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

I don't think so at all. I love it.

 

It's at about 38 seconds into the video:-

"The two [Dylan and Lanois] had made a demo at Teatro..."

The rest is a bit blurred for me.

In Brinkley's essay he has this on NDY:-

"The alternative take of "Not Dark Yet" on LP 3 is more mood-soaked trance than the Civil War drum processional the the song would become on the final album. But the truth is that all of Dylan's takes are phenomenal."

 

Someone’s Got a Hold?

 

After all of these decades and the countless thousands of critics (both professional and amateur) who have hammered just about anything Dylan has ever done, why would anybody pay attention to them?

 

oi.
one more reason to opt for the hi res downloads.

 

Yes, that's one which was changed after the liner notes were written. As was "Tell Me" although John didn't write the notes for that one, or for "I Shall Be Released."

John does describes "It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry" as a "moody blues..." and observes that the maracas on the maraca-less "I'll Keep It With Mine" are "absurdly irrelevant..."

As he said in his presentation to fans in 1992:- "Well, thanks a bunch, Jeff!"

He describes in fine detail the circumstances in which he got the gig, and luckily someone was recording his presentation. Here are a couple of quotes to keep you warm:-

Jeff Rosen: "John, we'd like you to write the notes for the bootleg-type album box, a four CD box. How do you fancy it?"

John Bauldie: "Well, I don't know. How much?"

And he quoted a figure I could just about afford. It's a very old joke..... He (Jeff Rosen) said "About this stuff you haven't heard. Here's what we'll do. You will be contacted shortly by a man you do not know. He will have in his possession a tape. He will play this tape for you as many times as you want to hear it and then he will take the tape away with him."

A couple of days later the phone rings:-

That John?
Yes.
You don't know me but I have a tape that I would like you to listen to.
Okay, right, fine.
I am Bob's British accountant.
I didn't realises that Bob had a British accountant.
I take care of financial matters for Bob when he is in the country. He doesn't like money, you know.
You could've fooled me!
Doesn't like to touch it.
Okay, when should I come down to your office?
No use coming round here, we don't have a tape recorder. I will have to come to your house.
Okay.


On Wednesday afternoon the mystery man comes around. Fedora hat, you know, gangster stuff all the way. Joey Gallo. Came in at two o'clock:-

Here's the tape, the taxi's coming at quarter past three. Gotta be outta here by then.
But it's a 90 minute tape!!
Play it as quickly as you can...



They remain, of all the Bootleg Series releases, my favourite liner notes. By a country mile. Nominated for a Grammy in 1992. Come to think of it, it would've been fantastic and fitting if the re-issues of BS 1-3 had contained the transcript of John's presentation in 1992. It is enlightening and amusing in equal parts.

 

The Water Is Wide:-

"...recorded at Oxnard in August 1996.... here he resurrected it as a reference point to jumpstart his creative process.... it casts an ethereal and ancient spell."

 

Now, it's interesting to thing of The water Is Wide as a reference point for the album as a whole, because it is a song that, although it also touches on ageing, deals mostly with love and betrayal:

Oh love be handsome and love be kind
Gay as a jewel when first it is new
But love grows old and waxes cold
And fades away like the morning dew

Partly because of the lyrical content and partly because of the health scare Dylan suffered after recording, a lot of the critical attention has focused on an existential reading of the album. However, taking The water is wide as a reference and also some of the additional lyrics for Not Dark Yet that can be glimpsed in the unboxing video, does suggest that, to some extent, Dylan may have seen it more as a break-up album. A new BOTT if you will. The songs are full of heartbreak, although, as we have all been focusing on the existential aspect, the fact that this aspect may have passed us by, hidden in plain sight. Perhaps these outtakes (and being able to read the liner notes properly rather than deliberately pausing a Youtube unboxing video to catch some stray sentences) will help us clear this up.

 

Its just a cover song, he's done it before.
Toom was more or less written at the time.

 

Oh, I think from "Love Sick" to "Cold Irons Bound" to "Can't Wait" there's a lot of pining for and hopes to spark a lost or unrequited love on the album, whether it's purely romantic or some other kind of love, or both that's taking such a long time to die and making our narrator sick and that he's looking for some renewed spark of, is sometimes not so explicit.

