Bob Dylan: Triplicate

BOB DYLAN: TRIPLICATE (2017)

1) I Guess I'll Have to Change My Plans; 2) September Of My Years; 3) I Could Have Told You; 4) Once Upon A Time; 5) Stormy Weather; 6) This Nearly Was Mine; 7) That Old Feeling; 8) It Gets Lonely Early; 9) My One And Only Love; 10) Trade Winds; 11) Braggin'; 12) As Time Goes By; 13) Imagination; 14) How Deep Is The Ocean; 15) P.S. I Love You; 16) The Best Is Yet To Come; 17) But Beautiful; 18) Here's That Rainy Day; 19) Where Is The One; 20) There's A Flaw In My Flue; 21) Day In, Day Out; 22) I Couldn't Sleep A Wink Last Night; 23) Sentimental Journey; 24) Somewhere Along The Way; 25) When The World Was Young; 26) These Foolish Things; 27) You Go To My Head; 28) Stardust; 29) It's Funny To Everyone But Me; 30) Why Was I Born.

Because he can. In fact, I am not altogether sure why he decided to stop at three CDs, containing ten songs each. It could just as well have been five CDs with twenty songs each — clearly, the main shocking idea of this package is how much is being offered, and is there anyone out there who doubts that the old man could have filled five, ten, twenty, fifty discs with this kind of mate­rial, and in a matter of several months at that? He's got plenty of money to afford studio time, he's got a dedicated and professional band that would probably back him through the entirety of Dolly Parton's catalog, had he opted for that one, he's clearly enjoying it all so far, and I don't think he cares all that much about whether he is going to make or lose money on this. In fact, he can use his entire Nobel Prize to cover the deficit, if it becomes really necessary.

I did not waste time describing the individual peculiarities of the songs in the case of Fallen Angels, and the «triplication» of the number of recorded tunes does not make such a description any more necessary — as you can probably predict, the playing, the production, the general vibe remains precisely the same. He does seem to be running out of Sinatra-related tunes, but even so, I do believe that the absolute majority of these thirty had been recorded by Frank one way or another, even if we probably prefer to associate ʽAs Time Goes Byʼ with Casablanca and ʽStormy Weatherʼ with Billie Holiday. There seems to be no special mini-concept that would govern the distribution of songs across the three CDs, except that each tends to begin with some­thing a little bit more uptempo, upbeat, and cheerful (all three opening songs feature lively brass riffs, for instance), before quickly descending into the world of slow tempos, midnight brooding, and sentimental nostalgizing. And — goes without saying — sitting through the entire package in one go is hardly possible unless you use it for background purposes only. (It's not that long: since the songs are not dragged out — even if, in some cases, Bob claims to have reinstated original openings to the songs that were lost in most of the classic interpretations — the whole thing barely runs over an hour and a half and could, if necessary, fit on two discs easily).

The only comment worth making here is, perhaps, the realization that Bob is genuinely awed by this material. If anything, he may have recorded so much of this stuff in the effort to have us con­vinced — if not by the quality of it, then at least by sheer quantity — that he is acknowledging the sheer power of Tin Pan Alley, and that he has devised a way, for himself, to make these songs reveal their «Dylanesque» properties, ones that neither us nor him would probably suspect half a century ago. The trick is to sing them in a way that suggests neither cheerfulness (for the cheerful songs) nor sadness (for the sad ones): the trick is to create a combination of instruments and voice that makes them sound psychologically deep and emotionally realistic. Pretty much everything here is reduced to one single denominator — much like with Billie Holiday, who also used to bring everything down to earth with one and the same manner of delivery, except hers was a deli­cate, fragile, humble, deeply personal and moving delivery that made you want to give her a hug of friendly consolation in between each of the tracks; old man Zimmerman here is not asking for your empathy, he sounds more like he's giving you thirty similar pieces of life advice from the depths of his seventy years of experience. Even a relative trifle like ʽSentimental Journeyʼ is sung by him as if he were impairing some kind of deep-meaning parable to you, something that could have hardly been contained in the original song.

So, if there's any moral to this at all, kids, it is that previously unknown depth of feeling may be found anywhere — which, allegedly, paves the way to future albums, in which an 80-year old Dylan discovers the Taoist wisdom of songs from Teletubbies (Over The Hills And Far Away),  a 90-year old Dylan cracks the neurocognitive code of Coca-Cola jingles (Things Go Better), and a 100-year old Dylan explores the nirvana-related properties of the IBM 5150 PC speaker (Beep Beep Doo Doo). And if you think this is a bad joke, well, I'm not altogether sure that this is a joke at all. Unless the title of the last song here (ʽWhy Was I Bornʼ) is meant as an implicit reminder of his own mortality and a brief musical testament (and I do not think it is), there is still no telling what the man might have in store for us in the coming years. Oh, and I actually enjoyed the record, though, honestly, I have a faint hope that he's finally through with this project and that he is not going to pull an Ella Fitzgerald on us.

Bob Dylan: Fallen Angels

BOB DYLAN: FALLEN ANGELS (2016)

1) Young At Heart; 2) Maybe You'll Be There; 3) Polka Dots And Moonbeams; 4) All The Way; 5) Skylark; 6) Nevertheless; 7) All Or Nothing At All; 8) On A Little Street In Singapore; 9) It Had To Be You; 10) Melancholy Mood; 11) That Old Black Magic; 12) Come Rain Or Come Shine.

Bob is well known for doing the same thing twice or thrice if he got a good kick out of it first time around: so, just as Good As I've Been To You was quickly followed up by World Gone Wrong (because there's nothing like a satisfactory refill of the good stuff), one album of Sinatra covers was quickly followed by another — and no, from what I can tell, it's not as if all the mate­rial was recorded during the same session. There is even a slight stylistic difference: Fallen Angels features a smaller band, with no brass support whatsoever, so that the «wee small hours» atmosphere is generated to near-perfection.

That said, I am not even going to try to comment on any of the actual songs — it is totally and utterly irrelevant whether Bob «does justice» to the old versions, and I cannot take seriously any review of Fallen Angels that tries to make meaningful comparisons between Sinatra and Dylan. It seems as clear as daylight that the main, if not only, goal of Fallen Angels is to strengthen and solidify the statement of Shadows In The Night — namely, that you can never pigeonhole Robert Zimmerman, because Robert Zimmerman refuses to wear the yellow star of the pigeon. You gambled on the man putting out another Tempest in 2015? You lost, sucker. You gambled that, okay, he had this weird diversion, but next year he'd put out another Tempest? You lost again. See, the man's been collecting from you for over fifty years now, and so far, he's shown no signs of stop­ping.

Of course, it's a pretty wise gamble: with time mercilessly rolling by, as each new record's chances of becoming his last increase significantly, these quiet, introspective, melancholy-filled tributes to Sinatra all work like ideal swansongs. But it's also obvious (well, not obvious, really: nothing is ever truly obvious with Dylan) that he is not going to stop, and that his next move could be anything — from yet a third album of Sinatra covers (and why not? he had three Chris­tian albums out, didn't he?) to a bunch of acid house rearrangements of Dolly Parton. That's what we love him for, and that's what he is going to keep on doing. As for Fallen Angels, well... I did listen to it twice, and I'll probably never listen to it again. Don't try to make the mistake of taking it too seriously — although if you somehow happen to love the results, there's nothing criminal about that, either (I do love Self-Portrait, after all; but then Self-Portrait was far more diverse, inventive, and unpredictable than these albums, where all the songs follow the same formula — take Sinatra's orchestrated songbook and adapt it for small lite-jazz combo). Just remember that, behind all the seriousness and «depth» of these renditions, he is still putting you on, and you'll never know the truth, because, as Keith Moon once eloquently put it, «you couldn't afford me!»

Bob Dylan: Shadows In The Night

BOB DYLAN: SHADOWS IN THE NIGHT (2015)

1) I'm A Fool To Want You; 2) The Night We Called It A Day; 3) Stay With Me; 4) Autumn Leaves; 5) Why Try To Change Me Now; 6) Some Enchanted Evening; 7) Full Moon And Empty Arms; 8) Where Are You?; 9) What'll I Do; 10) That Lucky Old Sun.

