Bob Dylan: The Bootleg Series

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.

xp - yes! I was bummed about that Volume 8 one.

The new one does alleviate the problem somewhat with disc 5. I rather hear the TOOM stuff on its own and the Oh Mercy stuff on its own too rather than mixed in together.

One thing that's grown about the series (but I personally won't complain about) is the redundancy. If you buy all the archival releases of the past 30 years, you'll see a lot of overlap.

However, it's mostly the result of better, more complete releases later on, and often times the sound is an upgrade (better sources, or better mastering). So I have no problem with them revisiting stuff because they usually fix things from earlier releases.

I sold Vol. 1-3, 4, 5, 7 and now 8 a long time ago for that reason. (1-3, 7 and 8 still have material that's unique, but I have them elsewhere on homemade compilations.)

Oh man – I would sooner sell everything but Vol. 1-3 & 4!

plenty of minor quibbles with the bootleg series, sure, but if you told me 10 years ago what we would be getting, i wouldn't have believed you. an embarrassment of riches.

^^^ this

When the first Bootleg Series came out, it was tremendously exciting to hear things like "She's Your Lover Now," and the alternate "Like A Rolling Stone," and "Blind Willie McTell"...stuff we'd only read about or maybe heard on shitty-quality bootlegs. If someone had told me in 1991 that in 2015 we'd be able to hear everything Dylan recorded in '65-'66, I would've called them a lying scumbag.

And to birdistheword's point re: 1-3 being trimmed down to three discs, in 1991 we were still using vinyl as a measurement. So it was less "three CDs of outtakes!" and more "IT'S THE EQUIVALENT OF SIX LPS OF UNRELEASED STUFF!" (Remember, this was a time when labels sold a single CD of a double LP for significantly more than a single CD of a single LP.) Four CDs would've been a heavy commitment.

yeah, that first bootleg series felt insanely generous at the time ... not many (any?) similar collections at the time!

I think it may have been the first! Other artists had released single-LP odds-and-sods outtakes collections, but this seems like the first box (CD or otherwise) to contain all unreleased material.

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

indeed, the (traditional?) melody reminds me of Neil Young's "Mother Earth" which Dylan might have been playing so loud that somebody was yelling at him to turn it down

Dreamin' of You sounded pretty great last night.

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

indeed, the (traditional?) melody reminds me of Neil Young's "Mother Earth" which Dylan might have been playing so loud that somebody was yelling at him to turn it down

― corrs unplugged, Tuesday, January 31, 2023 1:47 AM (nine hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

wow yeah this is an amazing performance

"Mother Earth" is definitely based on that melody — but Dylan had probably been singing "Water Is Wide" since 1960.

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

Appreciative for awakening Dylan's recording appetite, I nevertheless disliked TOOM for years. As a collaboration Oh Mercy is a better realization of Lanois + Dylan; whatever else it's got songs, beautiful and awful.

Listening to this album I'm struck by how the fanning away of Lanois' murk reveals how a few songs sound created for or even by the murk ("Can't Wait," "Lovesick," "Til I Fell in Love with You"), therefore the new mix accentuates the original's weaknesses.

i revisited the original last night for the first time in ages in hopes of drumming up some interest in the new set. i came away from the og mix with the same thought i remember about it: nice bob, nice fluff, nothing all that memorable happens. very much same feeling re:later day neil young. yes, some good (and sometimes even great) songs in there but a lot of mediocrity too. in fact, mostly that. not terrible, just meh. but i also think oh mercy! is across the board top tier bob, so what do i know?

maybe if someone does a highlights disk i'd check it out, but this was never my favorite period of bob and i've become a cliche in thinking it's horribly overrated. allmusic gave the new set three stars, overall vibe: ya only for people who already really this material.

*really like oops

hence why Love and Theft and 3/4ths of Modern Times were such shocks. It turns out...he needed to produce his own albums and write songs reflecting that immediacy.

oh boy, not sure i can get on board with that. again same vibe as modern neil: nice, but very meh.

wowee, I must be pretty shallow because I think TooM and LaT are stone brilliant, both top 5 Dylan for me. Maybe top 7, but still.

I won't bore with my entire history with Dylan, but after getting into him big in high school and college, I somehow had drawn this magic line that Desire was the latest Dylan I ever needed to hear and I couldn't care less about anything after that. TooM, which I didn't even hear until the early 2000s was huge for me and made me realize that, hey, this guy is worth digging into. Still love it.

L&T has a heft and insouciance which at the time pointed me toward a new way of thinking about love that coincided with my love for St. Etienne, Pet Shop Boys, and other acts who saw no point in lingering on bathos. I prefer it to almost every album he's released since 1969, including Desire (ugh) and Blood on the Tracks.. "I'm sittin' on my watch so I can be on time" + Charlie Sexton riffs = my idea of Dylan.

in other words L&T is queerer than Dylan or anyone else said at the time

Yeah, Desire was not one of my favorite Dylan albums but it was one of the first ones I bought, because of "Hurricane" being in Dazed & Confused. In those pre-internet days that snippet from the Emporium scene was enticing, in large part because it was one of the few songs that didn't end up on either soundtrack.

I'd be inclined to say that The Bootleg Series LPs are the best records I've heard that were released this century.

"Listening to all 18 CDs", etc, sounds time-consuming, but while I don't have an 18CD version of anything, I play what I do have over and over and over again - notably the 6CD BASEMENT TAPES and 5CD CUTTING EDGE. Which really is probably the best record of the century, for me.

I've never been that into TOOM or L&T (in fact TOOM is the only Dylan studio album of original material that I've never listened to in full, and one of the few I've never owned)... don't mean to be challopsy, as these are obv critical & fan favorites, they just don't press too many buttons for me.

How would you know, if you’ve not listened to them in full?

Oh, L&T I have (many times)... just TOOM. I didn't dig the singles, the sound... even the title and album cover put me off (shallow as that may be). I gave it another go with this remix or whatever, but the songs just aren't my kind of thing.

What do you dislike about L&T?

I dunno, I just don't like the style of the songs that much... it's a boring listen for me ("Mississippi" aside). I don't really start locking in with Bob again until Together Through Life. It's all good...

It's the same production!

It's the songs, man! Not Jack Frost's icy knob-twiddling...

I mean, if "Summer Days" and "Lonesome Day" and "Sugar Baby" did nothing for ya...

FWIW, with Time Out of Mind, the version I usually listened to has a few personal tweaks: I replaced "Cold Irons Bound" with this version from Masked and Anonymous (his touring band though by this time David Kemper had been replaced by George Receli), I replaced "Make You Feel My Love" with "Red River Shore" from disc one of The Bootleg Series Vol. 8: Tell Tale Signs (though to be fair, I like hearing that song on Adele's 19), and I replaced "Can't Wait" with the early version, also from the same disc on BS Vol. 8: TTS, but I trimmed off the brief dialogue heard at the start. It really improved the back half for me, so as much as I love Time Out of Mind, I have to admit that what I enjoy isn't really what was released.