By Tony Attwood
I have late been reflecting on some of Bob’s earliest songs – songs which of course I have listened to so many times before, but which still, when I play a recording, I am deeply moved.
The song Tomorrow Is a Long Time appeared on The Complete Budokan 1978 – which and all told thereafter it was played 69 times across 46 years.
And despite the fact that I utterly love this song, I would leave the matter there, except while do the usual bit of flipping around between sites when looking for information and inspiration for my next article I came across a whole series of recordings of this song. Here is one I particularly like.
The credit reads…. “Provided to YouTube by Columbia/Legacy Tomorrow Is a Long Time (Live at Town Hall, New York, NY – April 1963)” ·
And from there I found a whole stream of recordings of this song by Bob all gathered together on one site – so that was my job done for me. If you go to this page at first it might look like you have five or six recordings, but then you might be as overwhelmed as I was by some 16 different recordings of the song. But that is not the end – the different recordings just go on and on and on. Just keep on scrolling down, and you will quite possibly be amazed. I was.
So of course if you already know about this page then sorry, I am boring you, but perhaps you might allow that, given that this page (which has the highly unlikely site name shown here ) which I picked up from my searching, really there is not too much to say – assuming you quite like this song!
For these one or two versions are not all, because after that, if you scroll down the page you’ll find some 50 or so other recordings of the song! So it wasn’t just me that really liked it!! Of course whatever I pick out you’ll want to hear something else, so do go to the page linked above. But here are just a couple of those I have been listening to today…
There are even some which have adaptations of the song and bits of background chat which if you like the song are certainly worth hearing….
I have no idea who has put this site together, but whoever it was I have taken my hat off to you, time and again.
There is so much on this page that I can’t take it all in at one go, and indeed I haven’t even played every version yet, let along played them all.
There is no point in my going on and on about this site, for it you don’t particularly care for the song, then it doesn’t matter to you. It is there if you want it.
But this raises another point. I have tried to admit many times on this site that I am just a musician and writer who likes Bob and I like to share my enthusiasm with others. But if there are a multiplicity of sites like this one which gather together all the cover versions of a song, can you share with us all where that site is?
Here are some previous articles on covers….