It's really been a long time — these days, the Bobster is nowhere near such an intense presence in people's minds as he was in 1970, when the appearance of Self-Portrait was a weird shock not just for Greil Marcus, but also for millions of followers of the Verbose Curly One. In 2015, many of these original followers are already dead, and those who are not rarely make their voices heard, not to mention that they have been patiently taught, through more than five decades, that you do not bother His Bobness with anything as trivially pitiable as «expectations» — each new album may be freely judged on a take-it-or-leave-it basis, but the man just will not be chained by your demands and predictions, so do not even try.

Since we are all well used to it, and since we also all know that you do not ignore a new Bob Dylan album like you can allow yourself to ignore, say, a new Kings Of Leon album, it is not par­ticularly surprising that Shadows In The Night shot high up in the charts (even all the way to No. 1 in the UK), nor is it particularly surprising that the response to it has been rather limp. A record like this in 1970 would have made people scream — a few renegades would be loving it, most of the others would be hating it even more viciously than Self-Portrait. Today, most of us will pro­bably find ourselves... mildly curious about it. Which is not the fault of us, or the fault of Bob Dylan, or the fault of the music industry, but is simply due to the changing ways of the world.

Objective facts, in brief: The record consists of 10 songs, whose overall running length barely exceeds half an hour. All the songs are covers from the Songbook, all had been, at one time or another, performed by Frank Sinatra, most had been encountered on a string of his «melancholic period» albums from the late Fifties and early Sixties. Everything has been recorded with a 12-piece band in the «midnight country» stylistics (echoey guitars, nocturnal pedal steel reverbera­tions, quietly subdued, almost unnoticeable horns), and, most interesting of all, everything has been sung — almost crooned — by Bob in the cleanest, smoothest voice we've heard from him in ages; in fact, not once ever since he'd clearly developed his trademark «old» rasp-and-gurgle.

This last point is important, since it clearly parallels Dylan's vocal reinvention of 1969 with Nash­ville Skyline (the alleged «non-smoking» voice that had nothing to do with smoking and everything with confounding expectations). This time, he is not that capable — some of that rasp and gurgle has definitely set up for good — but capable enough to make it clear that the near-evil death rattle of his last few albums was just another of his impersonating acts. He never was a Sinatra at 20, let alone at 75, but he understands well enough that you cannot sing ʽFull Moon And Empty Armsʼ with the same voice with which you sing ʽDuquesne Whistleʼ, unless you want your album to be a parody, and Bob Dylan ain't no cheap «parodist».

One thing I do not wish to discuss at all is how well Dylan «understands» these songs, or whether he is able to offer his own «artistic interpretations», capturing their lyricism, emotionality, con­veying the right feeling of loneliness and despair, etc. etc. Above and beyond everything else, this is just a gesture of freedom — never mind his age, never mind the current century number, never mind that fifty years ago, a young Dylan probably wouldn't want to be caught dead trying to co­ver a Sinatra song, never mind that even the «gloomy» aspect of these tunes still sounds exces­sively mannered and polite next to the much more genuine-looking gloom of the preceding Tempest. This is a gesture, and all I have to say is that, accompanying this gesture, Bob does manage to get a good sound from his band (with Donnie Heron's pedal steel guitar as the lead instrument through­out), and that I was kinda happy to hear him sing like that — after all, not everybody can boast the honor of adding yet another vocal style of one's own to an already large bank, at the ripe age of 75.

At the same time, I also can't help thinking that this «gesture of freedom» comes with its own irony — back in the 1980s and early 1990s, when Dylan was severely out of the state of commer­cial grace, people were too busy digging the new musical sounds of those decades to pay much attention to an old fogey, regardless of whether his albums were really bad (like Down In The Groove) or really good (like Good As I Been To You). Now, in 2015, Dylan releases a short throwaway album of Sinatra covers — and not only does it not pass unnoticed, but it actually sells, charts, and gets positive reviews, when most of those people should really be busy doing other things. If you ask me, this is neither a good nor a bad sign — it just shows that these days, there are no expectations, not just from Dylan but from anyone, and in these conditions, an album of Dylan covering Sinatra is just as potentially welcome as an album of B. B. King covering Friedrich Nietzsche, and both of them are as potentially welcome as anything released by any­body in the last five years or so. Everything is so goddamn relative these days, with the sole ex­ception of "that lucky old sun — got nothin' to do but roll 'round heaven all day", which is sort of a slightly consolatory conclusion here, some stable point of reference to get us by.

As a stand-alone record, Shadows In The Night is too short, too slight, and too monotonous to deserve any recommendation. But as another quirky pit stop on this man's race to nowhere in particular, it should definitely earn its thumbs up — if only because it got me thinking again on all these odd issues of quality, relevance, artist-vs.-public, and the general and special theory of relativity as filtered through the incomprehensible mind of the Einstein of popular music.

Bob Dylan: The Bootleg Series Vol. 10 (Another Self Portrait)

THE BOOTLEG SERIES VOL. 10: ANOTHER SELF PORTRAIT (1969-1970; 2012)

CD I: 1) Went To See The Gypsy; 2) Little Sadie; 3) Pretty Saro; 4) Alberta #3; 5) Spanish Is The Loving Tongue; 6) Annie's Going To Sing Her Song; 7) Time Passes Slowly #1; 8) Only A Hobo; 9) Minstrel Boy; 10) I Threw It All Away; 11) Railroad Bill; 12) Thirsty Boots; 13) This Evening So Soon; 14) These Hands; 15) In Search Of Little Sadie; 16) House Carpenter; 17) All The Tired Horses;

CD II: 1) If Not For You; 2) Wallflower; 3) Wigwam; 4) Days Of '49; 5) Working On A Guru; 6) Country Pie; 7) I'll Be Your Baby Tonight; 8) Highway 61 Revisited; 9) Copper Kettle; 10) Bring Me A Little Water; 11) Sign On The Window; 12) Tattle O'Day; 13) If Dogs Run Free; 14) New Morning; 15) Went To See The Gypsy; 16) Belle Isle; 17) Time Passes Slowly #2; 18) When I Paint My Masterpiece.

The farther you go, the harder it gets to push out new incarnations of «The Bootleg Series» that would not merely be of historical interest, but actually worthy of Bob's general reputation and enjoyable to the average ear without having to be preceded by a three-hour lecture on how Bob Dylan changed the world in so many ways. The Witmark Demos was already something like the equivalent of Vol. 25 of Leo Tolstoy's Collected Oeuvres, located so far down the bookshelf that only professional philologists ever get there. But with Vol. 10, the Bootleg Series Team and their grumpy old endorser from Hibbing, Minnesota, have found an unpredictable and exciting twist that clearly shows — «Dylan still got it» even when it comes to digging around in forty-year old trash that most people would have probably recycled a long time ago.

This, in fact, is nothing less than «Dylan's revenge»: a double CD of demos, outtakes, and alter­nate cuts from his least critically respected era — the year of Self Portrait (which everybody hated) and New Morning (which everybody could have hated were it not for it being the follow-up to Self Portrait). Was the team crazy or something? Not in the least. Even as the original ter­minator-style reviews of Self Portrait pretty much secured the album's encyclopaedic status of «Dylan's lowest creative point», over the years, more and more people came to realize that the record was really «not all that bad» — meaning, of course, that it was pretty good, as long as you did not hold it up to the standards of a Highway 61 Revisited. All one had to do was wait — and Dylan waited just long enough. The timing could hardly be better: with his string of derivative, non-revolutionary, but still modestly brilliant artistic successes in the 1990s and 2000s he got fans and critics alike to recognize and respect that «Dylan cannot always be great, but he can be consistently good». And here comes a memo of the distant past — just admit it, guys, I've always been at least consistently good, even when you said I stunk. Just let it go. Drop a load. You've always liked Self Portrait, I'm sure, you were just too embarrassed to admit it.

To drive the final nail in the coffin of Self Portrait's musical-Frankenstein legend, none other than Greil Marcus, the author of the original famous «what is this shit?» review, is called in to repent and atone for his sins by writing a new set of liner notes. Honestly, I have not even opened them — I am just amused by the power that Bob Dylan has over people. Of course, he may have also reiterated what other reviewers have said: many of them, so as to save face, published glowing reviews along the lines of «Dylan was on such a creative roll in 1970, really, it is a pity and a shame that his outtakes were actually so much better than the official record. Yeah, truly and verily, the only thing that is better than ʽCopper Kettleʼ and ʽBelle Isleʼ without the orches­tral overdubs is ʽDays Of '49ʼ without the rhythm section!»

