Expecting Rain

Some songs seem lost to time which used to be fairly constant NET selections. Have we heard the last of them or do you think Bob can reach these songs again?:

Knockin' on Heaven's Door
I Want You
Gates of Eden
It Takes a Lot to Laugh
One Too Many Mornings
Mama You Been on My Mind
Tears of Rage
I Shall be Released
You're a Big Girl Now
Tombstone Blues
I And I
If Not For You
Song to Woody
The Times They are a-Changin'

It seems he has tried to bring some back (like Mama above back in 2009?) and then folded them due to unknown reasons (My Back Pages had a pretty subpar outing this summer, Tomorrow is a Long Time was a train wreck back in 2009 or so). For some I guess it could be the move away from acoustic sets, but he has folded in entirely acoustic songs into the repertoire such as Don't Think Twice, It Ain't Me Babe and Baby Blue, so why not these?

Anybody else remember when he revived "What Good Am I?" a couple years ago in that stripped down, funeral march style?

I believe he started doing it that way after he heard the version done by Tom Jones.

It was excellent too, then it disappeared as mysteriously as it arrived.

So it goes with a lot of things...

I think most of those are semi-likely to come around around again, but like I said before, "The Times" may be retired. The Whitehouse performance offered a rare opportunity to send a song off in style. Bob may consider it a fine punctuation mark.

i think tombstone blues would fit his current voice very well, as well as song to woody. the rest, im not so sure, it's probably getting harder for bob to pull some notes with his vocal range.

I'm sure he'll bust out tears of Rage again and Mama once more.

I've been to 26 shows since 2002 and I still have not heard him play Knockin' On Heaven's Door. I'd love to hear him to do it just once as it was one of the songs that got me listening to him in the first place. That and Subterranean Homesick Blues but I've given up all hope there. I think part of the reason he dropped some of these acoustic numbers is because he was no longer playing acoustic guitar on stage. When he switched to keyboards in 2002 the piano sound he was using worked pretty well on those songs you mention and blended in nicely with the rest of the band. However since 2006 it's either been the organ or electric lead guitar. Maybe he feels that for whatever reasons those sounds won't work for those particular songs (as evidenced by the occasional one-off trial runs that he gave some of them). Hopefully we'll see some of them brought back now that he's playing the grand piano, he definitely seems to be leaning in a softer and less abrasive direction over the previous Euro tour and the current one.

As an aside, I would just love to see him replace some of the overplayed 12 bar blues stuff with some of his lesser played blues numbers. I bet Bob and the band could do a storming From A Buick 6, Dirt Road Blues or Outlaw Blues. Why not throw in a bit of New Pony or Meet Me In The Morning for the less up tempo numbers?

I also think it would be great if he brought back a lot of the religious era stuff he was still playing in the late 1980s, stuff like Slow Train, Shot of Love and Dead Man, Dead Man. Imagine them resurrected with the current band, I can easily hear Slow Train done as a dark banjo driven stomp. I can dream...

I wish he'd pull out "Jokerman." It was a fantastic opener back in '94 and was played sparingly for a year or two after but I don't think he's played it in more than ten years. Anything off of "Infidels" or "Empire Burlesque" would be a pleasant development. The "Gonna Change My Way Of Thinking" he was playing fairly recently shows the potential tunes from the late 70's, early '80's can have. It bugs me that he basically ignores the 20 year chunk from the mid '70's to the mid 90's.

Would love to see the Christmas album performed live. Bob dressed as Santa with the Smurfs on backing vocals ( ok i know he hasn't technically done these live but i'm new here and i'm testing the waters).

I saw him play that song in concert later than that. The crowd was going wild, while he seemed to enjoy playing into it, which I found distressing.

Wow... I'm OK with no Knockin' as it was a bit overused in my opinion.
I got to lookin' and it's been longer than I thought since he played this one (with the Waifs, no doubt)...unless Dylan, Inc has it wrong on their site...Here's the set list from that "last" Knockin' show. Bob on piano(?)


