Bob Dylan – Bootleg Series Vol. 14: More Blood, More Tracks (2 Nov 2018)*

It (or part of it) was published in Rolling Stone in March 1974 and is primarily about 1965.

Bob Dylan: The Poet’s Poet – Rolling Stone

 

Listening to the final disc today and I got a surge of feelings. The sudden shift in the Minnesota performances is like a breath of fresh area. How these songs and performances still cut through, beautifully revealed in the new mixes/mastering. Without any build-up, since the tapes are lost, there is a shock of the new. In a way, the missing tapes are okay with me. It maintains a little bit of mystique.

 

. . . Listening to the final track, "If You See Her," can't help feel that the break from the songs and recording process gave Dylan the chance to come to these songs afresh, with the emphasis on artistic performance; the MN tracks may not feel as intimate or heart-felt (depending on your "reading" of course, because, let's face it, who knows?), but, in terms of Dylan's performing art, they are breath-taking.

 

I see any chance at getting Bob into the recording studio to record more music as a positive no matter the results. That he ended up with a hit single version of "Tangled Up in Blue" that continues to get radio play is payback for the whole venture. Though I love the NY version, I also love the Minn. version, so double-win! Because I always had the NY Sessions on a boot meant I never felt like I was missing out on anything with the official album.

When I got to disc 6, I was shocked (because my memory is terrible) to discover just how much of "Idiot Wind" was re-written for the electric version. For once, here's where I wish the un-spooky organ went missing. Bob's reckless chord-pounding pushes an already strident take into the abyss. That an even more impassioned version appeared on Hard Rain turns this song into the diatribe that wouldn't stop. A shame, since every take of the acoustic version is epic in the best sense of the world, jampacked with nuance and emotional ambivalence that changes from one enunciation to the next.

My only wish -- and it's an impossible dream -- was that somewhere in these tapes there had been an undiscovered tune as stunning as "Up To Me" found hidden in the sessions. To be a Dylan fan is to always be hoping there's more locked away in the files. It's what made Another Self-Portrait and The Basement Tapes so exciting.

Someday, "I'm Cold" will be found and it will be better than "She's Your Lover Now," "Up To Me" and "I'm Not There" combined.

Some say I'm a dreamer, but can't YOU reach?

 

So now that the action here has died down, is there a newer Dylan thread to follow? Either publish the link here or send it to my privately if there's a reason you don't want it to go public. I'm somewhat new to these boards compared to others and am just getting the feel for things.

Many thanks.

 

I'd like to do a song-by-song thread for the "Blood" sessions. With the semester just about to end, I can probably get it off the ground on Monday, assuming enough folks would be interested. Song by song (so all the takes of a given song would be open to discussion, along with chat about the notebook entries, and the song's post-"Blood" life in concert, etc.)

 

I'm game, Ray. I'd read anything you have to say on the subject. Your insights are helpful and entertaining.

 

Thanks, I appreciate it. We've got plenty of folks around here to contribute assuming there's more they want to say about these songs. This is my favorite album of all time, I could talk about it forever.

 

Didn't know what to expect with the half-hour worth of takes of Call Letter/Meet Me but I was interested and sometimes fascinated while listening to all of them. The take on Disc 2/Track4 of CLB is probably my favorite, but I like D4/T18 too, as well as D2/T5, etc...

Of course I enjoyed the 3 takes/mixes of Lily...not much to say but I like them all
"She was with Big Jim but she was leanin' to the Jack of Hearts"...
sounds like a pretty and nice kind of sweet-sounding mix of the band and vocal version from MN too. The vocal tone and balance seemed to fit smoothly with the mix of the band. Seems to me to have a hint of Rockabilly to it too.

Somehow the story just seems to maintain itself and grow more colorful throughout with detail and insight through and through.

 

Guess I've been preparing in some way for a song by song as I dub cds for myself with only a few songs on each one, the way I've been listening. Idiot Wind I love the blues he plays it in/with on D2/T7. Pretty haunting and forlorn stuff. The ambient vocal serves the performance well. Same with D2/T8. There's really a gentle vulnerability and quiet sensitivity in the performances. Quite lovely, regretful, in tone. Almost as if there's a sense of fate and destiny about it. Quite a gorgeous vocal there.