This is all rubbish, of course. Self Portrait was cool (including Bob's romantic takes on ʽBlue Moonʼ and ʽLet It Be Meʼ, rather than excluding them), and Another Self Portrait simply adds to that coolness. If there is one thing that it adds to our understanding of Dylan circa 1970, it is that the man was not merely driven by the desire to release something «humble» and «epochally irrelevant» to get the Messiah-seekers off his front porch — he really was exploring various musical avenues and corners, even if that exploration so often focused on material written and recorded by other people. It was all just a part of the general plan to «get back to the roots» (which he shared with the Beatles, the Byrds, and quite a few other people around the same time) and it worked far more often than it did not.

Of those songs that have previously been available only in real bootleg form, most would have fit in well on Self Portrait, although I do not feel like spending much spacetime discussing them — mostly a mix of blues, folk, and country oldies and a few originals, ranging from the stylishly romantic (ʽPretty Saroʼ) to the epic western (ʽRailroad Billʼ) to the working man's song (ʽThese Handsʼ) to even a satirical send-up of Jimmy Reed's classic style (ʽWorking On A Guruʼ); only the cover of Eric Andersen's ʽThirsty Bootsʼ, a stately song of consolation and repose, makes a humble swipe at «classic» status, but somehow remains in­complete. Still, it is kinda fun to imagine all of them, along with a few early versions that would later be reworked for New Morning, making it on to the regular Self Portrait and turning it into a triple album. What would Greil Marcus have said in 1970?

The most interesting stuff, actually, is not the «naked» versions of songs that did make it to Self Portrait (I personally do not mind the strings and backing harmonies on ʽCopper Kettleʼ at all), but those early versions of New Morning songs that are often completely dissimilar to their official equivalents. ʽIf Dogs Run Freeʼ, in particular, is an actual song here rather than just a recital, with a gospel chorus to boot; ʽNew Morningʼ itself is aggrandized with a horn section, giving it a flashy «Stax» feel; ʽTime Passes Slowlyʼ opens up in full-blast rocking mode, and ʽIf Not For Youʼ features a retro-romantic, if not too well polished, violin part from some wannabe Jascha Heifetz — I can see why Dylan ended up hating the idea, but it was funny while it lasted. Collectively, these songs are very different in aim and scope from the final «homebrewn», relati­vely minimalist product, and, as good as New Morning ended up anyway, it would have been interesting to see it as this far more ambitiously conceived project; the album would have no obvious equivalent in the rest of Bob's catalog.

Two of the songs also feature additional numbers from Bob's 1969 Isle of Wight gig with The Band, but if you're lucky, you might end up with the 3-CD deluxe edition whose bonus disc con­tains the show captured in full. Since it was Bob's first official gig after a three-year break (and would also be the last, an appearance at Harrison's Bangla Desh concert excepted, for another four or five), everything is as crude as it seemed on the official Self Portrait, but not without its own period charms — this is where Bob would sing (for about half of the show) in his «angelic» voice, putting a special spin on oldies like ʽIt Ain't Me Babeʼ and ʽTo Ramonaʼ, butchering ʽI Pity The Poor Immigrantʼ in the process, and, together with The Band, turning his old rockers into rambling, half-drunk traveling minstrel show ballads. Not a great show, but a fun experiment — and another live Dylan album that sounds nothing like any other live Dylan albums. Plus, that Robbie Robertson guitar solo on ʽQuinn The Eskimoʼ, cleaned up and remastered, has never sounded more fiery and inspirational.

Happy to say that I have no qualms whatsoever about giving this one a thumbs up — I, for one, have liked (and sometimes even loved) Self Portrait since the day I first heard it, and it is only natural to extend that liking to Another Self Portrait, since it sort of lets you in much deeper on Dylan's general state of mind at the time.

Bob Dylan: The Bootleg Series Vol. 9 (The Witmark Demos)

BOB DYLAN: THE BOOTLEG SERIES VOL. 9: THE WITMARK DEMOS (1962-1964; 2010)

CD I: 1) Man On The Street (fragment); 2) Hard Times In New York Town; 3) Poor Boy Blues; 4) Ballad For A Friend; 5) Rambling, Gambling Willie; 6) Talking Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues; 7) Standing On The Highway; 8) Man On The Street; 9) Blowin' In The Wind; 10) Long Ago, Far Away; 11) A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall; 12) Tomorrow Is A Long Time; 13) The Death Of Emmett Till; 14) Let Me Die In My Footsteps; 15) Ballad Of Hollis Brown; 16) Quit Your Low Down Ways; 17) Baby, I'm In The Mood For You; 18) Bound To Lose, Bound To Win; 19) All Over You; 20) I'd Hate To Be You On That Dreadful Day; 21) Long Time Gone; 22) Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues; 23) Masters Of War; 24) Oxford Town; 25) Farewell;

CD II: 1) Don't Think Twice, It's All Right; 2) Walkin' Down The Line; 3) I Shall Be Free; 4) Bob Dylan's Blues; 5) Bob Dylan's Dream; 6) Boots Of Spanish Leather; 7) Girl From The North Country; 8) Seven Curses; 9) Hero Blues; 10) Whatcha Gonna Do?; 11) Gypsy Lou; 12) Ain't Gonna Grieve; 13) John Brown; 14) Only A Hobo; 15) When The Ship Comes In; 16) The Times They Are A-Changin'; 17) Paths Of Victory; 18) Guess I'm Doing Fine; 19) Baby Let Me Follow You Down; 20) Mama, You Been On My Mind; 21) Mr. Tambourine Man; 22) I'll Keep It With Mine.

So I suppose it was only a matter of time, after all, before the complete set of the Witmark demos (only a brief «teaser» glimpse of which was offered on the original Bootleg Series) made it onto the public market. But almost inevitably, here is where we pass completely into the realm of special interest; the potential audience of this package is probably even smaller than the one for No Direction Home, which at least had the advantage of covering both the acoustic and the early electric periods and thus, featured considerably more diversity.

These recordings are not rejected outtakes and were originally meant to be heard by other people, but not by any people — they were recorded by Bob for two publishing companies (Leeds, and later the more prestigious Witmark that bought out Bob's contract) that would offer Bob's raw demos for other artists to cover. So, on one hand, there is some incentive here to get the basic point of the song through to the listener — on the other hand, there is no pretending that these aren't essentially «scratch» versions, ranging from half-finished drafts to completed recordings that still lack the care and meticulousness of finished studio productions.

More than half of the songs that the Bobster recorded in those «childhood days» we already know well enough from the official studio albums, and the cream of the crop for the unknown ones was already made available on The Bootleg Series Vol. 1. ʽDon't Think Twice, It's Alrightʼ is the only version here that can fully compete with the official original — most of the others will have you cringe a bit in terms of occasional flubbed lines, bum notes, or wrong intonations. For some reason, his latest sessions for Witmark were mostly piano-based, yet I doubt that anybody will get more kicks out of piano-driven versions of ʽMama You Been On My Mindʼ or ʽMr. Tambourine Manʼ, since Bob's piano skills were quite rudimentary.

As for previously unavailable or rare / bootlegged material, don't hold your breath: most of it consists of short, highly derivative snippets that may only disappoint when set next to classic material. Their main flaw is almost always the same — Bob is trying to sound like somebody else rather than himself. ʽStanding On The Highwayʼ, for instance, is an attempt at re-writing Robert Johnson's ʽCrossroadsʼ that fails because Bob is not Robert Johnson. A whole bunch sounds like Bob attempting to be Woody Guthrie (ʽGypsy Louʼ, ʽGuess I'm Doing Fineʼ, etc.). And it also features what might arguably be the man's worst ever attempt at a protest song: ʽThe Death Of Emmett Tillʼ. Which is really just ʽThe House Of The Rising Sunʼ with a new set of extremely crude lyrics that couldn't even be called «manipulative» because they're so ham-fisted. It did not take him too long to come up with better, sharper angles for Hollis Brown and Hattie Carroll, but poor Emmett Till, as tragic and disgusting as his story is, never really got his due here.

That said, there is hardly any sense in severely criticizing this album. For historiographers and «deep fans», this collection, grafted together in chronological order, is priceless anyway, because the lack of selectiveness shows, first and foremost, the learning process — the album lets us in, stage by stage, on the complicated job of becoming a successful singer-songwriter. In the process, we gradually see Dylan «coming into his own» — moving away from imitations and tributes and closer to finding his own voice. The big breakthrough, of course, comes with ʽBlowin' In The Windʼ and ʽHard Rainʼ — the great leap in quality that, amazingly enough, was yet nowhere near in sight when John Hammond signed Bob to Columbia — but it's not as if everything after that is a winner: inspiration still comes and goes, and it is only by the time of the second CD that Bob begins putting down masterpieces on a steady basis.

