Bob Dylan Live at Newport, 1965: Maggie’s Farm.
August 2, 2002 7:54 AM   Subscribe

Bob Dylan Live at Newport, 1965: Maggie’s Farm. 10 MB Quicktime mp3 A notorious and historic moment, that began a legendary year of touring , stolen moments of which are available in several sometimes bootlegged formats .Sometimes, perhaps revised , stories differ at what happened, and, now, post-ironically enough, He appears at Newport again this Saturday.
posted by y2karl (35 comments total)
 
Two amazing posts in two days, y2karl. Thanks. It's gonna take a while for me to go through this one.
posted by ColdChef at 7:59 AM on August 2, 2002


i think it is amazing how offended fans get when their pet artists change direction. Going to print out some Tabs and have a dylan weekend. Thanks for the think-links.
posted by th3ph17 at 8:04 AM on August 2, 2002


NPR had a report this morning on Dylan's performance Newport 65. sorry no link beyond this, with extensive audio and I'm thinking They've got a bootleg! They've got a bootleg! to beat of neenr-neener-neener. And, that, the crowd booed because (d) Bob and the boys stunk worse than Dylan and the Dead. But it had it's moments. And they've interviewed the usual suspects: Al Kooper, Pete Spinsational Seeger, etc. and man in the street geezers who were there.
posted by y2karl at 8:05 AM on August 2, 2002


y2karl, Why is Pete Seeger "spinsational?"
posted by Faze at 8:09 AM on August 2, 2002


I have little to say on Dylan, but I would like to applaud y2karl's fantastic use of the title tag (or attribute or whatever you call it).
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 8:10 AM on August 2, 2002


Beautiful.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 8:16 AM on August 2, 2002


y2karl, Why is Pete Seeger "spinsational?"

Just my cranky call upon hearing him this AM on NPR during the Dylan at Newport 65 segment--he was spinning his participation on the event, it seemed to me, as he seems to be in the interview linked. But then, I wasn't there. The clips were great, though, just as historical documents.

Just figured out the title="yak yak" >, tag, PinkStainlessTail, after looking at iconomy's blog yesterday in Notepad (after clicking on View Source) and figuring it out. 'S fun...
posted by y2karl at 8:21 AM on August 2, 2002


Hey, Dylan sounds great here! The band is well-mixed and playing in time. I always imagined something much, much worse. The only problem is that he allows that lead guitar workout between each line -- which really drags the song out, and is not that interesting to our generation's lead-guitar saturated ears. But outside of that, the performance is not at all obnoxious. It's difficult to understand the furor. But on the other hand, Dylan's electrification inspired as much horrid music as great music. It got performers like Ian and Sylvia, Mimi and Dick Farina, the Dillards to electrify when really they were much better off acoustic. It threw the whole kinda-beautiful mid-sixties, post-Hootenanny folk movement into emotional disarray. Dylan just wanted to get in on that sexy, Butterfield Blues Band action. He kicked over the traces, and folk music never got its edge back again.
posted by Faze at 8:34 AM on August 2, 2002


I see what you mean about Pete Seeger's spinning. But what can you say, the man wrote some great, great songs, and is unfailingly entertaining. What he really needs to spin is the fact that he's always been a filthy red commie, who at any point over the past 60 years, would have happily handed your and my freedoms over to Joe Stalin or his successors. Outside of that, he seems to be a nice guy, even though Woody Gutherie couldn't figure out why he didn't drink, smoke, swear or chase girls. End of discussion. I'm not hijacking the thread, honest...
posted by Faze at 8:39 AM on August 2, 2002


This article definitively proves the truth of the saying "if you remember the sixties, you weren't there". Dylan lyrics page for the words to the few you haven't memorized.
posted by Mack Twain at 8:42 AM on August 2, 2002


So I'm sitting here on my balcony with the iBook, got a drink and a long ethernet cable to the DSL router, it's a cool, quiet, breezy midnight after a hot day, reading y2karl's links 1-by-1, and I hear "Blowin' in the Wind" come drifting out the window. My wife, I'm keeping her.
posted by planetkyoto at 8:55 AM on August 2, 2002


