Theme Time Radio Hour — Dancing. With your host, Bob Dylan
It's night time in the big city
I have set this episode to play as a broadcast from midnight (UK time)
I decided to to post this after listening to this Definitely Dylan radio show this afternoon — Dancing Spell
https://www.definitelydylan.com/listen/2018/6/10/episode-21-dancing-spell
“This week the theme is Dancing Spells - with hypnotic rhythms, waltzing temptresses, and the FIRST EVER performance of the song Mr. Tambourine Man, which will blow your socks off!
Incidentally, this is also the episode when I finally learned how to pronounce the word "stasis"!”
I am quite late listening to these radio shows (this was the first one of these original radio shows that I have listened to, but I definitely recommend).
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The image here is of course from the photograph that makes up the album cover of Rough and Rowdy Ways. The original black and white photograph by Ian Berry.
https://www.magnumphotos.com/newsroom/magnum-digest/magnum-digest-may-15-2020/
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You can put a pin in this footage and say this is when the culture began to shift and elevate because of the songwriting of Bob Dylan. It already done very evocative and image rich lyrics before in such songs as chimes of freedom but it wasn't yet put together with the power of Mr tambourine Man.
Nice show and thanks for what you're doing it's invaluable. But she is mistaken: the first performance of Mr tambourine Man was in the afternoon of one of the Newport folk festivals when he was still a folk singer before he turned electric. It's captured in the films of Murray Lerner and you can also probably find it on YouTube. And you can see him playing to the Shell shocked folk fans and a puzzled Pete singer behind him because that workshop was dedicated to political and topical songs. It's remarkable footage because nobody outside of Dylan's friends or those who had perhaps heard him sing the song in the studio and ever heard lyrics as richly imagistic and evocative and surrealistic as that in music. It's worth tracking that footage down.