Untold Dylan

Dylan cover of the day 40: Gotta Serve Somebody

Posted on January 3, 2022 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood

Being an atheist the notion that I have got to serve somebody doesn’t sit very well with me – except in the sense of being as kind and helpful to my fellow humans as I can. It’s a very simplistic view of the world; a sort of “do the right thing” with the “right thing” regularly being redefined as befits a constantly changing world around me. But most importantly, being defined by me, not be some deity looking down.

As a result “Gotta Serve Somebody” doesn’t sit well with my view of reality. The religious context is right out for me, but I try to have a moral compass within my daily life and obviously within that I have a sense of morality.

So is there anything in this song for me? Certainly when I first heard it, I didn’t think so. A simple 12 bar blues structure, and a clearly spoken message which has always sounded to me ludicrously anti-individualistic.

Thus I didn’t expect to find anything to my taste meandering around the cover versions, but I did like Sweet Little Band’s take. To me they convey the simple message by giving me a simple but enjoy tune over bar after bar of 1234123412341234. And they make it work.

What it really makes me think is the world without end, world without change, just going on and on and on until it fades away. It is indeed a sweet little band.

Michael Des Barres gives me a new emphasis which again I enjoyed despite myself. This time the lyrics don’t have a religious connotation at all (and of course this is just my impression, not a definitive judgement). “If you want to get on,” the song is now saying, “you will have to be subservient.”

Also a lovely deviation from the rigid chord structure by bringing in the flattened seventh as if this is a major act of defiance.

And then of course if I listen to the song in a foreign language I don’t have to deal with the religious context that I have always heard from Dylan.

Put like this, it is rather an enjoyable basic blues song. Who knows that the recitation is about – I’ve no idea if he is sticking to a strict translation of the original, but the music is removed enough from Dylan’s version for me to imagine it as a new song.

I also like the way the chorus comes in, and the way the music varies just a little. For when stripped down to its basics, there really is not that much there. And yet that little more is added as we go.

I’m not sure if I’d want to play this again – at least not for a while – but in itself it is quite good fun. And that lasts all the way through. Indeed it is remarkable how the band managed to find more and more to do.

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Bob Dylan: The Last Train’s A-Coming Round The Bend

Posted on January 3, 2022 by TonyAttwood

By Larry Fyffe

Themes expressed in prose, plays, poetry, and song-and-music deal with the trials and tribulations of human existence.

From the Bard, hopes of happiness found in a life so brief:

If he thrives, and I be cast away
The worst was this: my love was my decay
(William Shakespeare: Sonnet LXXX)

From Romantic poets, hopes of eternal fame achieved through one’s works:

Keeps his pale court in beauty and decay
He came; and bought, with price of purest breath
A grave among the eternal. - Come away
(Percy Shelley: Adonais)

Hopes smashed by the sand:

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away
(Percy Shelley: Ozymandias)

From Gospel, a promise of eternal life in a paradisal hereafter:

Beautiful flowers that will never decay
Gathered by angels and carried away
(Kitty Wells: Gathering Flowers For 
     The Master's Bouquet ~ Baumgardner)

From blues, sadness of life in the micro-sphere:

It's such a sad thing to see beauty decay
It's sadder still to feel your heart torn away
(Bob Dylan: Cold Irons Bound)

And sadness in the macro-sphere:

I said the soul of a nation is torn away
And it's beginning to go into a slow decay
(Bob Dylan: Murder Most Foul)

That is to say that those who seek to make a clear distinction between literature and song search in vain.

The works of Shelley haunt the song lyrics beneath:

Businessmen, they drink my wine
Ploughmen, they dig my earth
None of them along the line
No what any of it is worth
(Bob Dylan: All Along The Watchtower)

Nature’s free-wheeling, regenerative beauty can be felt, even broken at times, but not replicated:

And the sunlight clasps the earth
And the moonbeams kiss the sea
What is all this sweet work worth
If thou kiss not me
(Percy Shelley: Love's Philosophy)

An everlasting Universe beyond the understanding of mortal human beings:

Column, tower, and dome, and spire
Shine like obelisks of fire
Pointed with inconstant motion
From the altar of dark ocean
To the sapphire-tinted skies
(Percy Shelley: Euganean Hills)

Quite alien she can be:

There's a woman on my lap, and she's drinking champagne
Got white skin, got assassin's eyes
I'm looking up into sapphire-tinted skies
I'm well dressed, waiting on the last train
(Bob Dylan: Things Have Changed)

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Untold Dylan was created in 2008 and is published daily – currently twice a day – sometimes more, sometimes less. Details of some of our series are given at the top of the page and in the Recent Posts list, which appears both on the right side of the page and at the very foot of the page (helpful if you are reading on a phone). Some of our past articles which form part of a series are also included on the home page.

