Bob Dylan: The Bootleg Series

* 1st song on Vol 5/1975 should shut up forever anyone who still thinks "Dylan can't sing"

* "Wallflower" - one of his most underrated songs, David Bromberg's version is great

I adore that vol 5 version of 'Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You' - track one, even using the phrase 'Rolling Thunder'. Thrills!

If you want to hear great acoustic Bob, you can't beat the three songs on Before the Flood: Don't Think Twice, It's Alright Ma and Just Like A Woman. All three are the best versions of those songs, and beat the piss out of the Royal Albert Hall acoustic stuff.

i'm also happy for the recently uprooted love of "shes your lover now". i about break everytime it just quits like that. Vol. 7 proves that the blonde on blonde sessions, though interesting, don't quite pack the punch of the final versions. i can't imagine what would have become of syln. the vol. 2 version is rough, but warm. b o b has a late night frosty glow. it coulda been better or worse.

the vol. 2 version of santa fe is great, better than the genuine basement tape's version....it makes you need to belt along with it.

i've gone on week long binges with each of the live records. Rolling Thunder got me to like "The Hurricane". The "It's Alright Ma" from 1964 brought back the almost crushing power of that song for me. And I still get chills with the 66 version of "Like A Rolling Stone".

all said, i love this series. i think it provides a brilliant look into how grand the dylan universe is.

dunno about "FA" but "MYBOMM" was covered by a few people--as the Scorsese doc makes clear, his publisher made sure his songs got covered.

I've had the the first box for a few years and been meaning to pick up vols. 4-7. Some faves from it that haven't been mentioned much:

Seven Curses (I'm sucker for mystical revenge/stolen virginity/evil lawmen/wronged man folklore stuff)
Sitting On A Barbed Wire Fence ("She's turnin' me into an old man/and man, I ain't even 25!")
If Not For You (It's prettier than the official version)
Nobody 'Cept You (Good call kornrulez)
Seven Days (Since i dig this and the rolling thunder biograph tracks, how urgent is it for me to pick up Vol.5? And also is the 1st version w/the dvd worth tracking down?)
Foot of Pride (The homesick blues, nearly 20 years of schoolin' later, and still on the day shift)
Tell Me (Bob can do Pop)

Xpost
thanks for answering my question before I posted it. that sounds cool.

-- Matos-Webster Dictionary (michaelangelomato...), October 6th, 2005.

Most notably and beautifully by Rod Stewart.

1st Disc Standouts:
"Hard Times in New York Town"
"House Carpenter" (Is this a cover or an original? It's become one of my Dylan favorites)
"Talkin' Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues"
"Rambling, Gambling Willie"
"Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues"
"Who Killed Davey Moore?"
"Last Thoughts On Woody Guthrie" (if for nothing else, those ending lines:

"You'll find God in the church of your choice
You'll find Woody Guthrie in Brooklyn State Hospital

And though it's only my opinion
I may be right or wrong
You'll find them both
In the Grand Canyon
At sundown"

Sung with such beauty, control, and weight, I can't get over it. Devastates me every time.

Listened to some Live 64, did not think much of it really. But I shall persevere.

Crawl Out Your Window is on Biograph, I think, Pinefox. Should you wish, I could copy it for you when I rescue it from "storage". I also have a J. Hendrix version recorded for the BBC Light Programme.

glockenspiel!

It's a cover - it's a ridiculously old trad song. A great version is on Harry Smiths' Anthology of American Folk Music.

seconded; amazing song/performance, totally spellbinding

Madness. I can't really say if it's the best disc but it's definitely the one I've listened to most. 'Foot of Pride','Every Grain', 'Blind Willie McT', 'Angelina', 'Seven Days' = throwaway??

So classsssssic.
Also turned me on to "St James Infirmary", from which the melody is lifted. Checl out Bobby Blue Bland's version if you have the chance.

