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

It looks like ITC Blaze Italic.

 

Let's see your tracklist.

 

Hmm. Very interesting, I'll go program the same.

 

No doubt I've posted this before, but I found reward in making a compilation or 2 of individual songs. Such as all the "Tangled" or "Idiot Wind" takes. Twice this year I've reached for those discs and was glad I made such a tedious thing. There are those days you just want to hear "Tangled Up In Blue" all day!

 

I did this with "Visions Of Johanna" from Big Blue, all takes in chronological order. It's a really interesting listen.

 

Looking for advice here. I picked up Blood on the Tracks cd at an op for 50 cents about a month ago and I've basically become obsessed with the album. The only Dylan album I owned is Masterpieces that I bought decades ago.

I recently received the single disc More Blood More Tracks and I'm loving it. I'm also currently reading A Simple Twist of Fate.

My question is should I get the 6 CD set? It's quite pricey, but I'm interested in it.

 

I wholeheartedly recommend it. Blood on the Tracks is my favorite Dylan album, and initially (from the tracklist) I feared too much repetition in the deluxe set, but it’s a wonderfully immersive experience.

 

I second that.

L.

 

Look for the New York Blood on the Tracks instead.

 

Or "As Well"

 

Get Street-Legal next.

 

No, buy another Dylan album instead. Desire, the one he made after Blood On The Tracks, is well regarded though noticeably different in tone and content to its predecessor.

 

Of course. It's amazing. Also, the Record Store Day release Blood on the Tracks Test Pressing so you can hear Idiot Wind with the spooky organ (and also the whole album as Dylan originally conceived it). Then there's a few other albums Dylan did that you might like

Tim

 

Welcome to our oblate spheroid!

I whole-heartedly recommend the 6 CD set. By listening to it you will witness the making of the album that you have become obsessed with. From its solo acoustic beginning through the mildly chaotic management-by-telepathy band session (described by Tom McFaul and Richard Crooks in "Simple Twist Of Fate"), to the guitar-and-bass-with-overdubs-and-editing conclusion in New York, and on to the re-recording of five songs at Sound 80, you will be immersed in the making of something magical.

An audio download might be a less expensive option for you but if you elect to purchase the physical product you will also see a facsimile of most of the legendary "fair copy" red notebook of handwritten lyrics. Four pages are missing, but if you ask the right question they can be acquired legitimately on this thread.

Frankly, the liner notes to the 6 CD set are flimsy. A much better, more complete companion is the Clinton Heylin book, "No One Else Could Play That Tune" which - unlike "A Simple Twist Of Fate", was written with the author having access to the extant master tapes. There are errors in it and unnecessary snide remarks - character assassinations, if truth be known - but the electronic edition is dirt cheap and includes some interesting images of studio documentation and new interviews with people who were there, one of which was a previously unknown assistant engineer on a couple of the New York sessions.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Else-Could...d-4981-9be6-f03900a1f890&ref_=pd_gw_ci_mcx_mi

A couple of those images are reproduced in a draft essay about the recordings by some clown calling himself "Percy Song", here:-

https://www.searchingforagem.com/1970s/Blood_On_The_Tracks_First_Acetate.pdf

The essay was later expanded and published in ISIS magazine #215 which is inexplicably still available.


Further reading material is available here, although I think it mostly is extracts from "A Simple Twist Of Fate".

The making of Bob Dylan's Blood On The Tracks: "We were racing to keep up"


The mighty @RayS also started one of his famous "song-by-song" threads here which discusses the set.

Bob Dylan: "More Blood More Tracks" Song-By-Song Thread

It is true that Paul Griffin's spooky organ on the New York test pressing "Idiot Wind" (mentioned so many times in this thread and others) is missing from all the official CD releases; you would need to invest in the RSD vinyl replica edition to acquire it legally. One reason put forward for not including it in any official cheap-and-easy-to-acquire release is that everybody has it in perfect quality on a bootleg...

Blood On The Tracks is only the tip - some will say the pinnacle - of a very large iceberg, but it is a great place to linger for a long while.

And it isn't really an iceberg, magnificent but cold and hostile; it is a sand dune, magnificent and warm and comforting.

