Bob Dylan: The Bootleg Series

bodying crapton during their showdown on the last waltz

think he always shied away from guitar superheroics on record -- though unfaithful servant and king harvest both have great solos. the isle of wight 1969 show, rock of ages, before the flood and last waltz all have fantastic Robbie playing.

yeah before the flood everyone really attacks dylan's material with a lot of cocaine urgency

yeah ok if it's live stuff then I'm down with that, but on Dylan's records Mike Bloomfield is just as great

bloomfield is amazing! i mean, even just for "East/West" alone

Granted it's not the series itself but I'm surprised not to see you all talking about this yet, the latest from the copyright extension vaults:

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/12/05/rare-dylan-recordings-set-for-release-in-copyright-extension-bid/

i hadn't heard about that! this is really interesting:

a tantalizing tape, accounting for nearly three LP sides, that Mr. Dylan recorded with the folksinger Eric Von Schmidt, at Von Schmidt’s home in Florida

yeah thought there was talk on some other dylan thread? or maybe just on twitter, it's all blending...
tracks from the (un-bootlegged AFAIK) von schmidt tape seem like a dry run for the basement tapes. the royal festival hall show should be great -- first ever mr. tambourine man and I think it ain't me babe with an extra verse?

Can't believe anyone would doubt RR's skill. He always said he got the soloing out of his system touring with Dylan, which is why the Band is all awesome groove and rhythm stuff. Check him out around 2:54 here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaKD1Vdarnw

Also Robbie's playing all over this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xetx-T6uIVY

But yeah, he's a player's player. Unless you know what to listen for it's easy not to hear it, especially in the context of the Band, where every element of every song is vying for your full attention.

Tell me what to listen for! No doubt, I just want to learn.

(yeah tyler you and I and others were talking bout the copyright xtension tapes on twitter; once the rich and/or crazies scarf 'em up, the rest of us will just have to wait for any Lady Bountiful to deign us some boots of Finnish digits, say, although, with the recent superbust of Pirate Bay, for one---) What's got me back into Robertson is all these perfect little interjections, fills, transitions, hinges on the CBTs' I know he can do the big solos when called on, like on Before The Flood, but that's still part of being such a good accompanist for Dylan (also on subsequent tracks like "Dirge," for instance), whatever the clashes with others (like maybe the Band, maybe that's part of the fairly quick diffusion etc, the precipitous drop-off in consistency re the their own albums). I wanna check their boxset, Across The Great Divide, right? Hope that's the title; applies to their internal probs.
Anyway, just came here now to be amazed by the first six tracks on Disc Six (seems like BD's touch on that early electric piano; those weren't very touch-sensitive, but his pawing works), and sure hope somebody covers some, especially/most likely "That's The Breaks," country soul casual stunner; could still hear Aretha or Jerry Lee doing this right (good BD rarity, "Stepchild," on JLL's new Rock & Roll Time, which should be called something like Country Boogie. He's done at least one good previous cover of Dylan, "Rita May," forget which album). Back to listening. (Also like the laffy yet attentive-to-details version of "Hallelujah, I've Just Been Moved.")

Also I linked NYTimes' copyright extensions announcement on the Bob Dylan POX thread, which has links re the first batch of extensions releases.

So Robertson seems at his best when he's not the guy calling the shots, but, like many of us, he doesn't want to know that.

Really is too bad the Disc Six tapes weren't available for coverage back on the 60s (now listening to "Pretty Mary").

Anybody know whereabouts of The Band's sessions w Tiny Tim? Hope his early 60s colleague Dylan's on there too.

"She laughed in my face and she ran away---whoohoohoohoohoo---" Now to thee unlisted

Is this in The Bootleg Series? Should be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAzm0eEANMQ

haha, that is a good one... it's available on this: http://www.amazon.com/Holy-Soul-Jelly-Roll-Poems/dp/B0000033AN
i think the whole tape is floating around...

I've got that (blush)! Guess I've spent too much time on the sessions with Arthur Russell (Dylan's on at least one of those as well). All that I've listen to so far are mighty fine, though wish it had all of his settings of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience. Ginsberg sings and plays original melodies on harmonium, with a little help from his friends, incl. Elvin Jones, Don Cherry, and whoever's picking that bluesy country guitar on "I Went To The Garden Love." AG's a soulful, unpretentious folky tenor, backed by Peter Orlovsky's all-weather vocal drone most of the tyme (he's like the upright human tamboura).

AR hadn't hit NYC when the Songs LP was recorded, but he's on some latter Blake tracks.

Heard about this from tylerw:

https://www.sainsburysentertainment.co.uk/en/MP3-Music/Bob-Dylan/The-Cutting-Edge-1965-1966-The-Bootleg-Series-Vol-12-Deluxe-Edition/product.html?product=V6505246

And that's just the tracklisting for the six-disc edition! Supposedly an 18-disc set is in the works.

pretty wild. obviously i want to hear it all, but even for me, an 18-disc set of this stuff seems kind of crazy.

I hear it finally clears up the mystery surrounding "throat clearing" and "throat clearing (alt. tk 1)"

So there's a two disc version there as well.

