Bob Dylan - Bootleg Series Vol. XII "The Cutting Edge"*

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Abbey Road, Oct 16, 2014.

  1. Thelonious_Cube

    Thelonious_Cube Epistrophe of Light

    Location:
    Oakland, CA
    Perhaps even then they were thinking not just of BoB, but of the whole trilogy
     
  2. RayS

    RayS A Little Bit Older and a Little Bit Slower

    Location:
    Out of My Element
    As some of you know, every once in a while I like to do a lyric interpretation thread (recent candidates include "I And I" and "Dark Eyes"). I thought I might pick one of the songs from the "trilogy" for this treatment, and I was going to go with "Like a Rolling Stone". But then I thought perhaps this song is too straight forward to warrant such a thread. Anyway, I wanted to share my "revelation" about the lyrics (which I may have shared before for all I know, I can't keep track). When teaching literature courses I've used rock songs as an "entre" into certain themes or time periods. I used "Like a Rolling Stone" as the lead-in to Kerouac's "On the Road". Though there's nothing overt, I've always heard echoes of "OTR" in "LARS" (well, not always, since I heard the song a good 10 years before I read the book). Anyway, leading a discussion on the two pieces changed my perception of "LARS" forever. I had always thought of "LARS" strictly as a "put down" song - four verses full of good swift kicks while the princess was down. But in terms of "OTR", Sal and Dean would consider the princess to be lucky. She was a walking antique and now she's ALIVE. Better to be authentic and not know where your next meal is coming from than to be safely ensconced and have no one tell you where its at while they do tricks for your entertainment. When you've got "everything", you've got everything to lose. Sal and Dean don't envy the people who have "got it made", they feel sorry for them.

    This thread may not be the place for this, or it may be exactly the place for this. Apologies if I made the wrong choice.
     
  3. notesfrom

    notesfrom Forum Resident

    Location:
    NC USA
    Hargus 'Pig' Robbins is the piano player for the Nashville Blonde On Blonde sessions (everything besides 'One Of Us Must Know').

    Griffin's work on 'One Of Us Must Know', though, is phenomenal. He plays some rhythmy block chords in the verses and then goes crazy melodic in a higher register during the soaring choruses, completely underpinning great Bob's singing. By the last chorus he's just toying with the melody in a total change-up, but it works anyway. Can't wait to hear what he does in the early takes of the song.

    He's also the sound playing on 'Like A Rolling Stone', 'American Pie', and other classics. Ironically, he muffs a simple passage on 'LARS'.

    From his New York Times obituary:

    'Mr. Griffin played for thousands of recording sessions. He was a keyboardist on Bob Dylan's albums ''Highway 61 Revisited'' and ''Blonde on Blonde''; Steely Dan's albums ''The Royal Scam,'' ''Aja'' and ''Gaucho''; Don McLean's ''American Pie''; the Isley Brothers' ''Twist and Shout''; Aretha Franklin's ''Think''; the Shirelles' ''Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?''; and on all the albums Burt Bacharach and Hal David made with Dionne Warwick. His tack piano is heard in ''Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head.''...'

    http://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/25/n...pianist-for-a-multitude-of-pop-musicians.html
     
  4. RayS

    RayS A Little Bit Older and a Little Bit Slower

    Location:
    Out of My Element
    You can hear a lot more of the piano in this mix, IMO.

     
  5. Claudio Dirani

    Claudio Dirani A Fly On Apple's Wall

    Location:
    São Paulo, Brazil
    Good one.
    My thoughts on LARS are that the lyrics are addressed to Dylan himself. Of course, not the whole song,as lyrics can be made out of random thoughts as well. But that's my take.
    He was distressed, tired and feeling uselles - with no direction at all, after spending months on the road singing about things he no longer cared about.
     
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  6. notesfrom

    notesfrom Forum Resident

    Location:
    NC USA
    I've heard in the past that the song was about Edie Sedgwick. The whole 'pawn' the 'diamond ring' thing. But the song - as originally written and not reinterpreted by Dylan afterward - is definitely about a woman.

    Sometimes it is the innocent bystanders in our lives that can give pinpoint insight into what songs might mean, beyond what we think we know about them already. For instance, 'Like A Rolling Stone' was playing in my house several years back, and we weren't really 'listening' to it, but it was playing, and my wife says just offhand while walking by where I"m sitting, 'He must have really loved her, to have written this song about her'... Now, she didn't even pretend to know who it was about, just that it was about a woman, and that Dylan had to have had very strong feelings for her to have scrawled out such an epic for her, whatever mixed emotions or loves were channeled into a venomous 'Dear Miss'.
     
  7. RayS

    RayS A Little Bit Older and a Little Bit Slower

    Location:
    Out of My Element
    If the song is based on an experience with someone he loved, then Bob was falling in love an awful lot during this time. Joan, Sara, Edie ... could he have cared so much in such a short a period of time with so much going on, or could he have used a lesser real life experiences as a leaping off point for a great piece of songwriting?
     