If seen from that point of view, The Witmark Demos is quite a unique archival release, because not even Anthology 1 included such a big share of early rejected or donated material, and it is quite bold of Bob to give the world easy access to his early jottings on such a large scale — al­though, at this point, it probably wouldn't have hurt his reputation if the next Bootleg Series were an entire album of Presley covers with his high school band. But the uniqueness comes with a price: I could only recommend this collection to people seriously obsessed with the question of «what is Bob Dylan's genius and where did it come from?». Additionally, young aspiring song­writers in need of some sort of «textbook» might certainly have an interest here. Not that Dylan himself had any «textbook» when learning to become a songwriter, but... well, let's just admit that «the waters around us have grown», and way too many aspiring songwriters seem to think that all it takes in this business is to write your own ʽDeath Of Emmett Tillʼ, without even bothering to upgrade it to the level of ʽBallad Of Hollis Brownʼ. So it doesn't hurt, every now and then, to refresh one's memory of what it is that separates «craft» from «awesomeness».

Bob Dylan: The Bootleg Series Vol. 8 (Tell Tale Signs)

BOB DYLAN: THE BOOTLEG SERIES VOL. 8: TELL TALE SIGNS (1989-2006; 2008)

1) Mississippi (alt. version #1); 2) Most Of The Time (alt. version); 3) Dignity (piano demo); 4) Someday Baby (alt. version); 5) Red River Shore; 6) Tell Ol' Bill; 7) Born In Time; 8) Can't Wait (alt. version); 9) Everything Is Broken (alt. version); 10) Dreamin' Of You; 11) Huck's Tune; 12) Marchin' To The City; 13) High Water (For Charlie Patton) (live); 14) Mis­sisippi (alt. version #2); 15) 32-20 Blues; 16) Series Of Dreams; 17) God Knows; 18) Can't Escape From You; 19) Dignity; 20) Ring Them Bells (live); 21) Cocaine Blues (live); 22) Ain't Talkin' (alt. version); 23) The Girl On The Greenbriar Shore (live); 24) Lonesome Day Blues (live); 25) Miss The Mississippi; 26) The Lone­some River; 27) 'Cross The Green Mountain.

The next installment in The Bootleg Series returns us to the original format. Since the release of the original triple package, more than 15 years had elapsed, and in the interim Bob had managed to recapture the hearts of fans and critics alike one more time — clearly, the entire fruitful period in between the «pre-comeback» of Oh Mercy and the super-success of Time Out Of Mind, Love & Theft, and Modern Times needed some extra coverage, to bring collectors, completists, and cultists up-to-date with the latest developments. Sure the third disc of the original series had some duds on it, but that was the Eighties, you know — surely Bob's blistering comeback had to lead to its own precious leftovers in dust bins?

Well, to tell the truth, this one's been a little over-hyped. First, although two discs for 18 years of music making does not feel too disproportionate compared to three discs for the previous 28 years of music making — one should not forget that back in the 1960s, each year counted for five in comparison. Look at this track listing and you will see that approximately half of these songs are alternate versions of officially released counterparts (demos, rejected takes, live versions, the usual stuff), whereas much of the other half gathers leftovers that had been officially released — on various movie soundtracks (North Country, Gods And Generals, etc.). Altogether, you only get something like five or six completely new songs. This is still a treat, but one that gets diluted in a sea of all too familiar voices and melodies.

Second, Tell Tale Signs presents very little, if anything, in the way of actual big-time «surprises». Most of those years Dylan spent reconnecting with his heritage — the dark side of Americana, in so many different, but nearly always similar, ways — and these outtakes mostly just offer more of the same. Blues, folk, country-oriented tunes with predictable melodies and the usual hoarse singing: no wonder the liner notes are mostly busy discussing the wonders of the lyrics rather than anything else. This is not a jarring criticism, though — merely a warning that if you already have the original official LPs, Tell Tale Signs will not be opening your eyes in a manner of which the old Bootleg Series was sometimes capable.

That said, this is still Dylan's Bronze Age here, and the album is consistently listenable through­out, and there are even highlights a-plenty. Particularly treasurable are the Time Out Of Mind outtakes: ʽDreamin' Of Youʼ is an atmospheric guitar lover's paradise, with several haunting, weepy lines flowing in and out of each other, perfectly complementing the main lyrical message ("I'm dreamin' of you / That's all I do / And it's driving me insane"); ʽRed River Shoreʼ is a nos­talgic ballad with a Texmex flavor (the accordeon strikes again) that was, perhaps, deemed too happy-sounding for the album; and the two early versions of ʽMississippiʼ (one almost purely acoustic, one with a full backing band) are arguably better than the final take on Love & Theft, which seems a little overproduced in comparison.

Of the soundtrack tunes, ʽTell Ol' Billʼ is pretty good, even if the melody is basically just a rewrite of the verse melody for ʽMan Gave Names To All The Animalsʼ (well, we wouldn't ex­pect Bob to overtax himself for a goddamn soundtrack) — nice «dark boogie» atmosphere smelling of unexplored alleys and unseen dangers. But the real highlight is ʽ'Cross The Green Mountainʼ, a song commemorated to the Civil War (only too appropriate for a movie about the Civil War) that somehow manages to get a unique sound going, courtesy of Tony Garnier playing a minimalistic «doom-style» bassline and Larry Campbell contrasting it with a romantic violin part, while Bob is telling us a not-too-sophisticated moral tale on the evils of war. This is pro­bably the greatest song on the album, so, not coincidentally, it is also set at the very end — and it gives a deeper impression than any song from Love & Theft (both were recorded in 2002).

Honorable mention should also go to the live cuts — so far, Bob has not released a single com­plete live album from the Never Ending Tour, so this is the easiest way to check out his band on a good night (other than actually buying a ticket to the next show, of course). On Disc 1, there is a really gritty, nasty rendition of ʽHigh Waterʼ, with Bob's guitarists raising hell and, overall, turning the formerly moody-creepy song into a kick-ass blues-rocker (not necessarily a «good» thing per se, but a good example of how Bob can still radically reinvent his new songs even at this late date). ʽLonesome Day Bluesʼ on the second disc is closer to the studio version and also featured in surprisingly lo-fi quality, but the acoustic rendition of the old ʽCocaine Bluesʼ from 1997 is hard to beat, with Bob's «whining» voice perfectly fit for the whiny occasion.

Finally, there are just some extra nice touches here and there — the versions of ʽBorn In Timeʼ and ʽGod Knowsʼ, for instance, will be a drop (two drops) of pleasure to those who hated the keyboard-heavy production of these songs on Under A Red Sky (as it turns out, they sounded so much better under the original supervision of Lanois during the Oh Mercy sessions). A couple extra acoustic oldies, recorded in the 1992-93 «back-to-rootsiest-roots» period, would have made a good addition to the original Good As I Been To You and World Gone Wrong. And ʽDignityʼ has a more interesting and flashy arrangement than on the live Unplugged version. In short, some of these alternate versions can outshine the originals — the final list depends on the listener, but I guess you could say that is the privileged advantage of an album of outtakes from your not-so-revolutionary period.

Overall, this is a fine supporting companion to Dylan's latest creative renaissance, as long as you do not set your expectations unjustifiedly high or join the salivating crowds of worshippers, ready to overpraise each scrap as soon as it is found and laid out on the table. One thing that it proves is that it always makes sense to pry into the man's vaults, no matter from which epoch they date. But the quality of the vault in question is tightly correlated with the quality of its epoch — thus, if your favorite Dylan album is Love & Theft, for some reason, then run, don't walk, to get this stuff. Otherwise, just walk. A walking man's thumbs up here.

