Bob Dylan: The Bootleg Series

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.

is there a tracklist for the 2CD version

you know...music piracy does have a time and place

18-disc tracklisting:

http://www.bobdylan.com/us/thecuttingedge_completetracklisting

2CD tracklisting

DISC 1

1. Love Minus Zero/No Limit - Take 2 (1/13/1965) acoustic
2. I’ll Keep It with Mine - Take 1 (1/13/1965) piano demo
3. Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream - Take 2 (1/13/1965) solo acoustic
4. She Belongs to Me - Take 1 (1/13/1965) solo acoustic
5. Subterranean Homesick Blues - Take 1 (1/14/1965) alternate take
6. Outlaw Blues - Take 2 (1/13/1965) alternate take
7. On the Road Again - Take 4 (1/14/1965) alternate take
8. Farewell, Angelina - Take 1 (1/13/1965) solo acoustic
9. If You Gotta Go, Go Now - Take 2 (1/15/1965) alternate take
10. You Don’t Have to Do That - Take 1 (1/13/1965) solo acoustic
11. California - Take 1 (1/13/1965) solo acoustic
12. Mr. Tambourine Man - Take 3 (1/15/1965) with band, incomplete
13. It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry - Take 8 (6/15/1965) alternate take
14. Like a Rolling Stone - Take 5 (6/15/1965) rehearsal
15. Like a Rolling Stone - Take 11 (6/16/1965) alternate take
16. Sitting on a Barbed Wire Fence - Take 2 (6/15/1965) unreleased take
17. Medicine Sunday - Take 1 (10/5/1965) early version of Temporary Like Achilles
18. Desolation Row - Take 2 (8/4/1965) piano demo
19. Desolation Row - Take 1 (8/4/1965) alternate take

DISC 2

1. Tombstone Blues - Take 1 (7/29/1965) alternate take
2. Positively 4th Street - Take 5 (7/29/1965) alternate take
3. Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window - Take 1 (7/30/1965) alternate take
4. Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues - Take 3 (8/2/1965) rehearsal
5. Highway 61 Revisited - Take 3 (8/2/1965) alternate take
6. Queen Jane Approximately - Take 5 (8/2/1965) alternate take
7. Visions of Johanna - Take 5 (11/30/1965) rehearsal
8. She’s Your Lover Now - Take 6 (1/21/1966) rehearsal
9. Lunatic Princess - Take 1 (1/27/1966)
10. Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat - Take 8 (2/14/1966) alternate take
11. One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later) - Take 19 (1/25/1966) alternate take
12. Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again - Take 13 (2/17/1966) alternate take
13. Absolutely Sweet Marie - Take 1 (3/7/1966) alternate take
14. Just Like a Woman - Take 4 (3/8/1966) alternate take
15. Pledging My Time - Take 1 (3/8/1966) alternate take
16. I Want You - Take 4 (3/10/1966) alternate take
17. Highway 61 Revisited – Take 7 (8/2/1965) false start

All tracks previously unreleased except Disc 1, track 2, Biograph; Disc 1, track 8, The Bootleg Series, Volume 1-3.

lol $600 ...
isn't that basically the price for the 80 DISC grateful dead set that just came out?

But did that come with a leopard print spindle? Or a certificate of authenticity?

omg this is fantastic news!!!
crazy project
piracy ftw, will prob get the vinyl version for 99 usd
but v happy they're doing this

I expect that the list price also takes into account the likelihood of piracy

lol $600 ...
isn't that basically the price for the 80 DISC grateful dead set that just came out?

― tylerw, Thursday, September 24, 2015 10:34 AM (28 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It is! And the 70+ disc Europe '72 box was $400!

FWIW, I'll likely buy the 2CD set and won't even consider dedicating the time/effort into downloading the 18 disc set since there's no way that I'd ever make it through even once. Ten versions of Mobile in a row? Dylan academics only.

Europe 72 was worth the $400!

11. California - Take 1 (1/13/1965) solo acoustic
9. Lunatic Princess - Take 1 (1/27/1966)

these are the only songs I don't recognize from bootlegs

interesting that none of the hotel tapes stuff qualifies. it's from the same period, but not studio so maybe that's why