Post by William J. Clinton on Jan 24, 2005 14:26:43 GMT -5
PERNICIOUS NONSENSE
(Volume III, Number 2)
And now, the second in this series of commentary on commercial Bob Dylan bootleg recordings. It hasn't been a very active month, and nothing really outstanding has turned up on the commercial front. I really envy the guy who wrote DEEP BENEATH THE WAVES; he was lucky enough to be writing about commercial boots at a time when exciting stuff turned up regularly. This isn't planned as a series of "stuff I don't like" columns, but those pesky commercial boot labels won't always go along. Still, even botched releases like this month's "Must To Avoid" give me a chance to talk about the good noncommercial stuff that's out there, especially some of the outstanding archival fan projects.
[glow=red,2,300][shadow=red,left,300]MUST TO AVOID[/shadow][/glow]
Now Your Mouth Cries Wolf
Hollow Horn 2CD [T-848]
(1) Bringing It All Back Home sessions (New York, NY); January 13, 1965
(2) Levy's Recording Studio (London, UK); May 12, 1965
(3) Highway 61 Revisited sessions (New York, NY); June 15, 1965
(4) Highway 61 Revisited sessions (New York, NY); July 29, 1965
(5) Highway 61 Revisited sessions (New York, NY); July 30, 1965
(6) Highway 61 Interactive
(7) Hawks session (New York, NY); October 5, 1965
(8) Hawks session (New York, NY); November 30, 1965
(9) Hawks session (New York, NY); October 5, 1965
(10) Hawks session (New York, NY); November 30, 1965
(11) Hawks session (New York, NY); January 21, 1966
(12) Hawks session (New York, NY); October 5, 1965
(13) Hawks session (New York, NY); November 30, 1965
(14) Blonde On Blonde session (Nashville, TN); January 27, 1966
(15) Hawks session (New York, NY); January 21, 1966
(16) Blonde On Blonde session (Nashville, TN); February 15, 1966
(17) Blonde On Blonde UK mono LP mixes
Tracklist: (1) Love Minus Zero, *I'll Keep It With Mine, If You Gotta Go Go Now, It's All Over Now Baby Blue, She Belongs To Me, *Subterranean Homesick Blues, California, *Farewell Angelina, You Don't Have To Do That
(2) Miami Sales Message
(3) Why'd You Have To Be So Frantic, Sitting On A Barbed Wire Fence, *Phantom Engineer, *Like A Rolling Stone [solo], *Sitting On A Barbed Wire Fence
(4) Positively Fourth Street [variant mix], Desolation Row
(5) From A Buick Six [alternate LP], Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window
(6) *Like A Rolling Stone [8 takes/excerpts, recorded June 15-16, 1965]
(7) Medicine Sunday, Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window [inc], I Wanna Be Your Lover [inc], *Jet Pilot
(8) Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window
(9) I Wanna Be Your Lover
(10) Visions Of Johanna
(11) She's Your Lover Now
(12) *I Wanna Be Your Lover, Number One
(13) Visions Of Johanna
(14) *I'll Keep It With Mine
(15) *She's Your Lover Now
(16) I'll Keep It With Mine [inst]
(17) *Rainy Day Women #12 & 35, *Pledging My Time, *One Of Us Must Know, *Fourth Time Around, *Obviously Five Believers
It's nice, I suppose, to see that one's writing has an immediate impact on "real world" (or at least "non-virtual world") events. I've noticed that the "usual suspects" in the lineup of bootleg retailers are advertising this one a little differently than the first -- for more than a month, no tracklists online, no back or interior cover slips, no label notes, etc. Could it be that this set is, once again, a bit less than advertised? Well, the truth (or at least the tracklist) is out there, and once again we have . . .
Another semi-piratical botch of a job from Hollow Horn, inexplicably well-received by ICE and ISIS. Barely half the tracks are actually unreleased; about a third (*starred) are taken from Biograph and Bootleg Series 1-3. (The others are officially released, but sometimes hard to buy, variant mixes; the more common ones are also *starred.) Worse, unless the ISIS review and several published tracklists are incorrect, two significant unreleased tracks are missing. Neither the May 1965 London recording of "If You Gotta Go" nor the post-Newport 1965 overdub/remix of "Tombstone Blues" is included. The minimum, the absolute minimum one should ask of a set like this is that it be complete. And this one isn't.
Almost as bad, the set includes the wrong lp mono mixes (and "wrong" here isn't simply a matter of taste.) The UK mixes are generally regarded as inferior to the US LP mono mixes; I don't think I've ever seen any comments that even put them on a roughly equal footing. As Roger Ford says at his essential "Electric Dylan" site, the UK mixes are relatively "dull and lifeless . . . lack[ing] the sparkle and bite of the American LP." The 10-second harmonica coda to "Pledging My Time" justifies the inclusion of that track alone (despite its other sonic weaknesses); it's not fully restored even on the SACDs. But the remaining LP tracks just waste disc space -- "Rainy Day Women" is conspicuously duller than the US version, for example; "Obviously Five Believers" has "much less bite."
