Bob Dylan: the concert series: 1968

Posted on June 18, 2025 by Tony Attwood

 

 

Do you have a view on Dylan, his lyrics or his music which you’d like to put across to our readers?   If so, please do drop me a line.  We are always open to new ideas and new points of view.   Just email Tony@schools.co.uk

By Tony Attwood

The idea of the concert series is very simple – a set of links to videos or recordings of a single concert year by year, gathered together so then when complete we can all find at least one concert for each year, really quickly, if we ever so wanted to.

Since then other ideas have emerged, such as comparing individual songs through the series.   Of course Mike has done this through his brilliant Never Ending Tour series: this I guess should be seen as a sort of lesser addendum to that.

But that is for the future, for we are still simply working on having one recording for each year.  And a full list of all the concerts we have covered thus far is given at the end of this little piece, with links in each case.   But all suggestions are welcome.

Today’s concert was held on 20 January 1968.  This, we are told by those who have put the recording on-line, was Bob’s first public appearance since 1966.  It was at the Woody Guthrie Memorial Concert at Carnegie Hall, New York City, New York.

And to give a spot of context within this, by January 1968 Bob had already written such masterpieces as Hard Rain’s a gonna fall,   Don’t think twice,   Masters of War,  Girl from the North Country,   With God on our Side,  The Times they are a-Changing , Mr Tambourine Man,  Gates of Eden ….    and that is just a tiny fraction.

The full set list for today’s concert was

  1. I Ain’t Got No Home
  2. Dear Mrs. Roosevelt (see below)
  3. Grand Coulee Dam
  4. This Land Is Your Land
  5. This Train Is Bound for Glory

… and the two links in there are to Facebook pages containing a recording from that concert.

As noted we also have found a recording of Dear Mrs Roosevelt

Here’s the list of concerts covered so far.  We’re currently adding a couple a week.  If you feel there’s a concert we should particularly add to the list because of the particular quality of a recording or indeed any other reason, please do write in and let me know.

From my calculations, we need another concert from the 2000s to ensure every decade has at least four years represented.

Meanwhile

 

 

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