Articles are written by a variety of volunteers and you can read more about them here If you would like to write for Untold Dylan, do email with your idea or article to Tony@schools.co.uk. Our readership is rather large (many thanks to Rolling Stone for help in that regard). Details of some of our past articles are also included on the home page.

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A Dylan cover a Day: 39 “Gates of Eden” as never before

Posted on January 2, 2022 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood

Today (2 January) is a public holiday in England, wherein I reside, and as a result there ain’t much doing. No dances are scheduled, the football team I support are not playing (having been beaten yesterday) and most of my friends seem to be asleep, recovering perhaps from a week of holiday celebrations or just not answering the phone.

And so, thinking that maybe you too might be living in a land where there’s not much to do, and given that next up on the schedule for “A Dylan cover a day” is “Gates of Eden”, I thought I might go rather overboard and offer not just one, two or three covers, but lots of them.

Because “Gates of Eden” is a bit of an oddity. It has not been covered by nearly as many people as some of Dylan’s most famous tracks, but where artists have had a go, they’ve normally come up with the goods. At least as far as I can see.

Now, if you are a regular here you will have seen and heard most of these before, not least in Jochen’s master series on the song (of which the last episode is here and that contains an index to the whole series).

And in part I have done this because an amazingly high percentage of covers are actually very good indeed – which is perhaps surprising because the song is utterly strophic, has a distinctive beat, and was issued of course as a solo piece. So off we go…

Totta Näslund starts with a solo guitar and it’s only as we go along the realisation occurs that there is a further accompaniment (unless one is paying very close attention). The artist takes a huge risk running the song at this speed – for he has to keep the piece running for over seven minutes, and we all know the lyrics by heart. Which means what he has is the magic of his voice, and that slowly evolving accompaniment.

And wow, suddenly a chorus turns up and the arrangement evolves… but never once interrupting or overlapping the singer. This really is an incredible achievement, I’m still here wanting to hear this song I’ve heard I don’t know how many thousand times.

Even when he sings fractionally out of tune, it is still grabbing me – every word is delivered as if he feels this is the key to the whole song. Stunning – and a superbly done simply ending too.

(I regret that since this article was written seemingly all videos of this version have been removed from the internet, but if you are a subscriber to Spotify you can find it there. It is on Totta’s Basement Tapes: Down in the Flood.)

Marc Carroll gives us full accompaniment from the off, and his own vision of the final line of the verse. Then in comes the percussion with a relentless six beats a bar – surely no one else has ever tried this before: I mean six beats a bar????

In fact it builds up to such a degree that by the time of relationships of ownership one is beginning to feel, “What on earth is going to happen?”

In fact what happens is we get an instrumental break after which the arrangement takes us down a notch or two, which is a huge relief – but it is only a relief for one verse, we’re back with the full blast next time around.

I’ve no idea who did the arrangement but whoever it was is a total genius. It is relentless, phenomenal, complex and demanding, but leaving the vocalist free to create his delivery, so that by the time his lover comes in telling him of her dream, we are part of the dream, the vision, the hope, the nightmare, the ruins, the ideals… everything.

This is stunning beyond belief, as is the ending.

If you have played Marc Carroll’s recording to the end this next version – an instrumental – is now offered to help you calm down. Arranging this is quite a task, because in essence what the music consists of is one line repeated, a counterpart line ending on the dominant chord, and then the verse resolving itself in the fourth line.

I’ve never played this type of jazz in an ensemble, but I imagine the key point is to key everyone aware of exactly where they came from and where they are going to, and that is exactly what happens.

And now by way of contrast back to one performer – Gene Clark. If you are particularly drawn to his music, there is a web page featuring several of his covers of Dylan songs. It is reported that he was buried beneath an epitaph that reads “No Other.”

There is an enormous power in this version, and Gene Clark’s early passing is surely a reminder of the destructive nature of the industry that produces these extraordinary pieces of music. And yes I know that sounds trite, but it is a reflection that I have listening to these performances.

