Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes - where we're at currently...

I appreciate the likes, but I'm surprised no one had any comment on the last post - particularly regarding the mono vs. wide stereo issue. At any rate, picking up where I left off, I'll start the summaries of basement-related releases with the official stuff, and proceed into the major bootleg releases concurrent with the advent of the CD era and following upon the last major unveiling of basement-related material to date with the 1991 cassette dubs...

The Basement Tapes original 1975 LP
Biograph: "The Mighty Quinn"
The Bootleg Series: "I Shall Be Released", "Santa Fe"
I'm Not There soundtrack: "I'm Not There"

The 1975 double LP represented the first official release of any basement material to the public, though much of it was already in circulation since first leaking out in 1969 on the famous "1st ever bootleg" - The Great White Wonder. Other boots followed - all based upon the original mono acetate tracks - the best known of which was probably Troubled Troubadour. With liner notes by noted rock scribe Greil Marcus, the official LP was critically hailed upon release, finishing in the #1 slot in the Village Voice critics poll for that year.

The lion's share of the work compiling the LP was of course done by Robbie Robertson, with Rob Frabioni the main man on the engineering side. Dylan greenlighted the project after apparently working out some of his differences with Albert Grossman over the publishing, but only poked his head in on the proceedings a few times.

Frabioni and Robertson painstakingly went through all the original tapes they had access to, carefully checking them for dropouts and other issues. This being the early 70s, all this had to be done in the analog realm in real time of course, without the aid of digital audio workstation-type tools that would have vastly speeded up the process.

To bring the tracks up to a technical level deemed suitable for release, they were run through a noise reduction unit, then compressed and EQ'd. As mentioned previously, they also made the decision to mix the tracks into mono or very narrow stereo - most likely for the primary purpose of centering Dylan's lead vocals. Since all the material had to that point only been heard in mono (nothing having been booted from the original reels or the Basement Safety) this of course would not be a concern to anyone - if they were even aware of the original 2-channel format of the recordings in the first place.

Dylan fans have since taken issue with the original release over a myriad of issues, most of which anyone reading this thread is already familiar with, so I won't rehash them here. Instead, I'd like to focus on what they achieved with the sound itself. On the plus side, they did a good job achieving a generally satisfying tonal balance, reducing the hiss level in the original tapes without over-compromising high-end detail. They were a bit heavy-handed with the compression - especially apparent on tracks that start with Dylan strumming his acoustic (i.e., "Million Dollar Bash", "Please Mrs. Henry", "Lo and Behold") the unit lending it a very unnatural, 'bursty' attack. The notorious overdubs (more here than generally acknowledged) and the addition of artificial reverb on a few tracks ("Goin to Acapulco" and "Too Much Of Nothing" particularly), while going against the spirit of the original recordings, as embellishments are generally tastefully done and fairly unobtrusive.

From a fidelity perspective, probably the worst aspect is that some of the tracks both here and on Biograph and the Bootleg Series are obviously from a generational source - or worse yet, an original acetate demo (as is likely the case with "Tiny Montgomery"). With the LP now having been remastered twice - by Sony in 2009 and Mobile Fidelity in 2012, it's shocking that no one's gone to the trouble of replacing these with the since located clean original tape versions heard on subsequent boots. Otherwise, while Mobile Fidelity generally did a nice job improving the overall tonality with their effort, the Sony remaster is an absolute atrocity.

"I'm Not There" - as mentioned previously, represents a special case in that it's the first time the Basement Safety has been sourced directly for an official release - and in a completely unprocessed state to boot. While personally I think it still could benefit from a touch of tasteful remastering, as is, it's a stunning example of the intimate, unadorned quality of the original recordings.

The Genuine Basement Tapes

This 5-volume set surfaced in the early 90's, representing the first attempt at a "complete" basement tapes issue. It appears to have been sourced substantially if not completely from the 1991 cassette dubs of basement material alluded to previously, and sounds largely like a straight dub with no further processing. Sound quality varies in concert with the quality of the transfer - good in some sections, but fairly weak in others - particularly a lot of the primary Dylan-composed material. Sequencing is also a bit haphazard in that it doesn't follow session chronology all that faithfully. Two decades on however, it remains a primary source for much of the basement material.

The Genuine Bootleg Series

Also first appearing in the 90's around mid-decade, this three volume set focused on 'unreleased at the time' recordings from all periods of Dylan's career, placing the tracks on each release in chronological order. There's only 12 basement tracks total between all three volumes, but in keeping with the integrity with which the entire series was assembled, these all seem to be from high quality sources, and sound very good here.

