Bob Dylan: THE BOOTLEG SERIES VOL. 17: "Fragments - Time Out of Mind Sessions" [1/27/23]*

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by DeeThomaz, Jul 20, 2021.

  1. zombie dai

    zombie dai people live in dreams, but not in their own

    anyone who doesn't like wiggle wiggle is an idiot, babe, it's a wonder they can even breathe
     
  2. zombie dai

    zombie dai people live in dreams, but not in their own

    for me it's the only song on the album that doesn't feel emotional. it's like the one paint by numbers emotional song on an album that is raw emotion, blood on the tracks all grown up
     
  3. Themigou

    Themigou Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    Stop if you begin to vomit fire though.
     
  4. Percy Song

    Percy Song A Hoity-Toity, High-End Client

    Sales are slowing down to a trickle on the UK site: 24 copies sold in 57 hours. At this rate it'll take 71 days to go out of stock, meaning there'll still be a few copies available on release day. But I imagine there'll be a surge towards the end of this month when salaries are paid.

    Ah, I remember salaries! Excuse me while I wipe a tear from the corner of my eye. It seems so long ago...

    Oh, it is. :)

    [​IMG]


    [​IMG]
     
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  5. Lonson

    Lonson I'm in the kitchen with the Tombstone Blues

    I confess that I'm looking forward to this set!
     
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  6. I Threw It All Away is several leagues better for one simple reason - his singing. Whilst I'm no big Nashville Skyline fan, Dylan's voice was on peak form between about 1965-1970 IMO. It's a slight song by his standards but performed quite beautifully.

    Make You Feel My Love is also a slight song, but it's sung by an old guy with a croaky voice.
     
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  7. Themigou

    Themigou Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    I Threw It All Away is a perfect song to me - mind you, I think NS is a perfect album. I love every second of it. He manages to sing ‘love is all there is - it makes the world go round’ and sound cool IMO. Also, the A chord between the F and C elevates the whole melody. It’s short and sweet. In comparison, I’m not convinced I really understand the intention behind MYFML; if it’s a purposely ‘Hallmark’ sentiment, I’m not sure where lines like ‘I’d go black and blue’ fit in. That seems more awkward than ironic. Weirdly, I still quite like the song though.
     
  8. Tribute

    Tribute Senior Member

    Yes, old at 55.

    Dylan's voice in the late 1990's was far more expressive of a wide range of human emotion and storytelling than it ever was in his earlier years.

    There are plenty of well trained singers with purity of tone in every city, town and village, but very few could ever attain the expressiveness of Dylan's voice at age 55.
     
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  9. President_dudley

    President_dudley Forum Resident

    i remember some time ago it was suggested we all rewrite this, taking the same prosaic approach elevated to Human Art.

    this was mine:

    }
    i'd go crazy i'd go black and white
    i'd go strolling through your dreams at night
    take everything that's wrong and make it right
    to make you feel my love
    {

    your turn

    and from the woman who brought us "what if bob was one of us / just a slob like one of us"

    Make You Feel My Love · Joan Osborne

     
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  10. I accept that he was still capable of expressing himself emotionally, but the range of his voice was very much reduced by the time he reached 55 years, (after about 35 years of performing and many years smoking). That's not opinion I'm afraid, that's a fact, you only have to listen to him honestly to hear how much more limited his range had become.

    If you prefer the timbre of Dylan's later voice to his voice during the 1960s then good for you, but I honestly don't. I find him to be a far more enjoyable singer to listen to during the 1960s and first half of the 70s when his vocals had much greater warmth, range, presence and elasticity. That doesn't mean I'm knocking his later singing, I'm just telling it the way I hear it.

    Bob's voice developed a significant nasal quality around the time of Street Legal, you can clearly hear the difference listening to that record and listening to Desire, and I really like Street Legal by the way. I'm sure you love your Dylan, so do I, but he isn't a superhuman, his voice has degraded significantly over time like everyone else's does. Being a committed performer will not have helped and I also suspect he's perhaps not looked after it particularly well. This doesn't make his less of a songwriter or artist, but he is much less of a singer, and it doesn't help him carry off a song like To Make You Feel My Love.

    I think the importance of Dylan's voice is overlooked when people discuss the reasons why his work is so moving. People focus on his lyrics, the way he phrases certain lines and the meanings of his songs and this is all well and good, but the quality (or not) of his singing and its impact on how we hear his music sometimes seems misunderstood.
     
    Last edited: Nov 22, 2022
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  11. Themigou

    Themigou Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    How about his voice here? This is 16 years after TOOM:

     
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  12. mightyquinn61

    mightyquinn61 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Australia
    Go to the pub and bring me back some beer.
    But cook me dinner first while while you're still here.
    Bring me my gun and I'll go shoot some deer.
    To make you feel my love.
     
  13. Right, I listened to thirty seconds of that and had to turn it off. Sorry, I could hear the Sinatra version in my head and well, you know, there is just no comparison. He can't hit the higher notes with conviction. He sings up to the note and when he gets there his voice sounds thin, worn, strained and pinched. When he's back in the middle of his range he sounds ok. I don't mind it, but I would never claim these days that Bob is much of a singer. Having said that I enjoy his vocals on Rough and Rowdy Ways, but he's almost reciting the lines on that and he somehow makes it work.