Bryan Ferry undertaking any song is bound to give us something memorable, and this must be one of my favourite performances, because the gentleness of the performance contrasts so utterly with how I have always perceive the words. And I love the way Mr Ferry physically seems to become part of the music.

And who thought of combining a blues harmonica with an occasional wordless female voice? And who thought of making the female counterpoint to the harmonica just two notes. Haunting is not the word – it is much more than that.

Bryan Ferry takes it verse after verse knowing that we are going to be there following each line of the lyrics, taking us in a different direction. And when we get to “no words but these to tell what’s true” I can utterly feel it.

Julie Felix’ arrangement is of the more obvious variety: let’s start with the lady on her own and then bring in some instruments – but what marks this out is the counter melody of the flute, complete with trills, because we then have the quasi-military drum as well.

But what really works here is that there is no descent into making the piece build and build – it is not that sort of song, for each verse delivers a sit of images that are as powerful as all that has gone before and is yet to come.

If you are still with me (as opposed to playing a little bit of each recording and then jump forward) then you’ll be getting the feel of just how many variations this song offers.

DM Stith was of course not even conceived of when Dylan wrote this masterpiece, and maybe that is what liberates him in creating this extraordinary version. There really is nothing like this version anywhere – every verse, indeed every line is original.

I have a friend who I asked to listen to this version and when I then went back and asked for an opinion, the answer was “didn’t like it”. So I said, “But what about the black Madonna verse?” to which he replied, “I didn’t get that far”.

Of course what you listen to is totally your business; I merely pass a public holiday in mid-winter gathering these together and writing about them, but I would argue, one can get an extra insight into what Dylan’s compositions have given to our civilisation by listening to recordings such as this. And if one is going to listen, then surely one must listen to the end.

If you have been, thank you for listening.

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Dirt Road Blues (1997) part 5: The purple piper plays his tune

Posted on January 2, 2022 by TonyAttwood

by Jochen Markhorst

V The purple piper plays his tune

’Til there’s nothing left to see, ’til the chains have been shattered and I’ve been freed

Fans anyway, but there are some more serious music journalists and historians as well who consider In The Court Of The Crimson King, King Crimson’s debut album from 1969, to be the big bang of prog rock. Which is debatable, of course, and ultimately mainly a matter of definition. The Moody Blues had already released Days Of The Future Passed two years earlier, and The Nice, with The Thoughts of Emerlist Davjack (1968), also deserve the label “Patriarchs of Prog Rock”. But we can probably all agree that In The Court Of The Crimson King is a milestone, one of the Pillars Of Creation under the classical/symphonic rock that evolved from the psychedelic rock.

The whole album consists of five marble songs, and the three crown jewels are “21st Century Schizoid Man”, “Epitaph” with the beautiful, Rimbaudesque refrain Confusion will be my epitaph / As I crawl a cracked and broken path and as a finale the namesake of the album, the stately, overwhelming, mellotron-driven “In The Court Of The Crimson King”. A monumental song, a crowd favourite to which King Crimson, in all its manifestations, always remains faithful and which, more than fifty years later (e.g. December 2021 in Japan), is still on the set list.

Robert Fripp, the genius who actually is King Crimson on his own, usually has a somewhat mythical story to tell about the song in interviews and retrospectives. “The name King Crimson is a synonym for Beelzebub, which is an anglicized form of the Arabic phrase B’il Sabab. This means literally the man with an aim and is the recognizable quality of King Crimson,” he says in the booklet for Frame by Frame: The Essential King Crimson Box Set (1991).

The man who should know, the poet and songwriter Peter Sinfield, lyricist and sort of fifth King Crimson member on that smashing debut, casually dismisses Fripp’s pompous interpretations. “It isn’t the devil, it isn’t Beelzebub, but it’s… arrogant, and it’s got a feeling of darkness about it, and Gothic.” In the same fascinating Japanese TV documentary Song To Soul (2011), Sinfield recalls: “It was a sort of Bob Dylan song [plays air guitar and sings “on soft gray mornings widows cry”], it was like that.” Composer Ian MacDonald confirms: “He had written it in a sort of folky, Donovan-esque, early Bob Dylan style. A little folksy song. But essentially I threw out his music [laughs apologetically].” With which Sinfield can only agree: “It had to be better than what I had. Mine was three chords, not-very-good Bob Dylan, you know. Except the lyrics were interesting in their Gothic way.” And elsewhere he characterises his lyrics as “a pastiche of images from Dylan, the Bible, and some of my favourite sci-fi and fantasy novels.”