The Basement Reels

Released around the year 2000, this 11-volume set is the "Moby Dick" of basement-related releases, attempting as it does to pull together everything "basement" into one place. This includes not only the original Dylan basement recordings, but also the later publishing and acetate demos, as well as various Band-without-Dylan basement-era tracks, including their stint backing up Tiny Tim for the soundtrack of Peter Yarrow's movie.

Where it ultimately fails is that most of the tracks appear in very poor quality due to what sounds like a particularly thin and brittle-sounding transfer, though some tracks as repeated here and there seem to originate from the same better-sounding sources found on the near contemporaneously released Tree With Roots. But for basement afficionados, it may still be worth the effort to track down for the following reasons: 1) At least through the first three discs, the transfer seems to have been done with no editing whatsover, so for those into this stuff, you'll hear little extraneous tape noises, asides, and other ephemera that you won't find elsewhere, 2) It's interesting to hear the original mono demo collections, even if they're in less than optimum quality, and 3) It's the best collection out there of Band basement-era material, much of which appears here in relatively good quality.

A Tree With Roots

Appearing first in 2001 and then in a slightly modified version in 2002, this 4-volume set touts itself as "The Genuine Basement Tapes Remaster". According to the liner notes, a good half to 2/3rds of the tracks originate from either a "generationally superior or an alternate version of the source tape utilized on The Genuine Basement Tapes". And where the same cassette dubs are used, these have now been subject to a "a brand new state of the art analogue to digital transfer." Sequencing also makes an attempt to follow session chronology as generally assumed.

While there is tangible improvement in some tracks, others - whether through inattention or a not particularly well executed remastering effort - remain marginally inferior to the earlier Genuine Basement Tape versions. We'll suss all this out in the track-by-track analysis to follow...

Mixin' Up the Medicine

This more recent effort (which has since itself spawned a number of related spin-offs) differs from the previously mentioned in that rather than a comprehensive basement collection, it bills itself as the famous "Basement Safety" mentioned a number of times previously here.

To put it bluntly, 'Basement Safety' my ass. Nothing here sounds remotely close to the actual "Basement Safety" track "I'm Not There" mentioned earlier. Instead, what I believe the creators of this disc have done is to pull together the Safety tracks from whatever source available and then completely filter out all hiss - at the same time of course removing any high-end energy and detail in the original recordings. And not only that, but on the better portion of the disc, the tracks are noticeably sped up.

This lazy, deceitful "Look Ma, no hiss!" effort has apparently succeeded in fooling a lot of naive people out there - you should see some of the hosannas for this on the various bootleg review sites. To my way of thinking, this is the antitheses of good mastering practice. This disc will receive no further consideration as I go through the individual tracks in the following posts to come...

 

Best thread ever. Thanks.

I loved these recordings as much as anything I ever heard.

I have a cd-r of some of the songs. My question, the Band recordings from the officially released; when did these songs get recorded?

 

The Hawks (they were not yet The Band in name) actually did quite a bit of recording on their own in Woodstock in 1967, though not much of it appears interspersed with the Dylan basement reels, instead largely being collected on the final reels towards the end. As they tried to develop their sound and their songwriting voice in making the transition from bar band to recording artists, there's a lot of experimentalism (particularly the downright bizarre but fascinating "Even If It's a Pig" suite), a lot of instrumental ideas and still to be fleshed out "song sketches", etc. A bit of this has since been released on the Musical History collection, but most is still not officially available - but IMHO, well worth tracking down.

Although versions of "Ruben Remus" and "Katie's Been Gone" exist that sound to have been recorded at Big Pink, the versions on the official LP I believe to have been recorded at the demo session The Hawks recorded at Columbia Studio E in New York City on 9-5-67 for Albert Grossman to shop around to record labels in his attempts to secure them a recording contract. "Katie" was then subject to further overdubs in 1975.

"Orange Juice Blues" was also recorded at that session in a much different version that appears on the Across the Great Divide collection. The completely different "official" version was originally a Richard Manuel piano demo that was also band overdubbed in 1975.

There's also an earlier version of "Yazoo" (quite different, featuring a screechy Robbie Robertson lead vocal) that sounds to have been recorded at Big Pink. However, the LP version featuring Levon on lead - as well as "Long Distance Operator" - are well documented to be Music From Big Pink outtakes. Both in fact appear on the more recent expanded version of that LP.

"Ain't No More Cane", "Don't You Tell Henry" and "Bessie Smith" were all newly recorded in 1975, though there's some conjecture about "Bessie" possibly having been recorded earlier.

 

...and Minstrel Boy from the latest official Bootleg installment.

