I have two issues with the "Before the Flood" album. First, I usually prefer full concerts, warts and all, to live albums selected from multiple concerts. And second, it seemed to me that Dylan was just going through the motions, playing his "greatest hits" to please the large crowds without much enthusiasm on his part.
It turns out that's exactly what happened. Dylan had been in seclusion pretty much since his 1966 motorcycle accident. He'd only done one full concert in all the years since then (at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1969), plus a handful of guest appearances. The public demand to see him on tour was immense. Add to that the fact that his backing band in 1966 were just a bunch of unknowns, but had since been deemed "the Band," and had some hits and critically praised albums of their own. They were a big concert draw in their own right, so to see them back Dylan was extra special. The resulting tour was one of the biggest and most hyped tour in rock and roll up until that point, selling out everywhere.
Unfortunately, whoever booked the tour set up a punishing schedule, with two shows per days sometimes and almost no days off. As the tour went on, Dylan started to lose the power of his voice. He often resorted to shouting the songs more than singing them. Furthermore, he played fewer and fewer rarities as the tour went on, ending up with just his biggest crowd pleasers by the end. Unfortunately, the "Before the Flood" album is drawn from the end of the tour. But most Dylan fanatics are more interested in the beginning of the tour, when Dylan and the Band were excited instead of weary, Dylan was singing great, and they weren't afraid to play unusual songs.
But there are more problems with the box set. One is that some of the concerts were not professionally recorded in full, due to technical difficulties or negligence or the like. Another is that although the Band played many of their own songs in every concert on the tour, the box set contains absolutely NONE of those.
The very first concert on the tour took place in Chicago on January 3, 1974. That one, plus the next one, also in Chicago, on January 4th, are the most interesting ones to me, in terms of the set list as well as the quality of the performance. But there's a pretty good sounding audience bootleg for the January 4th show, but only a very poor sounding bootleg for January 4th. So I decided to post the January 4th concert.
I used the audience bootleg to fill in the missing Band songs, all ten of them (tracks 7-12 and 21-24). The sound quality on these isn't as good, and you'll probably notice that right away. But I still think they sound very listenable. I used some tricks with the UVR5 and MSVEP audio editing programs to make them sound a little better. For instance, I got rid of most of the crowd noise in the middles of sounds, generally only keeping the cheering at the starts and ends of songs.
Another problem with this concert is that five of the Dylan songs were missing (probably due to technical problems). Those were: "Lay, Lady, Lady," "All Along the Watchtower," "Forever Young," "Something There Is about You," and "Like a Rolling Stone." Luckily for my purposes, all five of these songs happened have been performed the night before, even though there were many differences in the two set lists. So, for those five songs, I used the versions from January 3rd, since the sound quality was significantly better than the audience bootleg from the Fourth.
There was yet another problem with this concert recording. Namely, for both the January 3rd and 4th recordings, virtually all of the applause was quickly faded out at the ends of songs. This would have resulted in the loss of all banter between songs, but it so happened Dylan and the members of the Band almost never said a word between songs, so there probably wasn't anything lost there. However, it sounded annoying to me to have the applause cut off. So I did some editing, patching in extra applause after virtually every song, except for the Band ones, since they were sourced differently. It seems whoever was recording the concerts cut the applause off like that for all the early dates in the tour. Maybe it was to save on recording tape, I don't know.
Because it had been so long since Dylan had gone on tour, many of the songs were being played for the first time on these two Chicago nights. For instance, even though "All Along the Watchtower" had been written way back in 1967, and Dylan would go on to perform that song in concerts more than any other (2300 plus and growing as I write this), he'd never played it in concert before this. Others had only been done rarely. For instance, "Hero Blues" and "Song to Woody" had only been performed a couple of times back in 1962 and/or 1963. Dylan and the Band released a new studio album right as the tour was starting, called "Planet Waves." They only played a few songs from the album on tour though, and they gradually dropped out of the set lists as the tour went on. But this concert has "Tough Mama," "Something There Is about You," and "Forever Young," plus the outtake "Nobody 'Cept You." Additionally, "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" had only been released the year before on a movie soundtrack, and was being played for the first time as well.
If you're a Dylan fanatic, you should get the entire box set. If you're not though, I'd easily recommend this over the "Before the Flood" album, even though the Band songs sound a little worse.
This album is an hour and 57 minutes long.
01 Hero Blues (Bob Dylan & the Band)
02 Lay, Lady, Lay (Bob Dylan & the Band)
03 Just like Tom Thumb's Blues (Bob Dylan & the Band)
04 It Ain't Me, Babe (Bob Dylan & the Band)
05 Tough Mama (Bob Dylan & the Band)
06 Ballad of a Thin Man (Bob Dylan & the Band)
07 Stage Fright (Bob Dylan & the Band)
08 The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down (Bob Dylan & the Band)
09 King Harvest [Has Surely Come] (Bob Dylan & the Band)
10 Long Black Veil (Bob Dylan & the Band)
11 I Shall Be Released (Bob Dylan & the Band)
12 Up on Cripple Creek (Bob Dylan & the Band)
13 All Along the Watchtower (Bob Dylan & the Band)
14 Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat (Bob Dylan & the Band)
15 Knockin' on Heaven's Door (Bob Dylan & the Band)
16 The Times They Are A-Changin' (Bob Dylan & the Band)
17 Love Minus Zero-No Limit (Bob Dylan & the Band)
18 The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll (Bob Dylan & the Band)
19 Nobody 'Cept You (Bob Dylan & the Band)
20 It's Alright, Ma [I'm Only Bleeding] (Bob Dylan & the Band)
21 Rag Mama Rag (Bob Dylan & the Band)
22 When You Awake (Bob Dylan & the Band)
23 The Shape I'm In (Bob Dylan & the Band)
24 The Weight (Bob Dylan & the Band)
25 Forever Young (Bob Dylan & the Band)
26 Something There Is about You (Bob Dylan & the Band)
27 Like a Rolling Stone (Bob Dylan & the Band)
28 Maggie's Farm (Bob Dylan & the Band)
https://www.imagenetz.de/m9B4n
alternate:
https://pixeldrain.com/u/4v5gopbk
Luckily, the cover photo comes from one of the two Chicago concerts in January 1974, though I'm not sure which one. It probably was this one though, because the first night had a bunch of furniture on stage to try to create a homey atmosphere, but that was dropped by the second show.
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