It is not the first time Sinfield mentions Dylan as a source of inspiration. In 2007, Sinfield is interviewed by Paul Henderson for Louder:

“It was originally a sort of Bob Dylan song, if you can imagine that”, says Sinfield. “Ian took it and rewrote the music. He’d studied harmony, he’d studied orchestration, so his references were not just The Beatles, but also big, sweeping things like Stravinsky, Mahler, things that were emotional. And that would come out. That track did take quite a while to pull together.”

“In The Court Of The Crimson King” is a masterpiece that shines 2000 light years away from Dylan’s oeuvre, but “a sort of Bob Dylan song” is perfectly understandable if you only look at the lyrics. “The purple piper plays his tune”, “The cracked brass bells will ring”, “The pattern juggler lifts his hand”, “The yellow jester does not play / But gently pulls the strings”… the music archaeologists who, five hundred years from now, dig up this song will no doubt label it as mid to late 20th century, probably B. Dylan.

This is not only because of those Dylanesque images like purple pipers and cracked brass bells, but also because of Sinfield’s perceptibility to sound, a sensitivity he shares with Dylan and which he developed through Dylan in the first place. He explains it, better than Dylan ever did, on the basis of the refrain-line in the court of the Crimson King:

“What you have are the noises, the sounds of the words, like crowds, queue, jokers… ‘k’, ‘k’, ‘k’, do you see? You get this sharp cracking sound, and then it softens again…what is very important, even if you don’t pick up on it, is the feel of these hard sounds, even if you don’t understand the words, that there is something going on here – it was quite intentional to cause this effect – Bob Dylan admits to doing the same – it’s like playing games, but the games you play with the noises, the sounds and the syllables, and especially the consonants in this example, should keep the listener right there, suspended – it’s all in the way these are constructed.”

… more clearly than Dylan put it in that famous “thin wild mercury sound” interview with Rosenbaum, 1977 (“It’s the sound and the words. Words don’t interfere with it. They… they punctuate it”), or during that wonderful 1965 press conference in San Francisco (“The whole total sound of the words, what’s really going down is… it either happens or it doesn’t happen, you know”). And similarly, in Chronicles, Dylan doesn’t get much further than saying that it may affect him like that (“you get tripped out on the sound of the words alone”), but he doesn’t quite succeed in explaining it as vividly as Sinfield does.

However, the artistic congeniality is there. And we see it, for example, in the third verse of Dylan’s “Dirt Road Blues”, in that special word combination shattered chains, the combination Sinfield used in 1969 for the opening lines:

The rusted chains of prison moons
Are shattered by the sun.
I walk a road, horizons change
The tournament's begun.

“Shattered” is pretty much only used in songwriting for shattered dreams or a shattered heart anyway (“Confessin’ The Blues”, “The Curse Of An Aching Heart”, “You Are My Sunshine”, “There Goes My Everything”, “One By One”… the list is endless, culminating in the Stones’ 1978 “Shattered”). And “chains” are usually chains of love, and get broken or get tighter, or can’t loosen, or bind me, or have to be taken from my heart, and are rarely strong enough to hold me – but shattered they never are, except by Dylan and his disciple Sinfield. Both poets undoubtedly being guided by the sound affinity of the palatal consonants [sh] and [ch].

The difference, not surprisingly, lies in the poetic eloquence. Sinfield’s pièce de résistance still breathes the influence of psychedelia and contents itself with quasi-deep images like “prison moons” and “I wait outside the pilgrim’s door with insufficient schemes”, with “a load of words that half mean something,” as the British prog rock legend guitarist Richard Sinclair puts it.

Dylan, on the other hand, upholds the Holy Trinity of Rhyme, Rhythm & Reason; “I’m gonna walk down that dirt road ’til the chains have been shattered and I’ve been freed”… the yellow jester most certainly does not play. He walks a road and horizons change.

To be continued. Next up: Dirt Road Blues part 6

Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books, in English, Dutch and German, are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:

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The mysteries of Bob: Performances and recordings since 1989. Part III

Posted on January 1, 2022 by TonyAttwood

by mr tambourine

This is the final article in the series continuing from

Fifteen songs were recorded for Time Out of Mind, of which eleven made the final cut. (Some people over the years have even said that there were 13 songs recorded and 11 made the cut.)

