Bob Dylan: The Bootleg Series

xp Ha yeah, I saw that. If it's true, that'd be pretty unique for Bob — a few exceptions aside ("Mississippi" for one) he usually leaves old songs behind. It'd be like if he decided to record "Farewell Angelina" for Empire Burlesque.

I think Lanois productions can be pretty misleading. They're often a lot more "natural" and less tinkered with than people think they are. He's not as much of an Eno as his partnership with Eno would have you believe.

As I understand it, on "Time" Dylan (and/or band) would often record in a room with a relatively clean amp sound, or at least with few effects. But then Lanois would also send the signal to a different room, or through a different amp, with different sounds and effects. And then he could pick and choose and mix between the different setups in the final mix. Something like that, which I imagine means a remix could be pretty fruitful.

So, like, Dylan would hear it one way when he played, but it would sound a different way in a different room. Unless I'm confusing it with a different session.

I'm not a Dylan fan, but I've really been enjoying listening to selected Jokermen episodes. And I was struck by how remarkably terrible Lanois' production was on some of those records.

Also I'm looking forward to the book, even though I don't write songs or listen to Bob Dylan.

TOOM was the first one I bought in the store when it came out, so I'm not sure I can be objective. But do think Dylan's own production post-TOOM is far better.

think it was Auggie Meyers who heard time out of mind and said "that's not the record I played on!"

Duke Robillard said something to the effect that he played guitar on most of the songs, but the only parts that made the record were bits that bled in from other people's mics. He later got Dylan's permission to record a cover of "Love Sick" using the arrangement they'd started with before Lanois started exercising his influence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGc0iAcnJlA

Got the Dylan book today. I like it, but it’s not something I can power through. I think i’ll do a song a day, listening to it first. It’s written in his Theme Time Radio Hour voice, which I appreciate.

apparently he heard an early version of "Make You Feel My Love" way back in 1978! It was one of Dylan's "B songs" -

ha it's def. one of his B (I would even say C) songs

I don't care for the song or most of its covers, but the one Adele album I really like is 19 and "Make You Feel My Love" actually fits pretty well in there. Adele makes something of it and it's probably the only time I really enjoy that song from anyone.

the Uncut pieces on TooM some of the most hilarious and fascinating reads, hope more stories surface, could read a book on these recordings:

I mean, by that point, Jim Keltner is there playing drums, Brian Blade is there playing drums, and Tony Mangurian is there playing drums – three drummers going on at the same time, five guitar players, pedal steel, organ, piano, all these people. Dan had put together a band, and then Dylan had put out the call for these guys like Jim Dickinson, Augie Meyers, Duke Robillard, Cindy Cashdollar. Dylan brought in all these Nashvile people, and I think that made Dan a little mental having all these Nashville strummers strumming, it was a bit too much. As I’m sure Jim Dickinson has said, there were a lot of ingredients in there that you don’t actually hear on the record, because things were filtered down so we could take a cleaner path on some of them.

https://www.uncut.co.uk/features/bob-dylan-tell-tale-signs-special-mark-howard-37964/

Time Out of Mind set officially confirmed for release on January 27th.

Impressive set:

https://www.bobdylan.com/news/fragments-time-out-of-mind-sessions-1996-1997-to-be-released-on-january-27/

Am I correct that a lot of the outtakes already appeared on Vol 8? Or is the version numbering off - for instance on Red River Shore?

Go through the link I posted - all of the Vol. 8 stuff is included, but it's all isolated on Disc Five. Except for one live cut that was used as a B-side, everything else is newly released content.

I did, I just misread the dates of some of the versions and thought they were the same version on the same date. Not sure why they are using version instead of take here (maybe because it's not really a live take with all the protools being used).

Yeah, the "version" tracking is really nebulous. It becomes really confusing with these follow-up releases that cover the same ground.

Turns out that tweet and the speculation about the contents was pretty much dead on.

Jesus, $140 for the 5CD version!

I think that's pretty standard? That's what the 5CD Infidels set cost, which I bought (*checks old email*) around a year ago... tho I had Amoeba credit, and only paid $23.50 out of pocket.

Maybe it is, but I thought I paid just around $100 for it, could be wrong. I usually tried to time these Dylan boxes with coupons at like Barnes & Noble or whatever. $140 even on Amazon just seemed high at first blush, particularly when one of the five is all previously released.

Unless you want vinyl, I would wait. All of his super deluxe sets eventually come down quite a bit on the secondary market, usually as much as half.

