I just found out last week that there’s a documentary out of Bob Dylan’s performances at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963, 1964 and 1965. It’s called The Other Side of the Mirror: Bob Dylan Live at the Newport Folk Festival, 1963-1965. These are just amazing performances and I’ve seen bits and pieces of them in other documentaries. But for the hardcore Dylanophiles this is a critical three years because he shows up at the festival in 1963 as some sort of half reincarnation of Woody Guthrie and then in 1965 he comes with what was basically an electric blues backing band and gets everybody totally freaked out and upset.
In any case, I was going to order it when I got home tonight because it’s only available on DVD, not in any digital format that I’m aware of. But here I was cleaning off my desk at work — which is a fairly major enterprise — and what the hell, here it is. Like the whole thing. And I don’t know where it came from.
It’s possible it was sent by a publicist as a review copy. We get a lot of stuff that way but seldom anything this cool. But Amazon says it was originally released in 2007 and we’ve only been in this office since early 2009. So I figure more likely that someone got it as a gift for me on my birthday. (I usually hold a birthday party for myself in the TPM offices. So presents start here and alas sometimes don’t escape.) And somehow or another I didn’t see it or was in a particularly busy or non-Dylan state of mind and it just didn’t register with me. Or I forgot. Or something. I have no idea. In any case, if it’s the latter case and this is your gift, I really appreciate it and I’m really sorry for however it came to pass that I didn’t notice.
Looking forward to watching this.
