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

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