The tour ended - Conclusions

[vgonis]

twm, we seem to agree! But even if we don't it is always a pleasure!
dmg, man this was completely out of the blue! Ralf is it?

[Pottel]

I always considered under the red sky one of my favorite albums. Loved wiggle wiggle, 10000 men, etc...simply really liked it, maybe coz I did not spend too much time about it's motives.

[twm]

Some people loved "Under The Red Sky" on first hearing and still do. 

I had high hopes of it. It followed "Oh Mercy". In January, we'd had Dylan's night at Toad's Place, a long and very loose performance of songs old and new (4 hours and 50 songs). In February, we'd had a wonderful week of Dylan concerts at the Hammersmith Odeon. He'd bounced on stage to join The Byrds at the Roy Orbison tribute. The Traveling Wilburys were still active. The signs seemed good. For me, the album was a let-down and never really recovered from that.

I got to hear a pre-release (cassette?) copy of UTRS in August. Here are a few quotes from my notes at the time.  "OH MERCY, it ain't". "It hardly stretches Dylan lyrically at all". "Dylan seems somewhat detached at times".  I did like "Unbelievable" and described "Born In Time" as "a hidden gem", saying that it "gave me a frisson of Gershwin" (I don't think I knew it was a left-over from "Oh Mercy" at the time). I liked "TV Song" (as we called it then) but said "it may pall all too quickly"; it has. "God Knows", which faded oddly in the middle of a verse, didn't impress me but I said it may be a "grower" and that has also turned out to be true for me. I won't go on but my view of the album has hardly changed.

Now, back to MK,  please.

[dmg]

twm, we seem to agree! But even if we don't it is always a pleasure!
dmg, man this was completely out of the blue! Ralf is it?

Oh, it was 23:00 and I was tired while reading all these long posts that were, for the most part, going over my head due to me not knowing Dylan's back catalogue.  I felt a bit like Ralph talking to Lisa!

[twm]

There's a whole lot of music out there.

[twm]

Looking through my notes from 1990, I came across this (written by Clive Barker):

Somewhere between what the biographer writes, the conscience confesses and the critic accuses you of, can be insights the reader may find of interest and amusement

That is neat and  thoughtful but I don't know where I got it from. Maybe someone can identify the original Clive Barker source.

[dmg]

There's a whole of music out there.

Yep, and it was interesting to read.  E.g. I had seen the song Tweedle Dee... In a set list somewhere and thought it was a little strange for a song title, especially in light of the "dee" and "dum" parts being the wrong way around.  Now I am no longer in ignorance!

[twm]

About 3 days ago, I mentioned the wee Scottish village of Moscow. This post is about another wee Scottish village that has nothing to do with Bob or Mark but with Richard Thompson. You may be familiar with RT's beautiful song "Beeswing".  Well, there is a village called Beeswing and it is near the town of Dumfries - about 40 miles from another place I once lived.

The interesting things is that Richard Thompson was born and brought up in London but had a Scottish father (and you will note the reference to the records of Jimmy Shand in another RT song). RT's father was a policeman who started his police career in Dumfries and the family went back to the area for holidays.

This time, I have looked up Beeswing on Wiki [  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeswing,_Dumfries_and_Galloway ] only to discover that the village used to be called Lochend  but was renamed after a racehorse [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeswing_(horse)  ].

Finally, for those who want to know about Jimmy Shand: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Shand