Shows of the Day: March 8, 2021

Like a lot of collectors, I keep a list of all the bootlegs I own. Also, like a lot of collectors that list is in perpetual need of updating. A few years back I decided to move my list off of db.etree to a spreadsheet of my own creation. At that time I decided to separate my Bob Dylan boots from the rest of the list. Actually what I did was make a spreadsheet of all the Lossless Bob numbers and then indicate which of those boots I owned. I figured that way I could track both what I did have and what I was missing. The trouble is the LB numbers are regularly updated and I wasn’t keeping up with them. By this point, my list is pretty useless in that regard.

A couple of months ago I decided to transfer my Bob Dylan list to my regular bootleg list. It is a long process as I have a lot of Dylan shows, I was pretty casual about it too. Every now and then I would go in and move a few shows to the new list. Last week I decided to get more serious about it. I pretty much at random decided to tackle all the shows I owned from 1978. As I was fixing the list I decided it would be fun to collect as many bootlegs from that year as I could and then share them here. I downloaded every boot I could find from places like Expecting Rain and Guitars101. I reached out to friends I thought might have some of those shows.

It is still incomplete by a wide margin. As you might know, Lossless Bob tracks every possible source for every possible bootleg even if they are almost assuredly from the exact same source. I’m still missing over 200 LB numbers from 1978. However, I do have at least one source from almost every show Dylan performed that year. There are a couple of dates on which no tape seems to exist. There are also two dates in which there are sources but I don’t have a copy. That’s June 19 and October 14 if you are keeping track. I’d love a copy of those shows if anyone has a lossless copy and wants to share.

I will continue to add to this collection as I find more boots from this era. In fact, I have a collector friend who promises to send me what he has, but he has not yet had the time to do so. As new shows come in I’ll share them like I do my regular everyday shows. But for now, you can have what I have.

I quite enjoyed this project. Sometimes this blog can feel more like a job than a fun hobby but projects like this help keep it enjoyable. I think I’ll probably do some more projects like this in the future. Maybe not collecting an entire year but I think it would be fun to collect every source from a particular tour, or if an artist did an extended run at one venue, or maybe special projects where an artist sits in with other bands, etc. Stay tuned for more of that.