Bob Dylan: The Bootleg Series

Along with the three "demos" that were on Tell Tale Signs, I can see why he took the song back. At least this full-band take feels like it could have been a decent starting point, but they haven't nailed it yet, and if it was a later take, it probably gave them more reason to shelve it.

Whoever reviewed Tell Tale Signs for Rolling Stone claimed the three versions on there were better than the released one on "Love and Theft" (same with Clinton Heylin), but I could never get behind that - the first version on disc one was a great recording but it still sounded like an arrangement that needed to be fleshed out, i.e. the demo that it was. The other two got progressively worse, like they were getting further and further away from it and undermining it with bad choices.

yeah the Love and Theft "Mississippi" (far and away the definitive version) is kind of miraculous considering how they worked so much on it during the Time Out Of Mind sessions. Kind of like if Dylan tried recording "Caribbean Wind" during the Empire Burlesque sessions ... and nailed it!

I like this new version, though — interesting that losing the swampy shuffle they seemed enamored with during the TOOM sessions might've been what unlocked it during the L&T sessions.

to me, one of the biggest parts of being a dylan fan is all these alternate roads that could have been taken with songs, obviously his live show is based around that concept. it doesn't necessarily have to best the proper version, i like this version and i love listening to his process putting songs into shape.

yeah just the overall *fragility* of these songs as they get closer (or further away!) from their final form is fascinating. I mean, listening to that entire disc of "Rolling Stone" sessions is mildly terrifying as they continue to fuck up ... Dylan could have easily walked away from the song entirely. And then where would we be??

Oh, I totally agree that all three versions of “Mississippi” on Tell Tale Signs are better than the album version.

^^ crazy talk

xp haha indeed

it's def a big part of the appeal, although I do sometimes miss my early days of dylan fandom where I was just flabbergasted every time I came across a new wild tune I'd never heard before

agree love & theft mississippi is perfect, but the acoustic tell tale version was a revelation for me at the time

I mean, listening to that entire disc of "Rolling Stone" sessions is mildly terrifying as they continue to fuck up ... Dylan could have easily walked away from the song entirely. And then where would we be??

It's definitely fascinating and, in the case of "Like A Rolling Stone," kind of hilarious: take 4 is the master that we all know and love, but Dylan kept going for more takes after that, saying, "Why can't we get it right, man?!" Ha, you already did, and you didn't realize it!

yeah, even Neil Young, who obviously values spontaneity in the studio ... I think Neil still has a fairly clear idea in his head what he wants a song to sound like. With Dylan it's often like this bizarre blank slate quality where chords, vibes, instrumentation are all up for grabs.

On one of the takes, he accidentally sings “Threw the dumbs a bime, didn’t you….” Should have used that one!

LOL

Reminds me of this story from Chris Shaw:

But, the thing was, there’s a lyric on the song where Bob sings, “The leaves cast their shadows on the stones,” and, when he was singing it live, he was reading his lyrics off a piece of paper, and, I guess, for a split-second, he got dyslexic, because on the live take, he actually sang, “The leaves cast their *stadows* on the stones.” So, the only time I did any editing on that song, was when I heard this word “stadows” go by, I knew he meant shadows, because I had the lyric sheet in front of me. So, when I tried a remix, I took the vocal, and I found a “sh” from somewhere else, and I chopped the “st” out and put that in, so he was singing “shadows,” y’know. And Bob was listening to all these mixes, and he kept saying, “Nah, man, I really wanna use that rough mix.” Finally, I said, “Well, you know, on the rough mix, you don’t sing ‘shadows,’ you sing, ‘stadows.” And he took a long hit on his cigarette, and he kind of looked at me deadpan, and he went, “Well, you know:*‘stadows.’*”

Whole interview's a good read:

https://www.uncut.co.uk/features/recording-with-bob-dylan-chris-shaw-tells-all-37854/

(BTW, they wound up using the rough mix and fixed "shadows" in the mastering stage. However the downside of doing it that way means that every time the album's remastered, someone has to remember to go back and fix that word. Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab didn't do that when they reissued the album, so you can hear "stadows" in all its glory there.)

ha, i knew that story but did not know that the Stadows Cut had been made available!

Of course. He's stadows in the clothes you once wore.