 

Agree.This one is the path to take.

 

This link to an exclusive interview with producer Steve Berkowitz is still active:-

https://www.analogplanet.com/images/Steve Berkowitz.mp3

Embedded into this article:-

Bob Dylan's "More Blood, More Tracks The Bootleg Series Vol. 14" Review + Exclusive Interview With Co-Producer Steve Berkowitz

 

Hey Percy, thank you so much for such a detailed reply and for providing those links. An album hasn't had this effect on me in a long time and I'm mainly a hard rock guy.

I looked up that RSD release and it's also going for a bit. I'll probably hold off on that one for now. I've put in an offer on the 6cd set (The Japanese version as I collect Japanese vinyl and CD's)

I'm nearly done with A Simple Twist of Fate so I'll track down the book that you recommended to read over the Christmas break.

 

You are welcome. I'd better not mention that the 1981 CBS Mastersound Half Speed Mastered LP is a particularly interesting edition of the record. Dylan left instructions for the songs on the final album to be sped up by approximately 2% to give the thing a little more bounce. The Mastersound edition has the songs playing at the recorded speed and is, therefore, more natural sounding.

 

I missed out on that one when it came out. I assume you'd have to track it down these days, I've never seen a copy in the wild. I have the double vinyl More Blood, More Tracks. Good enough.

 

Berkowitz sometimes sounds annoyed with Fremer's line of questioning. To be honest, not a lot to learn from hearing this, but thanks for posting.

 

I think SB has a reputation of being somewhat gruff in interviews but, to be fair to him, in this one there does seem to be - shall we say - a lack of preparation on the part of the interviewer which, I agree, made it less than revelatory. It seems the interviewer had not received an advance copy of the set so I suppose he was at a disadvantage, and SB is also quick to close down subjects that he is unwilling to discuss.


Nonetheless I thought there was some interesting information offered:-

The description of the location of (some of) the microphones, for example, which assists with the interpretation of the track data sheets which, unfortunately, are only included in the 6 CD package as background images. It isn't entirely clear to me whether the "room safety" mic that SB talks about is the "Bob safety" mic on the TD sheet, but it seems most likely, given that there is no note of a room mic on the TD sheets I've seen.






It is unlikely there were a couple of hundred "promos" (I assume he is referring to the test pressing) of the New York album pressed. A couple of score would be nearer the mark, I'd say, maybe even only a couple of dozen; it depends how many Columbia suits were entitled to a pressing. I think seven copies have been unearthed (or re-distributed) to date.

I wholly agree with Berkowitz's description of the first CD: "If there was a guy named Bob Dylan and he'd only recorded those first [11] takes, that would be a legendary recording session." When the box came out I must've played that first CD a dozen times before I moved onto CD 2.

SB's description of the use of the mono 1/4 "reference tape was handy and I chuckled at his comment, "Bob Dylan made music, not records."

He confirms that some songs on the album released in 1975 were sped-up according to Dylan's wishes; this is also noted in Heylin's book. There was discussion for years about whether the speeding-up was an equipment error or a deliberate decision. This puts it to bed. (As I've stated elsewhere on a number of occasions, the single "Tangled Up in Blue" was doubly sped-up but it isn't clear whether this was an error or an attempt to add further bounce to the song. Either way, Dylan sounds like a chipmunk on speed on the single.)

I was interested to hear him talk a little about the musicians seemingly winging it in New York, and the MXR 90 phase box, not that I have any technical expertise:-





When Berkowitz says, "I wish you could've seen this book, it's my workbook of the production, which looks like the work of a wild man...", I'm thinking, yes, that would have been worth including in the boxed set instead of a bunch of photos that are not relevant to the set. But that's just me. Plenty of people enjoy looking at photos.

I imagine he'll be forever vilified for not including the spooky organ "Idiot Wind" on the set, but at least he spent a few minutes explaining why that decision was made. Unfortunately, he seems to get his "pass" numbers mixed up so it's still not entirely clear which of the three overdubs are the spooky organ. My theory is that it's a mix of two but I doubt I'll ever be able to prove it.