That's OK, Faze, I'm not as cranky today. I thought the stuff they played on NPR sounded great today but it was very ragged. And that Jac Holzman and friends link up above lay it out about the sound of the band, not te mention the histrionics backstage, but then again I wonder who remembers what and why?--and the Boston Globe article Mack Twain re-linked also allows for ambiguity for obivous *coughshortandlongtermwhatchmacallitlosscough* reasons--I was going for the Rashomon-like postmodernist hall of mirrors multiple narratives thing here, I guess...
posted by y2karl at 9:07 AM on August 2, 2002


Faze,

and Arlo woulda fed our children to Pol Pot! Dylan, on the other hand, simply thinks that everybody must get stoned and that even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked and that all the criminals in their suits and their ties are free to drink martinis and watch the sun rise and that he was a clean cut kid but they went and made a killer out of him that's what they did and that you've gotta serve somebody and that it's sundown on the unions and sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace. So that's clear.

The beat switch-up on "Maggie's Farm" that they were complaining about on NPR actually sounded pretty great to me. Way better than all those times in the 80s that he'd be on about the fourth verse before I could figure out which song it was. I hear he's better now.

y2karl, great post and nice Dylan and Dead snark attack.
posted by hackly_fracture at 9:13 AM on August 2, 2002


Well, their mutual album is the winner by acclamation for Worst.Recording.Ever in either his or their catalog.
posted by y2karl at 9:22 AM on August 2, 2002


As a young college student, I thought to myself: "Self, you should really expand your musical tastes beyond "Weird Al". Hmmm...my peers like Bob Dylan. They also like The Grateful Dead. Whoa! Here's an album with BOTH! Must be fantastic!"

Almost ruined me forever.
posted by ColdChef at 9:33 AM on August 2, 2002


I trust, th3ph17, you are getting your tabs from Eyolf Østrem's My Back Pages? And, Mack Twain here's Expecting Rain's lyrics page and, also, the Book of Bob, which I think has a certain Lilek-ian The Institute For Official Cheer ambiance. I also like this Love And Theft annotated lyrics page--and it's Polish, to boot!
posted by y2karl at 9:44 AM on August 2, 2002


I can see ya now, Coldchef: "Wow, this song 'Joey' is almost ten minutes long! I can't wait!"

I seem to remember taking some cold comfort in the perversity of the set list. Then I gave the record to a deadhead.
posted by hackly_fracture at 9:49 AM on August 2, 2002


... who sold it for $5 at a used CD store, bought blank tapes with the proceeds, had a friend spin him 5/8/77, and enjoyed some real Grateful Dead music.
posted by muckster at 10:04 AM on August 2, 2002


ColdChef & hackly_fracture , here's an interview with Paul Williams that has an interesting bit about Dylan & The Dead.
posted by y2karl at 10:10 AM on August 2, 2002


Y2, here's some Texas Homegrown Dope Seeds that'll come in handy when reading them lyrics. I saw Dylan at the Gorge in George, Washington a few years ago, much improved than with the Dead in Eugene, Oregon in the 80s.
posted by Mack Twain at 10:15 AM on August 2, 2002


Nice links.

I've become a huge Dylan fan as I've got to rediscover his material.  I love his early electric period (Highway 61 Revisited is, I think, my favorite Dylan album) but I can sort of understand the reaction-- all these folk-protest people who wanted to see just that and got a very short electric set instead.

But that's the problem with tying yourself down to one genre-- not to mention being unwilling to accept an artist's growth and change.
posted by nath at 11:20 AM on August 2, 2002


I saw Dylan at the Gorge, too, gosh, it must have been nearly ten years ago. What a traffic jam just coming and going from Enumclaw or wherever the motel was, miles and miles of cars blocked up on this two lane road. We missed Tracy Chapman, who was the opener--no loss there--and came waltzing over the hill during his 1st number. It was a total mob scene. Then one of our party insisted on singing along with every song. Most unnecessary. The ever preening G.E. Smith was in the band, as I recall...