On past albums, some fans have criticized Dylan for some of the creative decisions made with his albums, particularly with song selection. Time Out of Mind was no different except this time the criticism came from colleagues who were disappointed to see their personal favorites left on the shelf. When Dylan accepted the Grammy Award for Album of the Year, he mentioned Columbia Records chairman Don Ienner, who “convinced me to put [the album] out, although his favorite songs aren’t on it”

Searching For A Gem has this to say about the album:

Daniel Lanois said of the Time Out Of Mind sessions that Bob left his (Daniel’s) favourite tracks off the album – these out-takes have been rumoured for a long time: some out-takes from the album were finally released in Oct 2008.

The Bootleg Series Vol. 8 – Tell Tale Signs (2008): Mississippi (three unreleased takes of original versions – released in 2001 on “Love And Theft” in a new recording), Red River Shore (two takes of the rumoured unreleased song); Can’t Wait (alternate take); Dreamin’ Of You (unreleased song not previously known to collectors plus a radio edit R-0354, see 2008); Marchin’ To The City (two takes of unreleased songs not previously known to collectors).

Other out-takes rumoured but not yet released are Not Dark Yet – a reputedly stunning alternate version, better than the released take, and Highlands – a version reputed to last for 27 minutes!

This is something I found out about sometime ago:

Cold Irons Bound nailed in two takes only. The second take was the released version. Reportedly, Bob wrote the lyrics of the song on the spot, in the studio, while Jim Keltner was playing drums. Bob encouraged him to keep playing until he wrote the song. The song was written in only a few minutes, according to Keltner.

Lanois despised the song, saying that the world doesn’t another Bob Dylan blues song. Cold Irons Bound then won a Grammy in 1998 for Best male rock vocal performance.

There’s an unknown song from Time Out Of Mind, mentioned by Searching For A Gem by the name of “All I Ever Loved Is You”. This is the info:

Out-take from “Time Out Of Mind” recorded at Real Music Studios, Oxnard, CA, 26 Sep 1996. Reported by Clinton Heylin in “Still On The Road – The Songs Of Bob Dylan Vol. 2: 1974-2008” (Constable, 2010)

In my former article covering Time Out Of Mind and the Oxnard Demos, I mentioned one Dylan researcher assuming that Things Have Changed might’ve been performed during the Time Out Of Mind sessions.

Here’s some Wikipedia info about Things Have Changed.

The song was inspired by a meeting with country musician Marty Stuart and Stuart’s song “The Observations of a Crow” from the concept album The Pilgrim.[8] Dylan critics disagree about when this song was recorded. According to Olof Björner, “Things Have Changed” was recorded in May 1999 at Sterling Sound studios in New York.[9] Clinton Heylin, in his account of Dylan’s songs between 1974 and 2008, believes the song was recorded at Sony Studios, New York, probably on July 25 and 26, 1999. On these latter dates, Dylan was touring the US with Paul Simon.[10]

Sources agree the musicians who accompanied Dylan in the studio were his touring band at the time: Charlie Sexton and Larry Campbell on guitar, Tony Garnier on bass and David Kemper on drums and percussion.[9] Kemper has said, “We were touring and had a day off in New York. Bob said, “Tomorrow let’s go into the studio. I got a song I want to record. We went in and played “Things Have Changed” with only an engineer. We did two takes. The first was a New Orleans thing. The second was what you hear. So in about five hours we learned it, recorded it, mixed it”.[10]

Engineer Chris Shaw has confirmed there was another version, which “was really great, which had a kind of New Orleans shuffle to it”. Shaw hoped to include this unreleased version on Volume 8 of Dylan’s Bootleg Series, Tell Tale Signs. But when the studio recording could not be located, it was replaced by a live version recorded in Portland, Oregon, on June 15, 2000, which Heylin describes as “mediocre”.[10] The song was recorded in the sounding key of G minor.[11]

Chris Shaw did a rough mix of the song the same day it was recorded, which became the final mix. As he explained to Uncut, “We did ‘Things Have Changed’ in one afternoon, and when we were done we did a very quick mix of it, and I thought it was just going to be a rough mix to give to Bob who’d maybe give it to someone else, like Daniel Lanois, who’d wind up engineering and mixing the final thing. But it turned out that that rough mix ended up being the final mix. And that was pretty funny, because the very last thing Bob did was raise the shaker up like 10db, making it ridiculously loud, and that was the mix he wanted to go with”.[12]

When we’re talking about Love And Theft, there’s not much information to rely on.