With the performance as it is on D2/Track 9 Dylan seems to make the transition into the song maybe with a little more of a bitter, resentful, vengeful vibe, but still with nuance, dynamics, self-reflection, understanding, and maybe even sympathy, compassion, and of course wisdom.

D2/Track 11 seems to get a little more accusatory in spots but I feel like there is a sense of self-pity and woe is me that winds through verses of some of these takes and I wonder if the implication of that, if so, would have been so not what Dylan wanted to express or suggest, or present, in the final act, at least via as a performance. Anyway, what an expressive amd affecting mouth-organ solo to complete D2/T11.

This set requires a lot of time/work to listen to, at least for me, to get a grip on the different takes of the 'same' songs and also in trying to sequence takes of different songs into alternate albums.

I hate the jumbled, uneven way the pages in the book list the tracks and that full page pic of Dylan in-between only confuses it more.

A couple busted takes on Disc5/Track8 had some real promise and I enjoyed them while they lasted. Seems like Track 9 loses its way a bit. Parts of it feel a bit disjointed. The reading of it is different, more plaintive, so matter-of-fact in spots it seems as if it sounds almost disinterested. Perhaps it's as much disdain too, but anyway the last verse and solo pull me back in.

Track 10 with the organ. Well, there were already enough essential acoustic takes in the well, imo, I mean, "in the vault"...
The take on Track 10, like the one on Track 9, seems more a 'talking blues' in parts, and doesn't have the intense or consistent focus, or dynamics, all the way through, imo of most of the takes on Disc 2. I think I hear what Dylan does again on this take, with the last verse and the solo, where he seems to then invest the song in something more poetic, or for lack of a better word, a performamce that is more emotional or musical.

Hearing the MN. take remix on Disc 6, I get the same feeling I get as with TUIBlue, but unlike Jack of Hearts imo, there's a little too much vocal out front imo. It just doesn't move me or hit me all the way through, with the sound of it, despite the eminently convincing vocal delivery, poetic and memorable lyric, big chorus and grand verses.

"Buckets of Rain" remains for the weekend...


Fate, Big Girl, and If You See Her will wait for the song by song. Fwiw I haven't gotten to any of those yet.

 

Bob Dylan – Live 1962–1966: Rare Performances from the Copyright Collections [2018 2-CD release] *

Bob Dylan Listening Thread

Bob Dylan - Bootleg Series Volume 15

Bob Dylan "The Bootleg Series" – overview and possible future projects

 

Are there any clues or evidence as to the number of days or takes missing from the set as part of the missing MN. recordings?

 

There were only two days. For sure there is a lost performance of "Tangled Up in Blue" before the key was changed. Other than that I wouldn't rely on the memory of the musicians/engineers, since similar memories from the New York sessions proved to almost always be faulty. And even when they might rightly remember performing something, there's no guarantee that the tape was rolling at the time (or wasn't rolled over at Dylan's behest).

I don't know how he drew the conclusion, but Heylin states that the lead vocal for "Idiot Wind" was overdubbed. This suggests that there is a guide vocal (or, more likely, a rejected lead vocal) sitting on the master tape. IMO (and having obviously not heard it), I think that might have made for a cool inclusion on the box.

 

Thanks! Wow just tbose 2 days.

 

According to Kevin Odegard (in interview in 2004) it went something like this:-

27 December:

"Idiot Wind" (rehearsal)
"Idiot Wind"
"Idiot Wind"
"Idiot Wind"
"Idiot Wind" (released)
"You're A Big Girl Now"
"You're A Big Girl Now" (released)
Bob overdubs 2nd organ onto "Idiot Wind" and guitar on "You're A Big Girl Now"
Bob vocal punch-ins on "Idiot Wind"

30 December:

"Tangled Up In Blue" (in key of G)
"Tangled Up In Blue" (in key of A, rehearsal)
"Tangled Up In Blue" (in key of A, released)
"Lily.... "(rehearsal)
"Lily..." (released take)
"If You See Her...." (rehearsal)
"If You See Her...."(released take)
Bob overdubs second mandolin on "If You See Her..."
Chris Weber overdubs 12-string guitar on "If You See Her..."

