Expecting Rain

Maybe this has been covered before. I finally saw the clip from the 30th anniversary concert at MSG, featuring Sinead O'Connor. This has to rank up there as one of the bravest performances in the history of rock and roll. To take on the boos, to wave off Kristofferson's comfort, to face the ignorant and sing "War". I was shaking after her performance. Was anyone here on Expecting Rain there that night? Any memories? I just wish Bob had come out and told the boo-birds to "f" off and leave, since they had just judged themselves as heretics and liars.

I agree. Yes, that would have been great.

I wished she had sung You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go. She has a nice voice.

A real asswipe (with a great voice). She should have sung "I Believe in You" as she'd agreed to do. It was Bob Dylan's night, not hers.

She TOtally pussied out, and later said she blew it. She had one of bob's best songs as highly appropriate ammunition for making a distinction between the "You" she believes in and the Papacy she had recently dissed. When people are booing, as a performer, this is electric, a perfect situation to shoot out the lights and blow the room away--she totally turtled. Heretics and liars? Man, people can boo all they want, don't be lame. Gutless, not brave, imho

Have you listened to her version of I Believe In You? To sing that gently and beautifully to such a large booing crowd you'd have to be superhuman. They booed her, not Dylan, so she reacted. The asswipes were in the audience.

A real performer lives for moments like that. It's because of her failure at that moment that she retired to being a rasta priest.

I don't agree. If you are being booed for playing loud, hard rock, you can tell your band to play effing loud and turn up the aggressiveness a notch. But if you have a soft song like I Believe In You, that's not an option. Perhaps her reaction showed a lack of professionalism on Sinead's part, but I think I prefer her vulnerability over professionalism in that scene.
But I'm sure you're a badass performer who has stood before larger booing crowds and can only laugh about amateurs like Sinead.

I've sung to the utterly indifferent, and I assure you that getting booed would be far more stimulating and loaded with potential. We'll never know how that crowd would have reacted--that's a drag.

I agree with Neil Young's assessment: "Jesus, I've been booed everywhere; but they never made me run."

I've been waiting a long time for Neil to get to his so-called religious phase.

Yeah, you don't run. What she did is a humiliating loss of composure.

I think a couple of years after the event it was shown on Channel 4 here in the good old U of K round about Christmas time - I'd just realised the answer to the question which had vexed me through my mid teens of Beatles or Rolling Stones? was in fact Dylan, but I'd only heard Blonde on Blonde, Greatest Hits, and a bizarre Polish cassette compilation of the lesser songs from Bringing It All Back Home & Another Side. I couldn't believe how old Bob sounded, when he shambled on, but I loved Lou Reed's teleprompted Foot of Pride, watched it on rewind again and again. First taste of Dylan's later songwriting genius. I remember Sinead being back on stage for the ensemble Knockin' on Heaven's Door, joining in with some defiance on the aye-aye-aye harmonies. What a strange event it was. She does do a beautiful I Believe in You, but I can see why it wasn't quite the right arena for it.

She didn't run, did she? And the loss of composure probably had to do with the fact that the point she had tried to make on SNL was very important to her, it was a political statement in a matter that deeply concerned her personally. Perhaps it's unprofessional to try something like this, but I think the world would be a sadder place if not for artists willing to take such risks.
Sinead showed perfectly reasonable behaviour in a very unusual situation. In any other performance situation you have a repertoire to choose from and can pick a song that suits your mood in front of a booing audience. That's exactly the choice Sinead didn't have.
I bet if she had been there to play a rock song she would have told the band to play f*cking loud and spit her anger back at the crowd with the scheduled song. But her scheduled song was unsuitable, so she took one that made her point.

I thought it was gutsy. And at a tribute for what other artist could she even have tried to do that? It speaks volumes about Dylan that she felt a tribute to him was an appropriate forum to use music to protest something she believed was deeply wrong.

It was kind of like something a young Bob Dylan would do.

She snapped. How is that gutsy?

Looking back it seems her views were correct about the abuses in the church. I guess more people should have listen to her rather than boo her.

Hey, RankFLV! I thought Bob's YouTube lawyers shipped you off to Gitmo!

I said somewhere else that this was the most "Dylanesque" part of the concert. A real act of protest.

I agree the incident was Dylanesque but more Self Portrait dylanesque then play it x loud dylanesque. I really don't like her as a singer but politically I think she was on the money. The reaction to the SNL incident was pathetic, when Joe Pesci came on and said he'd give her a smack I lost all respect for him. How can someone be persecuted for tearing up a photograph and be unimportant compared to child abuse cover ups?

She's on Irish tv tonight discussing her views on the church.

video clip?

thanx

A moving moment, in which she at once revealed both the strength of her convictions and her own human fragility. While I agree that pressing on and singing I BELIEVE IN YOU would have been at least as powerful a statement, I don't blame her at all for being overwhelmed. Facing an audience that hostile is never an easy thing to do; Dylan was faced with the prospect so many times over the years that he became inured and hardened against it, but you can't expect that from everyone all the time. That she was clearly much more sensitive only makes it more impressive that she mustered the courage to take her stand as strongly as she did.

If you consider the words to the song, they fit the moment perfectly.

"They ask me how I feel
And if my love is real
And how I know I'll make it through
And they, they look at me and frown
They'd like to drive me from this town
They don't want me around
Because I believe in you. "

Now, the music may not be fast, or loud,
or aggressive, but the message is clear as a bell !
Too bad, she didn't step up to the mic, and
sing loud and clear, from her heart.
I'm not saying it would have been easy,
or even blaming her for not being able to carry on.
I'm just saying, it would have fitting and perhaps,
beautiful, if she could have put herself aside long
enought to pull it off.

I like and respect Sinead, but she brought the boos on herself. She could have easily sung "I Believe in You." The band tried to start the song like 3 times and she waved them off... This was the main cause of the crowd reaction.

Exactly!! Even as a huge Sinead fan, I thought this was her lowest and most self-important moment (and there are a lot to choose from). She obviously dragged it out for maximum self-exposure, having nothing to do with either Dylan or his song.

If the crowd starts booing you, you sing on. You don't stand there with video cameras on you, pausing the band and trying to look "hurt". Give me a break. Just sing and the booing will stop.