Bob Dylan: The Bootleg Series Vol. 7 (No Direction Home)

BOB DYLAN: THE BOOTLEG SERIES VOL. 7: NO DIRECTION HOME (1959-1966; 2005)

1) When I Got Troubles (home recording); 2) Rambler, Gambler; 3) This Land Is Your Land (live); 4) Dink's Song (home recording); 5) I Was Young When I Left Home (home recording); 6) Sally Gal; 7) Don't Think Twice, It's All Right (demo); 8) Man Of Constant Sorrow; 9) Blowin' In The Wind (live); 10) Masters Of War (live); 11) A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall (live); 12) When The Ship Comes In (live); 13) Mr. Tambourine Man (alt. take); 14) Chimes Of Freedom (live); 15) It's All Over Now, Baby Blue (alt. take); 16) She Belongs To Me (alt. take); 17) Maggie's Farm (live); 18) It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry (alt. take); 19) Tombstone Blues (alt. take); 20) Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues (alt. take); 21) Desolation Row (alt. take); 22) Highway 61 Revisited (alt. take); 23) Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat (alt. take); 24) Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again (alt. take); 25) Visions Of Johanna (alt. take); 26) Ballad Of A Thin Man (live); 27) Like A Rolling Stone (live).

Nothing lasts forever, and even «The Golden Age of The Bootleg Series» had to pass sooner or later. The first 3-volume set could rival at least a good half of Bob's officially released LPs, and the next three packages, in between them, offered a phenomenal retrospective of live perfor­man­ces, each one covering a completely distinct and autonomous Face of Bob Dylan. Alas, Vol. 7, nice as it is to have it on its own merits, shows that... well, we are not exactly scraping the bottom of the barrel, seeing as how there is seemingly no end to The Bootleg Series in sight, but we have definitely lifted off all the real juicy, creamy layers. The Bootleg Series Vols. 1-6 were for every­body; here begins the hardcore stuff for the truly inquisitive fan.

Actually, this album did not even begin its proper life as part of The Bootleg Series. It just so happened that Bob's old admirer Martin Scorsese finally got around to shooting a documentary on the man's rise to fame and his early, glorious years, with special focus on the «acoustic to elec­tric» tran­sition. The documentary had to have a soundtrack, but since it was deemed too boring to simply reuse the already available recordings from the movie, it was decided that the soundtrack would be a «pseudo-soundtrack», offering alternate cuts to much, if not most, of the music that was actually used in the movie or previously released on audio. And if so — hey, why not count the soundtrack as one more part of The Bootleg Series? Happy coincidence.

No Direction Home is the first Dylan album to be very similar, in principle, to the Beatles' Anthology: a few outtakes of songs that we have not previously heard from the man at all, inter­spersed with a boatload of alternate takes and live versions of stuff we do know pretty well. And, just like the Anthologies, it shares the same problem — there are good reasons why none of these alternate takes made the final cut. Live performances aside, there is a huge deal of «work in pro­gress» here, and for myself at least, these takes hold only historical interest. They might be seri­ously different from the final version — but in most cases, «being different» means «does not really work all that well».

One myth that the availability of these outtakes does ruin, or, at least, shatter a little bit, is the myth of «total spontaneity», according to which the usual process was as follows: Bob just threw some lyrics together, got some guys together, gave them the key to play in, and then they'd record everything in one, at max two or three takes. Very rarely, it was like that indeed, but in reality most of the tunes did go through a gestation period, and the second disc here, covering the early elec­tric years (1965-66), proves that all too well. We already knew about ʽIt Takes A Lot To Laughʼ and how it started out fast and raunchy and then only started making real sense when they slowed it down (there is yet another fast version here, and it works no better than the one on Vol. 2). But we may not have known that there was a take on ʽDesolation Rowʼ with Al Kooper on electric rather than Charlie McCoy on acoustic guitar — it sure sounds different, with Al's raga-like, proto-Velvet Underground improvisation a far cry from Charlie's quasi-baroque flourishes, but fact is, Charlie knew what the song needs here much better than Al did, and thank you very much, Bob, for understanding that.

Or take the two early outtakes from the New York sessions for Blonde On Blonde, recorded without the aid of the Nashville session people. ʽLeopard-Skin Pill-Box Hatʼ is slower and lazier than the finalized Nashville take, and has more of that uncomfortable «white boys play the blues» aura to it than the almost punkish punch of the final version. But the worst offender is ʽVisions Of Johannaʼ, which is seriously the only song on this album that I cannot listen to without crin­ging — the only excuse I can find for The Hawks' complete lack of understanding of how to play that song is that Bob, at this point, does not seem to understand it himself, screaming out the lyrics in «battle cry mode» as if this were ʽTombstone Bluesʼ. Horrible. And fascinating — that he did work it out, and eventually turned the disaster into an atmospheric masterpiece.

Even in the acoustic era, some outtakes sucked: the version of ʽMr. Tambourine Manʼ, included here, for some reason features Ramblin' Jack Elliott on rather out-of-tune background vocals, adding a semi-drunk echo to Bob's main part. Worth one listen out of general amusement, I guess, but believe me, these harmonies sure ain't Byrds quality. (For that matter, the liner notes state that this might have been the version that was actually sent to the Byrds — if it was the «duet» that prompted them to try out group harmonies on the chorus, then, okay, this take has much more historical significance than I'd generally award it).

Curious, but inferior alternate takes aside, there is still about 70 minutes of excellent live perfor­mances here. Real early stuff like an honest-to-goodness, but somewhat bumblin' cover of ʽThis Land Is Your Landʼ, is not all that great, but then we get to hear some peak-level acoustic-era numbers from 1963, which already show him experimenting with the tempos and modulations, and a very spirited rip through ʽChimes Of Freedomʼ from the 1964 Newport Festival (so spiri­ted, in fact, that some might probably suggest he was quite high at the time). Of course, the cake is taken by that one bit from the 1965 Newport Festival — that very performance of ʽMaggie's Farmʼ, cleaned up and remastered here in pristine sound (now we can hear what was actually played!), that started off the entire «heroic Dylan goes electric in the face of overwhelming odds» legend. Legend aside, it is one hell of a punk rock performance indeed, where Mike Bloomfield and his crazy electric guitar hystrionics rule the day more than Bob Dylan himself — naturally, the one crown jewel of this collection that should be present on any Dylan anthology.

Boosted by a few biographical oddities, like the low quality home recordings from 1959-1961 (ʽI Was Young When I Left Homeʼ is kind of a fun song to hear from a 20-year old, don't you think?), No Direction Home: The Soundtrack will boost your understanding of Bob Dylan and give you a few pointers about the nature and functioning of his genius. But unless you have worn out your copies of the «regular» albums no less than three times, I doubt that you will have strong «affection» for the seventh issue in The Bootleg Series. And to uphold that doubt, and also to stress the significant drop in quality, no thumbs up for you this time. As great as these songs are, we cannot give away thumbs up to any album that has any version of ʽDesolation Rowʼ or ʽMr. Tambourine Manʼ on it, can we? That'd be debasing the currency in too cruel a fashion.

Bob Dylan: The Bootleg Series Vol. 6 (Concert At Philharmonic Hall)

BOB DYLAN: THE BOOTLEG SERIES VOL. 6: CONCERT AT PHILHARMONIC HALL (1964; 2004)

1) The Times They Are A-Changin'; 2) Spanish Harlem Incident; 3) Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues; 4) To Ramona; 5) Who Killed Davey Moore?; 6) Gates Of Eden; 7) If You Gotta Go, Go Now (Or Else You Got To Stay All Night); 8) It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding); 9) I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met); 10) Mr. Tambourine Man; 11) A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall; 12) Talkin' World War III Blues; 13) Don't Think Twice, It's Alright; 14) The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll; 15) Mama, You Been On My Mind; 16) Silver Dagger; 17) With God On Our Side; 18) It Ain't Me Babe; 19) All I Really Want To Do.

Or maybe this, too, could be «Dylan's best live album», despite not featuring a backing band at all and not having anything to do with «rock and roll» as such — just Bob, Bob's acoustic guitar, Bob's diatonic harmonica, and Bob's Joan Baez on four of the tracks. Actually, if you do have the physical copy of the album already, this review will be completely unnecessary, because the astute liner notes by Sean Wilentz (who did really attend the show in question) provide all the information and all the extra food for thought you'd need, and I have nothing of use to add to the man's insightful retro-analysis of everything that was going on that night. But provided you do not have access to those liner notes, here be a lowly substitute of recycled information and plagia­rized conclusions for y'all.

The show was played on October 31, 1964, at New York's Philharmonic Hall, in preparation for Halloween ("I'm wearing my Bob Dylan mask!"). Another Side Of Bob Dylan had come out less than three months prior to that, and in two months' time he would be trying out the electric schtick; ʽMr. Tambourine Manʼ had not yet been officially released, but had already been exten­sively played out, and was clearly familiar to the audience. Basically, when the «Bootleg Series Team» decided that the next live album to be released would have to be for the acoustic period, the choice was between «classic acoustic phase» (Bob as Pete Seeger-approved hero of the protest movement) and «transitional acoustic phase» — and they settled on the tapes from the Philharmonic as a particularly well-played and well-preserved memento of the latter. What can I say? Awesome choice, probably (probably, because I don't have that much to compare it with).

