Something Calls For You (Thinman-137/138)
Fox Warfield, San Francisco, CA – November 11th, 1980
Disc 1 (69:46): Gotta Serve Somebody, I Believe In You, Like A Rolling Stone, Man Gave Names To All The Animals, Simple Twist Of Fate, Ain’t Gonna Go To Hell For Anybody, Girl From The North Country, Slow Train, Walk Around Heaven All Day, Abraham Martin And John, Let’s Keep It Between Us, Covenant Woman, Solid Rock
Disc 2 (33:05): Just Like A Woman, Señor, When You Gonna Wake Up, In The Garden, Blowin’ In The Wind, City Of Gold, It’s All Over Now Baby Blue
Something Calls For You is the silver pressed debut for the third show on Bob Dylan’s “Musical Retrospective” tour. Almost exactly a year after the tense first gospel shows, Dylan returned to the same venue but this time included some of the older songs among the new gospel numbers. And unlike the first gospel tours in 1979 and early 1980, the Retrospective shows are much less serious and a lot more fun with Dylan in particular sounding like he’s really enjoying himself.
The tape for the November 11th show is very good to almost excellent, taped very close to the stage and is very enjoyable to listen to. The tape omits the non-Dylan opening gospel set and cuts in with Dylan’s first song “Gotta Serve Somebody” in an arrangement heavy on the percussion and a nice organ interlude in the middle. “I Believe In You” is followed by a breezy version of “Like A Rolling Stone.”
Early on in the set he plays the unreleased song “I Ain’t Gonna Go To Hell For Anybody.” The song went through various incarnations throughout the year and by the the November dates was much heavier than the spring arrangements. Afterwards Dylan addresses someone off mic saying, “has the third world war started yet?”
“Girl From The North Country” is given a pretty little arrangement which confuses even Dylan who quips, “That was Girl From The North Country, I think it was. It sounded like about forty different songs at the same time, I know. You’re not crazy!”
Dylan explains before “Slow Train” that, “I grew up there was always a lot of trains going by. Trains in the morning, trains in the afternoon and trains at night. Trains, trains, and more trains. I never got sick of trains. They were always going someplace I wanted to go…. San Francisco. Oh yeah, I always wanted to go to San Francisco.” There is a miscue at the beginning and they begin it again, giving a very dramatic version of the piece.
The bluesy “Let’s Keep It Between Us” is the second unreleased song played in the set. “Just Like A Women” and a rare “Señor” anchor the middle of the set which ends with “In The Garden.” The pattern for the encore set is the same for these shows. A gospel arrangement of “Blowin’ In The Wind” is played, followed by the unreleased gem “City Of Gold” with a Dylan solo acoustic number to end the show as a reminiscence of his early days. This evening he closes with “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” played in a much quicker temp than fifteen years before. Something Calls For You is another gem by Thinman worth having.