I saw him again at the Washington State Fair a few years back--written up here in passing by Alex Ross, originally in the New Yorker--but I couldn't listen. A tenant had given me a $900 money order for rent, the owner had come over and let himself in my apartment and picked it up without bothering to tell me until a few dayus later and I thought it was lost and that my ass was grass, so to speak. So, I was sitting there, listening to Dylan and the band, and it was good, but meanwhile I'm thinking I'm dead! I'm dead! I'm fucked! I'm totally fucked! I'm dead! Oh, Jesus! Oh, shit! I'm dead! and so on in your basic morbid obsessive rumination holding pattern, so it kinda queered the evening for me, so to speak...

And here's some tea for you, Mack Twain.
posted by y2karl at 11:22 AM on August 2, 2002


Dylan was playing with Van Morrisson++++ and Joni Mitchel---- and the traffic! But that sunset down the gorge was worth it. They were on a west coast mini tour and there were vanloads of Dead-Head looking folk hitting every venue. Dylan was 5/8ths tronic, 3/8ths acoustic and if you wanted to see him you stood the whole time. Very much worth a 900 mile round trip.
posted by Mack Twain at 12:34 PM on August 2, 2002


And the stars after sunset, eh? Man, I'd forgotten about the Milky Way or how many stars you can see in the sky when you're out in the country... Of course, I 'd forgotten how many tie dye t-shirt selling Dead head girls you can see pouncing on the captive straggler exodus audience after a big outdoor concert, too.
posted by y2karl at 1:10 PM on August 2, 2002


Seeger, who quit the CPUSA in the 50s -- not that it prevented a HUAC appearance and blacklisting -- apologized in his recent book (apparently) for being blind to Stalin's crimes. Some rabidly anti-Red context; and some more polite criticism {interesting Robert Scheer anecdote}, both via Ron Radosh's biography.
posted by dhartung at 4:20 PM on August 2, 2002


dhartung, Thanks for these interesting links. I would say that Seeger had a lot to answer for, if he wasn't such a great artist. "Turn, Turn, Turn" and "If I Had A Hammer" go a long way toward helping one to forget his politics -- which are, after all, the same stupid politics I've had for most of my life. I agree which Radosh, who's quoted in one of the articles you linked to, when he says he considered it a moment of illumination when he finally understood that "the Left has always been a kind of hate group... its reflexive hatred of the American system is intact." As Lucy tells Charlie Brown (in the Peanuts strip published in my local paper this morning): It's hard work being bitter.
posted by Faze at 5:55 AM on August 3, 2002


Update:

A Folk Festival's Idol Returns

Bob Dylan returns to the Newport Folk Festival today after 37 years. The question is what will he do?

Incidentally, um, a reflexive hatred of the American system? That is a bit thick.

Re: Seeger:

Dubai Khaleej Times

September 1996

The 'Un-American' Troubadour By Mahir Ali


quote:

Pete's first major experience of nascent fascism came in September that year, when he was billed to perform at a Paul Robeson concert in Peekskill, NY, not too far from Beacon, where the Seegers had chosen to build themselves a home on the banks of the Hudson River. Robeson was a baritone who had also evolved into a widely appreciated and versatile stage and movie actor. His pro-Soviet political leanings and his race (he was proud of his African heritage) made him an obvious target for the Ku Klux Klan and like-minded groups of right-wing extremists. The first Peekskill concert had to be called off because of violence, but was rescheduled to take place the following week. And take place it did, with Robeson protected by war veterans and union volunteers as he sang Old Man River and other songs to an audience of 25,000. Once the show was over, the concert-goers were guided by state troopers into a trap, making them easy prey for right-wing vigilantes who made no secret of wishing to "finish Hitler's job". Rocks and stones were lobbed at all passing vehicles, including that of Seeger, who had driven to Peekskill with his wife and children. They survived without major injuries; Pete later placed the stones that had shattered the windows of his car on the fireplace of his Beacon house.