As @RayS indicates, we really are reliant on the memories of the musicians but there seems little doubt that Bob was in a hurry and wanted to get those five songs done and dusted sharpish. The legend is that Bob didn't have a harmonica in the correct key for the recording of "Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts" which was in the key of D and thus needed a harmonica in the key of G. Vanessa Weber, heavily pregnant, was sent on a mission to obtain said harmonica from the Weber's music shop, The Podium, about 5km across the river from the studio. While she was gone he recorded it, as we hear on "Blood on the Tracks", using a harmonica in the key of A and left it at that.

Later, drummer Bill Berg made a drawing of the rehearsal for "Lily.." :-




And another for the complete take:-





Salvaged from the second session was this scrap of paper showing the change of key from G to A for "Tangled Up In Blue":-




Which reminds me of a bit of banter, featured on Big Blue, during the recording of "One of Us Must Know (Sooner Or Later)" on 25 January 1966 when Bob is struggling with the song in the key of A having already switched once from the key of F. “Put it in G. Nobody sings any songs in A… Know anybody that sings in A?”

 

Er, Buddy Holly?

 

really? is this mentioned anywhere else? I wonder where he got this

 

He doesn't give us much to go by:

"The released 'Idiot Wind' - with an overdubbed vocal that went against Dylan's whole cut-it-live ethos …"

And since Heylin couldn't tell a punch-in from a splice on the New York takes, I don't know if he is referring to an entirely overdubbed vocal or the punch-ins referenced in the Gill-Odegard book. Since the Minnesota studio documentation is apparently as missing as the outtake reels, he didn't get the information from there.

 

I'd give Odegard's rundown of the Minnesota sessions a lot of credence not only because he played on the sessions but because his excellent BOTT book with Andy Gill seems level-headed and well-reported, even if it lacks the kind of discographical mania for precision and receipts Dylanologists crave.

 

I am more at peace lol that it's just 2 days of takes and aslo only of the 5 songs that appear on the album. I had wrongly imagined it was like a week or two of recordings so while some takes are missing, in a way it could have been much more missing. phew...

Now I'm going to be listening for a vocal punch-in on Idiot Wind, lol. Shouldn't be hard, it's only 90 minutes long with 4,000 words unless it's the entire vocal, hard to tell between the 2 descriptions above? "Vocal punch-in's" and "with an overdubbed vocal"?

 

And Bob on "Tangled Up In Blue"....

 

The punch-ins are quite easy to spot. As described previously on the thread....

 

I guess it's *possible* that most of the vocal is overdubbed, with maybe the two 'different' parts actually being the live vocal.

But I still think it's the other war round - most of the vocal is live, with two punched-in parts. Those two lines have always felt a little bit 'forced' and self-conscious to me, as Bob is trying to match the rest of the vocal.

The new remix seems to make the punch-ins less noticeable, with a more consistent matching tone with the main vocal.

The line 'Lily took her dress off' in Lily, Rosemary & TJOH always sounded a bit 'different' to the rest of that vocal too, not sure if that might have been punched-in or if there's some other technical reason why the sound goes a bit odd on that line.

 

Aren't Tracks 9 & 10 the same basic take (Take 4, Remake), but with the latter having the organ overdub?

I do agree with your 'matter of fact' description of the vocals though. Seems like Bob went for a different approach here. But I actually think that Bob had already recorded better versions (vocally) of Idiot Wind, Tangled Up In Blue and If You See Her Say Hello before he decided to recut them on the 19th (and the versions of Idiot Wind and Tangled Up In Blue from the 19th *still* needed splicing).

 

Heylin presents this piece of information in such a vague and off-handed manner that it could mean many things.

The edit after "tracks" is very clear, although after multiple listens I don't know that I would choose punch-in over splice. Sounds to me like there is a tiny change in tempo and a noticeable change in ambiance, but I could very well be wrong. I couldn't find an edit point on the other side (does the fact that the second half of the line is capitalized in the post @Percy Song is quoting suggest only the second line is different, because it sounds to me like they go together), which does suggest a punch-in at the start of the line (so we'd never hear the point of deviation).

I notice the sudden difference in the line in "Lily" (for lack of more technical terms, it sounds like someone hit the Dolby switch by mistake for a couple of seconds), but the singing sounds consistent to my ears. So I'd personally give that one a rousing "I don't know".