One of the interesting stories is that Po’ Boy might’ve been soundchecked before one of the 2000 shows, one year before the album recording sessions and release. It could’ve been Bob solo acoustic and on vocals. Although, I can’t prove this. It’s just a rumour I’ve heard that might be true.

As for the Love And Theft sessions, Bjorner suggests that the sessions lasted between May 8 and May 19 2001 and also had a brief continuation on May 21 2001. Seems like just a few days before Bob’s 60th birthday if rumours are true.

This is what Bjorner suggests as far as session info:

May 8, 2001

Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum
Number of takes - 9
Released take: take #9

Summer Days
Number of takes - unknown ?
Released take: take #5

May 9, 2001

Honest With Me
Number of takes - 6
Released take: take #6

May 11, 2001

Lonesome Day Blues
Number of takes - unknown ?
Released take: take #3

May 12, 2001

Floater (Too Much To Ask)
Number of takes - 5
Released take: take #4

Bye & Bye
Number of takes - ?
Released take : take #5

May 16, 2001

Moonlight
Number of takes: 3
Released take: take #1

Po' Boy
Number of takes: 3
Released take: take #1

May 17, 2001

High Water (For Charley Patton)
Number of takes: 2
Released take: take #1

May 18, 2001

Cry A While
Number of takes: 2
Released take: take #2

May 19, 2001

Sugar Baby
Number of takes: 7
Released take: take #7

May 21, 2001

Mississippi
Number of takes: 4
Released take: take #4

Not much is known about Modern Times.

Bjorner says it was recorded February-March 2006.

Although, I have heard some rumours from one of my subscribers who said that he had a friend who was close to the recording and said that Bob was doing piano demos for certain songs from Modern Times.

I’m pretty sure one of the songs was Beyond The Horizon, while the other could’ve been When The Deal Goes Down. Maybe even Workingman’s Blues or Nettie Moore.

It would be nice to hear some of these one day.

Together Through Life is nothing different. All we can really talk about is: what’s with the song Chicago After Dark? Does it exist?

We know that there used to be an interview when the album was about to be released and the interviewer asked Dylan about the song under that same name. Dylan responded something at least, which might mean that the song exists. Maybe it was cut at the last moment?

Who knows…

It also could be a hoax, as many people have said over the years.

Maybe one day we’ll find out.

Tempest, we have info from Bob directly. Bob said there were the Tempest songs and there were also “Christian songs”, whatever those are. He said he needed to choose between those two. He ended up choosing the Tempest songs as we know.

He also said that he has soundchecked Tempest songs before concerts a few years before Tempest release.

That’s why there exists a rumour of Pay In Blood being soundchecked in 2009 or 2010, or maybe even both.

Tempest was recorded January-March 2012 according to Wikipedia, which could be Bob’s longest sessions to date?

It would be interesting to one day find out about those Christian songs he was talking about.

And finally, when it comes to Rough And Rowdy Ways, people close to the album have said that there were multiple takes of all the songs, including Murder Most Foul. I think Matt Chamberlain said that in numerous interviews, mostly for podcasts.

Other interesting studio activities from around this time include the infamous Ardmore Sessions in 2017, and also the Shadow Kingdom sessions.

As for Shadow Kingdom, I recently learned that there were at least 40 songs recorded for the project, but most outtakes, if not all of them, are instrumentals of songs such as Simple Twist Of Fate, Saving Grace, Shooting Star, If Not For You and Oh Sister. Can’t say how true this is, but it’s something at least.

The Ardmore Sessions on the other hand, are a very interesting project.

I can’t remember the name of the young musician in the business, but he was a guest on a podcast where they talked about the Ardmore Sessions, and he was there. Not in the room though, but he was in the rooms right next to it. He sneaked his way into hearing some stuff they were playing.

He even said he spotted Bob and passed right by him one time and Bob was in disguise completely, with the hoody and everything.

