Bob Dylan: The Bootleg Series

I saw The Band maybe 3.0 at a 90s music fest; they sounded like a big ol' jukebox full of beardy covers, nice 'n' shiny, but there was a lot happening on other stages, so I didn't stick around.

yeah that Bobby Charles s/t is fantastic

^need to hear that badly. the first danko solo is pretty nice, features most of the band spread out over its length (minus robertson, i think). anyone checked out garth hudson's solo stuff? i mean this cover alone makes me want to hear it

http://eil.com/images/main/Garth-Hudson-The-Sea-To-The-No-248269.jpg

I remember seeing that Hudson album in the racks at Best Buy back when Best Buy racked stuff like that.

http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/85/cb/f2/85cbf2b0fefa205d7854477e05e6081c.jpg

yikes! canadians and their owls.

Danko was the opener at my first concert in '79-80, I was 13 or 14. He opened for Molly Hatchet. I had no idea who he was, but he was good!

So just what is up, then, with one of the best guitarists and sidemen of the '60s and '70s just hanging up his axe, more or less, after the Band broke up?

it is weird that he's never come back to reclaim some kind of guitar heroism (that I know of) ... i believe he's writing a memoir, so maybe he'll talk a bit about that.
no matter how many times he's cast as the villain in the band saga, the dude was one of the greatest rock guitarists of the 60s-70s.
danko's and helm's solo lps are generally a good time, if far from masterpieces.

Yeah, his guitar-silence and the crapulence of his solo output are pretty baffling, but I always felt his best post-Band works were the soundtracks he did for Scorsese films. As much as I love his playing, if he had to hang up the guitar to assemble, sequence, and edit the Casino soundtrack, I'm ok with that.

Yea, and also The Color of Money: in the theater, as the movie started going this way and that (later read that Scorsese started letting the cast improvise, about halfway through), the soundtrack took up the slack---although as an album, rather than a rich array of edits, "cues," as the pros say, would prob seem much more uneven. Allmusic's William Ruhlmann reports:

Ex-Band songwriter/guitarist Robbie Robertson put together this soundtrack, which allowed him to collaborate with blues master Willie Dixon and jazz master Gil Evans, though it was his collaboration with Eric Clapton that produced the album's hit song, "It's in the Way That You Use It." Also featured: Don Henley, Robert Palmer (three tracks), and B. B. King. Not to mention the Mark Knopfler track! But in the show, it all worked out, at least musically.
(It's a sequel to early 60s black & white saga The Hustler, with Paul Newman reprising his role of pool prodigy Fast Eddie, now mentoring Gen X hustler Tom Cruise.)

xpost Surely agree on his 60s/70s guitar work, Tyler; his contributions to The Complete got me hoping I'd overlooked something...

big thing with Robbie, as compared to Harrison, is that the big thing he always tried and failed to cover up is for how great a musician and songwriter he is Robbie couldn't SING for shit....sometimes it's hard to watch The Last Waltz for all his phony singing into a mic that's obviously mixed totally out....I think he sort of resented needing Danko/Manuel/Levon's voices to express his songs...but yeah he just sucks as a singer and obviously wasn't the type of dude to have a Jeff Beck guitar mag type career

I love his playing on "Obviously Five Believers" and on Live 1966, but to see Robertson as a guitar god, what other highlights would you single out?

bodying crapton during their showdown on the last waltz

think he always shied away from guitar superheroics on record -- though unfaithful servant and king harvest both have great solos. the isle of wight 1969 show, rock of ages, before the flood and last waltz all have fantastic Robbie playing.

yeah before the flood everyone really attacks dylan's material with a lot of cocaine urgency

yeah ok if it's live stuff then I'm down with that, but on Dylan's records Mike Bloomfield is just as great

bloomfield is amazing! i mean, even just for "East/West" alone

Granted it's not the series itself but I'm surprised not to see you all talking about this yet, the latest from the copyright extension vaults:

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/12/05/rare-dylan-recordings-set-for-release-in-copyright-extension-bid/

i hadn't heard about that! this is really interesting:

a tantalizing tape, accounting for nearly three LP sides, that Mr. Dylan recorded with the folksinger Eric Von Schmidt, at Von Schmidt’s home in Florida

yeah thought there was talk on some other dylan thread? or maybe just on twitter, it's all blending...
tracks from the (un-bootlegged AFAIK) von schmidt tape seem like a dry run for the basement tapes. the royal festival hall show should be great -- first ever mr. tambourine man and I think it ain't me babe with an extra verse?

Can't believe anyone would doubt RR's skill. He always said he got the soloing out of his system touring with Dylan, which is why the Band is all awesome groove and rhythm stuff. Check him out around 2:54 here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaKD1Vdarnw

Also Robbie's playing all over this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xetx-T6uIVY

But yeah, he's a player's player. Unless you know what to listen for it's easy not to hear it, especially in the context of the Band, where every element of every song is vying for your full attention.

Tell me what to listen for! No doubt, I just want to learn.

