Do you think? I like 'Love And Theft' but I must admit I'm not so interested in his later recordings. I will never dispute his genius, but there is a lack of energy in much of TOOM and beyond that I can't quite get along with. Of course, he's older and everything, but that has had an affect on his ability as a singer and how he pushes our emotional buttons. He can still write a great song - I just don't think he can get them across quite as well as he used to.
It appears that there will also be an extended 57 minute version to be broadcast on Monday on Radio Two at 22:00 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06hc0yy
That description has my mouth watering too. But thanks to last year's Basement Tapes set, we've already gotten to hear a fairly dead-on Dylan-as-Waits on "What's It Gonna Be When It Comes Up?" If only it wasn't chronologically impossible, I would have wondered if that song was a parody of Waits (obviously it's drawing on the same sort of boozy late night jazz/ beat poetry influences).
C'mon, let's be fair -- Knocked Out Loaded is a terrible album. And to be fair, most critics who blasted it cited "Brownsville Girl" as the highlight. But sure, I'd love a whole CD of the sessions for that song, spanning the original "New Danville Girl." If you love "Brownsville Girl" that much, there is a slightly different alternate mix on the Dylan greatest hits box. (Not the 1973 hatchet job, the 3-CD set from a few years ago.) EDIT: I see DeeThomaz beat me to it. Yes, the version on Dylan is an alternate mix -- not radically different, but if you love the song, it's worth hearing. (You can buy it on iTunes.)
I remember critics comparing KOL with Young's equally atrocious Landing On Water and saying how two giants had fallen, but which album was worse?
Anyone in for a 6CD set of Down In The Groove out-takes? He recorded shed loads for that album and spent half a year re-jigging the running order and changing the album cover. What a waste!
Wow, that's a bold statement. Honestly, I had totally forgotten what the side breaks were on KOL, but now I see that side 2 consists of "Brownsville Girl," "Got My Mind Made Up," and "Under Your Spell" -- and I can't argue with you. I like all three, and I've always had a soft spot for "Under Your Spell" despite 30 years of almost universal derision. I also like "Maybe Someday," for some reason.
Maybe Someday is Bob's little nod to Buddy Holly, don't you think? The song sounds like a Holly song to me, albeit Holly never lived long enough to write bitter lyrics to a lover.
I'm loving "It Takes A Lot To Laugh" Take 1 ("Phantom Engineer Number Cloudy"). That's got to be Dylan banging away on the black keys of the piano.
I have long lobbied for the 1983-1988 period to get the "Tell Tale Signs" treatment in the Bootleg Series. I think you'd need to anchor it with the Infidels sessions to give it some credibility as a commercial release, but I think there are gems galore to be discovered in the stripped down Empire Burlesqe sessions, the rocking sessions that Rolling Stone raved about in 1986 that somehow resulted in KOL, and all the stuff that didn't get onto DITG. I wouldn't want 6 CDs of ONLY Groove outtakes, but the broader period absolutely could be compiled into a satisfying 3-4 CD set. Highlights for me would be more of the Infidels stuff that didn't make BS1-3, the electric "Blind Willie McTell" (of course), "Angel Flying Too Close To The Ground" (the b-side from the sessions), "New Danville Girl," and "Band Of The Hand." There's a weird connective tissue between all these albums, with Infidels songs being re-written for Empire, EB outtakes ending up on KOL, KOL sessions morphing into the Hearts Of Fire sessions, HOF outtakes ending up on DITG, and finally, an Infidels outtake ending up on Groove. It's a weird period, to be sure, but it's definitely a "period" of its own.
It always struck me as a 1980s update of his famous '60s "put-down" songs ("4th Street," "Can You Please" etc.) Hate the production of the song, love the spite in the lyrics.
Actually, Sean, you might have a very valid point there. Whilst the albums are undeniably a bit of a mess and mostly lost causes there were some gems amongst them and some good songs scattered to the wind, whilst some material remains unreleased altogether. A box set might do better service to this period (especially stripped down takes / demos) than any of the original studio albums. Bob's 80's rejuvenated. Just imagine that!
It's amazing that such a lousy album can contain such great material, isn't it? Brownsville Girl makes my Dylan top 10 (for now; pending the '65-'66 material and subsequent digestion) and the other two tracks you mentioned are pretty strong. But my overall perception of that LP is that it sucks. Go figure.
Also, a Mid-80's box would allow Dylan to finally make good on the promise he made to Dave Alvin decades ago (regarding the early discarded r&b sessions, back when Bob was referring to the project as Self Portrait Volume Two): "I'm sorry, Dave, we didn't use any of that stuff, did we? But you know it's gonna come out one of these days, on one of those box sets!"
You forgot 'Bourbon Street.' Another song from the Basement era that sounds like Dylan accidentally invented Tom Waits's persona while he was down there.
Too large a period. 'Infidels' should (hopefully will) get a 3cd Bootleg Series box set release by itself. I do agree that there's probably room for a 1985-1988 2cd (or possibly 3cd) set though. I generally think more concentrated (and affordable) 3cd sets focussing on key albums is the way to go with future Bootleg Series releases for studio material. I'd like to see this for 'Oh Mercy' and 'Time Out Of Mind' as well - and contrary to what a lot of apparent scholars think, there is enough interesting unreleased material left in all instances to do these in a very worthwhile manner.
