License to POLL: Which is the best track on Bob Dylan's 'Infidels'?

I’ve tries to make alt version of the album but there are really terrible songs to deal with...

it's a terrible album. Even the pretty "Sweetheart Like You" gets on my nerves. Elsewhere Knopfler can't shut up with the guitar squiggles.

no way dogg

Yeah, weird take

oh yes. "Neighborhood Bully"? "Union Sundown"? "Don't Fall Apart On Me Tonight" ("CUZ I CANNOT HAAAANDLE I-I-I-I-IT" -- step AWAY, dude)?

Let's agree it's half-terrible.

I'll insist Empire Burlesque has many more good songs despite the lack of a classy production.

Well, he ain't alone in hating it (see Robert Christgau or Greil Marcus's take on it) but this is the first I've heard of anyone dumping on Knopfler's guitar work. That's just WRONG.

I like "Don't Fall Apart On Me Tonight" though, I LOVE how Dylan sings "You were so fine, Clark Gable would have fell at your feet and laid his life on the line" and the way his harmonica and Knopfler's (or Taylor's?) guitar blend together right after that.

But "Neighborhood Bully"and "Union Sundown" both suck.

He's too busy on "Jokerman," on which he can't resist answering Dylan with okay squiggles. I prefer a dryer take with just organ, piano, and the astonishing Sly and Robbie rhythm section.

I don't like Infidels as much as I used to, but I am jacked for this. IIRC, the Heylin Sessions book lists 50+ songs recorded during these sessions, including numerous covers.

Any chance the Letterman versions could be on this?

^Would be great, but v unlikely. Btw – where was this news posted? I just did a quick search and found nuthin’

Any chance the Letterman versions could be on this?

We'll see. I hope so. On the album, "License to Kill" flat out sucks, but the Letterman performance actually makes it sound great. (Even the way the audio and the audience obscures the opening line helps because it's one of the album's stupid space travel references.)

^Would be great, but v unlikely. Btw – where was this news posted? I just did a quick search and found nuthin’

The new issue of the Dylan mag ISIS has an article on it. I don't get the magazine, people just reposted that info on various Dylan/music forums.

FWIW, I also think “Don’t Fall Apart on Me Tonight” has some great lines... it’s a remarkably “vulnerable” song, too.

birdistheword – do you know who/what is being referenced in the lines directly preceding the Clark Gable one?:

Oh, do you remember St. James Street
Where you blew Jackie P.’s mind?

No idea, I just figured Dylan liked the sound of "Jackie P." and "St. James Street" (which is loaded with so many references - even bringing to mind St. James Hotel from "Blind Willie McTell" - that it may just stand out as a memorable name rather than any place he had in mind).

Just as a test, I tried a google autofill search on "Jackie P____," and it didn't produce any likely results.

I bet it's a reference to the late Quebec Separatist leader Jacques Parizeau. St. James Street is in London, where he received a doctorate from the London School of Economics.

ISIS issued an update:

In my editorial in the new ISIS, I mentioned that “The Bootleg Series Vol. 16” would be with us in May/June 2021. Unfortunately, since sending the magazine to the printer, to quote Bob Dylan, “things have changed.” Originally planned for May, around the time of Dylan’s birthday, the release slipped to June but has now been re-schedulable for much later in the year and will appear nearer the more ‘usual’ period for “BS” releases.

https://www.bobdylanisis.com/access-all-areas-blog/

"schedulable"?

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/AdolescentDefiniteBarasingha-size_restricted.gif

I trusted ISIS about a release date in May, but they could not hold on to it very long...

lol

Forgot the Dream Syndicate released a great "Blind Willie McTell" cover in 1988, back when it was still an "unreleased" song. They obviously heard the circulating bootleg, judging by the arrangement, and they improve upon it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwZ9j0ncjEY

Found more info on it - it's been collected on various compilations, and it's currently available through bandcamp:

https://stevewynn1.bandcamp.com/album/steve-sings-bob

BLIND WILLIE MCTELL - THE DREAM SYNDICATE
Musicians: Steve Wynn, Paul B. Cutler, Mark Walton, Chris
Cacavas, Dennis Duck (1988)

The Dream Syndicate had just played a well-known TV show in Germany and the show's host Alan Bangs invited me back to his place for some serious drinking and record listening. He had an incredible collection and saved the crowning jewel for last. It was an unreleased Dylan track from the "Infidels" sessions called "Blind Willie McTell." I couldn't believe it. How could this song, so much better than anything else from that session, have been left off the album. I felt it was our mission to let people hear the song and, much like an enthused town crier, it felt best to spread the word with my own voice. This version is from the late great Deirdre O' Donoghue's radio show on KCRW in Santa Monica and one year later it was released as a single by the UK magazine "Bucketful of Brains," marking the first time the song had officially seen the light of day, a few years before Dylan's version was released on the first of his bootleg series. We even had to get the permission of his publishing staff to put out our version before he did. I like to think that Bob sat in his home one night, listened to our version of "Blind Willie McTell," smiled and said "That will do."

Big news!: https://www.instagram.com/p/CNYcpzGgw7d/

I never heard Sly & Robbie talk about this album before, so I did a quick search and found this interview with Robbie from 2012:

https://unitedreggae.com/articles/n1024/062612/interview-robbie-shakespeare

----

Q: Final question, what is it about all the time people you work with - whether it's a Sinead O'Connor, a Bob Dylan, a Chezidek, a Chantelle Ernandez - that makes you say "Yes, I can work with this person?"