I'm not familiar with the Australian "Highlands" performance that they included. The live version in general beats the album version.

Here's one that name-checks Annie Lennox instead of Neil Young:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pm4ItXeKRvA

I’m pretty excited for the remix; Lanois’ mix is definitive but I’ve often wanted to push aside the murk. Such a pillar of his catalogue.

xp exception to the rule:
https://www.discogs.com/release/2808192-Bob-Dylan-Tell-Tale-Signs-Rare-And-Unreleased-1989-2006

look forward to (more) alternate versions of Mississippi, Cold Irons Bound, Highlands

price will come down, I'm sure. Looks good! And that "Love Sick" sounds sick! was revisiting Tell Tale Signs this week and it was definitely getting me fired up for more.

Sort of optimistic about the live disc maybe opening the floodgates for more curated neverending tour kinda things. Maybe it won't happen, but it would be cool!

I hope so too but there's a Rolling Stone interview from September 2017 that suggested such a release may not be worth it because the bootlegs out there may sound better:

NEVER-ENDING TOUR: Future chapters of the Bootleg Series might chronicle [...] some sort of examination of the Never Ending Tour. The latter is a particularly challenging project since it involves over 2,800 concerts between 1988 and the present day. Dylan's road crew has been recording shows dating back to the beginning of the Never Ending Tour, but the quality of them up until the mid-2000's is less than stellar. "Some of them are recorded on DAT or other formats of the moment," says the source. "Who knew they wouldn't last? For a lot of years during the 1990s, there were these two fans and they would go and each would wear recording equipment in their hats and they'd sit in different sections so that the stuff would be stereo. Those tapes sound better than our board tapes." (September 2017)

On Tell Tale Signs, the stuff recorded after Charlie Sexton left in 2002 sounds GREAT, but it's telling that "Lonesome Day Blues" sounds like an audience recording with some additional processing.

for me Tell Tale Signs is the most revelatory and allround enjoyable bootleg series release since 1-3 (honourable mentions vol. 4 aka The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert and Another Self Portrait)

Love Sick version 2 perhaps a bit dragging but great sound! (not a big fan of the song itself hehe)

That Love Sick is fun.

TOOM was the first Dylan album to be released after I had become a superfan, so it made a big impact. I still didn't know his post-Desire stuff that well and the story was he had just nearly died from the heart infection, so I had pretty low expectations. Love Sick seemed like such a surprise gut-punch way to start the album - all menace, murk, and croak. I still remember where I was when my friend played it for me. I turned to him 30 seconds in and said, "who is this guy, Lazarus?"

His voice had been getting thinner and drier in ways which led everyone to write him off as a spent force, and then I heard this album and realised oh shit, this is a whole new kind of power. So many songs are all time favourites, “Not Dark Yet”, “Highlands”, “Can’t Wait”, “Dirt Road Blues”, “Cold Irons Bound”. And then the absolute turd in the soup, “To Make You Feel My Love“.

Lanois may deserve some of the credit, I know at minimum he used the exact same mic he used for Oh Mercy, but it really helps that Oh Mercy was the first "quiet" album Dylan had done in a while where the songs are hushed and he isn't singing over a band that's completely rocking out. (It's more impressive with Time Out of Mind because they had so many people playing at once.)

I really like his voice on these two tracks from that third disc on the deluxe Tell Tale Signs that cost way too much money - a lighter mix of "Most of the Time" that I would've preferred for the final album and the same take of "Ring Them Bells" without the shimmering overdubs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdKup-Z4obQ

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

"Some of them are recorded on DAT or other formats of the moment," says the source. "Who knew they wouldn't last?

My experience may be unique and/or super lucky, but I have DATs from 1995-2006 that I recently backed up, and out of 100+ tapes there were maybe 4-5 brief (less then a second) dropouts.

Playing MORE BLOOD, MORE TRACKS, the 1CD version (all I have).

I can't really tell the difference between these versions and some others eg the Bootleg vol 3 'tangled up in blue', the original LP 'simple twist of fate'.

The different track order, presumably once intended, inevitably does make a slightly different impression.

The acoustic 'you're a big girl now' is more of a difference from the LP one I know.

'Lily, Rosemary' has always been a blur to me; today I think I heard the lyric properly, start to finish, for the first time, and understood it. Rosemary doesn't seem to get her just deserts. I note Dylan's interest in the Western genre, also arguably in 'Idiot Wind' (listened properly to that lyric also), 'New Danville Girl' (which I believe is also 'Brownsville Girl' (extraordinary lines about Gregory Peck - for the first time in my life this week I've properly listened to and appreciated that song).