Isn't Sheryl Crow's the best "Mississippi" ?

I don't like Crow's version, but the Dixie Chicks made her arrangement work on their tours, with the parts transposed to their standard instrumentation at the time - the change to fiddle definitely helped.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwTL0V132Ps

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

On first listen, it sounds like he's using something similar to what's been his standard concert arrangement for "Like a Rolling Stone" for that time. I can only speculate, but since it's take one, maybe he just needed something to put his words over, just so he can see how it plays (or if it can even play at all as a song).

― birdistheword, Friday, January 13, 2023 11:42 AM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

John Hart's sax solo too.

I was away prefer Oh Mercy to Time

Yall reminding me of Sheryl Crow & Friends' Live From Central Park/1999 performance ov "Tombstone Blues," with Natalie Maines letting her TX accent rip (think K. Richard is also on this one):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJ_jovZSdGM

I liked Joan Osborne's "Man in the Long Black Coat."

that chicks mississippi is great!

The album remix is an interesting excercise, not really better overall but clearer in places, less "artificial", as promised sounds a bit more like a rehearsal space (although I gather it was a pretty funky rehearsal space that didn't necessarily sound like the new mix) and less like that weird Lanois space

Look forward to hearing all the unreleased takes

Dreamin’ of You (10/1/96, Teatro) is terrible o_O

what is this shit?

I guess it shouldn't really be surprising if outtakes are lesser versions of what was released

happy to have another studio version of highlands even if it's no match for the perfect album version

as posted by Latham Green on Defend the indefensible - Bob Dylan.
Dammit we need a Rolling Neverending Tour Soundboard Series:
https://archive.org/details/s-08b_full/02.+THE+MAN+IN+ME.flac

yes that show was great and probably better quality than what's on this weird disc 5, i'm no expert but here's a hoffman take:

Live disc sounds awful compared to the identical audience recordings. Oslo is a total mess there is a much better recording out there same with Highlands. Only exception the soundboard TIFILWY from Buenos Aires and the previously released TMYFML.

enjoying Highlands (3/24/01, Newcastle, Australia)

hot take to my great surprise whatever revelation is to be had here is on disc 1

weird disc 54 that is

I'm surprised they didn't use the June 25, 1999 performance of "Highlands." I think it's the first time he sang it in concert, but it's arguably his best vocal performance of that song.

It's my favorite too, but in terms of audience recordings, the one on September 17, 2000 in Glasgow isn't far behind and actually better in some ways - the band's a bit better and the quality of the recording (at least what I've heard) is a bit better. It's also known for changing Neil Young to Annie Lennox:

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

Finished listening to this set - I was surprised to find the entire super deluxe set on Spotify (with the Bootleg Series, Dylan's camp usually allows them to stream only an abridged version), but hey, it convinced me to buy the whole thing.

I actually listened to the two-CD version first, and I was surprised that listening to the entire five-CD version was actually a much better experience. I don't know if it's the sequencing or what they picked for the shorter two-CD version, but on first listen, the "bonus disc" on that shorter version simply felt like a collection of inferior takes. Moving through discs two and three on the larger set, OTOH, really gives a sense of how this album evolved and they're really enjoyable.

Disc four really is a hodgepodge in terms of audio quality. I wish it was better, but despite the subpar audio, it plays like a really good live album. I also love how "Mississippi" is slotted in as the penultimate track. I only wish they could have included "Red River Shore," but unfortunately Dylan has never performed it in public.

At the moment, disc one doesn't do a whole lot for me, but I'm at the office and I'm not listening on the best set-up. Good enough to reveal the deficiencies of disc four, but I think I need to listen to disc one at home, where I can also compare it to the album as it was released. For now though, it's not revelatory. I wish Jim Dickinson was still alive and well - ideally, HE would have remixed it because he clearly had an idea of the album that he believed should have been heard, but unfortunately he's not here to present it to us. I have no doubt he would've done something more different and felt freer to do so as Brauer made it clear that he did not want to reinvent this album. I do like Lanois's mix, but I'll remain forever curious as to what Dickinson had in mind.