Playing Live 1964 back to back with Live 1966 (especially its acoustic first half) will give you a good idea of just how much the man — and the times — had changed in less than two years. The Dylan of 1966 was a Dylan living in a cloud (and I don't even literally mean a cloud of dope, though that was relevant, too), separated from the audience by an invisible plexiglas layer. By contrast, the Dylan of 1964 is a lively, cheerful, charismatic fellow, already well aware of the great power that he can exercise over people and occasionally testing its limits — for instance, there is a moment there when he just absent-mindedly strums the chords to ʽI Don't Believe Youʼ for a couple of minutes before «admitting» that he does not remember the first verse, and having people in the front row explicitly remind him that yes, Bob, truly and verily we have faithfully memorized all the songs from your latest and greatest. (I do not buy it that he actually did forget the "I can't understand..." bit, although he does stumble once on a verse in the middle of ʽIt's Alright Maʼ, and then again, there's a hilarious stumble in the middle of ʽMama You Been On My Mindʼ where they have to trade some extra vocalising in between Bob and Joan).

He is also clearly a fellow that is way too tired of his «protest» image, as evidenced by the encore, where somebody jokingly requests ʽMary Had A Little Lambʼ and the man responds with "Did I write that?... Is that a protest song?" To that end, there are only three songs off The Times, his most symbolically «protest» album, and once he gives the impression of being about to launch into ʽBallad Of Hollis Brownʼ, but then switches gears and it becomes ʽHard Rainʼ. Even the early Freewheelin' material is downtrodden — no ʽBlowin' In The Windʼ in the setlist, no ʽMas­ters Of Warʼ, and as for ʽDon't Think Twiceʼ, it is executed in near-parodic mode ("well it ain't no use to sit and wonder why, BAAAAAAAAABE!") that sends the audience laughing rather than empathizing. Clearly, the time had come for something different, even if you had to slaughter some of your own sacred cows, or, at least, rudely de-sacralize them.

On the other end of the pole, we have previews of things to come — introductions of the as of yet brand new ʽGates Of Edenʼ and ʽIt's Alright, Maʼ ("it's a very funny song!" — yeah, right), which could have been known at best to a tiny handful of people in the audience; it is not clear how many people could get the words right, but it must be said that Bob plays both songs at slightly slower tempos than we are used to nowadays, and enunciates everything very clearly. For that matter, he also enunciates very clearly the comical sexual innuendos on ʽIf You Gotta Go, Go Nowʼ, sending the people up in roars of laughter after each verse — even a stren-faced folkie likes a good adulterous brawl every now and then.

The Joan Baez section is probably the weakest link of the show: she was a good foil for him in the «classic protest» days, but by late 1964 the vibe had died down, and their dueting on ʽWith God On Our Sideʼ feels a little «workmanlike» and not particularly inspiring. ʽMama You Been On My Mindʼ, envisioned here as a mental dialog between the two separated protagonists, works much better (when they do not forget the lyrics, that is), and Joan graciously gets a solo spot with the traditional song ʽSilver Daggerʼ (she is really very beautiful when she comes in small doses like this), but in the context of this show it is clearly seen that the Dylan/Baez partnership is over and out. "It ain't me you're looking for, babe". Was it intentional that he had her participate in this as the show's final duet? I think it was.

Anyway, even despite the fact that there is relatively little space to rearrange and reinvent your songs when you are only armed with the barest of equipment, Bob gives us plenty of quirks and tricks to make this experience every bit as valuable as the canonical studio recordings. (Might I add that aficionados of Bob's guitar playing might have something to treasure about this as well — for instance, the basic melody to ʽIt's Alright, Maʼ seems to be played in a more complex manner than ended up on the studio album, almost giving an illusion of two guitars played at the same time). Most importantly, even if he does admit to "wearing his Bob Dylan mask", he is still young and fresh here, and his self-constructed «wall» that would firmly separate him from the audience in the future only has the first few bricks laid in. In fact, dare I say it, you can actually hear the sound of the first brick plunged in position when the sixth song of the show is introduced as "a sacrilegious lullaby in D Minor", and then it becomes ʽGates Of Edenʼ, and many of the people sitting there in the hall probably sit around in a «what was that?..» sort of mood.

But historical importance aside, this is just a very good performance. Impeccable sound quality, good playing, and fabulous singing — on no other live album of his can you really feel this magnetic pull on the audience, this desire to work 'em for all they're worth. Soon enough, Bob would only be playing for himself. But before he started doing that, he had to build himself up plenty of credit, so as to make the people want him to be playing for himself. If you are a Dylan neophyte, or an accidental walk-in who has no idea why people are still flocking to his shows to hear an old codger mumble out seemingly toneless, incomprehensible blabber — rewind all the way to here and see the reverberations of 1964 still influencing the atmosphere of 2014, in a bi­zarre, but real chain of causes and consequences. Thumbs up.

Bob Dylan: The Bootleg Series Vol. 5 (The Rolling Thunder Revue)

BOB DYLAN: THE BOOTLEG SERIES VOL. 5: THE ROLLING THUNDER REVIEW (1975; 2002)

1) Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You; 2) It Ain't Me Babe; 3) A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall; 4) The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll; 5) Romance In Durango; 6) Isis; 7) Mr. Tambourine Man; 8) Simple Twist Of Fate; 9) Blowin' In The Wind; 10) Mama You Been On My Mind; 11) I Shall Be Released; 12) It's All Over Now Baby Blue; 13) Love Minus Zero/No Limit; 14) Tangled Up In Blue; 15) The Water Is Wide; 16) It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry; 17) Oh Sister; 18) Hurricane; 19) One More Cup Of Coffee (Valley Below); 20) Sara; 21) Just Like A Woman; 22) Knockin' On Heaven's Door.

With the predictably warm reception organised for Live 1966, it was only natural that the sub­sequent evolution of The Bootleg Series would focus on live Dylan some more. But what would be the right period? On stage, the man evolved and recreated himself in different images even more radically than in the studio, so it must have been a tough choice to make — yet the com­pilers of the series managed to make exactly the right one. An uplifted, hyper-energetic, crowd-defying Dylan in the 1960s could only be matched by an uplifted, hyper-energetic, crowd-defying Dylan in the 1970s, and no moment in time could be more right than the first leg of The Rolling Thunder Revue, played out in the last two months of 1975.

We already had us Hard Rain from the second leg of the tour — recorded and released in 1976, after Desire had already come out — and it was a live album that was nowhere near as bad as its original reputation goes, but for quite a long time, there was nothing to compare it to (unless you were there in the first place or collected bootlegs). Live 1975 set out to remedy that omission, putting together a coherent, but mixed set of 22 numbers from five different shows, played at various locations in New England and in Montreal.

Some people complained about the album being a mix rather than a single complete show, and it is true that multiple fadeouts are a turn-off for those who want to feel themselves as part of the audience — yet it is also true that the tour, due to its spontaneous and chaotic nature, was uneven, and the compilers obviously did not want us to sit through particularly sloppy stuff, choosing instead the best of the best. So yeah, there is a touch of «fakeness» to the album in its historical function, but then let us not forget that many «regular» live albums are sewn together just like that in the first place, and that most of the «regular» Dylan lovers have no need to hear inferior versions of Dylan classics when they can easily have superior versions.

Anyway, what's so special about Live 1975 and why have so many people hastened to declare it the greatest live Dylan album on Earth? (And I count myself among these people every now and then — although, since no two live Dylan albums sound the same way, making a choice here is only a good way to kill some time). In a way, The Rolling Thunder Revue was an attempt to fight time and fate itself. In an era that was beginning to be more and more dominated by corporate ventures, pre-planned, well-calculated commercial tours, meticulously worked out market strate­gies, etc., Bob suddenly felt tremendous nostalgia for the era of Woodstock and Festival Express — nostalgia all the more fueled by the fact that he himself had pretty much missed out on in its heyday — and decided to single-handedly «bring it all back home». Of course, in order to turn back time you had to be a Bob Dylan, and even then, you could reopen that door for only a few minutes, but, luckily, somebody had time to thrust a few mikes in the opening, and preserve that little time trip for posterity. At least in audio form. (Video footage was shot for Dylan's 4-hour experimental movie Renaldo And Clara, panned by the critics for its clumsy avantgarde preten­se and shelved for posterity, although a few bits have been mercifully released for viewers on a bonus DVD that came together with the first pressings of Live 1975).