All of the material circulates commonly in equivalent quality. Disc 1 is organized chronologically [with the LARS excerpts/outtakes from Highway 61 Interactive segregated at the disc's end, a reasonable choice]. But disc 2 is a disorganized mess, ordered almost randomly, mixings songs and sessions at whim. A pretty package for a dodgy, incomplete collection of shopworn goods.
There's a crying need for a solid archival fan project covering this turf, whether a followup to "For Sale Or Just On The Shelf" or less extensive collections of the circulating, unreleased songs and genuine rarities.
What would I suggest? First of all, the "standard" collections of this sort have run from the January 1965 BIABH sessions through the earliest BoB sessions, traditionally with songs assigned to the wrong sessions and sessions that never happened. It's an unwieldy approach, even when error-free. Right now, the 18 circulating outtakes/rarities (variant mixes aside), plus the snippets of "Like A Rolling Stone" from H61 Interactive, fill out a single CDR nicely. Best source, in chronological order. Simple enough.
Then we get to the Hawks sessions and Blonde On Blonde. They're more problematical. The unreleased outtakes come to about 40 minutes. But they're not a full picture, even if we exclude concert performances. For Dylan's other compositions of the time, we need the two hotel tapes, from March in Denver and May in Glasgow. There's no ideal way to fit these onto two CDRs; maybe put all the studio stuff (and the "Tell Me Momma" demo) on one disc, the hotel tapes on the other. Fill out the first disc with a well-chosen selection of variant mixes, rather than haphazardly taking them from whatever's easily at hand. Ford is again an excellent reference.
OK, I've done the typing and occasional page-turning; somebody else can do the heavy lifting. I've even got a nice pair of titles for the discs: Volume 1 can be "A Long Haired Mule . . . " and Volume 2 ". . . And A Porkepine." A venerable Dylan phrase that I don't think has been used for titles before, and one that would make for interesting Ebay search results when the almost inevitable commercial/pirate editions followed.
Of course, the upcoming official 2-disc release of unreleased tracks from the Sony/Columbia vaults (and maybe elsewhere) could make this project obsolete pretty quickly.
=========================================
Just keep scrolling down for Part II; once again I'm too long-winded for a single post on my own message board!
(Volume III, Number 2)
And now, the second in this series of commentary on commercial Bob Dylan bootleg recordings. It hasn't been a very active month, and nothing really outstanding has turned up on the commercial front. I really envy the guy who wrote DEEP BENEATH THE WAVES; he was lucky enough to be writing about commercial boots at a time when exciting stuff turned up regularly. This isn't planned as a series of "stuff I don't like" columns, but those pesky commercial boot labels won't always go along. Still, even botched releases like this month's "Must To Avoid" give me a chance to talk about the good noncommercial stuff that's out there, especially some of the outstanding archival fan projects.
[glow=red,2,300][shadow=red,left,300]MUST TO AVOID[/shadow][/glow]
Now Your Mouth Cries Wolf
Hollow Horn 2CD [T-848]
(1) Bringing It All Back Home sessions (New York, NY); January 13, 1965
(2) Levy's Recording Studio (London, UK); May 12, 1965
(3) Highway 61 Revisited sessions (New York, NY); June 15, 1965
(4) Highway 61 Revisited sessions (New York, NY); July 29, 1965
(5) Highway 61 Revisited sessions (New York, NY); July 30, 1965
(6) Highway 61 Interactive
(7) Hawks session (New York, NY); October 5, 1965
(8) Hawks session (New York, NY); November 30, 1965
(9) Hawks session (New York, NY); October 5, 1965
(10) Hawks session (New York, NY); November 30, 1965
(11) Hawks session (New York, NY); January 21, 1966
(12) Hawks session (New York, NY); October 5, 1965
(13) Hawks session (New York, NY); November 30, 1965
(14) Blonde On Blonde session (Nashville, TN); January 27, 1966
(15) Hawks session (New York, NY); January 21, 1966
(16) Blonde On Blonde session (Nashville, TN); February 15, 1966
(17) Blonde On Blonde UK mono LP mixes
Tracklist: (1) Love Minus Zero, *I'll Keep It With Mine, If You Gotta Go Go Now, It's All Over Now Baby Blue, She Belongs To Me, *Subterranean Homesick Blues, California, *Farewell Angelina, You Don't Have To Do That
(2) Miami Sales Message
(3) Why'd You Have To Be So Frantic, Sitting On A Barbed Wire Fence, *Phantom Engineer, *Like A Rolling Stone [solo], *Sitting On A Barbed Wire Fence
(4) Positively Fourth Street [variant mix], Desolation Row
(5) From A Buick Six [alternate LP], Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window
(6) *Like A Rolling Stone [8 takes/excerpts, recorded June 15-16, 1965]
(7) Medicine Sunday, Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window [inc], I Wanna Be Your Lover [inc], *Jet Pilot
(8) Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window
(9) I Wanna Be Your Lover
(10) Visions Of Johanna
(11) She's Your Lover Now
(12) *I Wanna Be Your Lover, Number One
(13) Visions Of Johanna
(14) *I'll Keep It With Mine
(15) *She's Your Lover Now
(16) I'll Keep It With Mine [inst]
(17) *Rainy Day Women #12 & 35, *Pledging My Time, *One Of Us Must Know, *Fourth Time Around, *Obviously Five Believers
It's nice, I suppose, to see that one's writing has an immediate impact on "real world" (or at least "non-virtual world") events. I've noticed that the "usual suspects" in the lineup of bootleg retailers are advertising this one a little differently than the first -- for more than a month, no tracklists online, no back or interior cover slips, no label notes, etc. Could it be that this set is, once again, a bit less than advertised? Well, the truth (or at least the tracklist) is out there, and once again we have . . .
