Expecting Rain

This is one of those tunes one must be in the right mood for. That is true for much of TOOM. What a powerful tune though! He seems to do a good job with this one live over the years. This was the lead track for his great return, so to speak. Is this track popular here? It sure is with The MEZ!! What do you all think for track talk? Big 50 is next. Best or fav versions? MEZ

The Grammy's with the awesome solo. Possibly one of the greatest performances ever captured on tape and without a doubt the greatest live performance in the history of the Grammys.

I'm walkin...through streets that are dead

Ya KNEW you were in for a major album with those opening lines In fact, you could argue that those words are TOOM in a nutshell.

Nice song, terrifically recorded - one of those very rare occasions, as with 'Most of the Time' and a couple of other Lanois productions, that the sound of the recording is truly indispensable to the artistic effect. My only beef is 'take to the road and blunder,' which always struck me as more comical than bereft, but maybe I'm missing something.

Isn't it "plunder?" That's what I always heard. Could be what you're missing...Great song and agreed--great opening line. Grammy performance is my favorite live version as well.

Yeah, it's "take to the road and plunder" on TOOM. He's used several alternates in live performances, including "I feel like I'm being plowed under," though.

I think there's an underlying connection between this song and SEVEN DAYS, which follows a similar progression and uses some of the same rhymes. It's interesting because he had been performing SEVEN DAYS in 1996, the same year he was apparently working on TOOM.

I don't see any similarities with Seven days, other than both are great songs.
But I use this opprotunity (even if it maybe against rules) to ask about the lyrics
of the last verses of Seven Days BS 1-3-version.
They sound as ... seven days and she'll be knowing and the whisle will be blowing ...
and ... and the wind will be knowing and the whisle will be blowing ... .
But they make not much sense, epecially the word "knowing".
Is there another word that rhymes with "blowing"?

Great tune to head home from a night out with the friends at a bar and throw on the player. After having a drink or more with friends its nice to head home with a joint and play loud and feel all the subtle nuances. Love this tune and this album.

SEVEN DAYS:
"...ever since I been a child, ever since I seen her smile..."

LOVE SICK: (over the same progression)
"I spoke like a child, she destroyed me with a smile..."

SEVEN DAYS:
"...I've been hanging on; seven more days and all that will be gone..."

LOVE SICK:
"I watch them 'til they're gone; they leave me hanging on..."

I'm not saying LOVE SICK is a conscious rewrite of SEVEN DAYS, any more than BABY STOP CRYING was a conscious rewrite of TELL ME MOMMA. But there are some notable similarities and recycling of lyrical/melodic combinations, whether deliberate or un/subconscious.

It's GRAMMY®, yo. Everyone knows that

SOYBOMB

Great song and he obviously is singing "plunder". The soybomb incident was classic.

One of my favorite Dylan songs of all time.

I still pop in that Grammy performance sometimes. To me, it's as close to the stuff of legends as we can get these days.

My goodness, I'd always HOPED it was 'plunder,' which works great, but I kept hearing 'blunder.' Guess this is some bizarre aberration of my wee ears. I'll have yet another listen, but I'll take your expert words for it.

The 'Seven Days' contrast is interesting, but frankly 'Love Sick' destroys the earlier song lyrically. So if anything's going on there, it's improvement.

the live versions in 2009 are great

My youtube cover of Love Sick from a couple of years ago -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UnlBZrvBeU

Except for, you know... all the other ones.

When i heard the LP the first time I remember thinking that opening couplet: "I'm walking, these streets that are dead / I'm walking, with you in my head" was like what I was singing to Dylan. After 20+ years of waiting for the next great Dylan LP I'd given up; BOTT was going to be that last great one. Then TOOM, while not the next great one, was the herald for the next great one in 2001. Like Kubrick's monolith, L&T suddenly started transmitting from, the dark side of the moon.

Great opening track.

I first heard the song blasting when entering an open-air bar together with a non-Bobknob friend who immediately took up a liking, thinking it was Cohen or whoever. Smiling, I told myself, Dylan's back with a vengeance.
I was in to the album for a quite a while after that, then back and forth, and now finally I've settled on a handful of the tracks plus Dreamin' of you and the slow Can't wait.

Dylan's conversational skills were on display again, and so, his relevance, that would bring him attention from long-time doubters. OK, there are some empty lines here and there but this song showcased a return to serious songwriting that was somehow again in step with the everyman's concerns.

Probably my favorite Dylan song and one of his most perfectly constructed. Even has a twist ending! Really says it all... I don't see how someone could dislike it, unless you're afraid of confronting the things that it lays bare. Dylan at his best.

Oh, and this "plunder/blunder" stuff is very easy to resolve...

http://www.bobdylan.com/#/songs/love-sick

Great opening tune, the opening line always reminds me of Mr Tambourine Man's "streets too dead for dreaming". I'd also have to vote for the grammy version as my favorite, but if they were all available in that sound who knows? It's usually done well, rarely done poorly, though it doesn't always excite me.

Jack White did pretty well with it too.

Like Long Johnny, this track's magic for me is because it presaged a new era of Dylan - it sounded so strange, and the lines that jumped out - "I spoke like a child/You destroyed me with a smile" meant that this was the real thing. Time out of Mind really did sound very different to any other Dylan album, and this first track thrilled on first listen.

Excellent cover Three-legged man Awesome really! MEZ

Time Out of Mind was my first Dylan album. I was in high school when i saw the Grammy performance. i remember thinking as the song started that it sounded very strange and mysterious. The dancing people in black behind him only added to its strange nature. It was so moody it reminded me of The Doors who I was very into at the time. I knew it was Bob Dylan but at the time I only knew him as "Times They Are A Changin" protest Bob which I could never get into because it was such dusty grandma music. But this....wow. Not the Bob Dylan I knew.
And then Soy Bomb...I then was like "Is this part of the act??" If it was, this was pretty wild shit. I sort of realized after a second that it was not part of the show basically because of Bob's detached glance over at him followed by the eyebrows raised on "I'm love sick."
They take him off and Bob dives into the solo which is ferocious and pulls anyone watching right back into the song.
It's the perfect Bob Dylan event. Spontaneous, mysterious, and at times terrifying. A man on a tightrope.
It's a brilliant performance of the first great song of Modern Bob's career.
here it is uncut in all it's glory for anyone desiring to relive the beautiful event:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZwPqeZJ ... re=related

Nostalgia aside, it is most certainly not the best performance of the song. Many came thereafter. To pick one is foolish but I feel compelled to post this one for reasons that must be heard to be recognized:

Nashville TN
Feb. 6 1999

http://www.sendspace.com/file/2hs79i

I'm walking
given who's singing this immediately sets the existential scene of Life
Through streets that are dead
and, oh mother, things ain't going well - 'streets' note, no longer a 'highway'
I'm walking
persistence
With you in my head
psychological driving force - internal dimension
My feet are so tired
physical drag - external dimension - closeup on feet
My brain is so wired
closeup on head - tension between internal and external, yearning and pain
And the clouds are weeping
tension resolved by having clouds express emotion whilst raining

And as well as all that you get a clear image of those dark, dreary streets, hemmed in, repetitious, flat, and above there's the world of nature, swirling clouds mirroring emotion.

And if that's not enough I find it works as a mantra. I just say it - it's like an image in words.

That's simple slide work with a Digitech Whammy pedal and a fuzz box. I'm not denying that it kicks ass, it does, but Dylan uses simplistic riffs and naturalL overdrive to pull a really good tone out of that strat and lay down a classic blues scale solo.