Bob Dylan - Bootleg Series Volume 15 (Travelin’ Thru 1967-1969 (1st November 2019) *

I'll second that. The songs and performances are all worthy of being examined in detail, IMO. Some folks are apparently bored with repetitious false starts, breakdowns and studio chatter, and I suppose that makes the record company nervous, but I have no objection to them offering a more streamlined, cream of the crop-style companion release in addition to a nearly-every-note-recorded "complete" version -- just like they did with The Cutting Edge:

Producer's Note from the 18-CD "Big Blue" box:


2-CD "Best Of":


It would have made more sense to me if they would have issued the JWH and '69 Nashville sessions as separate releases, but apparently that's not going to happen, so I guess we'll have to accept what we get. But to repeat myself, I hope we won't be forced to travel to Tulsa at some point in the future if we want to hear the rest of the material. (I believe I passed through there many years ago while heading west on the Will Rogers Turnpike, and it seemed like a nice enough place, so it's not that I'm anti-Tulsa or anything. )

 

The irony is that if just a few of the JWH outtakes had been liberated back in the days before the EU copyright legislation was passed we would very likely have been in receipt of all the sessions at the end of last year, possibly in the same limited edition format of Big Blue (not that I'm advocating limited edition status for anything, by the way). As the JWH outtakes are now, effectively, public domain in Europe there really is no incentive for Team Bob to release every last scrap. The centrepiece and principal focus of this release is almost certainly going to be the legendary Dylan/Cash sessions.

There would be much gnashing of teeth over here in Percy Towers if JWH was represented on BS15 by alternative performances of just a couple of songs. Let us at least hope Team Bob finds room for a minimum of one alternative performance of each song, as it was implied in Andy's RS article. How they deal with the absence of an alternative "The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest" remains to be seen. Maybe there was an alternate take on the last day. Very unlikely, obviously, but not out of the question.

Here is a "reappraisal" piece in Goldmine from 2011. There are a few errors in Harvey Kubernik's essay but it's always entertaining to read some of Bob Johnston's stories from the studio, I think. Was Charlie McCoy ever interviewed at length about those JWH sessions?


Revisiting Dylan’s ‘John Wesley Harding’

 

Geez -- I know that they've done a few mind-boggling things in the past, here and there -- but can they really be intending to focus on the Dylan/Cash sessions?

Perhaps it's wishful thinking, but I'm holding out hope that it's a modest amount of "best" Dylan/Cash items, and a fairly liberal amount of mind-blowing JWH material.

Delusional?

 

Quite possibly. (Delusional, I mean.. ). I'm not going to offer up my lightly poached hat in a hollandaise sauce on this one, but it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if there was more JC than JWH on BS15. We'll find out soon enough.


What does Johnny Cash think of your wishful thinking....?

 

I meant 2017, of course.

 

Nashville Skyline is not my favorite Dylan album, and the sessions I've
heard so far are not my favorite sessions. Maybe it's the voice, I don't know.
By the time Self Portrait comes around Dylan is in a different voice and
he sounds more confident. I like the 1970 songs on Self Portrait.

... BUT the songs and playing on John Wesley Hardin are for the ages.
The lyrics are among his accomplished poetry. That album isn't a house,
it's a home. Whatever it is they've got or found I can't wait to hear it and I
hope there's plenty of it.

 

We need a Nashville ‘69 set. Those songs from the “Dylan” album are killer but were taken out of Bob’s deep dive country context in 69-70. It has nothing to do with Cash, they were just goofing off. Also, the SQ is not so great on TBS10, and it’s incomplete.
1969 Bob Dylan session pages

 

In addition to rehabilitating the image of Self Portrait on BS10, they should have stripped off the overdubs and remastered all the Dylan '73 tracks as well. There are a bunch of good performances on the "revenge" album, but the way they were presented made them all seem like a bad joke. Put back in context with the original sessions they would have made more sense. Who knows, perhaps Bob himself vetoed any Dylan tracks (still resenting their release in the first place), or maybe Rosen knew it was a no-fly zone.

 

This thread has run down and stalled.

New news is needed.

 

i'd guess very late August (but probably early September) for an announcement?

 

Perhaps the good folks at Isis will ferret out some insider information.

 

that is not news on BS15.

 

Then I'll delete it. Happy now?

 

mostly, yes.

 

In that case I'll re-post it soon as I get back from the store.

Meanwhile there are discussions above my post that don't
contain any new news, either. You gonna snark them, too?

 

i'm assuming you're just playing bc i am too.

 

Couldn't disagree more with that sentiment! The show I saw in '86 was killer, and the Australian performance captured on the Hard To Handle special is unbelievably great.

 

I recently watched my copy of Hard to Handle and it is a great performance. I wonder what we'd dub this version of Bob's voice. It goes along with other 1986 era boots I've heard where I hear him on the first song and his it's a mixture of hoarseness and high pitched thinness and end up wondering how he'll make it through 20+ songs with that voice. But it never seems to give out.

 

The 1986 tour was very exciting, at least at that time. If those genuine Dylan fans actually fell asleep (they were most likely making that up), they had some other personal issues going on during those shows. Maybe too many substances prior to the show.

One of the most tiresome statements, and inherently false, goes something like this: "I am a huge lifelong Dylan fan, and he sucks." We see those many times.

 

The tour with Petty was the hottest concert ticket of the year in every
country they played. The Heartbreakers were on the verge of breaking
up, I read, until Dylan revitalized them. He was really strange in 1986:

 

Yeah, but only in 1986. Like, never any other time.

 

If Bob weren't such a weird guy, he could've made something of himself and grown his father's business into the best appliance shop in Hibbing

This could be Bob today.

 

What a horrifying prospect. Best not to think about it.

Of course, Dylan was much creepier in the above-posted interview
as opposed to merely strange-as-usual.

 

I don't know.

I think it would be cool if you went in to buy a new washing machine, and went to the old man (Mr. Bob Zimmerman) and recited either a Hank Williams or Woody Guthrie lyric and gotten the "friend-of-the-store's special discount"

 

Don’t give him any ideas. “Heaven’s Door Laundry Machines”, hand welded from scrap iron.