One More Night: Unreleased Live Recordings, 1961 - 2014 (Volume Three)

 

One More Night: Volume Three

Unreleased Live Recordings

1961 - 2014 

Can’t Be Satisfied – November 2, 1992

Something There Is About You – February 20, 1978

Precious Angel – November 12, 1980

One Irish Rover – August 16, 1989

With God On Our Side – November 4, 1975

I Pity The Poor Immigrant – May 16, 1976

Ballad Of A Thin Man – July 25, 1981

Workingman’s Blues #2 – April 17, 2014

Seven Days – June 19, 1996

Moonlight – March 10, 2004

Ain’t Got No Home – December 22, 1961

New Morning – November 27, 2005

Red Cadillac & A Black Moustache – June 29, 1986

Delia – April 15, 1992

Mr. Tambourine Man – May 16, 1966

Bonus

It Ain’t Me, Babe – September 3, 1965

Wild Mountain Thyme – December 2, 1975

Go Down Moses – October 17, 1987

What Was It You Wanted? – February 6, 1990

To Be Alone With You – January 17, 1993

Tough Mama – April 8, 1999

What Good Am I? – June 12, 2010

Link

One More Night: Volume Three - Complete

The third volume of One More Night contains fifteen more classic songs from the span of Bob Dylan’s performing career.

“Can’t Be Satisfied” was one of many electric country and blues covers played by Dylan and his band around 1990. This was an especially spirited performance, with the singer interjecting “baby I’m gone” a couple of times throughout the track, to the audience’s delight. It gets a little shaky by the end, but that’s part of the charm, after all.

The second track, “Something There Is About You” is one of the more intriguing curiosities from this five volume set. It is a unique arrangement of the song, and the only performance after 1974. The sound quality is not the best, but it is the clearest recording I’ve heard yet. The lyrics hew closely to the original, excepting a couple of alterations.

“Precious Angel” is, much like the preceding track, a song’s final performance as of the date of writing. It is also, as Clinton Heylin notes in Still On The Road: Volume Two, a very atypical rendition. Though the arrangement is essentially identical to previous incarnations, the singer plays blazing harmonica over the chorus rather than accompanying his backing vocalists.

Track four, “One Irish Rover,” is a Van Morrison cover. It’s a mood piece, and is personally quite meaningful to me. Bob Dylan played this song eighteen times from 1989 to 1993, and this one’s probably the best.

“With God On Our Side” is one of only a handful of performances of this song after 1965, and the only one between 1965 and 1982. The vocals are outstanding, and the enunciation is deeply textured. The crowd’s quite into this one, commenting on and responding to the lyrics. The one significant lyrical alteration is the wonderful expansion of “I’ve learned to hate Russia” to “I’ve learned to hate Russia, and China, and Korea, and Vietnam, and Poland, and Bulgaria, and South America, and Cuba all through my whole life.” This received resounding applause, as you’d suspect.

“I Pity The Poor Immigrant” was a highlight of the 1976 tour, and the recording here is as pristine as can be. The song is rearranged from its original studio recording to an uptempo latin style; T-Bone Burnette is responsible for the incredible piano-playing on this one.

“Ballad Of A Thin Man” is a fairly standard treatment, but the vocals are so incendiary it could not be excluded. This song tended to benefit from the backing vocalists during Dylan’s 1978 and 1981 tours, and the Avignon recording is no exception.

The eighth track, “Workingman’s Blues #2,” is an exemplary performance of one of Bob Dylan’s modern classics. The lyrics have been radically reworked, with only half of the original words remaining. The arrangement, too, is new to the 2014 tour. It’s a sweet and very sympathetic reading, carrying the lyrics with due weight.

“Seven Days” is interesting, as the song was never recorded in studio when it was originally composed in 1976. It went unperformed from 1976 to 1996, when it became a fixture of Dylan’s live set. After that year, it was retired once again. The song is played with gusto, and it lost none of its passion in the two decades it had been shelved. It has been suggested that the song was revived as a result of the singer’s Hyde Park Trust concert of 1996, at which he collaborated with Ron Wood; Wood was given the song in 1976 to record for an album, and played it at Bob Dylan’s 30th Anniversary Celebration in 1992.

“Moonlight” appears here in an uptempo arrangement that was used only briefly. Though the song was played with regularity from its introduction in 2001, I have only heard this arrangement on live recordings of the 2004 tours. It’s very effective, if not as unique as the song’s typical style. Intriguingly, several lyrical rewrites lend credibility to an interpretation of the track as a murder ballad, with the narrator noting that the “bell tolls for you my friend.”

Song eleven, “Ain’t Got No Home,” is a catchy Woody Guthrie cover. It is characteristic of Dylan’s 1961 Guthrie interpretations, with a spirited harmonica solo throughout. Listeners would be advised to look into obtaining the very different arrangement played by Bob Dylan and the Band at the 1968 Tribute to Woody Guthrie.

“New Morning” was played sparingly on the Never-Ending Tour, primarily in the early 1990s. This version is the best of the lot, and dates from 2005. It features a beautiful interplay between violin and piano.

“Red Cadillac & A Black Moustache” is a Warren Smith cover, one of several played by Dylan on his 1986 tour. It would be memorably recorded for Good Rockin’ Tonight: The Legacy of Sun Records in 2000, and apparently also exists as an uncirculating outtake for Dylan’s own Knocked Out Loaded from 1986. If this live rendition is any indication, that outtake must be fantastic.

The penultimate song, “Delia,” is one of the more interesting tracks on this CD. Though Bob Dylan would perform many traditional and cover songs from 1988 to 1992, “Delia” is one of only two that would be among the songs recorded for two cover records in 1992 and 1993. Lyrically, it has more in common with the one performed by Blind Willie McTell than the one recorded for World Gone Wrong would. The arrangement is also unique, and dissimilar to the acoustic renditions after the release of that record.

“Mr. Tambourine Man,” from the noteworthy 1966 tour, has been celebrated as one of the best performances of this monumental song. I agree – the harmonica alone is spine-tingling. Though the song would receive many excellent treatments through the years, this solo rendition from almost fifty years ago remains one of the singer’s finest achievements.

Concerning the bonus tracks, “It Ain’t Me, Babe” was only excised from the third volume’s proper tracklist at the last minute; though it’s a great song in a fascinating electric arrangement from 1965, the distortion made it a little tough to listen to when juxtaposed with surrounding tracks. “Go Down Moses” is incredible, and one of only two known performances of the song, both from Dylan’s 1987 Temples In Flames Tour. “Tough Mama” is a truly noteworthy recording, since this song is performed here in a rare slow tempo. As far as I’m aware, the song would never again be played in this manner.

If these songs do the trick for you, I encourage you to purchase the original studio recordings, available on the following records:

The Times They Are A-Changin'
Bringing It All Back Home
Highway 61 Revisited
John Wesley Harding
New Morning
Planet Waves
Slow Train Coming
World Gone Wrong
"Love & Theft"
Modern Times
The Bootleg Series, Volume 1-3

Thanks for listening, folks. Next week will be the fourth volume of this five-volume conclusion to the Thousand Highways Collection. Until then, keep yourself healthy and listen to some good tunes.

-CS

Note: Another week, another technical hiccup. If you downloaded this set on Sunday, May 4, you were left high and dry without any bonus tracks. The file has since been re-uploaded with the bonus included.

Note: These notes formerly attributed Still on the Road: Volume Two to Greil Marcus. It's been corrected to Clinton Heylin as of March 19, 2018.