The songs Bob wrote and then ignored: No Time, Time Passes and Dirge

By Tony Attwood

Previously….

A rather beautiful song (to my mind if no one else’s) that falls into the “never played” category is “Alberta”, of which there are of course several versions.  I wrote a little something about them here and as I said at the time the two versions are quite different, and both have significant musical merit, number 2 particularly.  But neither have been offered to the adoring crowds.

In fact eight tracks at least from that album have not been played live by Bob – one more than have missed out from New Morning.  Although we did get an alternative version in the bootleg series volume 10.

I think maybe I can see why Bob might not like this enough to take it on tour, and that is the “la la la” sections, which I can’t see the need for.  But now listen to the version that was put on the album

And I still think there is more that could be done to develop this song and make it not only a song that could be played on tour, but one that could become a favourite of the live performance.

Yet just because Bob didn’t rate a song for a live performance that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be done.  And as proof of that, I’d take Caroline Doctorow’s version of “Time Passes Slowly” as one of my all-time favourite Dylan covers – it has everything that I could possibly want from a cover version – an understanding of the song itself, some beautiful harmonies, a gentle reverence for the original and an excellent performance.

Moving on there is perhaps more reason to understand why the Pat Garrett songs didn’t get played in concert, and I’m not really moved to examine them any further, so from there I move down the list on the official Dylan site of songs never performed by Dylan and get to “Dirge.”

My review eight years or so ago looked into the song, and didn’t bring in covers; but of more interest is the fact that it is one of only three songs on Planet Waves that was not performed by Dylan.

But there are some artists who have been brave enough to take this on.  These performances are, for me if no one else, highly imaginative and very varied in their approach.  One I really do like is from Erik Truffaz featuring Sophie Hunger – and please if you venture into this song don’t click away after a few seconds.

I wondered at first if Dylan’s decision not to present this was just down to an immediate decision, or maybe because he too felt that the way to go with this song, was to vary the approach within the song.   Dylan doesn’t do that – and besides he often has an audience that bounces along when there is a bounce to bounce to – and with this one they wouldn’t know where they were.

It would of course be a major leap for Dylan to try anything like this, and I am not at all sure that the audience would really appreciate what was going on – so this time, not performing the song is understandable – but still a shame.  I’d love to know what Dylan might have made of this in public.

Street Legal, had two non-performed songs: New Pony and No Time to Think.  The absence of the Pony doesn’t worry me too much but “No Time to Think” not being performed by Bob is a severe loss, I feel.

I have raved over this cover over and over again – it is right up there in my top ten of Dylan covers, and I really do feel Bob have given us much more had he ever chosen to take the song on stage.

On the other hand, I’m not so keen on Dave Tilton’s version – it just shows that what feels like a good idea doesn’t always turn out that way.
But the song has travelled to languages beyond English... alothough the original Dylan approach is generally retained.   So maybe that’s the clue – there really is no way to perform this song, other than with a very strong link to the original version.
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