I've been obsessing on the Oh Mercy album for the past week, and loving it.
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Haven't a clue @jafant. But I would love any Planet Waves unreleased tracks or alternative versions. And an expanded Before The Flood---from the 1974 tour with The Band, if any unreleased tracks exist.
Bill Graham sold tickets for the San Francisco Dylan/Band show in a mail-order raffle manner, and received requests for ten times the number of tickets available. I was one of the 90% who was disappointed. 😭
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@jafant: I bought all the deluxe CD boxset versions of previous Bootleg series releases (I really wanted ALL the Basement Tape recordings, for instance), but for this one I chose the 4-LP set. The extra material in the 5-CD box didn't particularly interest me.
But I love you don't let hardcore audiophile peer pressure intimidate you into not buying CD's ;-) . Some of my favorite music has been released on CD only, and if it's truly "about the music".....
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@jafant: I finally made up my mind on Bootleg Volume 17, and went with the 4 LP iteration. The 5 CD set includes a lot more material, but mostly live shows, with which I’m not particularly interested.
Some of the live recordings are from Dylan’s appearance in L.A. in 2001, a show I may have been in attendance at. He played The Pantages Theater on Hollywood Blvd. (a beautiful Art Deco building) five nights in a row. He and his band were absolutely fantastic the night I saw & heard them! I played a show on that stage once, and it’s a "difficult" room (the back wall reflections arrive back at the stage rather quickly---it’s not a deep room, making it hard to hear the sound coming from the stage monitors). So hats off to Bob and his fantastic band. Opening for Dylan that night (he had a different opening act every night) was an unaccompanied Beck, who was underwhelming.
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Nope! I'd love to hear out-takes from the Planet Waves recordings, though.
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I just stumbled upon a one hour-45 minute interview with Clinton Heylin (author of The Double Life of Bob Dylan) on YouTube,. and it's fantastic. Do a search for CoolCleveland, and you will find this year old video.
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@jafant: BS17 is going to be great! I love the Time Out Of Mind album, and am anxious to hear it remixed with some of Daniel Lanois’ production "haze" removed (like the Spector-free Let It Be Naked).
In addition to the regular CD and LP versions, a 10 LP box is available on the Dylan website (only). 230 bucks though, a lotta dough. I haven’t yet decided which version to get, but there’s no hurry (except for the 10 LP box, which is a limited edition).
For future Bootleg releases, I'd love ones devoted to the Planet Waves and Love And Theft albums.
Let me repeat that a new Dylan book is out (The Philosophy Of Modern Song), and it’s essential reading.
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The last time I saw Bob live was in the early-2000's, at The Pantages Theater (a great Deco-style building) on Hollywood Blvd. That night he was fantastic, and looking like he was actually enjoying himself. He was even taking guitar solos, Larry Campbell looking on somewhat bemused. ;-)
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Damn @jafant, 60 years! I was a little too young to like (or even know about) Dylan in '62, not learning of him 'til on the radio hearing "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35", and then not being able to relate to it at all. That song was of course on the Blonde On Blonde album, after which he had his motorcycle accident and didn't release another album until John Wesley Harding. By the time of the arrival of that album I was ready for him, though only barely.
That same year ('68) Music From Big Pink was released, and I was not ready for it.
By the time of Blonde On Blonde's follow up Nashville Skyline I was pumped and primed, and loved it. I even loved his next album, the generally-misunderstood and appreciated Self Portrait.
In '69 the Band's incredible second album was released, and it immediately became (and remains) the most important album of my life. By then I was making music with a coupla guys who had seen Dylan with The Hawks live in '65 (at The San Jose Civic Auditorium, where the previous year I had attended my first live show: The Beach Boys), which I would do just about anything to be able to say. |
No @jafant, and most likely never will. His worst period! I loved the three Christian albums which immediately preceded it, however.
I saw him live in the very-early 90’s, and he was just awful, as was his 3-piece band. Ten years later he was great live, one of the best I’ve ever witnessed. I just saw Mary Gauthier live in a small (maybe 150 seats), great sounding club (the Doug Fir Lounge in Portland, Oregon), and she was playing a harmonica mounted on a neck-brace (ala Dylan). She also displayed great ability as an acoustic rhythm guitarist, very dynamic. |
Though American Beauty and Workingman’s Dead were radical departures from the music The Dead had been making prior to those two albums, if one knew about Garcia’s early involvement in Folk and Bluegrass music during his formative years (I love those pictures of Garcia playing banjo---banjo!---on the Palo Alto Stanford campus, not far up El Camino Real from where I was growing up in Cupertino), it shouldn’t have been a complete surprise. And as the music being made by some of the Dead’s friends and contemporaries (Crosby, Stills, and Nash, etc.) was trending towards the acoustic/short song/harmony singing format and style (as opposed to the Dead’s long, free-form---in terms of song structure and improvisational nature), it was a natural transition for them to move in that direction.