Cary, North Carolina
Amphitheatre at Regency Park
May 13, 2003

Maggie's Farm (Bob on piano)
Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With Youe
(Bob on piano and harp, Larry on pedal steel)
Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum (Bob on piano)
Just Like A Woman (Bob on piano, Larry on pedal steel)
Things Have Changed (Bob on piano)
Don't Think Twice, It's All Right (acoustic) (Bob on piano and harp)
Cold Irons Bound (Bob on piano)
Watching The River Flow (Bob on piano and harp, Larry on slide guitar)
Love Sick (Bob on piano)
Highway 61 Revisited (Bob on piano)
Knockin' On Heaven's Door (acoustic) (Bob and Larry on acoustic guitars,
Tony on standup bass, Freddie on electric guitar,
Donna and Vicki from the Waifs on backup vocals)
Honest With Me (Bob on piano, Larry on slide guitar)
Floater (Too Much To Ask)
(Bob on piano, Tony on standup bass, Freddie on violin)
Summer Days (Bob on piano, Tony on standup bass)
(encore)

Like A Rolling Stone (Bob on piano)
All Along The Watchtower (Bob on piano)

Band Members
Bob Dylan - guitar, piano, harp
Larry Campbell - guitar, slide guitar, pedal steel
Freddie Koella - guitar, violin
Tony Garnier - bass
George Recile - drums

What about Silvio? I remember it used to be the bane of setlist fanatics between 88 and 98. I saw Bob and the boys in Melbourne 98, and the show didn't feature Silvio, and IIRC it was the first show in a couple hundred that it didn't feature in.

Happily, it was back on night 2.

CHeers, SLuggy

We Better Talk This Over

I'd like to see Ballad Of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest and Shelter From the Storm return, if nothing else.

Probably pushed aside in favor of more recent rave-ups--Summer Days, Jolene, etc.

"Christmas Blues" would fit in perfectly, and "Must Be Santa" should be an encore song every night. Not even kidding.

yeah, there's so many songs you could say 'will we ever hear x... again'

not that i believe in a hereafter, or anything like that, but I picture this scene at the gates of where ever-it is, if it is:

bob: ok, im here to meet my maker
angel/or whoever "-ok, let me get this straight, you played 'honest with me' , 'summer days', tweede-dee' and 'leveees gonna break, nine thousand times, meanwhile i shall be released, knockin on heavens door, if not for you, you havent played in 10 years, and you've never played 'please crawl out your window', sad eyed lady of the lowlands, lily rosemary and jack of hearts, or cross the green mountain even once? Huh?

Randy! Good to see you!

Some of the songs named above are now gone for good. The interest for a re-arrangment necessary for him to perform them isn't there... and some of them, while interesting a time or two, wouldn't have staying power as cowboy-shuffle-blues numbers.

A good Version of "Knockin on heaven's doore" alternating the awful overplayed LARS or BITW would be nice, because most of regular audiences know Heavens door better than Rolling stone.

I've read somewhere that Bob is playing LARS and BITW to please the regular audience. Then why no heavens door? This was his biggest hit.

And Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands?? One of his masterpieces and never player live... There's some hope than one day play this song??

He continues to play Like A Rolling Stone because it was ranked as the number one rock and roll song by the highly regarded, authoritative Rolling Stone magazine. Who's going to argue with that?

And it was critics and stars who gave it this ranking... and by now, I'm assuming it was unanimous (though it may not have been at the time).

if im not wrong he played it in the rolling thunder revue
but sara was around so...
i would never ever have hope on him playing that song live.

I feel the same.

While I would love for him to break out Street Legal or Slow Train items, I guess the focus of my post is why does he no longer play former staples of the NET?

He can definitely still "sing" Knockin' or Gates of Eden just as much as he still "sings" any other non-blues number. My personal guess is that he does try things out in rehearsal and they just don't work or they find their way onto the stage in bizarre one-offs (think that weird Dignity from 2009 or My Back Pages from this summer). Then he just scraps them.

The weirdest thing to me is not mixing up the blues numbers - he obviously could still do It Takes a Lot to Laugh just as easily as any Honest with Me, Levee, Cry Awhile, etc.

And again, these are songs he used to do A LOT, so it is not like hoping he will finally perform Meet Me in the Morning or Most of the Time.