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. Lucretius

    Lucretius Forum Resident

    Location:
    Cypress, TX
    It's kind of interesting that both Dylan and the Beatles stopped touring in 1966. This wasn't unprecedented (Elvis had done so), but from a show business perspective, it must have seemed quite insane. The most popular musicians refusing to rake in the cash at the height of their success? At least Elvis had a good excuse (movies). It was a given in the music industry that since your record royalty was only 2 cents a single, you make your money touring, not through hit records.
     
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  2. posnera

    posnera Forum Resident

    You should read Hunter S. Thompson's Hells Angels and also Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool Aid Acid Test for two takes on the Hells Angels. At the time, they were seen as another counterculture group.
     
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  3. RandPink

    RandPink Active Member

    Location:
    XX
    Last set of notes. again tried to get the Dylan quotes as close as possible.

    San Jose backstage intermission recording:

    Robbie is jamming/warming up on unplugged electric guitar.

    Dylan: "When I get off that f***ing stage I'm going straight to the hotel room, take a shower, I need 5 or 10 minutes before they start coming over. We're staying just across the street."

    Dylan: "What you're seeing now is a pretty typical concert. Last night you saw one that was, you know, I dug it that San Francisco and I sort of felt who they where out there. And you are at a typical concert now tonight, this could be anywhere."

    Dylan: "Did you see all those people come up to the f***ing stage to take pictures? That disturbs me. I don't give a f*** if you take pictures, but when you come right up to the f***ing stage, really I wasn't kidding I don't have any friendship at all for them. They didn't have enough cops to cover it. And I really dislike having cops in front of me when I sing, cause that happens and that's just a farce. But that's the only way you can do it in these places."

    Ginsberg: maybe have the venue put an advance notice up to help control it.

    Dylan: "It doesn't matter cause they just don't give a f***, and it's beyond any kind of control and I really don't care, I don't care, actually. it's just very disappointing."

    Ginsburg: in between songs can you mention to the audience please don't come up to the stage because it breaks my concentration?

    Dylan: "No I don't like doing that. It'll make them angry"

    Ginsburg: just say the flash bulbs distract me can't you please stop

    Dylan: "No, I can't say that, because the only thought I got in my mind is to get all the songs, and I do it man. I do it much better than I used to."



    Dylan: "Even when I can't sing, when I got no voice, I can still do enough sh** to cover it."


    Robertson is tuning up again. He hasn't said a word.


    Dylan keeps repeating that this is a typical concert tonight


    There is a Ron Boise sculpture calendar the room and Dylan really wants it "I got to keep it, I got to"




    Ginsburg asks Bob about the audience out there tonight.

    Dylan: "I'm not even thinking about them, where I actually did think about the San Francisco audience and the Berkeley nights, and know I'm going to think about the Santa Monica one."

    Ginsberg: what's your next show after this?

    Dylan: "Long Beach but that's going to be typical, I think that's going to be typical."
    "But this one tonight I don't know man, I don't feel like I know anybody out there.
    It's different when you know people out there. I don't know why it's different it just is."



    Ginsburg: if you want the people to accept you...

    Dylan: "It doesn't bother me, they don't have to accept me, you know that. And we are going to play music for them now and if they dig it, fine. We're gonna do what we are here for. I don't know what they are here for. I know why I am here, that's the least I can expect from them, but you never get it."

    Ginsburg: do you feel ashamed of your voice?

    "No, I don't feel Ashamed, should I? We all can't be blessed with beautiful voices. If you read all my biographies and interviews I never claimed that I had a voice. But it's gonna come though this time, you're gonna hear it, I'm gonna hit everything, all the high notes are going to be there."



    Dylan: Let's listen to rest of that tape. If you can do more after show if you can, and take your time out there. Have you heard the tape?, fantastic tape man. It's very long but let's take it from where we left off.

    (He's talking about the pre show fan interaction tape, and he is asking Ginsberg to get post show interviews with the fans)


    Dylan: Is it almost time to go on?

    backstage tape ends and straight into Tombstone Blues
     
  4. Percy Song

    Percy Song A Hoity-Toity, High-End Client


    Huge thanks for doing these transcriptions of your notes!
     
