In late 1989, after we’d finished making my first solo record, Matthew Sweet (vocals, bass, guitar), Sprague Hollander (guitar), Nicky Holland (piano), Fred Maher (drums) and I played two shows as ‘The Bob Dylan Band’ – Maxwell’s in Hoboken and CBGBs in Manhattan. Fortunately, the Maxwell’s show was not recorded, CBGBs was.
As we could not be advertised as ‘The Bob Dylan Band’ we were listed as ‘Billy Blake and the Eternals’ – an idea from a critic pal of mine – it’s from a Van Morrison rant at the end of one of his songs…
We played no originals. The sound isn’t great and there were some ‘technical problems’ which is what I’m referring to when I suggest we need to get louder. Fred swears this was the only time he’s ever been physically sick from too much drinking. You get the picture, we were under thirty and we thought we were really something. Possibly me especially. I’ve had to cut all of my ‘banter’ out as I’m embarrassed by it… still, it was a fun night.
We opened with She Belongs to Me and the final encore was Highway 61.
<mp3 links removed – cleaning up the website -maybe to be revived at a later date>