I've never liked 'Idiot Wind' very much but the fact that he expands at the end to 'we're idiots' is significant, and makes the song less mean that it would otherwise be.

But my main reflection is that Dylan with this LP wrote in a way that he never did before or since. He had c.12 years of world music stardom behind him, and came up with this approach involving a different tuning (different tunings are never fathomable to me but I think I can hear it), different guitar playing (especially lots of songs that involve guitar figures sliding around, finger shapes going quickly up and down the neck), a different lyrical mood (seeming more open and vulnerable perhaps, while also very detailed and sometimes wildly fictional - 'a parrot that talks'), perhaps different kinds of tunes (tending towards these soaring vocal moments - the 'blind man at the GATE', etc) ...

and then ... he never did it again, in 50 years.

extraordinary lines about Gregory Peck

indeed hillariously excellent, sometimes he can pull off anything

p sure a few of those tracks are identical to the vol 1-3 boots?

the revelation for me was the lazy groove of the band version of ygmmlwyg:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slmCQP75PEo

a beauty

I've never liked 'Idiot Wind' very much but the fact that he expands at the end to 'we're idiots' is significant, and makes the song less mean that it would otherwise be.

I love Idiot Wind, and a lot of what I love about it is that turn at the end and how he leads up to it - the way the initial venomous anger gives way to the sheer pain of "I can't even touch the books you've read," and you see that behind the anger is someone who goes through life flinching away from ordinary things, and behind this monster he's singing to is a real person with a stack of books by her bed. I think of it as a song about the stages of grief & the way we can take refuge in grandiose anger, betrayal, revenge fantasies etc. to avoid facing the reality of loss. And how coming to terms with that loss also means recognizing that the loss and the grief are mutual.

'New Danville Girl' (which I believe is also 'Brownsville Girl' (extraordinary lines about Gregory Peck - for the first time in my life this week I've properly listened to and appreciated that song).

I also overlooked that song until a couple years ago, and it became one of my pandemic listens. I think partly because "surreal and fragmented memories of a long-ago time when I stood in line to watch a movie" seemed very relevant to the moment.

My favorite thing about Brownsville Girl/New Danville Girl is the way it flattens the distinction between real life and fiction, so that it all exists together as part of the same surreal jumble of life experience - driving through the desert and having this relationship and visiting Ruby and standing in line to see a movie and watching the movie are all somehow equivalent, just as there's no real difference between watching the movie and being in the movie, and there's no real difference between Gregory Peck and the character he's playing - it's all equally a part of the narrator's past as he experiences it now.

Agree with that - it's incredible how readily he moves between talking about watching a film and being in it.

I've never owned KNOCKED OUT LOADED and have literally never even properly heard the song (in its earlier version, on SPRINGTIME IN NEW YORK) till two days ago.

re overlaps between LPs, according to the back of the CD the only previously released track is 'if you see her, say hello' which was, I think, track 1 on THE BOOTLEG SERIES VOL 3.

It is an extraordinary thing how the Bootleg Series has in a sense allowed Dylan's career to happen all over again at marvellously slow-motion speed. My most played records of the last 30 years are probably these rereleases of things that weren't chosen for release 50 years ago.

it flattens the distinction between real life and fiction

i've always been the kind of person who doesn't like to trespass / but sometimes you just find yourself over the line

But my main reflection is that Dylan with this LP wrote in a way that he never did before or since(…) and then ... he never did it again, in 50 years.

Great observations in this paragraph!

FM tapes, on the Rox Vox label, but 4.5 stars, 155 votes---why hasn't the Bootleg Series had a massive '74 dump, a la 1966 and Rolling Thunder and the Jesus tour?

From Amazon:

Bob Dylan & The Band: 1974 Tour live (3-CD, Vinyl)

