7 the never-ending tour: Third Year

7.1 Introduction

The never-ending tour continued 1990 with no less than five new legs:

1. The Fastbreak Tour during January and February

Spring Tour during May and June
Summer Festival Tour in Europe during June and July
Late Summer Tour during August and September
Fall Tour during October and November.

The so called Fastbreak Tour was a strange series of dates on three continents. First three warm-up gigs in US (a technique Dylan has used before on two occasions, 1978 and 1981), his first ever shows in South America, one in San Paolo and one in Rio de Janeiro, then four in Paris and finally six in London. The Dylan staff T-shirts in London had "1990 World Tour" on them, so it seemed that this leg was indeed only the beginning of 1990's touring.

After a break of three months, in which Dylan recorded two albums and one video, the tour started up again in late May, this time with a string of dates in Canada and the north of US. The musicians were the same once again, despite rumors that G.E. Smith had left. There are three remarkable things about this leg:

The acoustic set is revitalized by keeping the band on stage and having Garnier playing acoustic bass and Parker playing "acoustic drums". This is having a great effect on the more up-tempo acoustic songs like It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)'.
Dylan starts talking to the audience between songs!!! First time this happens is at the second show in Toronto as a response to extremely bad and extremely unjust reviews to the first show. Having rediscovered the delight of communicating with the audience also between songs this practice continued more or less during the remainder of the 1990 shows.
Dylan's singing. If playing the guitar seemed to be as important as his singing during the Fastbreak Tour, this time singing seemed to be his primary concern! Songs are sung like never before with improvised melodies and sometimes long "opera" endings. This is far from the raspy voice he's using on Under The Red Sky and Traveling Wilburys and, unfortunately (and strangely), very little of it is heard after this leg.

With little more than a week's rest the tour continues in Europe with only nine dates, mostly at the summer rock festivals. First date is in Reykjavik, Iceland, and he has now played in all Northern European countries! The shows are the same in structure and song selection, but somewhere some of the energy and the joy seem to have been lost and the shows are with a few exceptions rather uninspired.

The fourth part of the Never-Ending Tour started up with a show in Edmonton, just a month after the last European show in Montreux in Switzerland. This turned out to be one of the strangest set of showed Bob Dylan ever played. G.E. Smith had apparently given in his notice sometime during the summer and to select a replacement, a number of guitarists played with G.E. Smith and the band at a number of shows, auditioning live at stage as it were. At the last shows even his guitar technician Cesar Diaz played a couple of shows!

After another month-long break, during which the new album Under The Red Sky was released, the fifth and last leg started in Greenvale, New York. The replacement issue was obviously still unresolved, since the live auditioning continued with Steve Bruton and John Staehely. Cesar Diaz now seemed to be permanently in the band. G.E. Smith played his last show October 19 at the Beacon Theatre in New York City and Dylan continued touring with two guitarists, John Staehely and Cesar Diaz, neither playing lead guitar!

The structure of the shows stayed the same till the end of the fall tour.

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7.2 The Musicians

	Fastbreak tour	Summer tour	European tour	Late summer tour	US Fall tour
G.E. Smith (guitar, backup vocal)	X	X	X	X	X
Tony Garnier (bass)	X	X	X	X	X
Christopher Parker (drums)	X	X	X	X	X
Steve Bruton (guitar)				X	X
John Staehely (guitar)				X	X
Miles Joseph (guitar)				X
Steve Ripley (guitar)				X
Cesar Diaz (guitar)				X	X

7.3 The show

The shows were structured in the same way as in 1988-1989:

6-7 electric songs

3-5 acoustic songs

4-6 electric songs

1 acoustic encore

1 electric encore.

The only exceptions to this are the three warm up shows in January before the shows in Brazil. Some shows during the last two legs started with short instrumental, often only a few bars.

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7.4 The Fastbreak Tour

7.4.1 The dates

JANUARY

12	New Haven, Connecticut	Toad's Place
14	Penn State, Pennsylvania	Recreation Hall, State College
15	Princeton, New Jersey	McCarter Theater, Princeton University
18	Sao Paolo, Brazil	Estadio Cicero Pompeu de Toledo
25	Rio de Janeiro, Brazil	Sambodromo
29	Paris, France	Theatre de Grand Rex
30	Paris, France	Theatre de Grand Rex
31	Paris, France	Theatre de Grand Rex

FEBRUARY

1	Paris, France	Theatre de Grand Rex
3	London, England	Hammersmith Odeon
4	London, England	Hammersmith Odeon
5	London, England	Hammersmith Odeon
6	London, England	Hammersmith Odeon
7	London, England	Hammersmith Odeon
8	London, England	Hammersmith Odeon

All shows are stereo audience recordings.

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7.4.2 The songs

AC acoustic with G.E. Smith

AE starts acoustic, ends electric

SONG CHART

	January								February
	12	14	15	18	25	29	30	31	1	3	4	5	6	7	8	S
Walk A Mile In My Shoes	1