(yeah tyler you and I and others were talking bout the copyright xtension tapes on twitter; once the rich and/or crazies scarf 'em up, the rest of us will just have to wait for any Lady Bountiful to deign us some boots of Finnish digits, say, although, with the recent superbust of Pirate Bay, for one---) What's got me back into Robertson is all these perfect little interjections, fills, transitions, hinges on the CBTs' I know he can do the big solos when called on, like on Before The Flood, but that's still part of being such a good accompanist for Dylan (also on subsequent tracks like "Dirge," for instance), whatever the clashes with others (like maybe the Band, maybe that's part of the fairly quick diffusion etc, the precipitous drop-off in consistency re the their own albums). I wanna check their boxset, Across The Great Divide, right? Hope that's the title; applies to their internal probs.
Anyway, just came here now to be amazed by the first six tracks on Disc Six (seems like BD's touch on that early electric piano; those weren't very touch-sensitive, but his pawing works), and sure hope somebody covers some, especially/most likely "That's The Breaks," country soul casual stunner; could still hear Aretha or Jerry Lee doing this right (good BD rarity, "Stepchild," on JLL's new Rock & Roll Time, which should be called something like Country Boogie. He's done at least one good previous cover of Dylan, "Rita May," forget which album). Back to listening. (Also like the laffy yet attentive-to-details version of "Hallelujah, I've Just Been Moved.")

Also I linked NYTimes' copyright extensions announcement on the Bob Dylan POX thread, which has links re the first batch of extensions releases.

So Robertson seems at his best when he's not the guy calling the shots, but, like many of us, he doesn't want to know that.

Really is too bad the Disc Six tapes weren't available for coverage back on the 60s (now listening to "Pretty Mary").

Anybody know whereabouts of The Band's sessions w Tiny Tim? Hope his early 60s colleague Dylan's on there too.

"She laughed in my face and she ran away---whoohoohoohoohoo---" Now to thee unlisted

Is this in The Bootleg Series? Should be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAzm0eEANMQ

haha, that is a good one... it's available on this: http://www.amazon.com/Holy-Soul-Jelly-Roll-Poems/dp/B0000033AN
i think the whole tape is floating around...

I've got that (blush)! Guess I've spent too much time on the sessions with Arthur Russell (Dylan's on at least one of those as well). All that I've listen to so far are mighty fine, though wish it had all of his settings of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience. Ginsberg sings and plays original melodies on harmonium, with a little help from his friends, incl. Elvin Jones, Don Cherry, and whoever's picking that bluesy country guitar on "I Went To The Garden Love." AG's a soulful, unpretentious folky tenor, backed by Peter Orlovsky's all-weather vocal drone most of the tyme (he's like the upright human tamboura).

AR hadn't hit NYC when the Songs LP was recorded, but he's on some latter Blake tracks.

Heard about this from tylerw:

https://www.sainsburysentertainment.co.uk/en/MP3-Music/Bob-Dylan/The-Cutting-Edge-1965-1966-The-Bootleg-Series-Vol-12-Deluxe-Edition/product.html?product=V6505246

And that's just the tracklisting for the six-disc edition! Supposedly an 18-disc set is in the works.

pretty wild. obviously i want to hear it all, but even for me, an 18-disc set of this stuff seems kind of crazy.

I hear it finally clears up the mystery surrounding "throat clearing" and "throat clearing (alt. tk 1)"

So there's a two disc version there as well.

Is this a download-only deal?

hmmm

7.She's Your Lover Now (Take 16, Complete) 08:25 Album Only

Yeah, I wondered about that, too. They told us the only "complete" take was the breakdown on the first Bootleg Series!

ha, dylanologists must be freaking out about that ... i don't think there is an actual complete take of that song. that sean wilentz article from a few years back said that anyway (and he had access to all of this stuff.
i think there'll be physical for all of it ...

piano demo of desolation row sounds interesting... band take of tambourine man ... no dylan take of "love is just a four letter word" ...

I'm suspicious, to be frank.

That 'complete' take isn't on the 2cd version.

i'm betting it is just the take we know form the first bootleg series w/ chatter before and after...

here's what wilentz says:
Dylan became frustrated and angry at the next Blonde on Blonde date, held three weeks into the new year during an extended break from touring. In nine hours of recording, through nineteen listed takes, only one song was attempted, for which Dylan supplied the instantly improvised title, “Just a Little Glass of Water.” Eventually renamed “She’s Your Lover Now,” it’s a lengthy, cinematic vignette of a hurt, confused man lashing out at his ex-girlfriend and her new lover. Nobody expected it would be recorded easily. (Dylan’s manager, Albert Grossman, interjects on the tape, just before the recording starts, that there is a supply of “raw meat for everybody in the band.”) The first take rolls at a stately pace, but Dylan is restless and the day has just begun.

On successive takes, the tempo speeds, then slows a bit, then speeds up again. Dylan tries singing a line in each verse accompanied only by Garth Hudson’s organ, shifting the song’s dynamics, but the idea survives for only two takes. After some false starts, Dylan exclaims, “It’s not right…it’s not right,” and soon he despairs, “No, fuck it, I’m losing the whole fucking song.” He again changes tempos and fiddles with some chords and periodically scolds himself as well as the band: “I don’t give a fuck if it’s good or not, just play it together…you don’t have to play anything fancy or nothing, just…just together.” A strong, nearly complete version ensues, but Dylan flubs the last verse. “I can’t hear the song anymore,” he finally confesses. He wants the song back, so he plays it alone, slowly, on his tack piano, and nails every verse. He reacts to his own performance with a little “huh” that could have been registering puzzlement or rediscovery. But Dylan would end up discarding “She’s Your Lover Now,” just as he would abandon a later, interesting take of an older song, “I’ll Keep It with Mine.”

whole article is here: http://theband.hiof.no/articles/mystic_nights_tmobob.html

huh

That's a fascinating article; thanks for posting it. I've always thought that the most difficult undertaking for any musician was to be a Dylan sideperson.