Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes - where we're currently at (Part 6)

Convincing timeline. Going to Alcapulco just sounds like it was recorded at the peak of the Basement sessions around August/September, not much later than, say, Tears of Rage. The only thing that still puzzles me is the date/reel of Sign on the Cross. Obviously Garth did a very good job here, all instruments sound perfectly balanced - a perfection he would achieve again not until much later with tracks like This Weel's On Fire. Could it be that Heylin/Griffin both are wrong when they identify Sign on the Cross as one of the first Basement originals?

 

I also have these listed from : A Tree With Roots - 'The Genuine Basement Tapes Remasters' (By Captain Acid)

The Hills Of Mexico. (Short Intro Missing)

Under Control (Missing Intro)

I Forgot To Remember To Forget Her (Missing Cough )

Bells of Rhymney (Missing Outro)

Still in Town (Missing Outro)

Too Much of Nothing (T2) (Missing Intro)

Yea! Heavy And A Bottle Of Bread [T1] (Missing Intro)

 

Given all of the above, I'm just about ready to say that neither Griffin or Heylin seems to be any more sure or accurate about the chronology now than they were before this came out. With the basic arc of the sessions fairly well known, for me it's almost as useful just to apply the 'ear test' - i.e., does one particular group of recordings sound a bit more polished and together audio-wise than another? Then most likely, it probably came a bit later as they further honed the recording set-up and the sound. For instance, for me it's highly doubtful that the Sun Sessions reel (i.e., "Belshazzar" to "Bells of Rhymney") came as early on as sequenced on the new set; where it's generally placed on the boots (about midway through) sounds a bit more accurate.

 

One more list, based on the Heylin liner notes from the box set:

(11) SONGS -- COPYRIGHT REEL, DATED MARCH 19, 1971

- Don't Ya Tell Henry © 1971
- Bourbon Street © 1973
- My Woman She's a-Leavin' © 1987/88
- Santa-Fe © 1973
- Mary Lou, I Love You Too © 1987/88
- Dress It Up, Better Have It All © 1987/88
- Silent Weekend © 1973
- What's It Gonna Be When It Comes Up © 1987/88
- Wild Wolf © 1973
- All-American Boy © 1973
- Sign On The Cross © 1971

 

Amazon tells me it will be delivered by Thursday (using Prime).

 

Yes, it's too bad that the reels weren't dated somehow. I'm still on the fence about "Reel 2," as well.

As an aside: It's interesting that on one of the early Basement reels, Dylan chooses to cover Spanish Is The Loving Tongue and Come All Ye Fair and Tender Ladies, which he also recorded as "warm up" tracks during the Self Portrait sessions a few years later, as well as doing a third version of Spanish Is... during the New Morning sessions. Those songs must have been near and dear to him back then.

 

Hallelujah, I've just been moved...

 

I love it when bricks and mortar retailers beat Amazon to the punch. But I'm not clear why it happened in this case.

 

If Goin' to Acapulco was on reel #12, as Heylin maintains, it was recorded between the Tears of Rage reel (#10) and the Odds and Ends reel (#13). Sign on the Cross is still a question mark.

 

Well, 'Sign on the Cross' and 'All American Boy' are "floating" songs from a now-lost reel (pre-Levon Helm's return). I think they came into circulation from later compilation reels made in the '70s. They're on the '71 copyright reel, which Heylin says was compiled from reels 6, 15 & 16. We know they weren't on 16, so it must be one of the other two... Obviously, the date would be very different between 6 & 15, either mid-summer or mid-fall. I think earlier in this thread it was decided that reel 6 was the most likely.

 

I think Heylin just says that reel 16 was "compiled from at least two reels, both referenced in 1975" - no numbers given.
He does seem clear that 'Acapulco' & 'Gonna Get You Now' were the only songs taken from reel 12.
But yeah, there is some reel-number confusion, and I hope someday soon Heylin will be more specific about the reel attributions. He obviously had more information than he was able to share.

