Bob Dylan: The 1966 Live Recordings - Sony 36-CD box-set - November 11th 2016

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Richard--W, Sep 27, 2016.

  1. notesfrom

    notesfrom Forum Resident

    Location:
    NC USA
    Hey, we're all on a time-travel trip. :yikes:

    Your 2-LP cover deserved some advance press, in retrospect.
     
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  2. Walking Antique

    Walking Antique Nothing is incomprehensible

    Location:
    usa
    A second "Judas" shout at Newcastle, to me, this is the most startling thing I’ve heard on the boxset. It seems some in the Newcastle audience must have read or heard about the “Judas” incident at Manchaster four days earlier. As Dylan is introducing “Leopard-Skin” one or more people yell “Judas” (mixed with “Boo”). Dylan says “You’re talking to the wrong person”. Then a little later at :38 Dylan laughingly says to the band ”It’s Judas again!” and, like an inside joke, he calmly intones: “Liar” and the band has a big laugh with that. Just before the song kicks in he says “Somebody call the press again.”
    How’s the saying go: first time as tragedy, the second time as farce?

     
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  3. inaptitude

    inaptitude Forum Resident

    It's funny to think of pre-internet times these days where it would have taken 4 days for an audience to repeat something from a previous show.
     
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  4. Catbirdman

    Catbirdman Forum Resident

    Forum member soniclovenoize has updated his fun-tastic "Albums That Never Were" blog, and 2017's first entry is an imagining of a soundtrack to the Eat The Document. Check it out:
    Albums That Never Were: Bob Dylan - Eat The Document Soundtrack »

    Side A
    1. Tell Me, Momma - Liverpool
    2. I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met) - Cardiff
    3. Ballad of a Thin Man - Newcastle
    4. Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues - Belfast

    Side B
    5. Mr. Tambourine Man - Newcastle
    6. Baby, Let Me Follow You Down - Liverpool
    7. One Too Many Mornings - Belfast
    8. Like a Rolling Stone - Liverpool
     
  5. DeeThomaz

    DeeThomaz Senior Member

    Location:
    In The Felony Room
    Ha! That's weirdly plausible. I will add it's not impossible that there could have been electric overdubs added to Mr. Tambourine Man. Though that was more of a Tom Wilson sort of thing (but not exclusively. Witness Self Portrait, but in Bob Johnson case, he seemed to be acting under Dylan's instruction). But I enjoy imagining these ridiculous possibilities.

    Also, it rests on the assumption Columbia would have utilized Alderson's tapes. Not impossible (given the "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" b-side) but not my instinct.
     
    Last edited: Jan 9, 2017
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  6. fangedesire

    fangedesire Well-Known Member

    I noticed that exchange too (though I didn't make out the "Judas," and apparently Heylin missed it too) - I think Dylan & the band had to have been reminded of Manchester, so they find it funny.

    However, I doubt that anyone in the Newcastle audience knew about the "Judas" shout at Manchester, though like other Dylan audiences they might've read that he was being booed elsewhere. The only known article where "Judas" was mentioned, I believe, was a letter in the Oldham Evening Chronicle - BUT, that wasn't printed until May 25. So there's nowhere they could have read it, nor is it likely the same protesters attended both concerts (and the cities are, in UK terms, not very close); so I think it's a coincidence.
     
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  7. fishcane

    fishcane Dirt Farmer

    Location:
    Finger Lakes,NY

    Its been my impression that the Judas shout was a common heckle and not limited to the singular incident throughout the tour. That one just happened to be loud and captured as well as responded to
     
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  8. Dflow

    Dflow Listening in the time of Dylan

    Very wicked find - lots of listens all around these parts and beyond and I don't recall anyone catching that heckle and response. Well done.
     
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  9. Six Bachelors

    Six Bachelors Troublemaking enthusiast

    Belfast - such contrasts between the acoustic and electric set, for me. In the acoustic set, at least up until the end of Desolation Row, Bob seems to phoning it in (by standards of the '66 tour), almost rushing parts of VOJ. Then, things take a turn for the better on JLAW, oddly, at the same time as a vinyl source seems to be used instead of Alderson's tape. No doubt this was discussed before but I missed it.

