100 Reasons Why Bob Dylan’s “Live 1966” is Great 100 Reasons Why Bob Dylan’s “Live 1966” is Great 100 Reasons Why Bob Dylan’s “Live 1966” is Great

ok this isn't a # but I can't find another thread on Dylan 1966. I recently d/l'ed the ridiculous Genuine Live 1966 and Jewels and Binoculars boot boxes but they're so massive that I've just begun to wade therein. Anyway, I have a question. Were there other tours (I mean, by other artists) with an acoustic set first and an electric set second, before Dylan starts doing this in 1965?

i can't think of anyone who did this before Dylan -- I mean, in the rock world at the time, everyone was straight-up electric, right?

Yeah, me neither. I'm listening to Neil Young 1973 boots and he's doing the acoustic set -> electric set thing too, and he continues to do it for years (cf. Live Rust, for instance). And it occurred to me how I automatically parse this as a Dylan thing, and wondered about predecessors. By 1972 the Dead kinda pull this, but that's way later obviously; prob. lots of other acts are doing this around 1970 as well but I can't think of them.

so uh dylan nerds, what bootleg/comp/live record has this on it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atUiJKsP3Jg&feature=related

Folk Rogue bootleg.

cheers!

I hope you enjoy it when you track it down - it's a good one!

looking forward! the youtube just slays - that manic, tribal drumming is incredible

Is that the Newport 65 version of "Maggie's Farm"? I think so. & if so it's on Bootleg Series 7, the No Direction Home soundtrack.

I think you're right. Though Folk Rogue has the whole set, as well as the Newport '64 set. Nice to hear the difference year-to-year.

okay I didn't mean to say the drumming was awesome - I meant the bass. I love that one-two bassline. I wish I knew more about folk music so I could say more than just "it's that one-two folksy bassline".

somehow the youtube version sounds louder and more raw. hmm

I think the youtube is sped up. whatever, I'm tapping my toes.

it was The Paul Butterfield Blues Band what backed Bob up on that set. I definitely think that YouTube is sped up

well they fucking killed it. cannot stop listening to this today! makes me want to get a big ol upright bass.

Judas!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKOJO3pKxw0

The Newport '65 (electic) show was 47 years ago today. (Seemed to be the most applicable thread.)

and almost ten years since his triumphant return!
http://img2-2.timeinc.net/ew/dynamic/imgs/020819/161625__bob_dylan_l.jpg

Why does “Ballad of a Thin Man” sound so shitty on this album? Do any of the bootlegs have better sound quality?

What I hear is a shitty-sounding take on an otherwise rockin’ Dylan set. What Dave Marsh hears is… ahem: “As Dylan and the Hawks tune their way into "Ballad of A Thin Man", a tension, intangible but definable for anyone who has ever seen great music performed in its live context, accrues, becomes almost unbearable and then is relieved by the most precisely perfect note from Robbie Robertson. A swoop of the purest finery, not all flash and filigree but something else, something so simple that it treads the thinnest edge of becoming merely mundane. Its B. B. King antecedents laid bare, it remains the most cosmic rush I've ever experienced from mere music, totally unadulterated by chemical...a pristine swoop, up and then down and then back up again, Robertson soaring on that single note to heights the significance of which the average guitarist couldn't begin to comprehend even if he were capable of playing them.”

The "About the Recordings" section at the end of the booklet mentions that the tapes "came with built-in limiting/compression," and some sound issues arising from that... that song may be particularly affected?

FWIW, the Free Trade Hall show on Live 1966 was officially mixed twice - the first time, Dylan didn't think it accurately reflected what people heard at the show (too clean, too tame) and rejected it. It eventually got leaked and was promptly bootlegged. In the mid-to-late 1990s, they mixed it again, this time with a dirtier, more aggressive sound, including more compression, and Dylan approved it for release.

What that in mind, it's possible you may prefer the bootleg of the first mix. (I don't have it, I've always been fine with the official release.)

there was a new mix of the manchester show made for this thing... also includes another 17 (increasingly ragged) performances of boatm if you really want to go there

actually, looking around i can't find any info to back up my assertion about its being a new mix. i do recall noting on my one listen that it sounded different to my memory of the earlier release (then again i could just be entirely wrong!)

I actually prefer the electric set from the Liverpool show. (FWIW, only a few songs are known to exist on tape from the acoustic set.) It wasn't recorded to multi-track, so it only exists as a mono Nagra recording for D A Pennebaker's filming, but the performance more than makes up for it - it's even sharper and more ferocious. For decades the only official release from the 1966 tour was "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" from the Liverpool set, and it was issued barely a month after the show as the B-side to "I Want You."

Absolutely LOVE that version of “Tom Thumb”. “And my best friend my doctor… he won’t even TELL me WHAT it IS iIiiiigggggghhhuhhhhh.”

one thing I love on this is in the acoustic set where Dylan seems to creep into each song like it’s a dark room, his singing is a flashlight picking each lyric out of the murk