 

We all know the later recordings (1967 and 1975) of the Band material were deliberately made to sound lo-fi in order to fit sonically on the original Basement Tapes LP. Have any "normal" sounding mixes of those recordings appeared?

 

Keep it up ... Job well Done.....

 

Re: the Basement Safety tape. I agree and I did a bit of listening and essentially it's A Tree With Roots tracks fiddled with soundwise. One oddity though, Down in the Flood on the Basement safety is much narrower stereo than on the 'safety tape' so I presume they got it from another source. I have the 11 disc reels version, but I'm not going to go through it now!

 

While you're putting as much detail into this thread, don't feel that anything is unworthy of a rehash: SH forum threads of higher quality can turn up high in Google searches, so your comments may well become relevant to a wider readership than just the forum regulars. Mandatory bump and watch, by the way.

 

Other than the audio issues already identified (heavy-handed compression, less-than-ideal generational sources on some tracks, after-the-fact overdubs, narrow mixes), most fan complaints about the official set pertain to the following:

1) Inclusion of Hawks/Band material not part of the actual "basement tape" sessions, giving the impression that this was a far more equal partnership than it really was.

Let's get one thing straight - the basement sessions were in no way a partnership of equals. Dylan was already a world-reknowned folk/rock icon with several all-time classic LPs under his belt; the Hawks a barely known bar band whose main claim to fame at that point was first backing up rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins, and then later Dylan during his '65-'66 world tours (mostly absent Levon - as he would also be during the near entirety of the basement sessions).

In fact, the only reason the Hawks could afford to be there in Woodstock with Dylan was that Dylan was able to keep them on retainer after the next scheduled leg of his world tour was cancelled due to his accident. As mentioned in the previous post, getting off the road finally allowed them the time under Dylan's tutorship to develop their own style and songwriting voice. But their principle function there was to back-up Dylan on music he wanted to record.

Robbie Robertson later attempted to justify the inclusion of the Band tracks (beyond the obvious financial benefits) by claiming the "basement tapes" referred not to the actual sessions, but rather a "homemade" process of recording. All fine and dandy, except that all the Band tracks to appear here were likely recorded in professional studios - including the 9-67 studio demos, the outtakes from the Big Pink sessions, or tracks recorded at their Shangri-La facility in Malibu in 1975.

That's not to say that the quality of this stuff doesn't merit release - it certainly does. But we and it probably would have been better served if these recordings had wound up on some kind of Band archival collection - as is finally becoming the case more recently (and in non-dumbed down, better quality as well).

2) The exclusion of some key, absolutely critical Dylan compositions/performances.

Thinking principally here of "I Shall Be Released", "I'm Not There", and "Sign On the Cross" - though lighter novelty numbers like "The Mighty Quinn" and "Get Your Rocks Off" are also conspicuous by their absense. "Released" of course came out on the Bootleg Series later, though from a less-than-optimum generational source, and "I'm Not There" as already mentioned is also finally available. "Sign On the Cross" was apparently scheduled for the original Bootleg Series collection as well before it was downsized to the current configuration. It's continued availabilty only on the grey market to this date is beyond absurd.

3) The selection of alternate takes of some tracks as opposed to those that appeared on the original demo collections.

This caveat applies to just two tracks in particular - "Tears of Rage" (Take 3 instead of Take 1) and "Too Much Of Nothing" (Take 1 instead of 2), with some considering the versions selected by Robbie inferior. Personally, I find that all the alternate takes of Dylan material recorded at Woodstock are interesting in their own right and deserve to be released.

 

My sense is that one of the main reasons the '75 double LP came out in the first place was that Dylan wanted to throw the Band some money. From that point of view, it wouldn't have made sense to save those outtakes for a Band-only odds-and-sods collection, which wouldn't have sold anything close to what the Dylan/Band Basement Tapes album did--even though, as you say, some violence was done to historical fact to justify putting those recordings on the album.

While I'm sure one of these years we'll get a Bootleg Series iteration centered on unreleased basement tapes (perhaps for the 50th anniversary in 2017?), it seems fairly clear to me that Dylan himself doesn't really share the enthusiasm many other people have for them. He didn't use them as a basis for his next album back in '67 (instead going to Nashville to do the very stylistically different JWH without the Hawks); he let Robbie Robertson take the lead on putting the '75 album together; the first, career-spanning Bootleg Series collection almost completely ignored them; and we're still waiting for most of them to be released decades later, even as the likes of the Witmark demos and Self Portrait outtakes are issued officially. I just think that if Dylan really rated them, we would have seen an official release well before now.

