...and it was finished as the sun rose on Wednesday morning... A shame about Spitz's style, as the facts in the Mort Nasatir interview could be interesting if presented accurately. I can't find any other quotes from Nasatir about it anywhere else. It's a very mysterious episode. Thanks for reminding me of what Spitz wrote (badly). Interesting about the 'Acapulco' connection though...
I think a lot of the details regarding the basement tapes will forever remain a mystery. You can desire to know the facts all you want, but the fact of the matter is that a lot of what is being said on this thread (and probably Griffin's book too) is pure conjecture. Were you there? Me neither. And even for those who were, we're dealing with 47 year old memories here, which are bound to be at least a bit hazy. I feel that Griffin has at least some knowledge about these tapes that the average one of us does not, and look forward very much to reading his updated book, which I just picked up a few days ago. I will not read it as if I am reading 100% factual information, but I still expect to learn at least a few things from it. I must also admit that I really don't have much interest in the chronology of the reels, and that seems to be what 90% of the posts on this thread are about. It's more important to me to simply listen to, and enjoy, the music.
Heads up ... I just picked up the Basement Tapes Raw Vinyl on Pop Market for $55 Shipped (US). It's their deal for today.
Absolutely right on a number of counts Street Legal. However i can't help feeling that your post should be from page 6 rather than 10. Could be something about the ambience. I certainly don't think your post belongs anywhere other than Part 7 though. What does Griffin say ?
Certainly to each his/her own, but the more context I have, the more I enjoy the music. In the case of this material, the chronology is a huge part of the context. So I guess I like to complexly listen to, and enjoy, the music.
I know, right. I'm glad I got mine from importcd's, for a shade over $100. I feel bad for those who spent $140 - $150, and it can now be had for under $100.
I got it for $119, so I'm not really unhappy. But it seems especially weaselly for Amazon to do their standard, "We are soooooo nice that if the price drops before the release date, you'll get the lowest price! My god, we are the greatest retailers ever, aren't we? Of course, if we decide a couple of weeks after the release date to drop the price by like 20 more bucks, you're s**t out of luck, sucker. Have a nice day!"
Amazon used to account for about 90% of my online music purchases. Nowadays, it is maybe 20%, at best. In my experience, they rarely have the best price anymore.
Well, I had a shiny copy of the Basement box in my greedy hands by like 9:45 am on release day, so I can't whine too much about Amazon.
Got my LP set today from Amazon. Unfortunately pressed at United -- Side A had non-fill and deep scratches all through it . . . all three inner sleeves were split . . . I am working out an exchange, but I'm afraid the next set will be the same or worse.
These LPs sound sweet, though!! WOW!! Basement Tapes sound almost hi-fi . . . haha . . . pressing quality is dismal, though -- I may have to just return this and live without it.
Kind of makes you wonder what kind of deluxe editions we could've gotten for previous Bootleg Series. Also makes it pretty certain that there'll be a full four-disc release of the Supper Club some day.
In the best sense, I feel like they don't necessarily care about the earlier releases. A good handful of Witmark demos were issued on Vol 1 and 7, yet everything was issued on vol 9, even though it led to some duplication. So, whatever missed opportunities there were, I think there is still hope yet to see things done right.
I just jumped on this. Seems like about the best price that will seen on it in the immediate interim. Here's hoping my United pressed copy of this somehow doesn't suck. I was kind of hoping that they'd have a deal on the six CD box as well, but alas. I'm wondering if I should wait for them to make a "daily deal" on that one or snag one now from Amazon for the current price of a little over ninety bucks?
Dylan's recent interview transcribed by 'Johanna Parker' over on E.R: "We had a place pretty much on our own. Whatever was on top the pile, somebody grabbed it and said, this, let's do that for a while. It was a kind of music that made you feel that you were a part of something very, very special and nobody else was a part of it, and back then it was hard to get to. You can't record everything you wrote, so it's understandable that a lot of this stuff just, hmm, fall by the wayside or... I don't even know how or where it was kept all these years, umm... I'd never seen these lyrics since the day they were [written]. Never seen 'em. How did I wind up in Woodstock? Uhh... I don't know! How did the songs on the Basement Tapes come about? Oh... y'know, beside this, kind of was gonna stay up in Woodstock for a while, so... my band from the touring we had done together, those guys just came on up there, they liked it too. And Robbie called me up one day and said, "What's happenin'?" you know, "What's happenin'?" and I said, "Nuthin'." He said, well he was in the mood for some nuthin' too. And it had a basement, typical basement full of pipes and a concrete floor, washer, dryer... We'd just kind of sit around and call out the songs and before we went down into the basement to put it on tape. Woodstock was a place were you could kinda go and get your thoughts together. It was an artist colony. There were plenty of painters who lived in that area, but very few musicians, who... we certainly knew of nobody up there playing any music. Later there were, but when we were up there, middle of the '60s, we were pretty much by ourselves. The events of the day, they were just happening, they seemed to be a million miles away. We weren't really participating in any of that stuff, well it was the Summer of Love, but... we weren't there, so we did our thing where we wrote Million Dollar Bash, you know, go along with the Summer of Love. We had nothing else to do, so I started writing a bunch of songs. I'd write them in longhand and I'd write 'em on the typewriter and whatever was handy. Pencil, pen, typewriter... How do we go about writing our songs? I'd know I wasn't gonna write anything about myself, I didn't have nothin' to say about myself that I'd figure anybody else would be interested in anyway. You kind of look for ideas on TV [??] or somethin' and just any ol' thing would create the beginning to a song: names out of phone books and things. When China first exploded that hydrogen bomb, it just flashed across the headlines in newspapers, so, you know, we just go in and write Tears Of Rage. Things were just happening, there was riots in the street, they were rioting in Rochester in New York , it wasn't that far away, so we write Too Much Of Nuthin'. And just one thing lead to another, you know. The human heart, the first time that anybody every heard of a human heart being transplanted, that was incredible. That was a real breakthrough, so we came up with a song, and then when we got the lyrics down, we took the song to the basement. I don't when I became aware of these songs being bootlegged. I had no attention [?] about, I don't even... I won't know how to get that record, I guess they were selling them in record stores. It's always interesting when someone takes a song of yours and re-records it. But these songs weren't tailor-made for anybody. I just wrote what I felt like writing."
Holy s**t, is that Bob actually giving something vaguely in the neighborhood of a straight answer? [reeling] The only thing wrong with a transcript is that it omits the delightful scowling. Clearly, he's referring to "Bourbon Street."
Finally...I have a copy of the Complete set. Went Amazon as HMV were going to have to order it anyway so would have had to go back there. CD #1 on right now.
The missing bit: "You kind of look for ideas and the TV would be on, you know, like As The World Turns or Dark Shadows or somethin'..." Link to the interview (Youtube)