He said he heard that Bob and his band did a lot of acoustic arrangements of songs, and the young musician remembers them playing Girl From The North Country (which wasn’t played live between 2014 and 2019 by the way) and a lot of Time Out Of Mind songs. Could be, since Time Out Of Mind had its 20th anniversary at the time.

This is the only info we have of the Ardmore Sessions so far. Some people have speculated that Bob was maybe recording some video footage of him and the band recording. Some people also speculate that Bob might’ve been interested in recording something for the Nobel prize committee at the time… Who knows…

Interesting stories really.

As a bonus before I close, I’d like to mention some pre-1989 stuff you might not have heard about along with some post 1989 stuff you also might not have heard about.

A song by the name of Ain’t It Funny:

Lyrics of this song are reported by Clinton Heylin to have been found in a notebook containing lyrics of the “Blood On The Tracks” songs, but no studio or live version is known

Thanks to Searching For A Gem for this as well. Apparently, there’s more songs like this out there, which Untold Dylan writers can cover in a separate article. If they need my assistance, they can let me know.

———-

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The mysteries of Bob: Performances and recordings since 1989 Part II

Posted on January 1, 2022 by TonyAttwood

by mr tambourine

This continues from

The mysteries of Bob: Performances and recordings since 1989. Part 1

Heading towards Bob’s next studio album, World Gone Wrong, here’s some Wikipedia info that might be useful for you:

Similar to how he had recorded his previous album, Good As I Been to You, Dylan held sessions at his Malibu home garage studio and recorded World Gone Wrong solo in a matter of days. He was assisted by sound engineer Micajah Ryan but served as his own producer. In their book Bob Dylan All the Songs: The Story Behind Every Track, authors Philippe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon describe “a clear difference in the sound quality of this new record: Good As I Been to You has a ‘full’ sound, with Dylan’s guitar recorded in stereo; World Gone Wrong sounds more raw. Listeners can hear breathing and distortion”.

The balance of songs in World Gone Wrong swung more towards rural blues. Two had been recorded by the Mississippi Sheiks, two more by Blind Willie McTell, one by Willie Brown, and another by Frank Hutchison. Songs popularized by Tom Paley and Doc Watson were also recorded. In the case of “The Two Soldiers”, Dylan learned it from Jerry Garcia and had been performing it live since 1988.

Possibly influenced by the controversy surrounding the lack of credits on Good as I Been to You, Dylan wrote a complete set of liner notes to World Gone Wrong, citing all possible sources. It had been decades since Dylan had written his own liner notes, and they were always surrealistic; these notes, while still playfully written, were actually informative.

Two outtakes from these sessions, Robert Johnson’s “32-20 Blues” and the traditional “Mary and the Soldier”, were released on The Bootleg Series Vol. 8: Tell Tale Signs in 2008. There are rumors of at least three additional outtakes that do not circulate among collectors: “Goodnight My Love”, “Twenty-One Years”, and the Carter Family’s “Hello Stranger”.

Many people know a lot about the MTV Unplugged album that Bob released in 1995, and recorded in late 1994.

The songs, probably the outtakes as well.

But what if I told you that Bob wanted to do songs from Good As I Been To You and World Gone Wrong?

It would’ve been an entirely different album.

That was Bob’s choice.

But somehow, the producers of the project, or whoever, convinced him to do more of a greatest hits kind of set.

And Bob did just that.

Of course, it wasn’t entirely a greatest hits set, it also had a few rarities. It wouldn’t be Dylan’s way to do the hits only.

You know about some of the outtakes like Hazel or I Want You, I’m sure. Those outtakes are circulating even though they’re not yet officially released.

But …

Bjorner says that Bob also rehearsed I Pity The Poor Immigrant during those 4 nights, 2 nights of rehearsals and 2 nights of recording and performing. That performance is not in circulation, unfortunately.

I Pity The Poor Immigrant was previously played in 1976. It was never performed yet on the Never-Ending Tour still to this day, making this a very treasured performance probably.

Did you know that back in the early days of the internet, there used to be a rumour circulating about a hoax new Dylan album coming up in 1997? No no, it’s not Time Out Of Mind.

It’s actually Stormy Season.