Vol. 1-3 I heard before a lot of the albums, and it's the thing that made me obsessive about Dylan. Had a 90 cassette of tracks, mostly discs 1 & 2, that I completely wore out that summer and beyond. It started with "Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie". Upon hearing the original version of say "If Not For You" without the "Ready George?" and a certain wobbly reckless energy of a lot of the tracks on 1-3, the originals sounded rather polished or staid. "Santa Fe" is another good example. Even "Idiot Wind" at the end of Vol. 2 is more biting and mean than the album vers.

Vol. 4 opened my eyes in a big way to the pre-'66 material, as I'm sure it did for a lot of people. I actually prefer disc 1, particularly the devestatingly sad "Desolation Row" and Dylan's expressive harp playing thoughout. Almost like he's testing the audience with his harp playing, similar in aggression to part 2 "Play it fucking loud". I find the guitar playing on disc 1 tattered, like he means it, it all fits the mood nicely.

Vol. 5 I bought when it came out and only listened a handful of times. Need to return to it. I remember it sounding very punk rock, though.

Vol. 6 is the 1964 disc, right? Never bought that.

Vol. 7 don't have yet.

but anyway, i love the bootleg series' one and all, but part of me wishes that Dylan (or Columbia) would do like Elvis Costello and just reissue the albums each with a bonus disc of outtakes/live stuff/etc. Of course they just did that big SACD reissue series a few years ago, so that's unlikely to happen any time soon.

The fall reissues have an extra disc, but as they mostly have Peel sessions, they are pointless if you have that "Ah, the Fall Peel Sessions box set, you guys" set.

Latest discoveries:

'Tangled Up In Blue' - a centrepiece of the set to me when I first heard it - is it in E, and the LP version in G?

'Call Letter Blues' is doing more for me than before: some poignancy in the words.

I have never loved 'Idiot Wind' but am now impressed by the relative tenderness of this (NYC?) version as vs the LP.

The bootleg 'If You See Her' is a lot better than the LP's, surely.

Is 'Golden Loom' the first time Bob and Emmylou H sang together? Assuming it's her.

It's funny how that is country, then 'Catfish' is blues. I have always thought 'Catfish' kind of unimportant, but actually I like the depth of its sound, the reverb around those slides and harmonicas.

Is the barking dog the reason that this 'Every Grain of Sand' was not used? I like this song a lot considering that it's religious.

The whole set is an amazing way to take a rapid-fire time-tour through Dylan's career, hearing the flavour of one year (those Desirous violins) for a track or two before the next sound comes along.

Unlike PJM, I like Live 1964 a lot.

This glockenspiel rumour remains mysterious to me.

But christ, so many great things: 'Barbed Wire Fence', 'Train To Cry', '... Go Now' on bootleg 2. Peerless!

First listen to the only stream I could find, on free Spotify (commercials didn't break the vibe): some of these will have to grow on me, but "Queen Jane" actually gets me to thinking more about Jane and her situation than Dyl; this arrangement of "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" kills, ditto the re-write of "To Be Alone With You," "What was it you thought you saw...?"---perfect lead in to "What Was It You Wanted" (not really a question), "Watching The River Flow: "People disappearin' every day," yeah, tell me about it; was that in the original? "Pledging My Time" slyly otm, "Wicked Messenger" now sporting some cruelly jaunty accompaniment, as in Charley Crockett's cover of "Tom Turkey (Alternative Version)": "Billy you're so far away from home" and all (wicked Spotify serves this up as a chaser to SK).

xpost Somebody should do a book about Dylan's 80s trek, or have they?

I thought that a book which solely focuses on INFIDELS is on the horizon

They just dropped a "Man In Me" from Budokan in advance of presumably the newest set.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IcO4yO4FdM

Hmmm. Live at Budokan is, for me, the absolute worst Dylan. Is this from the same shows? I have a hard time seeing how this can be good. That clip, "The Man in Me," isn't bad except for the saxophone. I'll probably get this but it's the first archival release that prompted an instant "bullshit" from me.

Those are substantially new lyrics. I probably won't buy it, but I'm down for the listen. Even when he's "bad" he's fascinating.

I do like the version of "Rolling Stone" from Budokan — seems sadder and wiser, even somewhat sympathetic.

This isn't THE BOOTLEG SERIES, is it? I have become quite confused by the fact that there is now a whole series of other releases that are like THE BOOTLEG SERIES but not actually part of it.

