Monday, January 05, 2009

Making Sense of Dylan's 1963 Newport Folk Festival Appearances

Recently released on DVD, The Other Side of the Mirror is an important visual record of Bob Dylan's 1963 appearances at the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island. Unfortunately, the DVD's booklet contains errors when it comes to identifying dates for the performances and the official Dylan site is of no help, listing only two songs from the opening night (July 26). Luckily, the audio for the festival still survives, allowing for the complete reconstruction of Dylan's sets. It turns out he performed on all three days of the festival that year and on two of those days, he played songs that failed to make the final cut of The Other Side of the Mirror. The full Dylan set lists for Newport 1963 are assembled on the Live Show Archive Bob Dylan page.

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