Robyn Hitchcock - Performs JOHN WESLEY HARDING - The Chapel, San Francisco, CA, 12-27-2018 (John Wesley Harding) | Albums That Should Exist

 

Robyn Hitchcock - The Chapel, San Francisco, CA, 12-27-2018 (John Wesley Harding)

Paul says: Robyn Hitchcock has written many hundreds of songs himself. But even so, he loves performing cover songs as well, so much that he sometimes performs entire classic albums by others from start to finish. I've already posted a bunch of those, and here's another. This time, he did "John Wesley Harding," the great 1967 album by Bob Dylan. 

Most of the cover albums I've posted by Hitchcock so far were performed at the Three Kings club in London, with a full band. But this one took place in San Francisco, and is in solo acoustic format. Dylan's original album was with a band, but the backing was pretty sparse, mostly just Dylan on acoustic guitar, harmonica, and/or piano, plus bass and drums. So Hitchcock, also on acoustic guitar, harmonica, and/or piano, wasn't that different.

The original Dylan album is only 38 minutes long. This concert, however, is almost two hours long. In addition to performing the entire album, he warmed up with three other Dylan covers. 

Strangely, he also did two more covers during the album, "Dear Prudence" by the Beatles and "Dear Doctor" by the Rolling Stones, after playing "Dear Landlord" by Dylan. (He thought the Beatles and Stones were inspired to write songs in the "Dear..." format. I don't know if that's true, but the timing lines up, since the other two were written within a year of the release of Dylan's song.)

Then, after the album finished, he did still more Dylan covers ("I Threw It All Away" and "Senor (Tales of Yankee Power)"), but also songs by the Band ("Caledonia Mission") and John Lennon ("God"), plus two songs he'd recently written himself ("Serpent at the Gates of Wisdom" and "Those Guys Are All Dead Now"). On top of all that, there's plenty of banter between songs, in his usual entertaining stream-of-consciousness style.

This originally was an audience bootleg. It was a pretty good one though, helped by the fact that it's easier to record a solo acoustic show, especially with a small, polite audience. But I improved the sound of every single track, so much so that this sounds as good as a soundboard or FM radio broadcast. For all the talking tracks, I ran them through the Adobe speech enhancer, and improved the clarity a long. Then, for all the songs, I ran them through MVSEP's "Reverb Removal" filter. That made a big difference as well.

This sounds really excellent now, even though everything here is unreleased. These filters are steadily improving with updates. Writing this in August 2026, this wouldn't have sounded this good if I had done these same audio edits even two years ago.  

This album is an hour and 58 minutes long. 

01 talk 
02 Mr. Tambourine Man 
03 Visions of Johanna 
04 talk
05 Clothes Line Saga 
06 talk 
07 John Wesley Harding 
08 talk
09 As I Went Out One Morning 
10 I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine 
11 talk
12 All Along the Watchtower
13 talk 
14 The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest 
15 talk
16 Drifter's Escape 
17 Dear Landlord 
18 talk 
19 Dear Prudence 
20 talk 
21 Dear Doctor 
22 talk 
23 I Am a Lonesome Hobo
24 talk
25 I Pity the Poor Immigrant 
26 talk 
27 Wicked Messenger
28 talk 
29 Down Along the Cove
30 talk
31 I'll Be Your Baby Tonight 
32 talk 
33 I Threw It All Away
34 talk 
35 Caledonia Mission 
36 talk 
37 Serpent at the Gates of Wisdom 
38 talk 
39 Senor [Tales of Yankee Power]
40 talk
41 Those Guys Are All Dead Now 
42 talk 
43 God