May way of coping with the waiting is to revisit the previous 11 bootleg series' - Started with 1-3 yesterday and plan to play them through in order
But "Bourbon Street" is more late period, post Swordfishtrombones Waits, while "What's It Gonna Be" and (apparently) the "Desolation Row" piano demo seem to ape his early years. He sorta mapped out Tom's entire career it seems.
Yeah. I sometimes wonder if Waits may have actually heard those songs at the time. There's an interview with him where he discusses Dylan as a formative influence and says how much he liked the sound of his bootlegs from the late sixties..... or something like that. He is definitely talking about songs from the Basement Tapes when you read it, but I have no idea whether those two songs were in circulation at that point.
Hey, if they can rehabilitate the Self Portrait period, they can do almost anything! I mean, if you're Jeff Rosen, BS12 is going to be a great project -- there's almost no way to screw it up, and it will be praised no matter what. But all it's really doing is reinforcing what we already know -- Bob was on FIRE in the mid-60s! -- with a staggering amount of evidence. But I have to imagine that something like Another Self Portrait was more SATISFYING -- because the horrid reputation of that period had been set in stone, and that box almost completely redeemed it. If you're the caretaker of Bob's archives -- and by extension, the public perception of his legacy -- isn't that the brass ring right there? For that reason alone, I think we will get Bootleg Series entries for some of the lowest points -- let's call them "misrepresented" -- of Bob's career. The Gospel Years for sure -- we already saw the thawing of the ice with the Gotta Serve Somebody tribute CD (which is terrific); and I think deeper looks at 1985-1988 AND 1990-1996 are warranted. When it comes to the future of the Bootleg Series, I take the two "overview" BS releases (1-3 and 8) and ask myself, "Which periods are skimmed over or ignored by these two sets?" -- and those are the more focused sets I expect eventually. There were only two Basement tracks on BS2, so it makes total sense that we got the "complete" set eventually. We only got a couple of "Country Bob" tracks on BS2, so ASP fills that gap. There were surprisingly few "Electric Bob" tracks on BS2, and that was addressed on BS7 and now forever cemented in BS12. There was only ONE Oh Mercy track on a set that purported to span through 1991 (BS3), so BS8 was basically the sequel to the first box. In turn, BS8 didn't touch the UTRS sessions and only gave us a handful of tracks from the acoustic covers / Bromberg sessions / Supper Club -- so don't be surprised if there is a set covering 1990-1993 in depth. I guess the best I can suggest is that those good songs are "great" in their context, but maybe not as great when put up against better tracks on better albums. I remember when the Doc Pomus tribute album came out in 1994, and the source talking to ICE Magazine about it went absolutely BONKERS about Bob's track ("Boogie Woogie Country Girl") -- saying it was his best vocal in decades, and oh! what an incredible track, etc. But that was back when we all wondered if Bob would EVER record a great track again; post-TOOM, those fears seem silly, and "Boogie Woogie" is a fine track, but he's recorded dozens that are as good or better since then. As for KOL, the beginning of that album is a mess, the production is often terrible (I'm looking at you, "Driftin' Too Far From Shore"), and Bob seems mostly lost. Side 2 seems like salvation in comparison. They would probably use that quote in the promotion of the box! Let's get on this one, Sony!
I don't agree that it's too large a period, and as I described above, I think there's a thread running through those albums that connects them. But I certainly wouldn't argue against a 3-CD set for Infidels alone -- as long as that set didn't kill the hopes for a 1985-1988 set. I would rather explore the relationship between all of them, though, so we could see how, for example, "Someone's Got A Hold Of My Heart" became "Tight Connection To My Heart" and all the old movie lines that ended up in both albums. Perhaps a 4-CD set that devoted a full 2 discs to Infidels, and the other two discs for the other three albums. Or, depending on how well the 6-CD set of BS12 sells, a 3-CD "best of" the period and a 6-CD "deep dive" into 1983-1988.
I'm fairly certain the GH3 version is the original KOL mix. The Dylan 3CD version is a different mix and does improve things somewhat, some of the 80's reverb has been toned down and Dylan's acoustic guitar is brought up in the mix. I've never been a fan of the rest of the album though.
I personally don't see a massive connection between what was recorded for/came out on 'Infidels' and what followed up to 1988. The Infidels songs were written by Dylan in 1983 in Jamaica, and you can hear that influence in them, as well as a common 'sound' there is a bit of a theme in all the songs which I mentioned before - the man/woman thing but also the ancient/modern. A 3 disc set with 2 CDs of early takes and alternates, and a 3rd remixed disc of Knopler's original sequence would be fitting. It would be doing Infidels a disservice to include the material recorded (especially as there is so much) with later material with a different feel, particularly the 'Rock 'n' Roll'/"Self Portrait II" material, not that I don't believe some of this is worthy of release, but 'Infidels' is very specifically one of those "could have been something else" records that, like "Self Portrait" and "Another Self Portrait", deserves a re-evaluation.
Great book, made me feel better about my own Bobsession by knowing that no matter how many bootlegs and live recordings you own there's always someone more crazy than you are!