The original atmosphere of the Revue is mostly felt in this music when you realize how many people there are onstage — approximately a dozen musicians playing together with Bob, inclu­ding not only understandable superstar choices like Roger McGuinn and Joan Baez (who, like in the old times, duets with Bob on four of the songs), but also completely out-of-the-blue characters like Mick Ronson: if you thought the former «Spider from Mars» would be the least likely choice for a Bob Dylan sideman, think again — there are no musicians who couldn't step into the shoes of a Bob Dylan sideman, period, because Bob Dylan is... well, adaptable. With a crowd like that, chaos is inevitable, and there is some, but not too much: Dylan's songs are so flexible, and so easily stretch in any direction, that messing them up is dang near impossible as long as Dylan himself is inspired and interested.

And he is clearly inspired. The choice of ʽTonight I'll Be Staying Here With Youʼ, formerly a pleasant, but minor country ditty on Nashville Skyline, as the album opener is perfect — not only do its lyrics perform a welcoming function in a most original manner, but the song itself is rein­vented as a loud, bombastic roots-rock anthem that promises a brand new start in life. The open­ing line — "throw my ticket in the wind!" — just cuts through the air like a samurai sword, prompting a cheerful response from the audience. Of course, Bob has completely rewritten the lyrics (more for fun than anything else — why the heck should "throw my suitcase out there too" become "throw my mattress out there too"?), restructured the melody, and turned the song from a settle-down decision into a ceremonial pledge of honor, but isn't that just what we mean by saying «the song lives on»? Let's hear it one more time for musical evolution.

Bob shouts a lot throughout the album, much like he did on his Before The Flood tour, but he does not do it all the time, so that the music is not reduced to a monotonous arena-rock buzz. The most questionable decision was probably to reinvent ʽHard Rainʼ as a martial rock stomper which is now more melodically similar to ʽHighway 61 Revisitedʼ than to its troubadourish origins — but it is still fun to hear it trod along that way. On the other hand, ʽIt Ain't Me Babeʼ works great in its sped up version, making Bob sound cooler than ever in his anti-heroic poise; and the resur­rected ʽLonesome Death Of Hattie Carrollʼ now laments the lonesome death in near-symphonic format without losing the mournful spirit of the song.

Most importantly, Live 1975 is probably the one live Dylan album on which his «human» side opens up to us better than anywhere else. Not only was he totally inspired by what he was doing, but he also happened to be going through some turbulent rough shit at the time (specifically with his marriage on the brink of collapsing), and while he is on that stage, it never feels like he is «playing a character», as he usually does. It may have been the one tour on which he was wearing a real physical mask (white clownish paint, probably to match the spirit of Children Of Paradise, a movie to which Renaldo And Clara paid heavy tribute), but, paradoxically, the singing seems to come straight from the heart this time around — and you can most clearly notice it on the acous­tic sub-set. Listen to this ʽMr. Tambourine Manʼ: he sounds nervous, agitated, eager to let it all out without any stage mannerisms or specially conjured poetic trances. Listen to this ʽSimple Twist Of Fateʼ: it does not hold a candle to the studio original, but that is because in the studio original Bob played the part of a sympathetic wise onlooker, an experienced Buddhist master contemplating the young folks, whereas here he jumps right in the fray as if he were part of the story — losing subtlety, but gaining in urgence.

This intense combination — Dylan in his most disturbed and exuberant state, caught in a rare moment of opening up; and this huge band, fueled by the man's energy and buzzing around like a swarm of roots-rock-hungry bees with their slide guitars, dobros, mandolins, and violins — en­sures that the album never gets boring, not for a second. Echoes of the past pursue the performer in the guise of an occasional listener shouting «play a protest song!» («here's one for you», Bob replies as the band goes into ʽOh Sisterʼ), but then what else would you expect from an old fan who has just witnessed his idol crooning out ʽMama You Been On My Mindʼ with Joan Baez like it were 1964 all over again? And, actually, Bob does protest songs, old as well as new: ʽHurri­caneʼ, performed very close to the studio recording because the tune was brand new at the time, is presented together with a plea to the audience for help — "if you got any political pull at all, maybe you can help us get this man out of jail". So, in a way, we do go ten years back in the past here: never ever again would Bob sound so rejuvenated.

It does get darker towards the end, where there is a streak of four numbers in a row from Desire that culminate in a particularly sinister, bass-heavy rendition of ʽOne More Cup Of Coffeeʼ and a creepily personal rendition of ʽSaraʼ, a song that, as it turns out, Bob was not afraid to perform in front of a live audience. But the darkness is still chased away at the end, as all the band gathers round the campfire to sing a spirit-lifting rendition of ʽKnockin' On Heaven's Doorʼ (one verse is gracefully given over to McGuinn, whose angelic vocal tone suits the song so well) — and then ends the show with a little happy country jig as Bob announces, traveling-circus-style, that "we'll be in the area for a few days, maybe we'll see you tomorrow night!" Yes, tension and trouble aside, it was quite a merry-go-round.

It was also the last time that Bob would get so friendly: for the tour, he got together with many old friends, only to part ways with them completely once depression and disillusionment got the better of him by early 1976, and never again would a live Bob Dylan show have this sort of cama­raderie attitude (certainly this was the last tour on which the Dylan/Baez connection was still seen to work — on the 1984 tour, Joan was only used as an opening act, and quit midway through in protest). In short, this was a unique event from just so many sides — technical, emo­tional, historical, cultural — and Live 1975 captures and bottles its essence to perfection. «Le­gendary» baggage aside, it deserves to be soaked in every bit as much as Live 1966, and as I am giving it out the obligatory thumbs up, I seem to understand that I have actually listened to it quite a few times more than to Live 1966. It might be, of course, that I am at heart just a bigger fan of Mick Ronson than of Robbie Robertson, but who knows?

Check "Live 1975" (CD) on Amazon

Bob Dylan: The Bootleg Series Vol. 4 (The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert)

BOB DYLAN: THE BOOTLEG SERIES VOL. 4: THE «ROYAL ALBERT HALL» CONCERT (1966; 1998)

1) She Belongs To Me; 2) Fourth Time Around; 3) Visions Of Johanna; 4) It's All Over Now, Baby Blue; 5) De­so­lation Row; 6) Just Like A Woman; 7) Mr. Tambourine Man; 8) Tell Me, Momma; 9) I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met); 10) Baby, Let Me Follow You Down; 11) Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues; 12) Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat; 13) One Too Many Mornings; 14) Ballad Of A Thin Man; 15) Like A Rolling Stone.

It was only a matter of time before The Bootleg Series would turn into a chain of new releases — considering that Bob Dylan was one of the most heavily bootlegged artists of all time, and quite justly so. Perhaps the wait was intentional: in 1997, Time Out Of Mind proved to everyone that the old man still had plenty of incense left to burn, and it became safe to put out archival docu­ments without expecting the average review to carry on in a «yes, believe it or not, there was a time when there was a reason to listen to Bob Dylan...» manner. Or perhaps it wasn't. Whatever be the case, over a stretch of seven years The Bootleg Series managed to enrich us with three fantastic live albums in a row — each one featuring a Bob Dylan that was completely different from the other two, albeit not exactly in chronological order.

The first choice was perfectly natural, almost predictable: the «Royal Albert Hall» Concert boot­leg (quotation marks signify that the album was originally misattributed to a more famous loca­tion, even though the actual show was played at the Manchester Free Trade Hall) had been in heavy circulation since the early 1970s, and was traditionally held in awe by fans due to its con­taining the infamous «Judas!» episode. Fortunately, the official release went all the way to boot the boot out of competition — not only by including the complete show, together with the first acoustic half (the boot only contained the electric set), but also by cleaning up and remastering the original tapes, so that the final product is pretty much impeccable. (There are a couple spots on the acoustic part where Bob's voice suddenty turns distant and cavernous midway through the song, but that may have been due to some microphone problems or slight equipment malfunction, and it does not do much harm anyway).

