Once or Twice: Buckets of Rain

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 I don’t know what it means either: an index to the current series appearing on this website.

By Tony Attwood

As far as I can tell Buckets of Rain has only been performed once live by Bob – on 18 November 1990.  As you can hear, the song is given quite a bounce compared with the original – which makes the music somewhat contradictory to the lyrics at the end

Life is sad, life is a bustAll you can do is do what you mustYou do what you must do, and you do it wellI'd do it for you, honey baby, can't you tell?

It is interesting that at 2’43” the band plays what sounds like a typical ending to a live Dylan performance, but then immediately Bob goes on with a repeat of verse one, and then a couple of harmonica verses.  I wonder if that was a misunderstanding between him and the band?

Certainly a two and three-quarter minute song would seem very short on stage, but lengthening it in this way doesn’t really work for me.

Until this moment I’ve never really thought too much about this song and have never  counted this as one of the major compositions of Dylan, although it is a jolly piece, but I think the main thing against it having a lot of outings on the tours is that it is primarily a short, jolly song about a sad situation.  And I guess it is the shortness of the song itself, and the lack of much one can do by way of instrumental breaks, that makes it hard to fit into a Dylan show.

Here’s the original

Playing this straight after the knock about rock version that was presented live, is quite a shock.   It really does work as a simple guitar and bass piece.  I would suspect Bob felt this too after putting in the one performance – which loses the whole essence of the simplicity of the song.

I must admit I haven’t played this song for many a year and it is really refreshing to come back to it today.   Yes it is the simplicity of the arrangement that makes it worthy of a place in this wonderful album.  It needs no change.  Now the “life is a bust” lyrics work perfectly.  I doubt there is any other way to perform it.  Hence only once.

And here’s a random thought to wrap this little commentary up with. Supposing one set out to play Dylan’s recordings of his songs in alphabetical order.  I wonder how that would feel….  (If you want to try the alphabetical list of the songs is here.)

Incidentally, as I noted once before, the Dylan Haiku series came up with this for “Buckets of Rain”.

Various people
Seem to have a good time, but
They’re actually not.

I rather like that.

Also in this series…

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