Ten Years of Bootlegs #8: Bob Dylan – The Genuine Never Ending Tour Covers Collection (1988-2000)

I must confess that the transition of The Midnight Cafe from a pop culture blog (where I posted about movies, music, books, and other assorted oddities) to solely being a bootleg blog was mostly due to hit counts. I had a brief but passionate affair with the idea that I could somehow become big enough of a site to, well not make a living from it, but at least supplement my income. I dreamed of being a cool little corner of the internet where people would come to read my thoughts on art and entertainment and maybe discuss them with me.

During this time I paid a lot of attention to my hit counter. I poured over my stats looking to see where folks were coming from and how they’d gotten to my little blog. As I started posting more bootlegs I noticed that a lot of searches were for various live shows. I also noted that since posting bootlegs my daily hits were increasing. The transition was slow but eventually all other non-bootleg things fell away.

I now actually do some pop culture writing, but it’s on other sites so that the Cafe could remain pure.

These days I pay very little attention to hit counts and all those stats. Now and again I like to see where people come from and what links they click on but it’s not something I keep up with. But were it not for those early days of counting I’d never have become The Midnight Cafe I am today.

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The Midnight Cafe’s #8 most viewed bootlegs of all time: The Genuine Never Ending Tour Covers Collection (1988-2000)
Because my hit counter really was fluctuating a lot due to me linking to the posts in this little countdown I finally got around to writing the top ten down somewhere permanent so as to not get confused as the numbers changed. Today’s post is technically now sitting at #10, because the original #10 and #9 have since moved up in the count so we’ll pretend its actually #8.

The always-great DylanDave gave me this compilation.  It contains every cover song Dylan sang on the Never Ending Tour up until 2000 (I keep hoping someday someone will do a Part II to catch us up.) While Dylan is one of the great songwriters of our time it’s kind of fun to have a whole compilation of him singing other people’s songs.

It was originally posted in July of 2016 and has accumulated a total of 2,345 hits. Smart readers will note that this is actually more hits that I posted for #10 and #9 but again those have since moved up quite a bit. Those same readers may also notice this is the third Bob Dylan boot in a row for the countdown. Get used to that as all but one bootleg in the top ten comes from Dylan (there are a couple of others that have Bob playing with other artists, but he’s in 9 out of the 10).

That’s it. If you haven’t grabbed this boot I highly recommend it.

You can read about the #10 show here and #9 here.