 

Is there anything to suggest it was to throw the Band a bit of cash? He'd just released Before the Flood and Planet Waves with them, so it's arguably just another addition to the partnership, and designed to undercut some of the bootlegs on the market at the time?

 

Plus Bob had 'proved' himself again with 'Blood On The Tracks', so perhaps didn't mind looking back at that point.

 

I've always gotten the idea that Bob was pretty sore that those tracks got bootlegged the way they did, and has felt like "oh well if the bootleggers think they can do it best, let 'em try." And now, their history as bootlegs is part of the story possibly worth preserving (to a certain point of view, not mine) which is why I'm Not There was basically just cut from a copy of a tape.

 

I definitely recall seeing or hearing words to that effect when the Columbia Basement Tapes LP was released, but can't recall whether that was fact or speculation.

Interesting. If so, that parallels the situation in 1997-98 when the acclaim received for Time Out of Mind finally cleared the way for the official release of the Manchester '66 ("Royal Albert Hall") concert.

* * *

As I mentioned in another BT thread a few weeks ago, when the Basement Tapes LP made the top ten in 1975, Dylan's comment was supposedly “I thought everybody already had them.”

 

As Lance said, it's never been formally said (nor will it ever be said!), but I think everyone who has the set and has followed the jaded backstory of the original lp believes it, whether they're a rock critic or just fans like us.

 

Yazoo Street Scandal and Long Distance Operator appear in sonically superior stereo remixes on the Music From Big Pink remaster from 2000 (since, as noted above, they are actually outtakes from the Big Pink sessions rather than Basement recordings. Yazoo is an alternate take, however, but it's quite similar to the originally-released version. And Orange Juice Blues also appears on that disc, though it is in its original piano demo form, minus the 1974 overdubs.

 

I think "Ruben Remus" is probably a legitimate Basement track... it sounds Basementy, and the released version seems pretty similar sonically to the outtake versions that we do have from the Basement. And to me it seems much lower-fidelity than Katie, which we know is from the 1967 demo session.

 

Yeah, I've always thought that too. (It sounds like possibly the vocal is an overdub onto a Basement instrumental track?)

As GetRhythm mentioned earlier, 'Tiny Montgomery' appears to be the mono acetate version on the official LP (IIRC, that particular reel was already AWOL when the Basement safety copy was made).

 

One of the great things about being a Dylan fan... there's no end to the endless avenues you can go down. Even though I possess all the songs mentioned here I haven't delved in the way I apparently need to. There goes my free time this week!

 

I was very happy with the sound quality heard from the remastered I'm Not There. If that is representative of the safety tapes, use them by all means for a complete release.

 

There are a couple of versions of "Ruben Remus" that I think are legitimate basement tracks - one being an early instrumental version that's interspersed with the Dylan stuff on an early reel; the 2nd being a vocal version that's similar to the version on the LP; however it's definitely a different take as it is drumless and features a promiment Rick Danko backing vocal beginning with the 2nd verse that is absent on the LP version. The sound is very basementy as well.

The LP version to me bears all the hallmarks of the 9-67 studio-recorded demo - it has that big, diffuse, echoey sound characteristic of those recordings, and includes drums. Though Levon wasn't back in the fold yet, it's well-documented that the Hawks hired a studio drummer for this session.

There's also this:

http://recordmecca.com/products-pag...released-1967-demo-tape/#sthash.pizrmX3S.dpuf

which I think could very well be a straight copy of the 9-67 demo tape (though it does mention a Levon Helm vocal on "Yazoo Street Scandal" which would post-date that recording to a bit later)...

 

Good to have all this info in one place.

P.S. It's Fraboni, not Frabioni.

 

Oops - certainly is! Thanks - correction noted...

 

Hmm. The alternate version of "Ruben Remus" that I have with a prominent Rick backing vocal does have drums. It appears on the Crossing the Great Divide boot. Is there also a version without drums, or are you misremembering that you heard a version without drums?

At any rate, based on a re-listening to this alternate version, I'm going to concede that you're right that the officially released "Ruben Remus" is not a Basement recording. In fact, I've become convinced that the officially released version and the alternate version (with the Rick vocals) feature the exact same instrumental backing track, and simply have different lead vocals overdubbed. Which obviously would have been impossible to record in the Basement. So neither one of them is a Basement recording, and only the earlier instrumental version is from the Basement, I think.

As to the drums, couldn't it have been Richard drumming? I don't hear a piano in there. If there is one, it's really buried.

 

When the 2009 Legacy version of Odds And Ends blasts out of my speakers, I wonder much better can we expect the sound to get really?