Technically speaking, and also from the point of view of the continuously evolving setlist, there may have been better shows that were played by Bob on his British tour of mid-'66. But, of course, it is not really for performing quality that The «Royal Albert Hall» Concert has gained most of its fame — it is more for serving as a priceless historical document illustrating the end­less conflict between «The Artist» and «The People». Should The Artist, offering his Art to The People, pander to The People instead of following his individual muse? Should The People ex­pect to be given what they want from The Artist (especially if they're paying for it), or should The People respect the integrity and/or evolution of The Artist? Does The Artist have a right to force his actions on The People? Do The People have a right to force The Artist to amend his ways, even if they believe they are acting in Art's best interests? So many questions in that field, and they are all raised on Live 1966, even if not one of them is conclusively answered.

You probably know the backstory already, and what you don't know can easily be deduced from listening to the album itself. First part of the show — «traditional»: Dylan and his acoustic guitar alone on stage, lights dimmed, dreamy, mumbly voice, the audience holding their breath. Still weird, though, since the man has decided not to sing any of his old «protest» tunes, but is instead treating everyone to stripped-down acoustic versions of songs from his new, bizarre, modernist, «treasonable» electric albums. Only ʽMr. Tambourine Manʼ dates back to 1964, and even that one refers to an imaginary, hallucinatory universe, rather than a world populated by Hollis Browns and Hattie Carrolls. The audience applauds politely, but nobody really knows what they feel —mesmerized? enchanted? confused? disappointed?

Second part of the show — «treason» starts in earnest: the Hawks appear onstage, set up their instruments, and Dylan leads them in an ear-piercingly loud electric set that includes not only re­cent songs, but also — treason! treason! — those old acoustic songs from the folk troubadour era, now reinvented as bombastic rockers. "This is called ʽI Don't Believe Youʼ. It used to be like that, and now it goes like this". 'Nuff said. The battle line is drawn.

Of course, like 99% of the stuff that eventually passes into legend, Dylan's clash with the «tradi­tionalists» was always overstated. The acoustic set goes on without a hitch, and the first two songs of the electric set also feature no ruckus. «Trouble» kicks in after ʽI Don't Believe Youʼ, when hecklers first start peppering the stage with insults, and then join together in a clap-hands demonstration whose purpose is rather to show disrespect than to boo the man offstage complete­ly. But listen closely to the album and it becomes clear that there is only one part of the audience, a representative, clearly audible group, maybe about a quarter or so of the hall, that is getting busy with heckling — and that Dylan actually gets more approving applause at the end of each «electric» performance than he gets «disruptive» applause from the hecklers. So picturing this as some sort of epochal «One Man Against The Whole Wide World» battle would be overdoing it: clearly, were it really like that, Bob would never have set foot on British soil, or removed it once and for all after the very first show.

Nevertheless, he does have to battle the hecklers, and the way he eventually wins over the majo­rity of them, to me, is far more priceless than the famous «Judas!» — «I don't believe you... you're a liar!» exchange. At one point, as the counter-applause really threatens to spread to an alarming level, the man begins mumbling some slurred, incomprehensible story into the micro­phone: eventually, the hecklers calm down, as curiosity to hear what is actually being told gets the better of them, and just as the rhythm of the clapping hands breaks down and dissipates, Bob finishes the «story» with a «...mumble mumble grumble grumble... if you only just wouldn't clap so hard». At that point, even some of the hecklers probably couldn't help breaking into a general laugh, and the atmosphere becomes significantly lighter from then on. Just one of those little things, I guess, but sometimes they illustrate the greatness of great minds with much more clarity than «big things», don't they?

That said, Live 1966 does tend to get its fair share of «tepid» assessments these days, usually accompanied with the formula: «historically great, no doubt, but rather so-so as an actual musical performance». Well, it is probably true that the atmosphere was a bit too tense for both Dylan and the Hawks to concentrate exclusively on the music. The electric part, in particular, sets out to overwhelm rather than intrigue the listener — the emphasis is on being loud, on getting every decibel possible out of every instrument, with the six players on stage doing everything they can to sound like a big band, if not like a symphonic orchestra, but only with reference to volume, bombast, and power, not to «tightness», which may be found missing. And on the acoustic part, Bob largely neglects the guitar, concentrating most of his expressiveness in the art of singing and playing harmonica (ʽDesolation Rowʼ suffers the most, as it may be hard to endure all of its 11 minutes without the ornate baroque guitar flourishes of the original).

But then this is, after all, a performance in the «garage» spirit of the times: substance, energy, and revolutionary ideals first, technical quality second. So the band teeters on the brink of chaos every now and then, but they never descend into chaos (and, actually, it would be fun even if they did), and the maniacal strength of the proceedings is still with us — as ʽTell Me, Mommaʼ (a song that was frequently performed, but never made it onto any of the studio albums) opens the electric set, the band plays the first bars quietly and tentatively, looking for the groove, then drummer Mickey Jones gives the signal, and off they go into complete electric madness. Robbie Robertson, in par­ticular, gets into the spirit brilliantly, and his sharp, gruff guitar leads, usually attested in brief splatches as they emerge from under the general rumble, are a worthy counterpart to Dylan's moaning, howling, and wailing (three preferred modes during the electric set).

I must say that, throughout both sets, Dylan does sound «trippy». Whether he was really on grass or acid, was just tired, or was just acting, is unclear, but if this manner of singing is typical of his 1966 tour (and, judging, by the real Royal Albert Hall performance of ʽVisions Of Johannaʼ on Biograph, it might have), it is seriously different from both the snappy, sneery performance style of Highway 61 and the more contemplative, peaceful manner on Blonde On Blonde. This here style is more «breathy», more «nasal», and, in moments of frenzy, more high-pitched than he usually goes. Later on, when the 1970s came along, he would resort more to shouting out the words, but here, he drags and drawls them out as if in an intoxicated haze. No mistakes, no slip-ups, but a sound that seems completely locked in on itself rather than targeted at the audience — an additional factor, perhaps, in enraging the hecklers, who must have gotten the feeling that the man is doing it all strictly for himself, and couldn't care less about whoever else was out there in the hall (a correct feeling, most likely). Unfortunately, in my case at least, it does not exactly make me want to listen to the album over and over again — even the great, fabulous conclusion of ʽLike A Rolling Stoneʼ ("play fucking loud!") has the feeling of an imposing distant volcano, erupting over the heads of the unfortunate nearby villagers rather than over your own: I get the feeling of admiring the scene from afar rather than being directly involved. But that's also the same thing that makes it such a fascinating historical document.

On the other hand, it must also be stated that the stripped-down acoustic versions, especially ʽVisions Of Johannaʼ, raise the «intimacy» bar rather than lowering it — the mystical nighttime aura of ʽVisionsʼ is enhanced through this minimalism, even if I do miss Al Kooper's ghostly or­gan (but not Robertson's squeaky guitar runs, for that matter). And in general, I'd say that acous­tic reinventions of Bob's «beatnik-psychedelic» classics are more interesting, per se, than the electric reworkings of Bob's acoustic material, because most of the electric songs, mood-wise, sound the same in this setting, whereas the acoustic songs still preserve their individual faces. Plus, you get to hear Bob's harmonica better, and he behaves like a mean, evil beast with the instrument, parti­cularly on the opening ʽShe Belongs To Meʼ and on the closing ʽMr. Tambourine Manʼ — some of the shrillest, wickedest blasts you'll ever hear.

All in all, this is probably not the «greatest live album of all time» from anything but a purely historical point of view, and this may not even necessarily be the greatest live Bob Dylan album of all time (at least the next two volumes in the series give it quite a bit of competition), but, re­gardless of that, you have much left to accomplish in your life if you have not yet heard a good sample of Bob Dylan live circa 1966, and no better sample exists than this. As for historical im­portance, my only quibble is that people who praise Live 1966 to high heaven for that importance should stop dissing Live At Budokan — which, for my money, quite matched Live 1966 in the overall «braveness» of approach, even though the Fan War of 1965-66 was ultimately won and the Critical War of 1978-79 was ultimately lost. Of course, nobody could call Dylan's reinvention of his back catalog in «mock-Vegas format» a «key moment in rock history». Yet I think that, to most people, Live 1966 is important not for holding a particular vital place in history — but for simply showing how one man can hold his obstinate ground against many and emerge victorious, sort of like a rock music equivalent of 12 Angry Men, and so, let us not forget that this was far from the only such battle in Dylan's lifestory, even if it's naturally the first one to be featured on the thumbs up list for such achievements.

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