To see who were the actual leaders in that back-to-the-Country movement, and who were the followers, watch the documentary film Festival Express. Then remind oneself of the two albums The Band made in 1968 and ’69, and compare them with The Dead’s two contemporaneous albums: 1968’s Anthem Of The Sun and 69’s Aoxomoxoa. Not to mention Dylan, who had been recording in Nashville long before any other Rockers of his generation. Compare John Wesley Harding (’68) and Nashville Skyline (’69) with Anthem Of The Sun and Aoxomoxoa, recorded and released contemporaneously. Dylan had earlier (1965) completely changed John Lennon’s approach to songwriting. "You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away" was nothing more than John’s Dylan imitation.
But ya’ll missed the point about the Hippie ethos: In The Last Waltz (and in Martin Scorsese’s later documentary on The Band), Levon Helm, Richard Manuel, and Rick Danko discuss not sharing in many regards the sentiments of the Hippies. Not to mention Dylan, who, after almost single-handedly codifying the basic tenants of the counter-culture that emerged in his wake (it would be an exaggeration to claim he created it), turned his back on that very community.
While The Airplane on the West Coast, The MC5 in the Midwest, and politically-minded "radicals" on the East coast were calling for revolution, and rejecting all that American (and in fact all Western) civilization embraced, The Band posed with their parents, grandparents, and other relatives on the inside gatefold cover of the Big Pink album. So much for hating your parents ;-) . When Dylan and The Hawks toured Europe and England in 1966, Bob hung a giant American flag behind the stage, sticking his finger in the eye of the growing hate-The U.S.A. sentiment embraced by his audience in those countries.
I love what Rick Danko said in one Last Waltz scene: "We’re not trying to save the world, only improve the neighborhood." Hillbilly wisdom ;-) .
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Well Dylan fanatics, the Clinton Heylin book, The Double Life of Bob Dylan; A Restless, Hungry Feeling 1941-1966, is finally on the shelves at Barnes & Noble. Or at least it was (I bought the only copy) at my local branch. And it shouldn't have been, as street date is not for a coupla days.
Heylin has written a lot of books on Bob, and it considered the best writer on the subject:
- Robert Hilburn: 'If you really want to know the story of Bob Dylan (and everybody should), this is where you must start."
- Rolling Stone: "British writer-historian Clinton Heylin is perhaps the world's authority on all things Dylan."
- New York Times: "The only Dylanologist worth reading."
- Graham Nash: "So, you want to know more about Bob Dylan? Read Clinton Heylin's new book. You'll get all you need."
- Lee Ranaldo (of Sonic Youth): "Whether you've read one book on Bob Dylan or one hundred, THIS is the one you want to read and refer to from this day forward. It leaps a couple light-years ahead with much newly revealed material and deep scholarship. If somebody's got to tell the tale, we can all thank our holy electric pickups and mystical typewriter keys that it was up to Clinton Heylin."
If after reading the above quotes you aren't compelled to immediately find a copy, you REALLY aren't interested in Bob Dylan. ;-) |
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@jafant: If Columbia (and Bob, one supposes) keeps to chronological order, I guess the next bootlegs will be 80's material, not a favorite Dylan decade of mine.
I picked up the latest Dylan release, a triple CD (only) package entitled 1970. It contains unreleased material recorded during the New Morning and Self Portrait album sessions, and is not essential. Mostly early takes of songs that are far inferior to the released versions. But it's cheap (around $20), so what the heck, may as well have it. |
@jafant, is Vol. 16 actually available? I tend to take my time getting each new volume, and actually only fairly recently got Vol.15. I would have preferred more from John Wesley Harding and less of the Johnny Cash recordings on that one. There is a new book on Dylan coming early next year from Clinton Heylin (whose writings on Bob I quite like): The Double Life Of Bob Dylan Vol.1 1941-66; A Restless, Hungry Feeling. What with the recent sale of his archives and song publishing, I get the feeling Dylan is preparing for his relatively imminent demise. His passing will leave as large an unfillable artistic void as I will have witnessed in my life. The largest since Hank Williams', imo. I was alive when that occurred, but just barely! |
And a very merry Christmas to you, jafant! Everyone else as well!!---Eric. |
Yup @jafant, I put it on my Christmas list for the sisters. I’m so backlogged with CDs and LPs waiting for their first spin that I can wait. I have the original LP, the version with back-cover liner notes by Pete Hamill. |
jafant, the current Mojo Magazine has extensive coverage of the trinity albums, lots of great info. |
There is an upcoming Dylan release I AM really looking forward to: "Love And Theft", an album I love, on a double-LP, just announced by Sony for the near future. |
Not yet jafant, but I did look over the LP and CD boxsets at my record store during the week, and the double-disc releases as well. The boxsets contain a lot of material---unreleased songs, out-takes, live recordings. I really liked the Christian albums when they came out, but I'm not sure how much more of that material I need! We shall see---right now I have higher priorities. |
