Sukiyaki Party In Budokan (Mainstream MAST-102/103)
Budokan, Tokyo, Japan – March 10th, 1986
Disc 1: Justine, Positively 4th Street, Clean Cut Kid, I’ll Remember You, Trust Yourself, That Lucky Old Sun, Masters Of War. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers: Straight Into Darkness, Breakdown. Bob Dylan: It Ain’t Me Babe, Mr. Tambourine Man, Girl Of The North Country, It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding), I Forgot More Than You’ll Ever Know, Just Like A Woman, I’m Moving On, Lenny Bruce
Disc 2: When The Night Comes Falling From The Sky, Lonesome Town, Ballad Of A Thin Man. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers: So You Want To Be A Rock ‘N’ Roll Star, Refugee. Bob Dylan: Rainy Day Women #12 & 35, Seeing The Real You At Last, Across The Borderline, We Three (My Echo, My Shadow & Me), I And I, band introductions, Like A Rolling Stone, In The Garden, Blowin’ In The Wind, Uranium Rock, Sukiyaki, Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door
Sukiyaki Party In Budokan is the final night of the short True Confessions tour of Japan several months before the US tour. The source used is a very good to excellent, slightly distant stereo audience recording. There are several tape flips that occur between songs with no loss of music or talking. The taper or someone close by has a serious cold and coughs frequently during the opening numbers. He might have either moved or taken a cough drop since he is rarely heard from after the first ten minutes.Dylan, Petty and the entire band are very loose and chatty in this show and it sounds like they’re having a lot of fun.
“Domo Domo. Ha, here’s an old song I wrote many years ago. It’s from my protest period. I’m still in that period. Anyway, I wrote this a while back. I could never write another one as good, so I still keep singing this one. It still holds up, so I’m gonna sing it again tonight, it’s called ‘Masters Of War'”. It isn’t listed on the liner notes track listing, but “Mr. Tambourine Man” is played in Dylan’s acoustic section between “It Ain’t Me Babe” and “Girl From The North Country”. It is played pretty close to the original arrangement except it sounds like he’s having trouble with his harp. He blows two notes, the crowd reacts and that’s it. He also breaks a string on “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”.“Here’s a song I wrote a while back about a guy who died pretty miserably actually.
I figured I didn’t write this song, nobody would so, somebody had to write it. There’s a great American playwright named Tennessee Williams. He said, ‘I’m not looking for your pity; I just want your understanding. No, not even that, but just your recognition of me and you and time, the enemy in us all.’ Anyway, he died pretty miserably too. So this is a man who got no recognition really during his lifetime. But he laid down a lot of road for a lot of people to walk on. People still walking on that road, making lots of money, living in fine houses. Have plenty of women and eating good food. And he didn’t have none of them things” is Dylan’s long introduction to “Lenny Bruce”.
“Thank you. We’ll play this last song and hit the road. Anyway, it’s a song I wrote. I write songs about all kinds of things. This song here’s about my hero. Everybody’s got a hero. Where I come from heroes are … John Wayne, Boris Karloff, Henry Winkler, Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon. Anyway, I don’t care nothing about any of those people. I have my own hero,” he says before “In The Garden”. This tape surfaced in the late 80’s on the 4LP box set Last Night In Far-East (Tokyo A/B/C/D/E/F/G) containing the complete show but this is the first silver disc release. This show was professionally taped and bits were aired on MTV back in 1986. It would be great to have the video of the show someday. It’s a great concert definitely worth having, and Mainstream didn’t tamper much with the tape so it sounds very enjoyable. (GS)