A: You just called one of my favourites again - Bob Dylan! (laughs) Now Bob was one of my all time writers and singers from a long time. The way Bob Dylan put words together was very unique and masterful. When we worked with Bob, he worked the way we work. He'd just go in the studio and start playing and we'd just jump in. There wasn't any pressure from him - you'd more pressure yourself to make sure you get the right thing. Which I do, mostly every session, to get the right thing, the right flavour, the right mix. And because we were born in a reggae town and played in a reggae town you have to get the thing out and sounding in a way where no man will say "Cho! It's reggae man" you know? So we add a little uniqueness to it because we want to get it the right way.

----

RIP Robbie

Also here:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/dec/09/robbie-shakespeare-married-funk-and-reggae-to-create-a-catalogue-of-classics

“Mick Taylor and Mark Knopfler put out the sheets with the chord changes, and we just deal with it,” Shakespeare emphasised. “When we met, Bob said, ‘I heard that you guys love to work, so I’m gonna blow you out of the ground,’ and I said, ‘Oh no, Bob, it should be the other way round!’ But Bob Dylan is the greatest writer in the universe in our time. I used to love all the Dylan songs I hear, like Seven Days and Lay Lady Lay. Bob Dylan is the man who make me start checking song lyrics.”

don't think this got linked in this thread yet but it's good to watch robbie enjoying himself on this clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=di6wU11_4Wg

this came out recently as a record store day thing, pretty fun

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmrrzLoO-UQ

A friend of mine who's a Dylan nut played that for me a few months ago--it's shockingly credible!

a fella by the name of Daniel Romano imagines what Infidels would have been like if Dylan had done Infidels with the Plugz, works pretty great

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqeerOQLT1c

Thanks! Another great cover: Lou Reed's "Foot of Pride," on the 2-CD xpost 50th Anniversary concert comp. Performed with a lyric sheet, as well he might, considering epic lyric density, but it worked great, as is said to be the case w D.'s own latter-day shows (taking some effort-to-recall strain off the voice).

Really cool that some on went for it and realized this project. Not exactly my wheelhouse but it sounds great.

nice

enjoy the dub mixes too

caetano veloso does a great jokerman as does built to spill

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

V, informative--and the most free Double E's (sic) content in quite a while, seems like:

Plugz Bassist Talks Backing Bob Dylan in Raucous Letterman Performance
Months of rehearsals led to one of the most unusual, and memorable, performances of Dylan's career

FYI, we have a thread on this: Bob Dylan's punk period

Once during rehearsals the cops showed up right?

The neighbors used to complain. As far away as the houses were next to Bob – which was quite far, the property as pretty large – sound travels. We played loud. We’d been told before to turn it down.

That one day [when the cops came], Bob just hightailed it into the back room. He just said, “Tell them you’re playing with Waylon Jennings.”

Incredible.

Dylan as guy who talks mad shit about the cops at a party until the cops actually show up:CONFIRMED

This story gets better and better. I just got to the part about Liberace.

So what happens right after? You finish “Jokerman” on a weird note with the harmonica, you walk off, how does the evening end?

It's kind of a blur at this point. I think we went out to a bar, just me and the band. Dylan split. He went to a Knicks game.

"I'll tell everything I know."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Start_Me_Talkin%27

Bob had this big reel-to-reel tape machine. He liked to record the stuff and listen to it later too, but Bob didn't know how to work the reel-to-reel. Every time he tried to use it, the reels would just go flying and spinning. It was a clusterfuck.

This sounds like a hilarious scene in a Bob Dylan comedy I want to see. Maybe the one he bailed on because it was "too slapsticky."

Dylan as guy who talks mad shit about the cops at a party until the cops actually show up:CONFIRMED

Cops a comin', me a runnin'

"I didn't know whether to duck or to run so I ran"

that double e's interview is a real treat! looking forward to his book

The word we're using is “jamming,” but can you talk about what specifically that means? What are you actually doing for eight hours a day?

We wouldn't really talk about what we were doing. We would just we go in the room. Bob would take out the guitar and just start strumming a couple chords. We all just fall in and jam on something.

Is he singing or is this mostly instrumental?

It was mostly instrumental, though he would mumble under stuff. Not really sing words.

Some of these are songs, some are things I think he's working on in his head. We recognize a few of the older songs, but it was a lot of just getting a groove and a vibe.

So we would just play on a song for 15, 20 minutes, looking out over the Pacific. It was a whole different experience in what we were used to. We didn't do that in our punk bands, where the songs were two minutes long.

Is it musically satisfying, or are you looking at your watch by minute 15 of the same song?

Totally satisfying. Are you kidding? There was none of that “we're working” vibe. We're making music and it feels good.

Yeah, maybe he was at least sometimes thinking about writing, seeing if it might come his way---reminds me of Malibu barn session w Carole Bayer Sager: https://www.vulture.com/2016/10/bob-dylan-carole-bayer-sager-book-excerpt.html

("Elizabeth" referred to is Elizabeth Taylor--says later in her memoir that he came to the party that Sayer gave for Taylor's 55th birthday.)

haha that's a great one, thanks

I refocused. “So, do you have any ideas of what you feel like writing?”

“Well, I’ve got a little bit of an idea.”

He mumbled his words very softly. I thought he said “I godda libble bid a deer.”

they really should do an anthology of these working with bob memories

Still, "Jokerman" is in my top five Dylan.

they really should do an anthology of these working with bob memories
Yes, these two were great.

“I godda libble bid a deer.”

I fought LOLing and almost spit my coffee upon reading this

"Jammin' Me" was Petty and Campbel mostly; Dylan added a few pop culture lines.

It might be why he rarely performed it (he also hates, incorrectly, Let Me Up).