Another semi-piratical botch of a job from Hollow Horn, inexplicably well-received by ICE and ISIS. Barely half the tracks are actually unreleased; about a third (*starred) are taken from Biograph and Bootleg Series 1-3. (The others are officially released, but sometimes hard to buy, variant mixes; the more common ones are also *starred.) Worse, unless the ISIS review and several published tracklists are incorrect, two significant unreleased tracks are missing. Neither the May 1965 London recording of "If You Gotta Go" nor the post-Newport 1965 overdub/remix of "Tombstone Blues" is included. The minimum, the absolute minimum one should ask of a set like this is that it be complete. And this one isn't.
Almost as bad, the set includes the wrong lp mono mixes (and "wrong" here isn't simply a matter of taste.) The UK mixes are generally regarded as inferior to the US LP mono mixes; I don't think I've ever seen any comments that even put them on a roughly equal footing. As Roger Ford says at his essential "Electric Dylan" site, the UK mixes are relatively "dull and lifeless . . . lack[ing] the sparkle and bite of the American LP." The 10-second harmonica coda to "Pledging My Time" justifies the inclusion of that track alone (despite its other sonic weaknesses); it's not fully restored even on the SACDs. But the remaining LP tracks just waste disc space -- "Rainy Day Women" is conspicuously duller than the US version, for example; "Obviously Five Believers" has "much less bite."
All of the material circulates commonly in equivalent quality. Disc 1 is organized chronologically [with the LARS excerpts/outtakes from Highway 61 Interactive segregated at the disc's end, a reasonable choice]. But disc 2 is a disorganized mess, ordered almost randomly, mixings songs and sessions at whim. A pretty package for a dodgy, incomplete collection of shopworn goods.
There's a crying need for a solid archival fan project covering this turf, whether a followup to "For Sale Or Just On The Shelf" or less extensive collections of the circulating, unreleased songs and genuine rarities.
What would I suggest? First of all, the "standard" collections of this sort have run from the January 1965 BIABH sessions through the earliest BoB sessions, traditionally with songs assigned to the wrong sessions and sessions that never happened. It's an unwieldy approach, even when error-free. Right now, the 18 circulating outtakes/rarities (variant mixes aside), plus the snippets of "Like A Rolling Stone" from H61 Interactive, fill out a single CDR nicely. Best source, in chronological order. Simple enough.
Then we get to the Hawks sessions and Blonde On Blonde. They're more problematical. The unreleased outtakes come to about 40 minutes. But they're not a full picture, even if we exclude concert performances. For Dylan's other compositions of the time, we need the two hotel tapes, from March in Denver and May in Glasgow. There's no ideal way to fit these onto two CDRs; maybe put all the studio stuff (and the "Tell Me Momma" demo) on one disc, the hotel tapes on the other. Fill out the first disc with a well-chosen selection of variant mixes, rather than haphazardly taking them from whatever's easily at hand. Ford is again an excellent reference.
OK, I've done the typing and occasional page-turning; somebody else can do the heavy lifting. I've even got a nice pair of titles for the discs: Volume 1 can be "A Long Haired Mule . . . " and Volume 2 ". . . And A Porkepine." A venerable Dylan phrase that I don't think has been used for titles before, and one that would make for interesting Ebay search results when the almost inevitable commercial/pirate editions followed.
Of course, the upcoming official 2-disc release of unreleased tracks from the Sony/Columbia vaults (and maybe elsewhere) could make this project obsolete pretty quickly.
=========================================
Just keep scrolling down for Part II; once again I'm too long-winded for a single post on my own message board!