Which ones are you taking about(?)

There are the "complete" series - complete shows with the band, complete rolling thunder, now the complete Budokan. I assume these are different because they're not really curated in any way.

Hoffman forums is saying that the Bootleg Series is winding down and there are a limited number of releases planned at this point; partially because of dwindling sales and also the sense that they've gotten through most of the good stuff. Somebody was saying that at a certain point the archives may start releasing stuff, but I don't know how much of any of that is confirmed.

a "complete" show series would be good — like the Royal Festival Hall gig in 1964, or the "complete" Hard Rain 76, or a complete show from the 1980 Warfield residency ... I've always thought that someone like Dylan or Neil Young could just follow the Dick's/Dave's Picks model and target the hardcore fans who want this stuff. A subscription, 3-4 releases a year, it'd definitely make money.

Live at Budokan is, for me, the absolute worst Dylan.

I've never heard it but that's always been the word on it -- back in the day cut-out bins were swollen with copies of it.

Those COMPLETE boxes yes, that's a good example - plus, the releases which are somehow for copyright? I have '1970', think there is also an ANOTHER SIDE demos set of that kind?

These are things that I find hard to distinguish from THE BOOTLEG SERIES. In fact I thought the 1966 band series WAS part of that series!

Budokan is awesome, accept Budokan into your hearts.

i have been waiting for this for decades

I can deal with Dylan and the Dead, Knocked Out Loaded, everything else, but Budokan is the final Dylan frontier for me. It sounds pompous to me, like it's trying to add a lot of elements that just don't work: the flute, the saxophone, etc.

Tyler, what does it do for you? What am I missing?

I dig his vocals on Budokan, I like the sort of wonky big band arrangements ... I dunno, it's always seemed kind of weirdly edgy to me, Dylan seeing how far he can stretch his songs into this smoother territory.

I'm seeing that they are charging $160 for the CDs of this new set though! WTF lol.

From the official email that went out this morning:

This new deluxe box set celebrates Bob Dylan's 1978 world concert tour and the 45th anniversary of the artist's first concert appearances in Japan. It includes two complete shows from Tokyo’s Nippon Budokan Hall (February 28 and March 1, 1978) featuring 58 tracks, 36 of which are previously unreleased, all newly remixed from the original 24-channel analog tapes.
This luxurious 12 x 12” box is imported from Japan and includes 4 CD’s, a 60-page full-color photo book of liner notes and previously unpublished photos of Dylan on-stage and behind-the-scenes at the airport, press conferences and more and facsimile memorabilia such as concert tickets, pamphlets, posters, and flyers.

Also available as a 2-LP set with a selection of 14 previously unreleased performances. Listen now to “The Man In Me.”

So not an actual Bootleg Series title, but an imported domestic release of a Sony Japan box.

his tenderly unhinged vocals on "i want you" (over just the flute, lol, and a lil textural guitar) are maybe a way in

if the remit is "add way too much drama to it's alright ma" i prefer the broadway-climax version here to the before the flood approach of just turning everything all the way up and crossing fingers

Dylan seeing how far he can stretch his songs

big appeal for me yeah

yeah, i mean, i fully recognize that getting into this era is a typical "i have listened to too much bob dylan" move, but I do genuinely enjoy it. maybe what comes across most is how strong so many of Dylan's melodies are, he really gives them room to breathe on Budokan as opposed to sort of sledgehammering them as he had during his previous 70s tours.

Maybe he realized he had only a couple more years of belting like Caruso before he blew out his voice.

I was curious, but jfc... $160 for 4 CDs? Come on.

Dylan and Zappa drive me nuts with alternating these box sets between really reasonably priced and ridiculously overpriced. I get that it comes down to extras, books and packaging... but it's obnoxious. I think I paid like $18 for the 3xCD 1970 sessions thing and less than $70 for the gigantic '66 tour box.