For Dylan's first proper tour since 1966, he was joined by his longstanding colleagues The Band. Expectations for both acts ran high, with huge venues swiftly selling out and immense media interest. It was no nostalgia act, though: whilst Dylan performed old material, he did so with considerable attack, as well as showcasing songs from his new Planet Waves LP. The Band also played alone, showing themselves to be arguably the finest group of their sort in the world. This release offers two historic shows from the early part of the tour, both originally broadcast on FM radio. They are presented here together with background notes and images.DISC ONE Bob Dylan & The Band, Boston Garden, MA. January 14th 1974 (WBCN-FM) Bob Dylan: 1. Rainy Day Woman #12 & 35 2. Lay Lady Lay 3. Just Like Tom Thumb s Blues 4. It Ain t Me Babe 5. I Don t Believe You 6. Ballad Of A Thin Man The Band: 7. Stage Fright 8. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down 9. King Harvest Bob Dylan & The Band: 10. This Wheel s On Fire Bob Dylan: 11. I Shall Be Released The Band: 12. Up On Cripple Creek Bob Dylan: 13. All Along The Watchtower 14. Ballad Of Hollis Brown 15. Knockin On Heaven s Door 16. The Times They Are A-Changin 17. Don t Think Twice, It s All Right 18. Gates Of Eden 19. Just Like A Woman 20. It s Alright, Ma DISC TWO Bob Dylan & The Band, Madison Square Garden, NY, January 31st 1974 (WNEW-FM) Bob Dylan: 1. Most Likely You Go Your Way and I ll Go Mine 2. Lay Lady Lay 3. Just Like Tom Thumb s Blues 4. Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 5. It Ain t Me, Babe 6. Ballad Of A Thin Man The Band: 7. Stage Fright 8. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down 9. King Harvest (Has Surely Come) 10. When You Awake 11. Up On Cripple Creek Bob Dylan & The Band: 12. All Along The Watchtower 13. Ballad Of Hollis Brown 14. Knockin On Heaven s Door DISC THREE Bob Dylan & The Band, Madison Square Garden, NY, January 31st 1974 (WNEW-FM) Bob Dylan (Acoustic): 1. The Times They Are A-Changin 2. Don t Think Twice, It s All Right 3. Gates Of Eden 4. Just Like A Woman 5. It s Alright, Ma (I m Only Bleeding) The Band: 6. Rag Mama Rag 7. This Wheel s On Fire 8. The Shape I m In 9. The Weight Bob Dylan & The Band: 10. Forever Young 11. Highway 61 Revisited 12. Like A Rolling Stone Encores: Bob Dylan & The Band: 13. Most Likely You Go Your Way And I ll Go Mine 14. Blowin In The Wind

One of Rolling Stone's interviews with someone in Dylan's camp said it wasn't a priority or even a consideration for the Bootleg Series because they were pretty satisfied with Before the Flood as the sole representative of that tour, but I imagine they'll dump everything they got next year just for copyright protection. I don't know if it has to be by the end of 2024 or within 50 years of the recording date - if the latter, it'll be out one year from now, but if the former, maybe not until December 2024.

Thanks---these are described as early shows, think you said his singing was better later in the tour?

I actually prefer his singing in the earlier shows! By the end of the tour he was just singing with all out force, virtually shouting all the time. FWIW the live album was taken mostly from the very last day (evening and afternoon shows on Feb. 14, 1974) and none of those tracks came earlier than Jan. 31.

The early shows also had more interesting setlists, especially the first show (Jan. 3) which opened with "Hero Blues" of all things (an outtake from Freewheelin') and had Dylan sitting in with the Band on "Share Your Love With Me" and playing harmonica. The highlight for me was "Nobody 'Cept You" - a great performance of a great song that Dylan did during some of his solo acoustic sets, much better than the Planet Waves outtake backed by the Band. But after a few weeks, the setlist settled into something that more or less stayed the same until the end of the tour. I think the only real surprise on the back half of the tour was "Mr. Tambourine Man," which he sung at one of the Feb. 14 shows - it was Sara's favorite song and was probably done given that it was Valentine's Day and also the last day of the tour (plus Sara was there).

Thanks, that sounds a lot more promising than the setlists on this boot. I just now cancelled the order, will wait & see about xpost copyright dump.

I'm also surprised that nobody checked his claims, incl his basic bo=io ffs, until he was about to take office. Apparently if McCarthy was already in and doing business, Santos would be too.

basic bio, I meant

Can't wait for the Santos Bootleg Series

Oh, Jokerman

Interesting that, two weeks after Planet Waves comes out, he plays only one song from it as the 24th song in the set. Also, only three other songs that postdate 1966; a real nostalgia fest.

Not the way he did them, especially on Before The Flood---sounded like he was demanding comparison with the original versions, and/or saying fuck it, this is how they are now, in 1974 arena rock, under hot lights, through big amps---and to me they're even more expressive than the studio originals. Although birdistheword thinks the gain is just in hard clarity, I take it (in making his own comparison between earlier and later shows, BTF being later).