    I don't want to start a big debate. It's just obvious his voice is pretty well shot, and as he's over eighty, I'm not very surprised!
     
    Last edited: Nov 22, 2022
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  14. Themigou

    Themigou Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    I know you haven’t got the box set yet, but
    You might find out that you are wrong
    ‘Cause in the Fragments Bootleg Series set
    Make You Feel My Love is the best song
     
  15. DeeThomaz

    DeeThomaz Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    In The Felony Room
    Adele must have skipped that verse.
     
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  16. ILoveLucille

    ILoveLucille The infernal desire machines of Dr Steve Hoffman

    Location:
    Savior's Compound
    Who wears boots and a suit of red?
    Santa wears boots and a suit of red
    Who wears a long cap on his head?
    Santa wears a long cap on his head
    So he can feel my love.
     
  17. mightyquinn61

    mightyquinn61 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Australia
    Nowhere in the song does he ask her what she wants.
     
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  18. Tribute

    Tribute Senior Member

    There is a lot more to a vocalist's phrasing to effectively communicate deep emotions and profound stories than range, timbre, elasticity and so many other measures.

    As I said, there are countless singers in virtually every locale who would receive blue ribbons for each of those textbook measures that every choir director seeks.

    But hardly any of them would score highly in that nearly magical and difficult to quantify vocal quality that speaks very directly to the listener.

    That is the quality that Dylan has, and has always possessed, which really is at the foundation of his fame.
     
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  19. DeeThomaz

    DeeThomaz Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    In The Felony Room
    We know that he often had fragments (oh!) of lyrics that he tried out in various songs until he liked the result. We also know there was a late vocal overdub session in March. I’m now wondering if the reason for that overdub session was to replace whatever repeated lyrics were there when they finalized the sequence? Certainly wouldn’t be ideal to discard a favorite take just because it shared some lines with another song on the album.
     
  20. It's because she is incapable of feeling to that degree. That doesn't make her a bad person of course--just different. I encourage people who dislike the song to re-examine the lyrics from a different angle.
     
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  21. mightyquinn61

    mightyquinn61 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Australia
    Contrast it with What Was It You Wanted? This time he's asking questions, instead of just stating his position, but he's still not paying attention. Either way it's his own needs and desires that drive him.

    *What Was It You Wanted? has a question mark in Lyrics and the BD website, but not on the record. Interesting.
     
    Last edited: Nov 22, 2022
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  22. Sipuncula

    Sipuncula Forum Resident

    Location:
    Texas
    I never realized To Make You Feel My Love was so devisive. I remember it being a nice song and popular and Garth Brooks doing it. I haven't listened to TOOM all that much over the intervening years as much as, say, Love and Theft, so I'm looking forward to hearing this song and the others with some different production touches. That one, as I remember, had more of the Lanois "touch" to it. I've got a self-imposed moratorium on listening to the album until the new box comes out so as not to spoil it for myself. Working my way through the entire Bootleg Series in order now, though I'm kind of busy and have only managed to get through sides 1,2 and 3 of BS Volume 1-3 which is 5 records I think. I'll get there by January.
     
  23. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    Right. In a way, it's a kind of aggressive song. I'm going to make you feel my love. But the narrator does seem genuinely try to be supportive to support someone who needs emotional help.
     
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  25. Sacr

    Sacr Forum Resident

    Location:
    Brussels
    I think Make you feel my love was included in the album simply because it was very different to the other songs, in particular, it was a melodic, rather than blues-based song. For me it is one of the weaker songs on the album, and it sounds, in terms of performance, as though it was recorded as a one-off. In fact, I am amazed there is another take in Fragments as I could have sworn that it was the one and only take.

    I remember a few interviews on it that were interesting on its genesis (summarised here:Behind The Song: Bob Dylan, “Make You Feel My Love” ).

    Augie Meyers: “Bob’s a fantastic piano player, when he wants to play. On [this song] he asked, ‘If you and Doug [Sahm, co-founding member of the Sir Douglas Quintet] were in the studio, how would you do it?’ And I said, ‘Well we wouldn’t have two drummers, four guitar players, and stuff. Did you write this on piano or guitar?’ And he said, ‘I wrote it on the piano.’ I told him, ‘Play piano. I’ll play organ. Let’s just have one bass, one drum and one guitar.’ So that’s the way we did it.” (I wonder if take 1 will be a band take?)

    Daniel Lanois: "I have a really great spinet piano that is a beautiful restored masterpiece from the Twenties. And Bob sounded really great on it because Bob’s a great piano player. He had a roaring sound happening on that piano.”


    There is also of course the claim from Rob Stoner that it had actually been written in the 1970s, which would be interesting but hard to prove conclusively.

    Despite it not being the best song and the recording being so ragged, I do like it in the context of the album. It complements the rest of the album and the performance has its moments...
     

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