$108 on Importcds and it'll come down (though as a Japanese import, probably never as cheap as some of the other sets have been).

xgau:

Bob Dylan: Bob Dylan at Budokan [Columbia, 1979]
I believe this double LP was made available so our hero could boast of being outclassed by Cheap Trick, who had the self-control to release but a single disc from this location. Although it's amazing how many of the twenty-two songs--twelve also available on one of the other two live albums Dylan has released since 1974--hold up under slipshod treatment. And not only that, lyrics and poster are included. C+

I liked the xpost big band arrangements in the US '78 show I saw, especially the proto-speed metal big band "Masters of War." A lot of it was more Rolling Thunder, if that means subsets of musos all over the stage wt the same time, with more in the wings. Sometimes he'd call on one or more guys from various subsets (and/or the wings) to come together. Also, there was gospel, though also the gospel singers sang all of "Rainy Day Women." The duet with flute guy was "Blowin' In The Wind" on this occasion.

Some of it was loosey-goosey, and set up that way; some was very tight, none of it seemed "slipshod."

I tried, but this era does nothing for me. Dylan's singing is probably the best thing about it but it's not enough for me - I had a better time listening to him on the "Sinatra" tributes. What makes these shows unsalvageable is the arrangements. I am totally skipping this, which isn't saying much - the evangelical shows are much better and I never even bothered to buy that set either. (If they ever release the soundboard recording of Nov. 16, 1979 at Fox Warfield, I may pick it up.)

I am definitely with with TylerW in the "i have listened to too much Bob Dylan" camp, but I also like the rehearsal boots from this era.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTtcDE9-4oM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSeJNi1HgQg

That Tomorrow is a Long Time is really nice.

this is the best

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

^Bob takes shouted requests(!)

wiki sez that tour started with three nights at the Budokan, Feb. 20, 21, 23, three in Osaka, then back to Tokyo for five more Budokan shows, the last on March 4. The show I saw was Dec. 3, after what was indeed a world tour, and Birmingham was def. not the last stop. So might have been very different from the Bukokan experience. Transitional, speculative, hot as spotlights pretty often:I t really did seem like a rolling crossroads. Hope somebody's got a tape.
All dates, quite a pace:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Dylan_World_Tour_1978

Yeah, he really needed the money so packing in the shows made sense. I thought people were just being snarky calling it "The Alimony Tour," but turns out, he really WAS short on funds, sinking it into a film that spent two full years in post-production and even more on a costly divorce via lawyers and the eventual settlement. Also on other things along the way - he had to pay the entire cost of the Hard Rain production because he rejected the network's taping of a previous concert, and that was very expensive for one person to bear. (Contractually, the network would have picked up the tab for any filming and recording, but if Dylan exercised his right to reject whatever the network shot, he was still obligated to deliver a show for broadcast and to do so at his own expense.)

Thank his then-new manager, who also managed Neil Diamond and basically worked similar deals for Dylan. IIRC Budokan was the biggest payoff, but with a lot of concessions that Dylan readily agreed to like compiling a new anthology for that market (it wound up being Masterpieces), preparing a live album that was originally supposed to be an exclusive souvenir for that market, and his agreement to perform whatever songs they requested beforehand - I guess he took requests from the audience in keeping the spirit he already held for the whole enterprise.

I can't say I ever throw on Budokan in its entirety, but I always rep for the "One More Cup of Coffee" on that album. Huge extra shot of energy relative to other ways he does that song, and I especially love the sleazy, skronky sax that jumps on you as each chorus is ending. I love slinky ominous versions of it too, including the album version, but the bite in this one is its own brand of awesomeness.

Anyway I listened to "The Man in Me" that was released and am reminded that even for eras of live Dylan that are not especially compelling musically, I can't help but want to hear everything when he's constantly messing with lyrics, adding new verses, etc. You never know when you're gonna find a diamond in the rough or have a song illuminated in a whole new way.

interestingly enough, it seems like he didn't want to release the live album widely either. as someone posted on the H0ffman Forums, this was taken from a 1984 interview with Kurt Loder:

The Budokan album was only supposed to be for Japan. They twisted my arm to do a live album for Japan. It was the same band I used on Street Legal, and we had just started findin’ our way into things on that tour when they recorded it. I never meant for it to be any type of representation of my stuff or my band or my live show.