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  5. Thank you very much for sharing this very valuable information, RandPink!
    I've had the "Berkeley" tape for at least 20 years and it's always been a personal favorite. I saw it as a kind of missing link between Hollywood Bowl and the well known April/May 1966 recordings, in decent sound quality (I was not familiar with the February 1966 tapes until fairly recently). Now I want to hear the complete San José show and the SF show. And all the backstage chatter, of course. Well, I guess I'll have to wait and if the tapes never leak, we will at least have RandPink's detailed notes.
     
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  6. Am I and Dee Thomaz the only ones who thinks this is a huge scoop, worthy of headlines?
     
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  7. Richard--W

    Richard--W Forum Resident Thread Starter

    It is definitely a huge scoop, worthy of not only headlines, but of an immediate and urgent hard-media release in the same box-set as the rest of the 1965 concerts.
     
  8. bluesbro

    bluesbro Forum Hall of Shame

    Location:
    DC
    That post should be its own thread
     
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  9. brianvargo

    brianvargo Senior Member

    Location:
    San Diego, CA
    No.
     
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  10. notesfrom

    notesfrom Forum Resident

    Location:
    NC USA
    20 lbs of...
     
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  11. RandPink

    RandPink Active Member

    Location:
    XX
    No problem. "Berkeley" always one of my favorites over the years as well. Was Interesting to hear it under the new context - with Dylan coming off a fresh rant about the crowd and how it was just a typical concert...then goes back out on stage and still gives that quality of a performance.

    Not sure where everyone ranks "Gates of Eden" on Dylan's best songs list. I always personally held it as just a solid early work but nothing overly special. That has changed for me with these SJ and SF versions...jumps up the list now. The only other recorded version within a few months is from Hartford '65, which I re-listened to. It does not compare.


    Some SJ acoustic notes:

    'Baby Blue' has a drop out in the middle. maybe 1 minute of the song is not there. Ginsberg let's out a "beautiful" after this song.

    The familiar "This never happens to my electric guitar" line while tuning before Love minus Zero. Crowd laughs. Great version.

    TamMan has slight drop out on last harp solo.


    SF acoustic notes:

    "Love minus Zero" opening strumming has one audience memeber clapping loud to which Dylan jokingly responds:
    "How do you know what this is?"
    ~audience laughs
    "I mean I could just be up here folling around"
    More Laughs
    ~great version

    Visions
    ~opens with long harp solo
    ~"ain't it just like the night to play games when trying..."
    ~"He boasts of his misery..."

    The SF acoustic set is unique.


    SF electric set performance is like the SJ set but with a more amped up Dylan. However, SJ sound quality is better.

    No, the SF "it ain't me babe" robbie guitar solo is not as good as in the SJ show, that was never going to be topped.
     
  12. fangedesire

    fangedesire Well-Known Member

    I asked one & a half years ago if anyone would listen to the tapes at Stanford.... It's great that someone finally did! The tape contents surpassed expectations, and I'm glad you were a diligent note-taker.
    It is bizarre that no Dylan scholar has written much of anything about these Ginsberg recordings before (Heylin didn't say much; no ISIS article or anything that I know of). On top of their being left off the 1965 Copyright Collection, it's like a strange veil of silence was drawn over tapes that have been sitting right in a public library for years.
     
  13. masswriter

    masswriter Minister At Large

    Location:
    New England
    I'm doing work for Ginsberg estate, I'll ask about these.
     
  14. JohnS

    JohnS Senior Member

    Location:
    London, UK
    Another very excited format here thrilled to read about this discovery and new information. It just goes to show that new stuff can still surface. You can't help thinking what/when will the next one be?!
    The 'Berkley 65' boot was one of my holy grails years ago, after I found that 'Long Distance Operator' was another 'Tell Me Momma' so to speak - played live only, never laid down in the studio (by Bob and band)
    I'd kicked myself repeatedly after seeing the Wanted Man boot CD 'Long Distance Operator' in Revolver Records in NYC - and passing on it in favour of a (shoddy home-made) CDR of the Hollywood Bowl 65 show. I read the tracklist and thought, " 'Long Distance Operator'? Never heard of it - that's GOT be a bootlegger's made-up song title, trying to scam the buyer cos it's clearly all standard '65 live songs" !
    I had to wait a few more years before I got lucky(!) and found a used copy of the Great Dane '1965 Revisited' box set - the bulk of which I had already, but I bought the thing JUST to hear that 'Berkley' show and 'Long Distance Operator'
    I still love it. Wherever it was recorded!
     
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  15. Walking Antique

    Walking Antique Nothing is incomprehensible

    Location:
    usa
    So, then, anybody with a tape of the stuff that was left off could legally release it without Dylan's permission?
     
  16. DeeThomaz

    DeeThomaz Senior Member

    Location:
    In The Felony Room
    This story rings very true to my own experience. Wild times, huh, when information about bootlegs was so scarce (usually the province of obscure fanzines and privately published books) and the availability of specific titles themselves even rarer. You really did have to make a lot of snap judgments when you were holding it in your hand as it seemed quite likely you'd never see a particular title again.

    I also had the mind-blowing experience of visiting Revolver in the mid-90's, back when finding CD bootlegs at my local MPLS record shops was incredibly unusual. As I recall, all their stock was $20 per disc and they had a constant line of people handing over handfuls of cash (no check or credit cards accepted, to the best of my memory).
     
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  17. DeeThomaz

    DeeThomaz Senior Member

    Location:
    In The Felony Room
    That's my understanding too. The flipside being that someone else can reissue it immediately afterwards as well. Which is why it doesn't seem to make much sense for big record companies to dip into their archives after 50 years, though it might work for small-time entrepeneurs looking for a quick buck.
     
  18. Walking Antique

    Walking Antique Nothing is incomprehensible

    Location:
    usa
    Right. But since it's the Stanford Library that has the master, maybe they could be convinced that it would fit their mission as a non-profit educational organization to make it available. It would make a heckuva a Friends Of The Library membership incentive.
     
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  19. DeeThomaz

    DeeThomaz Senior Member

    Location:
    In The Felony Room
    We think alike.
     
  20. Richard--W

    Richard--W Forum Resident Thread Starter

    I'd rather the Dylan organization see the Light and simply re-issue Live 1965, updated and reinforced with additional material, and properly mastered, in hard media form. 1965 Live needs a CD box-set exactly like 1966 Live. There is every reason to do it and no reason not to.

    Bob Dylan -- Live 1965 - U.K. tour poll

    If fans like you folks on this forum started calling for it, it would happen.
     
  21. DeeThomaz

    DeeThomaz Senior Member

    Location:
    In The Felony Room
    I don't know the financial details. But the 1966 set SEEMS to have been a big success. A 1965 set might make sense. I mean, I'd buy it. The earlier download might complicate it.
     
  22. Tim Wilson

    Tim Wilson Forum Resident

    Location:
    Kaneohe, Oahu, HI
    Not for me. I honestly DO think of the downloads as a genuine freebie with Big Blue. I got my money's worth out of the studio stuff, plus the leopardskin spindle :laugh: so I don't feel that I've paid anything for the 65 shows yet.

    The 1966 box is the perfect compromise between insanity and a sustainable level of mental health, too, :laugh: easily replicated for 1965. I'd gladly drop another $100-ish for higher quality, on disc, nice context from the book or books included with it (none of that came with the downloads of course), plus the added hook of these new shows.

    I also think that there's a whole bunch of folks who passed on the massive Big Blue, but found the 1966 box worth jumping on, who'll be newly enticeable for a similar '65 box. That's a much, much larger audience than the folks who spent many hundreds on a giant box who'll not want to go back to the well, which again, I think is a super small circle on the Venn Diagram of Bob Box Mania. The combination of this box and Big Blue make me want a proper dozens-of-disks 1965 box more than ever!
     
  23. Richard--W

    Richard--W Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Everyone who wanted Live 1966 will buy Live 1965 on hard media, especially now that there is more to put in it. They go together. The Cutting Edge box-set will not be complete until Dylan drops the other shoe.
     
  24. revolution_vanderbilt

    revolution_vanderbilt Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York
    If a box set was made that replicated the downloads, I'd consider getting it.

    If a box set was made that included all the same material as the downloads, but unedited, I'd definitely get it, if not necessarily immediately.

    If a box set was made that included everything unedited, plus this "new" material, it would be an instant pre-order!
     
  25. The Bard

    The Bard Highway 61 Revisited. That is all.

    Location:
    Singapore
    All of the above. Im available just to have a monthly direct debit going out to Sony tbqh.
    It just saves everyone the trouble and its harder for my wife to spot.
     

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