    The electric set is a different animal - he seems ready to take names from the start and doesn't stop menacing the room until the end. Perhaps the greater hostility, apparent on the tape, inspired him. Anyway, up to this point, chronologically, I feel that Belfast is the most focused, powerful and threatening set. Dublin acoustic and Belfast electric for me out of these two shows.
     
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  10. CrabbyPantalones

    CrabbyPantalones Active Member

    Location:
    Palmerton, PA
    You quoted the wrong person.
     
  11. Walking Antique

    Walking Antique Nothing is incomprehensible

    Location:
    usa
    CrabbyPantalones noticed it first. I listened to it with EQ and compression and it's possible to pick up on the other comments. He may be saying "It's Judas Iscariot" instead of "It's Judas again".
     
    Last edited: Jan 9, 2017
  12. Percy Song

    Percy Song A Hoity-Toity, High-End Client

    I’m delighted to report that Richard Alderson, my Unsung Hero Of The Year - no, make that Century, has responded with answers, some lengthy, some short, to the questions I put to him on behalf of the contributors here. He's given me permission to publish them; I just need to do a little bit of editing to remove some of the comments made in our various exchanges that are viewed as private.

    Watch this space. :)

    #
     
  13. Lucretius

    Lucretius Forum Resident

    Location:
    Cypress, TX
    :goodie:
     
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  14. Lucretius

    Lucretius Forum Resident

    Location:
    Cypress, TX
    A single Live LP would not have been enough songs. A double Live LP would have been perceived as a huge risk by releasing two double LPs by the same artist in a row. I wonder if these thoughts played a role in not releasing the RAH concert?
     
  15. matt79rome89

    matt79rome89 Forum Resident

    Unless I'm missing something I don't think it was ever close to being released although they professionally recorded it.
     
  16. Walking Antique

    Walking Antique Nothing is incomprehensible

    Location:
    usa
    For a live LP in 1966, I would have concentrated on new arrangements (solo versions of electric songs and electric versions of solo songs) with a new song and a couple of hits thrown in, rearranged for better flow.

    Bob Dylan “Now It Goes Like This”

    Side A
    1. Mr. Tambourine Man
    2. Fourth Time Around
    3. Visions of Johanna
    4. Just Like a Woman

    Side B
    1. Tell Me, Momma
    2. Baby, Let Me Follow You Down
    3. I Don't Believe You
    4. One Too Many Mornings
    5. Like a Rolling Stone
     
  17. The Bard

    The Bard Highway 61 Revisited. That is all.

    Location:
    Singapore
    If Bob got a say in it, then I think he'd want it to be a single LP .. electric only.
     
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  18. Mbd77

    Mbd77 Collect ‘Em All!

    Location:
    London
    They planned to release it in 1974 on Columbia after Dylan defected to Geffen's label.
    Obviously now as we know Dylan went back to Columbia, so the only archive release from this time was the 'Dylan (A Fool Such As I)' album.

    Interesting to think what Columbia would have doubtlessly continued to release had Dylan not gone back to them. You'd have had new material from Dylan being released on Asylum and archive releases from Columbia going on at the same time without Dylan's say so.

    Could've been interesting!
     
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  19. jamesmaya

    jamesmaya Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    :righton: I like this! :agree:
     
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  20. Percy Song

    Percy Song A Hoity-Toity, High-End Client

    :) Richard Alderson Answers Some of Your Questions. :)


    (A RATHER LONG) PREAMBLE AND PART ONE.

    Such was Richard’s generosity to me with his time and his memories and his comments (attachments even!) that the email exchanges between us will be reported over more than one post to keep them at a manageable length and to give me time to do a bit more editing of the planned latter parts. Firstly, please allow me to explain the process of our correspondence and its resulting transcription.