The conjectural list of reels you made a while back, assuming 20 reels, had a whole bunch of "LOST" reels at the end - somewhat heartbreaking to see. This would be something like a third of the Basement Tapes lost!
On the other hand, we don't know for sure how many numbered reels were actually lost, or how many might not have Dylan songs on them. That's why I think some investigation is needed into the known/circulating Band tracks from the Basement... If there were actually some 5 or 6 reels made after Levon Helm's return, it means Dylan and the Band were recording even MORE stuff than they had in summer '67 - at the same time that they were recording their own albums as well! It might make more sense that many of these later reels were just the Band's stuff.

Griffin's book, unfortunately, almost nowhere discusses the original reels. I don't think he had access to them - only copies made for him - which may explain why his song order is so screwy. And he's pretty vague on just where the Band's songs come from.

 

Thanks!!!

 

I noticed the duplication of "Spanish Is The Loving Tongue" as well, and it made me think that the Self Portrait cover song sessions and the Basement Tapes are really not so far apart in some ways, although obviously the Self Portrait sessions were recorded in a far more normal, professional studio environment. But they were both cases where Dylan got back to his roots via cover songs, which fed into his next batch of original songwriting, that, in the first case, produced John Wesley Harding, and, in the second, New Morning.

 

I've been hoping that The Band experts around here would give us more insight into the material that they recorded without Dylan during the Basement era. Until that happens, I'm staying focused on the 139 tracks on the box set, so that we can re-sequence them into an accurate chronological order.

I made up this single-page "reel guide" to try and keep track of the tapes, but it is still a work-in-progress, and I'm sure I'll have to update it sooner or later. Not very good quality, but it's a start.

 

Wow dude - you're obsessed! (lol)

I think someone really does need to organize and publish all this stuff as an adjunct to the new release...

 

Hey, YOU started this thread!

And yes, an authoritative guide would be nice. But then what would we talk about here??

 

At some point, the echo unit stopped being used for some reason. For that reason, I'd put 'Acapulco' somewhere after the 'Odds And Ends' reel. The latter reel still has the echo unit in action (though it's oddly missing on 'Apple Suckling Tree'). Aren't all recordings after that reel 'dry'?

 

Don't go too far down this rabbit hole guys - it might get dangerous once you discover the basement recordings were faked, just like the moon landings.

 

Yes, Apple Suckling Tree does have a different sound to it, possibly because Bob was at the upright piano? (I think that's him playing, right?)

And Acapulco was assigned to reel #12 by Heylin, who said it came from a generational copy in Dylan's archive, but as far as we know it could have originated on reels #14 or #15. The newly remastered version does sound a lot drier than the reverb-y track on the '75 LP.

 

Has anyone come up with a definitive list of tracks not sourced from the original reels at this point? Don't recall seeing such an animal yet. I'm wondering how much such a list might coincide with what I'm hearing as the less successful audio presentations, as these would all be at least second generation. Anything sourced from the 1975 Fraboni reels will also most likely have much more narrow stereo panning than is characteristic of tracks sourced from the original reels.

 

I agree with you.

 

Hominy, can you post links to the full size photos of all the 'Reel & Tape' pics that you have shown us so far?

 

Wasn't it you who gave us all those links to the images awhile back? Some of them I found online through those links, some I actually scanned in myself from the Lo & Behold book. I didn't think the Garth Hudson Archives (the copyright holders) would mind if I used some of them here in reduced size and resolution.

 

Well, I think we'll know a lot more after we go through the ZaprRolling Stone video frame by frame.

 

This is a little too complicated and a little too convenient, but could Heylin and Haust both be right? Poor-sounding reel 2 was later taped over, leaving just Goin' Down The Road at the "very end"?

Also, wonder why the compilers would go with Heylin's chronology over Haust's unless they had a reason.