In the circumstances, one might have expected him to emulate the militancy of Guthrie, whose guitar bore the legend: "This machine kills fascists". But the inscription that Seeger's banjo still bears is altogether more pacifistic: "This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender." His patience would sorely be tested - and occasionally lost - in the decades ahead. But Pete still holds the view that it's wrong to write off any segment of humanity as a lost cause. "You can't say, 'That man is a fascist
and I will not speak to him'," he told me, because in his opinion the potential for enlightenment exists in every person.


From an interesting page of linked transcribed articles on Seeger found on the Pete Seeger Appreciation Page.

It's helpful to remember that, in regards to American left of the 50s, there was, in the recent past, this little thing called World War II and this little guy named Hit--oops, forgot: Godwin's Law!--revisionism may be 20/20 in the details but not perhaps the grand view.

I was never a fan of Seeger's for various reasons. The sing-a-long stuff--Everybody!--for one, was annoying. But you made me remember Horizontal Lines, an instrumental he did for a short film by the same title, which was on his Folkways album Indian Summer , and, god, that took me back...
posted by y2karl at 1:19 PM on August 3, 2002


The Dylan/Dead rehearsal tapes blow away the album and most of the live shows. The "Stealin'," and the half-assed "Boy in the Bubble" stand out. Probably findable on etree.
posted by xian at 2:44 PM on August 3, 2002


Welcome to metafilter, xian. Good to see you here.
posted by muckster at 9:13 PM on August 3, 2002


thanks, jurgen. long time no e-.

...and who says metafilter is cold and clique-ey? :')

i only realized last week the mefi was taking new users and even then it took checking on a saturday to make it through the eye of the needle. happy to be here. i've killed my aggregator feed in radio, though, because of the way the entire front page is shoveled out every time there's a new post...
posted by xian at 1:00 PM on August 4, 2002


" historic moment " ??

on the list of historic moments dylan must be waaaay

down........

certainly below the "historic moment "

they let new users into metafilter.......

can someone please start an i/p thread ???

i cant believe how long i've lurked here for...

lets form a gang xian......
posted by sgt.serenity at 4:14 PM on August 4, 2002


Put a sock innit, soldier boy, 'cause the reviews are in.
posted by y2karl at 5:41 PM on August 4, 2002


(muffles)
posted by sgt.serenity at 6:08 PM on August 4, 2002


Being the indecent sort, y2karl, I'm linking one site with pics but commentary too, which seems to suggest that your aptly described "Gefilte Joe and the Fish" look were pasted on. Um, which seems bizarre. But then, other bizarro moments semi-explained have a way making all Bob does look like part of some intricate scheme, so I don't question anymore. Except for the whole Paul Simon tour two years ago. Watching Paul look over His Bobness, trying to sing together with him and in the same key, too, while Bob sang on through and ignored him altogether, was just kind of sad. (Thanks for the links, y2karl; I've been listening to "Live 1966" since you posted this.)
posted by onlyconnect at 7:00 PM on August 4, 2002


That is a classic, onlyconnect--I remember when I got the single of I Want You and turned it over to Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues (Live in Liverpool, 1966), a hotter version--ooh, here's a boot with more--than the one on Live 1966. by the way, and just got blown away. When the first 'Royal Albert Hall" bootleg came out , I pounced on it like a starving bobcat.

Rather than intricate scheme, I tend to see him as presenting such a moving target, wearing a mask that even he doesn't know what he's going to do next. Either that or he's turning into the Howard Hughes of rock. Or has.

I saw an interview with Jerry Garcia where he talked about how hard it was to play with Dylan as his Bobness had no use for the concept of intros and outros and other bourgeois conventions of concert rock arrangements. I can't imagine that Dylan and Simon matchup, frankly, it sounds doomed from the git go. Your Simon comment resonates with xian's Boy In The Bubble reference--and thanks for the heads up, xian..
posted by y2karl at 12:58 AM on August 5, 2002


« Older   |   Teenage vampire found guilty of murder. Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments