Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes - where we're currently at (Part 6)

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by hodgo, Nov 8, 2014.

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  1. Koabac

    Koabac Self-Titled

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    Argh! I'm so busy at work the past week I haven't been able to keep up with this thread. I keep refreshing and it's jumped 6 pages. It's like a television show you're forced to binge watch on Netflix when you get a moment to catch up. Someone should seriously collect and publish this thing. Great stuff guys!
     
  2. TeddyB

    TeddyB Senior Member

    Location:
    Hollywoodland
    Wild Wolf has finally got me in its jaws. It's the slower cousin to Wheel's On Fire. That's high praise.
     
  3. Feat21

    Feat21 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Boston, MA, USA
    I feel the same way. But SERIOUSLY... if this is the Complete set, where is the other take of Wild Wolf? Come on.
     
  4. Terry

    Terry Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee
    Discs 3 &4 are my favs thus far. Not feeling disc 1.
     
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  5. Feat21

    Feat21 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Boston, MA, USA
    I will say that I love the box set after listening for a week straight. And I really enjoy the creative reasoning used for sequencing the tracks the way they did. While I appreciate folks who want strictly chronological tracklists, which I have done constantly for archival/live tracks of The Band's work, I think the BT are unique and really benefit from a kind of thematic arc to the discs. "Edge Of The Ocean" is a perfect first track, you're literally at the shore of a huge ocean of music to dive into. The final track "Confidential" with the Floyd & Lloyd outro is brilliant... just a fantastic ending to the box. And throughout, although some may dislike the edits, there's great commentary from Bob on The Band. "Whaddya say we hear some of that, Garth?" or calling out Rick for a bass solo in "Whatcha Gonna Do When It Comes Up" and both encouraging Richard Manuel ("One Too Many Mornings", "Bring It On Home" where Bob says 'Take a verse, any song' and RM answers 'Nah I can't add lib like you do') and admiring his abilities ("look at Richard pounding the piss out of that piano!")
     
  6. Feat21

    Feat21 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Boston, MA, USA
    Also, I truly love Disc 6 ("Bonus"). The early song ideas are cool, but there's so many beautiful BEAUTIFUL lost gems! Down By The Station, Hallelujah I've Just Been Moved, That's The Breaks, Pretty Mary, Will The Circle Be Unbroken, She's On My Mind Again, Going Down The Road Feeling Bad...
     
  7. Mike D'Aversa

    Mike D'Aversa Senior Member

    People keep complaining about this but,

    1. We only have Griffin claiming there are two takes

    (and, even if true)

    2. The one we don't have is the first take. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm not sure I want a more ramshackle/less rehearsed version of this, otherwise, great song...
     
  8. Mike D'Aversa

    Mike D'Aversa Senior Member

    So if one of you is hearing this on take 1, and the other on take 3, can we assume it is also on take 2?

    And, by extension, is it a part of that entire reel?
     
  9. fangedesire

    fangedesire Well-Known Member

    True, it's almost impossible to put into words how much meaning Dylan is conveying through his singing, regardless of the lyrics.

    Only Dylan would leave a song like this unreleased for almost 50 years as just a tossed-off throwaway...
     
  10. Mike D'Aversa

    Mike D'Aversa Senior Member

    Wait.

    Wouldn't the fact that he actually did become a fundamentalist Christian seem to argue that it's actually less likely that he "mocking", than it is the other way around?

    Seems, to me, a rather strange/"circular" logic with which to make such a conclusion...
     
  11. fangedesire

    fangedesire Well-Known Member

    I'm also suspicious of several of the songs Griffin says there are two takes for... I think sometimes he might've made a mistake when he had two different copies of a song. No way to tell unless someone else checks the reels.
    Actually there are several cases where the first take is the more enthusiastic one, and the second take is more sedate, or done in a lower key.
     
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  12. RandyP

    RandyP Forum Resident

    When my wife asked me what I wanted for Christmas this year, I told her about this release. She knows I'm a music fanatic/collector as we've been married 25 years. She said fine and I picked my copy up at the local independent music store last week. I have yet to open it, however, since it is a Christmas gift from my lovely wife.

    What am I doing to hang in there in the meantime?

    1) Listening to the Genuine Basement Tapes, Volumes 1 - 5.
    2) Planning to listen to From The Reels (not there yet - on the hard drive still).
    3) Hoping to revisit the Mixin' Up The Medicine Safety Tape CD.
    4) Making notes of all the little nuances of the tracks on a ridiculous spreadsheet.
    5) Reading these threads every day and making more notes.
    6) Glancing over at the shelf where I put the Bootleg Series Vol. 11 to make sure it's still there. I touch it once in a while too.

    In all seriousness, I am really enjoying everyone's input on this. I only thought I knew a lot about this topic, but I really don't. I am in the presence of greatness here.

    And the fact of the matter is, I'm not going to wait until Christmas. We each get to open a gift early and this will be mine... sooner rather than later, I'm sure.
     
  13. fangedesire

    fangedesire Well-Known Member

    You're pretty much right - they recorded selectively, and might only record a song or two a day. They also taped over a lot of stuff, unfortunately. Also some reels have been lost.
    http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threa...rently-at-part-6.391877/page-24#post-11369932

    That said, there are some sections, particularly on discs 1-2, where it sounds like they recorded several songs in a row. I think they may have slowed down later in the summer when they were doing more of Dylan's new songs; at any rate, not sure anyone can establish how much was recorded "on average" per day.
     
  14. JL6161

    JL6161 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Michigan, USA
    Yeah, I don't know where people get this crazy idea that Bob was a family man:

    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
    (Judicious cropping is the only reason there's not a baby bottle on the cover of your Basement Tapes Complete box.)
    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Nov 14, 2014
  15. soniclovenoize

    soniclovenoize Forum Resident

    Location:
    Minneapolis, MN
    No, curiously it's only on takes 1 and 3 of Tears of Rage. It is absent on the rest of the reel.

    Note it is also absent on the mix of take 3 from the 75 album, as well as the versions on ATWR and GBT. This was apparently an oversight from this new transfer.
     
  16. fangedesire

    fangedesire Well-Known Member

    Every Band member said the same thing - I think it's no exaggeration.
    http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threa...rently-at-part-6.391877/page-25#post-11372273

    To repeat a few:
    Danko: “Bob and Robbie, they would come by every day, five to seven days a week for seven or eight months. Bob would show up like clockwork around noon.”
    Robertson: "We used to get together every day at 1:00 in the basement of Big Pink. And it was just a routine...we would play music every day."
    Helm: "He started coming over…usually at the same time every afternoon, and they’d all go downstairs and play. ‘Like going to work,’ Richard said… Ten songs a week for months." [Al Aronowitz, when he visited in the spring, also said "Ten new songs a week," and even got to hear a few, so he's an independent firsthand confirmation of their regular rehearsals.]
    The three hours a day or so also seems consistent in their reports. Of course there must have been breaks too, when Dylan had other things to do; but I think it's telling that Dylan would keep taping songs even if one of the Band members wasn't available.

    Robertson has always stressed how much fun they were having, that it was not serious "work," so I wouldn't necessarily call Dylan a "disciplined craftsman" just for making it a regular routine. What's obvious is that songs were just spilling out of him - every day he'd type up a new one, it seems - but the majority of them were either nonsense lyrics or never finished. There's a huge difference between most of the Basement songs and the truly "disciplined craftsman" songs he wrote for John Wesley Harding that fall, apparently without any contribution from the Band. There's also a huge difference between the, say, 60 hours a month he might've spent with the Band and the paltry few reels they actually recorded. (His entire '60s-70s studio output was probably recorded in less time!)
     
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  17. asdf35

    asdf35 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Austin TX
    Thanks for those observations, I hadn't noticed that whispering in "When It Comes Up,"
    and I could never figure out what was said in "Bring It On Home."

    It's so clear now.

    'Nah I can't add lib like you do'
     
  18. gottafeelin

    gottafeelin Forum Resident

    Location:
    Georgia
    It seems to me that as a Jewish man himself, he might be wondering if Jesus really was the King of the Jews that Isaiah prophesied about and his ancestors missed it. I could see that being worrisome.
     
  19. fangedesire

    fangedesire Well-Known Member

    Has anyone checked to see how much of "Reel 16" Levon Helm might be playing on? (Basically, most of disc 5 of the box set.)

    Per Sid Griffin, Helm plays on very few songs, but I'm not sure Griffin's always right. (For instance I think Helm is on 'Wild Wolf' though Griffin doesn't hear him there; and I think Heylin disagrees with him on which songs Helm might be on.) These are the songs Griffin says he plays:
    It Ain't Me Babe
    One Too Many Mornings
    Wildwood Flower
    One Kind Favor
    Comin' Round the Mountain
    Nothing Was Delivered take 3
    Silent Weekend
    All You Have To Do Is Dream
     
  20. Mike D'Aversa

    Mike D'Aversa Senior Member

    IMO, Levon has to be drummer/percussionist on "Wild Wolf".

    I hear:

    Bob on acoustic/Robbie on electric/Rick on bass/Richard on piano/Garth on organ.

    So who the hell else is left to be drumming besides Levon?

    Forget whether it's/isn't his "style" or not, we're talking simple mathematics at that point...
     
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  21. fangedesire

    fangedesire Well-Known Member

    One of the joys of the Basement Tapes is being able to hear Dylan at his most free and unguarded, without any expectations of an audience, just singing for himself... Frequently his best performances will come in chance moments, perhaps when no one's listening. But when it comes time to release songs on record, it seems he doesn't want to be too "naked," or perhaps thinks certain songs aren't what people should hear from him.
    Throughout the years there have been numerous accounts of Dylan singing fantastic stuff in rehearsals that he then refuses to put on an album or play onstage, etc. Just as one random instance, the Pat Garrett session in '73 where he pulls 'Rock Me Mama' out of thin air and turns it into a song, then abandons it the next moment. Or there's the time in '86 when Mikal Gilmore was watching the early sessions for Knocked Out Loaded and Dylan was doing all rock & roll covers...you might call it the "Basement Disaster" of the '80s. Quotes from Heylin's Behind the Shades:
    "They were playing some really good stuff, and he was sort of tossing out vocals as he was going along... They recorded a lot. I was there for at least 12 hours, over 2 or 3 days, and they were recording pretty much the whole time, and some of it was pretty wondrous... He was working very fast, moving from track to track... Inventive versions of wondrous songs come and go and are never heard again, [but Dylan told him,] 'I'm not sure if people really want to hear that sort of thing from me.' ...Dylan would pull some song that nobody had ever heard of, or that nobody ever expected Dylan to sing, and do a wonderful version of it. And yet they couldn't convince him to take that stuff to the stage... I saw great performances in rehearsals that were just of a very different tone and temperament from the live performances... [By the end of the sessions,] his mood was entirely different, the music wasn't as inspired... He told me he'd thrown out all that other stuff, and now it was just gonna be an album of bits and pieces." (Al Kooper added, "There was enough stuff cut to have put out a great album. There was some really wonderful things cut at those sessions, but I don't think we'll ever hear them." Other participants also mentioned that Dylan kept bringing in these great old songs, but over time gradually became discouraged and disinterested.)

    The Basement Tapes are one of the rare examples where we get to hear Dylan in full flight like that, bringing up songs at whim, joking around, singing in lots of different styles. And yet, in terms of what he was willing to make public, that self-censorship or something came into play, and all kinds of great or unfinished tunes got left on the tapes, abandoned. And not one Basement song did he consider recording "for real," at least 'til 1971.
    Of course any Dylan fan knows he can be perverse in deciding what's worth releasing... RayS asked earlier in this thread how Dylan decided which Basement Tapes songs would get dropped and which would be put on the acetate. I'm not sure there's any answer, except the whim of the moment.
     
  22. Feat21

    Feat21 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Boston, MA, USA
    I hear Levon Helm as being on every track from Disc 5.
     
  23. cc--

    cc-- Forum Resident

    Location:
    brooklyn
    yeah, I've seen the pictures, thanks... saw the quotes too; they were what I was referring to. My point was not whether he actually was a family man/guy next door--who knows? even with a few pictures--but why "people" might be so invested in wanting to see him as one. Plenty of possibilities, but if it's in service of the narrative of the Basement Tapes as anti-psychedelia, anti-hippie, anti-excess, proto-Americana.... I would find that view disappointing, that's all.
     
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  24. fangedesire

    fangedesire Well-Known Member

    I don't know if he's in every track, but certainly more than these.
    Along with Wild Wolf, add Blowin' in the Wind, My Woman She's A Leavin', What's It Gonna Be and If I Were A Carpenter definitely; and Satisfied Mind and Confidential To Me maybe. (Griffin claims that Dylan's playing piano on Confidential.)
     
  25. stephenlee

    stephenlee Forum Resident

    Location:
    East Coast, USA
    Oh, man, I got way too busy with work the past couple of weeks and didn't stay on top of this thread. I just spent the last I-don't-know-how-many hours catching up. My mind is about to burst! So much great information!

    There was one question I wanted to ask of soniclovenoize:
    I'm curious why you indicate that the 11-song Copyright Tape is the "proper place" for Minstrel Boy? Is there some documentation that supports this (and that I just missed while reading through the thread)? Or is it just a personal preference and you feel like it "belongs" with those songs? (No criticism intended, just curiosity.)

    Also, where do you place it in the running order of that tape?
     
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