Bob Dylan: The Bootleg Series

pretty amazing how loose the isle of wight show is -- dylan realizing mid song he has the wrong harmonica for "tambourine man," the sound of Robertson reminding Dylan how "lay lady lay" goes...

Wild Mountain Thyme!

yeah that one is pretty amazing. kinda perfect for a pastoral English setting like the isle of wight.

Younger me, who only knew at most the Dylan hits, was introduced to JWH by way of Yo La Tengo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73qny9RqVEM

I remember thinking, huh, what a pretty song, maybe there are other Bob Dylan songs beyond the hits that I should hear ...

That's like me with Robyn Hitchcock covering "odds & ends" at the Croc in Seattle in 94 or so. I had never heard the basement tapes yet...

And on thread topic rh has covered at least two self portrait tunes (copper kettle and let it be me).

I guess Dylan probably got "Copper Kettle" from Joan Baez, who recorded it in 1962, but how do you get from this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLf1fDfSMN8

to Dylan's version? They're not even on the same planet.

yeah wow that's different

yeah on that one i assumed that dylan nicked his arrangement from someone (dave van ronk maybe?) but i can't really find any precedent for it.

I had to read Jon's post a few times before I worked out he didn't cover Bob Dylan with Robyn Hitchcock there...

Haha

My rich fantasy life

man joan baez's voice is just unbearable

^

OTM

Against us is the power of poliiiiice

Younger me, who only knew at most the Dylan hits, was introduced to JWH by way of Yo La Tengo:

"i threw it all away" is on nashville skyline, not JWH

xpost

i like that morricone/baez sacco & vanzetti song

http://25.media.tumblr.com/6095624797cc27029119fe29c481571b/tumblr_msxbbz5KxA1qay9wgo3_1280.jpg

awww

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61D537fsLAL.jpg

http://www.amazon.com/Dogs-Run-Free-Bob-Dylan/dp/1451648790

"i threw it all away" is on nashville skyline, not JWH

Yeah, exactly! There's even less of a chance younger me had that one, since JWH at least has Watchtower.

man, the overdubbed 'sign on the window' would have made it seem like the sky were opening up if it were on 'new morning'

Yeah I want to make a new new morning with with that, plus the alt versions of time passes slowly and dogs run free

pretty great -- someone's synced up the sbd isle of wight recordings w/ this audience footage
http://johannasvisions.com/bob-dylan-the-band-at-isle-of-wight-1969-video-clip-wgreat-sound/

the more i listen to this show, the more i'm bummed that there aren't more band/dylan gigs from this period, such a cool sound. no idea what it would've been like if dylan had toured in 1969, just from a cultural standpoint. mayhem?

That clip is great! More please.

yeah, very cool to see the interaction onstage... i know there's more audience footage out there, some dylanologist is probably working hard right now to sync it up.

Unbelievable backing vocals on Mighty Quinn almost worth the cost of the deluxe version. Is there footage of that performance out there?

here's the tracklisting for that sidetracks thing - pretty boring, looks like it's mainly the unreleased stuff from biograph?

Baby, I’m in the Mood for You
Mixed-Up Confusion
Tomorrow Is a Long Time (live)
Lay Down Your Weary Tune
Percy’s Song
I’ll Keep It with Mine
Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?
Positively 4th Street
Jet Pilot
I Wanna Be Your Lover
I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met) (live)
Visions of Johanna (live)
Quinn the Eskimo
Watching the River Flow
When I Paint My Masterpiece
Down in the Flood
I Shall Be Released
You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere
George Jackson (acoustic version)
Forever Young
You’re a Big Girl Now
Up to Me
Abandoned Love
Isis (live)
Romance in Durango (live)
Caribbean Wind
Heart of Mine (live)
Series of Dreams
Dignity
Things Have Changed

Yeah, non-album singles and Biograph. I think it's smart, in that it rescues the Biograph tracks and keeps the Bootleg Series as a separate entity. At least you can sell Biograph along with all the albums you already have to get $40 to put toward the box.

wow great clip - nice find

Remember Bob Dylan? He's back! In app form!

that app is a neat idea, though not perfect functionally. Looking forward to more versions, videos, etc.

there seems to be some confidence that the next one will at least include the Blood on the Tracks sessions.

yeah it'll be interesting to see how they do it -- i can see them just doing a two-disc Blood On The Tracks sessions thing, but they might also do a broader 73-75 kinda thing, including material from pat garrett, planet waves the 74 tour w/ the band and desire? might prefer the latter...

on a broader note this whole bootleg series thing is so great--dylan is obv uniquely suited to it but surely there's a few other acts out there that could sustain something similar.

Neil young is doing it, Springsteen too...

Bruce is being too control freak about it. His archive releases keep getting finessed into essentially new albums, polished with new sessions. Several if not most tracks on "Tracks" included new vocals or other new additions; a least one track on "The Promise" is completely re-recorded. Neil is going about things his own way, which mainly means ... slow, and designed to satisfy no one. Dylan, or whomever he pays, is pretty much of the only one doing the official bootleg thing right, imo.