    I emailed Richard with eight questions culled from your suggestions. He initially replied via his “Inter-Galactic Space-Time Transceiver” with mostly brief one- line answers (clearly a busy man) and I thanked him for responding. At that point all the questions were about 10 times longer than the answers! I was pleasantly surprised when his next two emails expanded on some of his original answers and also contained some further comments and observations outwith the original eight questions, including some memories of The Gaslight days. I hope you detect in the resulting edited texts, as I did in all our correspondence, Richard’s candour, warmth and wit that is in evidence in the filmed interviews with him that we’ve seen thus far.

    To present the texts coherently for you, I’ve combined the answers to each question from all the emails so it reads like a single Q&A session, a conversation or an interview if you will, which it wasn’t. The first sentence of each answer is the initial response I received. Subsequent sentences, if they exist, are the expansions from later emails.

    At least for now I’ve decided to exclude plenty of text (mostly mine) which, while not strictly private and certainly not vetoed by Richard, doesn’t really add to the conversation but rather sits orphaned or unresolved in the exchanges we had. I’ve added some punctuation where I thought it was necessary, turned a few lower case letters into upper case, and added an occasional linking word or two [in square brackets…] to clarify the context of a sentence or partial sentence. Everything else has been extracted by cutting and pasting relevant sections directly from the original emails, with Richard’s permission. There’s no revisionism here; it is what it was.

    Finally, let me say this upfront: I’m a technical imbecile, although oddly enough I spent a college summer holiday in 1971 working in an independent recording studio in London. I make very good tea, by the way and know how acetates were cut in those days. All of you would laugh your socks off and then run me out of town if you knew what I employ to listen to my CD collection. (Cryptic clue: It's 15 years old and covered in household paint. I think it’s called a “boombox” and it costs £20 in a supermarket). I don’t know one end of an omnidirectional microphone from the other so when Richard lists some of the sound equipment, for example, I’m happy with his description, and take it at face value. I know too little to argue or to judge. (This particular answer, serendipitously, can also be viewed as complementary to the one received by the mighty, and clearly tech-savvy, “notesfrom” earlier in this thread.)


    For presentation purposes, my text is in this normal type. Richard’s is in this italic type. So, I hope you find something to enjoy in…


    Part One: The First Five Questions.


    There’s a bunch of contributors to The Steve Hoffman Music Forum who have been discussing and enjoying your Bob Dylan 1966 Live Recordings since the release announcement. I’ve no doubt you have been pestered for many interviews and comments since your pivotal role became apparent, but I hope you will be kind enough to answer a few, mostly technical, questions raised by members which I’ve listed below. Even if you choose not to, please let me extend to you our heartfelt thanks for your remarkable contribution(s) to the documentation of that tour.

    The artwork on the CD sleeves indicates that you recorded the shows at 7.5 ips. Forum sleuths have suggested that 15 ips. on 1200’ reels was more likely, given the apparent timing of the reel changes during shows.


    They were recorded at 7 1/2 ips which was a good sounding speed on a Nagra. You can plainly see the reel on the Nagra in the hotel room shot from the interview video Sony made of me (with filmed outtakes from the tour); you can also see that it's turning at 7 1/2 in the film. If you go to the Sony video interview: at 6 minutes 30 seconds in, you will see clearly the Nagra with a 7" reel running at 7 1/2 ips - that's it, babe!


    [Below: Attachment from Richard - a still from "The Untold Story..." promo video showing the Nagra reels in the hotel room.]

    [​IMG]


    The reels at the hotel recording were seen and noted, but there was just a suggestion that you might have recorded the actual shows at 15 i.p.s. The 7 1/2 i.p.s. tapes certainly do sound good.

    Do you know whether any of your tapes were “patched” using other tapes made by film crew members? (One potential example being the first minute and of a half of the Dublin acoustic set, where audience member dialogue is prevalent and Dylan’s vocal and guitar are relatively distant.)


    No idea what anyone might have done to those tapes after I turned them over.



