sorry) and they'll be among the things I talk about here, going forward.
We all (or at least many of us) know about Bob Dylan's appearance at a Joan Baez concert at the Forest Hills tennis stadium, in New York City. It took place on August 17, 1963, and a partial recording of the show, including Baez's solo tracks and two Dylan-Baez duets, but not Dylan's solo songs or the last duet, circulates. One duet, "Troubled and I Don't Know Why," was released some years back on a Baez box set.
Hardly anybody remembers that Dylan himself topped the bill at a "hootenanny" at the Forest Hills stadium a month earlier. Sharing the top of the bill were Odetta and Bud and Travis. I haven't found any accounts of that concert so far, no setlists, certainly no recordings. It probably was Dylan's warmup gig for the Newport Folk Festival a few days later.
Bud and Travis retired long ago, and both have since died. But an interesting relic of their career turned up on YouTube three years ago, a televised cover of "Tomorrow Is A Long Time." It's quite nice. There's also a short introduction where they talk about "Bobby Dylan," which to me makes it likely that this clip comes from 1963, rather than the later date attached to it on YouTube. But that's just guesswork.
If the embed doesn't work for you, this is the basic link:
http://youtu.be/H3yUZOaZICE
There are a lot of almost-forgotten Dylan history and chronology from the early 1960's out there to be found, and sadly fewer and fewer folks who can give us their recollections.of those events. I've turned up a small pile of "vanished" dates (no recordings, sorry) and they'll be among the things I talk about here, going forward.
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