Is this a download-only deal?

hmmm

7.She's Your Lover Now (Take 16, Complete) 08:25 Album Only

Yeah, I wondered about that, too. They told us the only "complete" take was the breakdown on the first Bootleg Series!

ha, dylanologists must be freaking out about that ... i don't think there is an actual complete take of that song. that sean wilentz article from a few years back said that anyway (and he had access to all of this stuff.
i think there'll be physical for all of it ...

piano demo of desolation row sounds interesting... band take of tambourine man ... no dylan take of "love is just a four letter word" ...

I'm suspicious, to be frank.

That 'complete' take isn't on the 2cd version.

i'm betting it is just the take we know form the first bootleg series w/ chatter before and after...

here's what wilentz says:
Dylan became frustrated and angry at the next Blonde on Blonde date, held three weeks into the new year during an extended break from touring. In nine hours of recording, through nineteen listed takes, only one song was attempted, for which Dylan supplied the instantly improvised title, “Just a Little Glass of Water.” Eventually renamed “She’s Your Lover Now,” it’s a lengthy, cinematic vignette of a hurt, confused man lashing out at his ex-girlfriend and her new lover. Nobody expected it would be recorded easily. (Dylan’s manager, Albert Grossman, interjects on the tape, just before the recording starts, that there is a supply of “raw meat for everybody in the band.”) The first take rolls at a stately pace, but Dylan is restless and the day has just begun.

On successive takes, the tempo speeds, then slows a bit, then speeds up again. Dylan tries singing a line in each verse accompanied only by Garth Hudson’s organ, shifting the song’s dynamics, but the idea survives for only two takes. After some false starts, Dylan exclaims, “It’s not right…it’s not right,” and soon he despairs, “No, fuck it, I’m losing the whole fucking song.” He again changes tempos and fiddles with some chords and periodically scolds himself as well as the band: “I don’t give a fuck if it’s good or not, just play it together…you don’t have to play anything fancy or nothing, just…just together.” A strong, nearly complete version ensues, but Dylan flubs the last verse. “I can’t hear the song anymore,” he finally confesses. He wants the song back, so he plays it alone, slowly, on his tack piano, and nails every verse. He reacts to his own performance with a little “huh” that could have been registering puzzlement or rediscovery. But Dylan would end up discarding “She’s Your Lover Now,” just as he would abandon a later, interesting take of an older song, “I’ll Keep It with Mine.”

whole article is here: http://theband.hiof.no/articles/mystic_nights_tmobob.html

huh

That's a fascinating article; thanks for posting it. I've always thought that the most difficult undertaking for any musician was to be a Dylan sideperson.

yeah i'm sure it was weird. he is a weird musician! and from the outtakes that have made it out into the wild from this period, he really had very little idea how to play with a band.

Guess all those bands he was with in high school, like the Golden Chords, the Shadow Blasters, were covers only, eh? And didn't last long with him anyway, according to Chronicles: some hot shot with money and connections (or maybe just more experience) was always stealing 'em. So by the time he got with the Hawks, had lost his feel, I guess? (Before that, hit it lucky with Butterfield's crew at Newport, and on a few early tracks, with Tom Wilsom supervising.)

Playing covers may have been easier, I mean.

Guess I mean he didn't know how to "lead" a band. Possible he didn't figure this out til 2001 or so.
Saw the track listing for the 18 disc version... Holy moley.

Jeepers, 18-disc is like Dylan (or whomever is in charge here) trying to out-Fripp Fripp on those massive King Crimson sets!

Awhile back one of Dylan's people told Rolling Stone that full session boxes (with the "Like A Rolling Stone" date being cited) was a direction that they were keen to pursue with the Bootleg Series.

Tbf, as far as throwing meat to the animals goes, that's great. I do like the idea of making it available, as long as there is an equivalent curated version as well, like they did with the Basement Tapes. Way back when I was happy to pay for the complete Stooges "Funhouse" sessions, but I'd be lying if I said I'd ever listened to the entire thing more than once. Was that the first "here's everything" set released?

miles is where i really remember it becoming a thing. there was a box set of the layla sessions but i don't know if it was as thorough as the funhouse box. i listen to the miles boxes not infrequently, i've listened to the funhouse box more than once but not nearly as much as say the in a silent way box. in both cases it's when i'm working on or preoccupied w/ something else, comparable to putting an album on repeat for hours only w/ the added potential of discovery, which since i never particularly focus on the recording is present each time i play it.

Elvis "Complete Sun Sessions" - 1987

I played the "Complete Fun House" a fair bit, but I don't know if I could do it now.

six hundred goddamn dollars:
http://bobdylanbox.shop.musictoday.com/page/MinimalSplash

Yeah, Sun Sessions, like Robert Johnson ... good examples, but they're also really limited in terms of actual takes, per the tech of the time, less "here's everything we have" and more "this is all there is." Even the Miles boxes are still just a couple of discs/takes of each 20 minute track. I think "Funhouse" might be the first example of truly emptying the studio vaults of everything. I kind of wonder how many records (if any) warrant an 18-disc warts and all deconstruction...

xpost It's like they did the math and realized how few people would actually pay for that, so priced it accordingly to make up for the discrepancy. Apparently Dylan Inc. has pegged the number of worldwide obsessives at 5000.

With nine mono singles additional.