 

Sounds totally plausible. I’m really looking forward to The Water Is Wide now.

 

Exactly.
You can't tell me he isn't chatting up the waitress in Highlands.

 

Well spoken. With a man like Dylan with his experience guiding him along (wives, ex-wives, lovers, friends, ex-friends, extended family and grandsons and granddaughters and nieces and nephews), he draws upon so much. This may sound bizarre, but I believe that it's not that hard for him to process all these emotions wildly flying around his mind and distill them into something like a well written song where he doesn't second guess himself and just lets his words fly and then die in our ears. It reminds me of the short novel The Subterreans where the narrator is "swimming in language". The issue is not writer's block. The issue is that there's not enough writer's block for his own sanity imho. When I heard Dylan perform "Lenny Bruce" in Irvine three years ago, it felt painfully personal. Of course no one really knows Dylan. But I do believe this: His fans can feel him in his art. It's no different than if we were talking about Baudelaire, Poe, or the painting of Frieda Kahlo.

 

Do you have a link to the recording?

Agree re the liner notes. Back then, they weren’t afraid to engage a writer who really understood Dylan, who was willing and able to offer nuance and insight. Today the notes are just booklet padding, corporate gushing rehashing old facts, stories, and cliches. Often they are error strewn, like the More Blood ones (if I recall correctly).

 

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hopefully we'll get a bonus for our toom preorders!

 

"In the early days of writing the Time Out Of Mind song cycle the Biblical verse from John 9-4 kept ringing in Dylan's head: "Work while the days last because the night of death cometh when no man can work." The result was a sublime and enriching meditation on ... facing mortality.

"I once ****asked Dylan if he thought about death often. "I think about the death of the human race," he answered..... "Every human being, no matter how strong or mighty is frail when it comes to using Autopen- death." .... "I mean, the loss of life is the one thing we all have in common, isn't it? That makes us all equal.""


**** Percy Note: the interview with Dylan's quotes about the death of the human race was conduct in 2019, twenty two years after the release of Time Out Of Mind. That's not to say Dylan wasn't thinking about death when he was writing Time Out Of Mind, obviously. I mean some people think about death all their lives, and others just take their chances and get on with it.

 

I've been catching up on this thread.....what a wonderful version! cant believe I'd never heard it before, fabulous!

 

One of the hopes I have (or would have if were more of an optimist) for the liner notes that accompany the Time Out of Mind Set, is that we might get a bit more info about the genesis of the songs. We all know the standard narrative: sudden inspiration down on the farm, in the Winter blizzards. Cool. And then the meetup with Lanois in the hotel room, reading him the lyrics. Now neither of those ever seemed very convincing to me - for what I imagine are obvious reasons so won't blather on here - and it'd be great if we could find out more around the real story. Time will tell. I don't hold out much hope for Doug Brinkley's essay, he is more of a courtier than a critic so I expect we will just get the rehashed standard narrative along with a lot of gushing. Dunno much about the guy who has written the main liner notes but generally I don't see Sony/Rosen choosing a writer who is likely to probe, spill beans, or depart from the script. But, we shall see.

 

From the unboxing video clip, the main essay in the deluxe LP set box is distributed over perhaps 24 - 26 pages with four distinct parts - unsurprisingly labelled from Part I to Part IV - and is by Brinkley. It appears to delve into each song presented in the box. The essay by Steven Hyden - titled Time Out Of Mind - The Immortality Album - is located after the Brinkley essay and is shorter. I'd say 14 or so pages. Those page counts include photos and illustrations, some of which take up a whole page.

 

You can add me to the 'random-free-poncho club.' Mine came w/ no invoice or explanation. & it's red.

 

I'm up to five ponchos. 3 the other day, 2 more in today's mail. Is there a prize for most ponchos received? Besides the ponchos themselves, of course.

 

Vertigo? Like Michael Jackson?

 

Like Hitchcock

 

Are the deluxe LP boxes Limited editions?? will they be available for a while? Or should I pre-order? Thanks.