Pete Townshend did a good job with his Scoop series.

yeah, i mean, the bootleg series is a good argument for the artist not being involved in it at all. young and springsteen might just be too fussy.

Pete Townshend did a good job with his Scoop series.

Yeah, but the rest of the Who's reissue program is a fucking disgraceful mess.

Is it? Why?

There's a whole bunch of expensive 'deluxe' editions of stuff, but of you ignore those and keep to the 2cd versions, it seems alright.

Or not?

There are at least seven (but likely more) officially/professionally recorded full Moon-era live shows that have either not been released at all or, more commonly, only been released in dribs and drabs, scattered across multiple (and hard to find) releases.

The recent deluxe boxed sets are a perfect case in point. There are at least two 1973 shows that were officially recorded, but nothing from these appeared on the Quadrophenia box. Neither did the previously-released 1973 studio recordings "We Close Tonight" or "Four Faces" (to say nothing of any unreleased studio material, cf. "Bank Holiday").

The recent Tommy box boasted a "live bootleg of 1969 recordings!" These all came from a 1969 Ottawa show, with two exceptions: "I'm Free" and half of "We're Not Gonna Take It" were from a 1976 show (on the latter, the first half is from '76, the second half from the Ottawa show's "See Me, Feel Me" segment of "My Generation"). The 1976 recordings are not mentioned in the liner notes, but after this was released, the official Who website posted a "Hey, look what we 'just' found!" MP3 of a 1969 (Stonybrook, NY) recording of "We're Not Gonna Take It." For a week.

I will say that the recent 2CD The Who Sell Out and the 2003 2CD Tommy largely get it right: the former has the mono and stereo mixes, along with various outtakes, and the latter has some Who outtakes along with a handful of Townshend demos. But no Who reissue has been comprehensive -- along with the studio album, you get some demos or some live tracks, but never all the demos, never the whole live recording -- and they very easily could be.

My all-time favorite Who album is View From A Backstage Pass, a 2CD compilation of Moon-era live recordings that is, to put it mildly, mind-boggling. But you could only buy it by paying $50 for an "official" website membership, and Ebay auctions for the set were shut down. And now it's out of print.

there are 2 completely separate versions of Blood on the Tracks right? The mpls one and the NYC one? then they mixed them to form the released album?

still think A Tree With Roots needs to be done ASAP

I think in a lot of cases it's the quality of the tapes that are an issue. Something like Springsteen's "Nebraska," that's an anomaly. Major labels don't usually OK spending money to restore old shitty tapes for release. Stuff like A Tree With Roots, I'm fine with it existing as this sort of samizdat talisman. Maybe Garth has OK tapes, maybe not, but the principals don't seem terribly interested in that part of their history.

I wouldn't be surprised if the quality of the Who live stuff is an issue, too. Townshend is a compulsive archivist, and seems to have no problem dusting off stuff from the vaults, so there must be something up.

There are lots of acts, like U2 and Nine Inch Nails, that record every single show. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Dylan or Springsteen or whomever do, too. A lot of them record this stuff for reverence. But it seems a lot simpler to do what Pearl Jam does, in real time, going forward, then to go back and spend time on old stuff.

Frankly, I've always wondered what will happen with all the Prince stuff, Springsteen stuff, even Neil Young, all the cats who leave behind albums and albums of unreleased material. Will it just disappear? I guess if someone like Miles Davis can serve as an example, it's that someone will eventually go through, clean up and release everything.

still think A Tree With Roots needs to be done ASAP

when they do this it'll probably be in some giant box plated with 24 karat gold that contains a titanium flash drive on a red silk pillow. and it'll cost $7,500.

Garth Hudson will just start charging admission to his living room. You can only listen to it all at once, one person at a time.

curious as to whether there's actually anything else of note from the basement tapes that hasn't been bootlegged. I guess "Minstrel Boy" which showed up on "Another Self Portrait" had never been bootlegged as far as I know. there's supposed to be some other tune called "wild wolf" that no one's heard.

I've heard Wild Wolf it's just 45 minutes of the dudes stoned as hell howling like banshees

oh man can't wait

I wouldn't be surprised if the quality of the Who live stuff is an issue, too. Townshend is a compulsive archivist, and seems to have no problem dusting off stuff from the vaults, so there must be something up.

Townshend is indeed compulsive about archiving, but mostly (only) about his solo stuff. He hasn't expressed much interest in potential projects like a live Who box or a Dick's Picks-type series, and he's nixed two Who live releases (Philadelphia '73 and Woodstock).

I don't think quality (sound or otherwise) is an issue. In terms of performance, there are two profoundly crapulent live Who albums out there (Who's Last, Join Together), and the sound quality of the released Ottawa '69 and Isle of Wight shows is a little rough.