  8. Thelonious_Cube

    Thelonious_Cube Epistrophe of Light

    Location:
    Oakland, CA
    I came to a similar interpretation through the Jimi Hendrix version. He never struck me as much of a "put down" guy and everything seemed (to me, at least) to be about the psychedelic trip. Seeing the song as a celebration of being free of "straight society" (and, indeed, of rationality) that also acknowledges the terrors associated with that freedom seemed a natural interpretation in that context. At the time I found Dylan's version (and Dylan generally) too bitter for my West Coast hippie ears.

    Even now I see the song as being more about growing up and leaving the nest than about a put-down of any particular person
     
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  9. notesfrom

    notesfrom Forum Resident

    Location:
    NC USA
    Either, really, I'd say.

    For his writing, he could easily compartmentalize one relationship and zero in and expound on the details and emotions of that, especially if that one relationship was perhaps the more passionate of them all, even while being the most volatile.

    The song seems to be focused on a individual, and sort of going through all the drawers in the person's chest and throwing their contents onto the floor.

    At the same time, what results from the original inspiration can shift by the time a song is done being written, to be about something more universal, even to the writer.
     
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  10. RayS

    RayS A Little Bit Older and a Little Bit Slower

    Location:
    Out of My Element
    I hadn't really thoight of the Hendrix version but I think you are spot on. Jimi's version is about liberation, not put down. Perhaps Bob's is put down on the surface with the counter culture liberation just beneath the surface. In a strange way, this song has an allegiance with "When the Ship Comes In".
     
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  11. Claudio Dirani

    Claudio Dirani A Fly On Apple's Wall

    Location:
    São Paulo, Brazil

    All my songs are protest songs... That's all I do: protest" Dylan, Bob ;)
     
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  12. JimC

    JimC Senior Member

    Location:
    Illinois
    I may be a bit too immersed in all things Dylan with this upcoming release...I just read the bolded words from Ray's post as "Aaas SOME of youuu KNOW..." Directly from an alternate world where it's part of Blonde on Blonde.
     
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  13. posnera

    posnera Forum Resident

    Nah. He was always more of a song and dance man.
     
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  14. posnera

    posnera Forum Resident

    I love the Hendrix version. I agree that it takes on a more defiant tone and may represent a different interpretation of the lyrics.
    In my opinion, this is Hendrix's masterpiece of a Dylan song. Way better than Watchtower.
     
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  15. RayS

    RayS A Little Bit Older and a Little Bit Slower

    Location:
    Out of My Element
    Unfortunately he gets the words wrong to both of them. Yes, I know most of the world doesn't care. :)
     
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  16. marmil

    marmil It's such a long story...

    One of the best LPs ever!!!
     
  17. marmil

    marmil It's such a long story...

    If Lester being dead is a problem for you, try Richard Meltzer or Nick Tosches (both not dead).
     
  18. paidinblood

    paidinblood Forum Resident

    Wasn't this mix on a Japanese release years ago?
     
  19. paidinblood

    paidinblood Forum Resident

    Ah. The first part of the information had not scrolled down. My memory isn't completely gone then.
     
  20. fangedesire

    fangedesire Well-Known Member

    That's so elegant... It makes me wish that, instead of isolated tracks for a couple songs on the new set, they'd included a couple discs of instrumental master takes without the vocal.
     
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  21. fangedesire

    fangedesire Well-Known Member

    There was some discussion of this a while back:
    http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threa...tting-edge-11-6.387120/page-143#post-13078861

    We're not sure, but it seems more likely the BS7 version was the 13 January "take 2 remake." We'll know when we hear them!
     
  22. lschwart

    lschwart Senior Member

    Location:
    Richmond, VA
    I have to say, it really makes you appreciate Dylan's genius as a singer. I don't think anyone could have imagined and executed the singing Dylan does over that ensemble--the way he rides the rising and falling tension of the chords and the constantly shifting syncopations in the rhythmic texture of the thing. I can sing his lines because I learned them from the record, but I can't fathom how he found them or how he just kept throwing himself into wave after wave of the thing with so much abandon and mastery to achieve them.

    It's shocking, really, when you try to imagine that thing emerging out of a world in which nothing quite like it had ever existed. I have a much easier time imagining him writing the lyric and coming up with the basic music of the song. And I can even imagine how they put the thing together in the studio, once the frame of the lyric and melody was in place. But I can't for the life of me imagine how he came up with the idea of singing it like that and how he actually did it in the swell and rush of all that sound.

    L.
     
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  23. Thelonious_Cube

    Thelonious_Cube Epistrophe of Light

    Location:
    Oakland, CA
    True.

    There were some great Dead concerts in the 80's, too
     
  24. fangedesire

    fangedesire Well-Known Member

    It's even harder to imagine when you hear the rough earlier takes, which all collapse. The right performance came out of nowhere.
     
  25. Mbd77

    Mbd77 Collect ‘Em All!

    Location:
    London
    ive lost where it is in this thread, but I just wanted to say thank you to the member who uploaded the .PDF with the song list.
     
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