More like Third/Sister Lovers (plus my fave outs and remixes from The Complete Third), I'd like to dream---and/or whatever record Augie Meyer thought he was playing on (def. not the original release).

enjoying Highlands (3/24/01, Newcastle, Australia)

Flaggin Down The Double E's:
A Listening Guide to the Time Out of Mind Bootleg Series Live Disc
A track-by-track look at disc four of Fragments: Time Out of Mind Sessions (1996-1997)

//dylanlive.substack.com/p/a-listening-guide-to-the-time-out?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

xp oops I moved there in June 2001, great timing

"where the Aberdeen waters flow"

I like the groove on Glasgow "Highlands"! More enjoyable than the record.

listening again today disc 3 is for the most part groovy

in the style of Cutting Edge and More Blood More Tracks, seems like they're more or less sharing every available take? always interesting to follow the process, but of less historical relevance with TooM than those seminal albums

Some great lines in this Pitchfork review (on the pithier side, the Bootleg Series feeling “overwhelming by design or aimed only at the highest-security-clearance Dylanologists”).

yeah that's a very good review

Listening to the evolution of Time Out of Mind’s most beloved song, “Not Dark Yet,” shows how these lurching, unsteady sessions wound up yielding their particular exhausted glitter. The first alternate take is in a different key, sending Dylan’s voice into a higher register and the song into ill-fitting sunlight; it’s a harmless little ramble. The second take, on Disc 3, is slower, and in the same key as the final version. You can hear Dylan’s voice settle into the tired languor that defines “Not Dark Yet.” But although you get a tantalizing glimpse of its potential, the view is blocked by a marching-band triplet fill on the drums and some Hornsby-esque piano trills. It doesn’t feel gloriously endless, as it does in the final studio version; it simply feels long. It wasn’t until the band stumbled into lockstep, all musicians’ frills burned away, that the song’s dark shadow loomed into view.

On many days, my favourite Dylan

the "water is wide" that opens disc 2 is gorgeous.

Finished the first four discs over the weekend, a great listen, though I had to bounce around out of order to not burn myself out with multiple takes (I did - remix, outtakes disc 1, live disc, outtakes disc 2).

I'm still digging through it — no grand statements yet, except to say that I'm enjoying it.

the Bootleg Series feeling “overwhelming by design or aimed only at the highest-security-clearance Dylanologists”

There's definitely no hiding that fact. When they first started the series, they were thinking of a much broader audience, hence the "best of" nature of the first release, and from Vo. 4 through 7, you only had the inexpensive and easy-to-digest double-CD's. (The first release, Vol. 1-3, was very nearly a four-CD release, but they trimmed it believing a bigger and more expensive set would hurt sales.) Given how the market for physical media has been decimated, diehard fans and collectors are possibly the last group of people who will reliably buy something. IIRC that's been a common explanation for the ongoing trend of super deluxe album releases.

I think Vol. 8 might've gotten the ball rolling with that outrageously priced deluxe edition (where it was basically larger, fancier packaging and a third disc of 12 bonuses). It's a bit of a mystery why they released that to begin with, but I wonder if they were testing the waters to see if they could sell deluxe sets like that.

I only wish they'd re-release the complete "Cutting Edge" set of 1965/1966 sessions, but on something more manageable than 18 CD's. A Blu-ray would be perfect for that kind of thing - a single layer Blu-ray could hold the complete audio contents of that set twice over.

I only ever ended up getting the 2xCD version of The Cutting Edge. Maybe heresy to suggest as a Dylan fan, but I've never been huge on sets that features dozens of versions of the same song.

I’m still sore about how the third disc of Vol. 8 was basically unattainable at a reasonable price (I of course downloaded it at one point and burned it onto a cd).

This new set feels more like a deluxe/expanded reissue of the original album, than it does the usual bootleg series format… but I guess they’ve always changed it up.

xp Not heresy at all. It's a pretty academic endeavor - I actually DID listen to the whole thing during lockdown (perfect time to do it), and it was glorious, but that's because I had the time to actively listen to the whole thing. It's great research, even if it wasn't for a professional reason, but outside of that context, I don't think it's enough to be a Dylan fan - like you need a reason to really hear it.

FWIW, if they wanted to go the hi-res route, they could re-release such a set as three Blu-ray discs with 24/192 audio and have each one cover a different album (with the last one covering the additional bonuses too). Separating it out at that way may even be preferable than packing it all into one disc.