Heylin goes into it in Behind the Shades - his books are invaluable for the less-heralded years of Dylan's career probably because it takes an obsessive fan like Heylin to put in the dedication and research needed to unearth anything in a period that usually draws little interest.

Basically, when Dylan got a new manager, he got an old-school showbiz guy who also represented Neil Diamond. Dylan was in dire straits financially due to his divorce and the costly Renaldo and Clara which clearly wasn't going to recoup the money Dylan personally sunk into it over two years, so his new manager set up a lucrative deal where he got to tour Asia for a ton of money. Three stipulations came with that:

1) a souvenir double LP of the tour for the Japanese market (a lot of bands were making similar deals at the time and those records sold really well in the Japanese market - Budokan was always a popular choice of venue as any Cheap Trick fan can tell you)
2) a pre-approved list of "hits" that would dominate the setlists
3) a box set anthology (in this case Masterpieces) which Dylan begrudgingly agreed to help sequence

It was a much-needed lucrative deal, and even though Dylan hated the live album, he thought it didn't matter because he didn't think it would have much of a market beyond Japan. Instead it wound up selling big via import so CBS pushed for an official U.S. release. Dylan was NOT happy about that, and it was tough pushing back, so he made sure that if it happened, it would at least count towards his contractual obligation of albums delivered. It went platinum in the U.S. so it wound up being more profitable for him, but again he never really wanted to put out, it really was a money-making endeavor, nothing more.

I have never seen RENALDO AND CLARA, but recently saw THE ROLLING THUNDER REVUE and then realised that most of its incredible footage is either from RENALDO AND CLARA, or is, as someone somewhere wrote, *outtakes from* RENALDO AND CLARA. I'm not sure which.

As I like Rolling Thunder a lot, I should probably try to see RENALDO AND CLARA.

You sure about that?

xpost
Yes, I think most of the live footage in THE ROLLING THUNDER REVIEW isn't in RENALDO AND CLARA, and vice versa.

I've probably mentioned this somewhere before, so apologies, but about 10 years ago the GFT in Glasgow screened the UK's only known film print of RENALDO AND CLARA, held by the BFI since the film's brief theatrical release back in the day. The print had taken on a pinkish hue that actually worked well for the film and the whole thing is far from being the chore and disaster it's painted to be.

I have a homemade DVD of R&C, copied from a VHS tape that I bought in Compendium Books in Camden, long gone now. The tape is derived from the film's only ever UK television showing, on C4, also back in the day.

There’s at least a great version of “Isis” that is in one or both, no?

In Montreal, I think, hence the dedication to “Leonard (Cohen)”

Initial copies of The Bootleg Series Volume Five came with a DVD featuring performances of Tangled Up in Blue and Isis that are taken from RENALDO AND CLARA - the only official physical media release of any kind.

Yeah. That “Isis” was up on YouTube at some point but now it’s either been taken down or the audio silenced.

So there is virtually no way of seeing RENALDO AND CLARA (unless one goes to Ward Fowler's home and watches a home-made DVD copied from a VHS cassette of a TV broadcast) ?

Remarkable!

You can also go to Bob's house, where he'll sit you on a barstool at his counter and tell you about it.

or to the internet archive, which has something they call a "concert cut" of renaldo and clara.

back in college there was the oak street cinema by the university of minnesota, really amazing old school art house/repertory place. was owned by an old folky hippie type (a real character, natch).

anyway, once in college i saw "eat the document" there off a VHS projector, he had gotten a VHS tape of it from dylan himself cuz they knew each other back in the day.

Aw man that place ruled, I remember going to see Bunuel movies there in college.

My 2012 take on Renaldo and Clara when it was on YouTube, about 45 minutes a night, which may have added to my enjoyment, as I said then:

The flick's three hours-thirty-odd minutes, but very episodic, no prob with breaks. Though maybe such a bounty of episodes, jumping between live music and skits (or scenes, as some deserve to be called), got on nerves, especially those of reviewers, who were no doubt even more bombarded by Rolling Thunder hype than were us common readers of Rolling Stone, for major instance.