I have now finished the book, and it is my number one recommendation for insight into, and plain ol' info on, Dylan. This Wilentz guy is really somethin'! I suggest taking notes as you read it, as there will be stuff you want to later check into, but won't remember. A lot of work went into this book; it is a landmark reference source on not just Bob Dylan, but all American music and literature! |
roxy54---I have just finished reading the chapter in Bob Dylan In America in which Sean Wilentz discusses Dylan’s "Love and Theft" album. Bob is so productive I haven’t been able to keep up with all his releases (plus the nature of some of them doesn’t interest me. Dylan sings Sinatra? Uh, I’ll pass.). But "Love And Theft" I loved from the instant I heard it, moreso even than Time Out Of Mind. Whereas TOOM was produced by Daniel Lanois, Dylan himself produced "LAT" (under his Jack Frost alias). I’m no fan of Lanois’ production in general, and really dislike the sound he created for TOOM, plus some of his musical choices and decisions. Dylan felt the same way---the two butted heads throughout the making of the album. "Love And Theft" is now one of my all-time favorite Dylan albums. The songs are great, and Dylan seems to be in unusually high spirits (perhaps from having survived almost dying immediately following the completion of TOOM?). There is a lot of humor in the lyrics and their delivery---he sounds like he’s having a lot of fun. And he has one of the best bands he ever worked with, perhaps the best outside of The Hawks/Band. Certainly far better than The Grateful Dead and Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, two ill-advised choices as accompanists/collaborators. Wilentz has deepened and expanded my appreciation of the songs on "LAT". He has a vast knowledge of both music and literature (a rare combination), and cites the sources for a lot of the songs on the album, both musically and lyrically. The sources?! Dylan is what Wilentz calls a "troubadour", an old term for the tradition of songwriters "borrowing" from the work of those who came before, appropriating their ideas and incorporating them into their own. Have you noticed the title of the album is not Love And Theft, but rather "Love And Theft"? You will learn why if you read Bob Dylan In America, the most insightful book I have read on the subject of Dylan. Fanfreakingtastic! |
All right, I’m back. jafant, here are the major books on Dylan: - No Direction Home by Robert Shelton. Shelton wrote the rave review in The New York Times of a Dylan Greenwich Village live performance in 1961 that got everyone’s attention. A basic biography. - Behind The Shades by Clinton Heylin. A good examination of Dylan by a British writer, Brits having a special appreciation of Bob for some reason. - Bob Dylan: A Biography by Anthony Scaduto. Written in the early 70’s by a major Rolling Stone writer, I didn’t like it as much as the above two, but it’s worth reading. - Chronicles by Dylan himself. Ya gotta read his autobiography, right? It’s hard to know how much of it is literally true---it is Dylan, after all ;-). - The Old, Weird America: The World Of Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes by Greil Marcus. This you HAVE to read. A really deep, well-researched examination of old songs that were important to Dylan, and the re-recording of them (along with new songs of his own) with The Hawks (aka Band) during 1967, in both the basement of Big Pink and in the living room of his nearby Bearsville house. Fascinating! Dylan was a sponge, instantly absorbing everything he heard. He settled in with The Hawks for a year, giving that Canadian (heh) band a crash course in American music. The Basement Tapes became a primer for the emerging Americana-style music that was the hippest being made in the late 60’s and early 70’s, a counter-Counter Culture movement that rejected the Hippie ethos. It literally rewrote the rules for making music, as did The Band’s debut album the following year, 1968’s Music From Big Pink. Bob was a good teacher, and The Hawks/Band excellent students! Let me again praise the book in the original post, Bob Dylan In America by Sean Wilentz. Wilentz’s father owned a bookstore in Greenwich Village, one that the Beat writers and Folk singers frequented. The elder Wilentz was himself a poet, and Sean grew up surrounded in immersed in the Beat/Folk world. He has an unusually good knowledge and appreciation of American music, poetry, and writers---Dylan included, not to mention the historical context within which those art forms are created. When I left off, I had just finished the chapter on the recording of the Blonde On Blonde album (THE best writing on Dylan’s music I have read), and Wilentz jumps from that period to the 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue era, mentioning only briefly the intervening years. I assume he’ll come back around to them---the fantastic John Wesley Harding and New Morning albums, the 1974 tour with The Band (his first since the 1965-6 World Tour with The Hawks) and subsequent album recorded with them, the very cool Planet Waves. |
I like the issues raised here since my posting, but left yesterday morning for an out-of-town gig from which I have just arrived home, and am beat. I’ll add some more thoughts tomorrow. Thanks everybody! |