    Were your original tapes used for the “nightly ritual” of the band listening back to the shows, or did you create dubs or splice on to larger reels for that purpose? (The Mickey Jones Home Movies DVD contains a photo, below, of a reel and box, apparently of the Liverpool electric set, that Mickey claimed to own. Would this have been something that you put together for him, and/or for other members of the band?)



    [​IMG]


    Only the originals were listened to. Maybe somebody made that big reel copy somehow. I have no idea where that big reel came from in the picture - never had any large hub metal reels on the tour. It is possible that he [Mickey] somehow got his hands on the Liverpool tapes and had copies made when we were on tour. They definitely aren’t my originals in that picture.


    There was quite a bit of scepticism about Mickey's reel in any case, so no big surprise there; but he contributed a whole lot of energy to the music, I think.

    Clinton Heylin in “Judas” indicates that Columbia employed an overhead microphone at Manchester specifically to capture the ambient noise of the hall(s) / audience. Did you also do this at the concerts for your recordings? It is understood that you used 10 microphones. The best guess during discussion at the forum was that 9 were used for the instruments/musicians (1x Bob vocal, 1x Bob guitar, 1x Robbie guitar, 1x Rick bass, 1x Garth organ, 1x Richard piano, 1x Bob vocal piano, 2 x Mickey drums) potentially leaving one for the house.


    I never used any audience mic. One U-67
    [Neumann condenser mic?] was used for Mickey. I am hoping that amongst all the outtakes of film there are some shots of the gear. If my memory is correct there were 2 Altec 1567 mixers and a LA 2a compressor. The hook up would have been: bass, drums, piano, organ, & Robbie guitar in one mixer, and Bob’s vocal and guitar in the other with the compressor in line. The combination would have been a high quality audio transformer. The tape feed would have been the tape outs of the mixers, again combined with an audio transformer. The 1567 has five main channels and a tape out which bypasses the volume and eq. Probably Sennheiser 421’s or 441’s on the instruments, with a Sennheiser MKH 404 on Bob.

    I would like to see all the footage Howard Alk shot of the tour, hoping that there are more shots of the gear. Only my memories […..] and a few shots of Dylan's mics, the 2 stage 604's, Mickey's U67, and the Nagra are all we've seen. No one has determined exactly what happened to the Australian system (or why exactly Grossman had me fly back to NYC and build a duplicate system for Europe), nor what happened to that duplicate European system either.


    [Below: Attachment from Richard - a still from "The Untold Story..." promo film showing Mickey's condenser mic.]

    [​IMG]



    Were you aware during the Hawaii and Australian legs of the tour that you would be recording the shows on the European leg, or was the Nagra just thrust in your direction when Pennebaker’s crew arrived on the scene? (If the latter, I hope you negotiated an additional fee for this priceless additional service…!)


    I think I was paid something extra for the taping.



    END OF PART ONE

    Part Two (with very little preamble, I hope!) will follow in the next couple of days...

    #

     
  21. Lucretius

    Lucretius Forum Resident

    Location:
    Cypress, TX


    :righton:
     
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  22. Dave Gilmour's Cat

    Dave Gilmour's Cat Forum Resident

    Terrifc stuff. Thanks so much for doing this.
     
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  23. Lucretius

    Lucretius Forum Resident

    Location:
    Cypress, TX
    I just noticed that the first song on Mickey Jones's reel is "What's Wrong with You This Time." ;)
     
  24. aoxomoxoa

    aoxomoxoa I'm an ear sitting in the sky

    Location:
    USA
    And also "Mr Jones" is a title instead of Ballad of a Thin Man.
     
  25. RayS

    RayS A Little Bit Older and a Little Bit Slower

    Location:
    Out of My Element
    Thank you so much for undertaking this and sharing it so liberally. You are a gentleman and a scholar. :)

    He was THERE, so he certainly knows what reel size and tape speed he was using. But 7 inch reels (meaning 1200 feet of tape) running at 7.5 have room for 32 minutes of music. That's one reel change per set, and there'd be no way we'd have all the cuts that we do. Or am I missing something?
     

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