If we were sticking to the Searching For A Gem website, in the category Starlight In The East – Unreleased Dylan songs, you would find some info about the majority of the songs that are a part of the Stormy Season hoax. But let’s take a look at the title track of that album and the info provided below, which should be the same for all the songs the exact same way. Here it is:

Fake title tracks first circulated on the Internet in October 1996 as part of a hoax about a new album to be called “Stormy Season” – the phoney list was posted to the DylanChat section of Karl Erik Andersen’s Expecting Rain web-site by someone calling themselves “The Masked Tortilla” (this is the name of the character played by Bobby Neuwirth in the film “Renaldo and Clara”). The hoax track list given was:

Butcher’s Crew
The Fire Starter
Apollo’s Love
Police State
You Belong To Me – the song included on the 1994 “Natural Born Killers” film soundtrack, see “Searching For A Gem”, 1994 (R-0231)
Abraham’s Altar
When You Give Me Your Love
Up On The Hill
Stormy Season
No Compassion

I tried to find more info about this hoax on Google and I found this article that’s very entertaining and amusing in so many ways:

No other info that I could find.

The rumours though weren’t far from wrong, as Time Out Of Mind got released not long after.

A while ago, I wrote an article for Untold Dylan about the Oxnard Demos in 1996 and the full Time Out Of Mind sessions, which included the Oxnard Demos in ’96 + Miami Sessions in 1997.

Back then, I knew a little less than I know today, and I was also telling too many stories without providing the sources for readers.

I wanted to do it again this time and make up for a missed opportunity to write a more insightful and a better article overall and make it more interesting. Here’s what Wikipedia says about Time Out Of Mind before we get to the Searching For A Gem part, which is also interesting.

In April 1991, Dylan told interviewer Paul Zollo that “there was a time when the songs would come three or four at the same time, but those days are long gone…Once in a while, the odd song will come to me like a bulldog at the garden gate and demand to be written. But most of them are rejected out of my mind right away. You get caught up in wondering if anyone really needs to hear it. Maybe a person gets to the point where they have written enough songs. Let someone else write them”.[4]

Dylan’s last album of original material had been 1990’s Under the Red Sky, a critical and commercial disappointment. Since then, he had released two albums of folk covers, Good as I Been to You and World Gone Wrong, and MTV Unplugged, a live album of older compositions; there had been no signs of any fresh compositions until 1996.

Dylan began to write a fresh string of songs during the winter of 1996 at his farm in Minnesota, which would later make up Time Out of Mind.[5] Criteria Studio in Miami, Florida, was booked for recording. In a televised interview with Charlie Rose, Lanois recalled Dylan talking about spending a lot of late nights working on the lyrics. Once the words were completed, according to Lanois, Dylan considered the record to be finished saying, “You know, whatever we decide to do with it, that’s that.” Lanois replied: “What’s important is that it’s written”.[6]

Dylan demoed some of the songs in the studio, something he rarely did.[5] Members of Dylan’s touring band were involved in these sessions. Dylan also used these loose, informal sessions to experiment with new ideas and arrangements. Dylan continued rewriting lyrics until January 1997, when the official album sessions began. It was the second collaboration between Dylan and Lanois, who had previously produced Dylan’s 1989 release Oh Mercy and was known for his work with artists such as Emmylou Harris (on Wrecking Ball) and U2 (on The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby). Dylan wanted the sound of Time Out of Mind to be influenced by early blues musicians, such as Charley Patton, Little Walter, and Little Willie John, and he recommended that Lanois listen to their recordings to prepare for the sessions.[8]

New personnel hired for the album included slide guitarist Cindy Cashdollar and drummer Brian Blade, both hired by Lanois. Dylan brought in Jim Keltner, who was Dylan’s tour drummer from 1979 to 1981. Dylan also hired Nashville guitarist Bob Britt, Duke Robillard, Tex-Mex organist Augie Meyers, and Memphis pianist Jim Dickinson to play at the sessions.

With two different sets of players competing in performance and two producers with conflicting views on how to approach each song, the sessions were far from disciplined. Years later, when asked about Time Out of Mind, Dickinson replied, “I haven’t been able to tell what’s actually happening. I know they were listening to playbacks, I don’t know whether they were trying to mix it or not! Twelve musicians playing live—three sets of drums,… it was unbelievable—two pedal steels, I’ve never even heard two pedal steels played at the same time before! … I don’t know man, I thought that much was overdoing it, quite frankly”.[10]

Lanois admitted some difficulty in producing Dylan. “Well, you just never know what you’re going to get. He’s an eccentric man…”[6] In a later interview, Lanois said Dylan and he used to go to the parking lot to discuss the recording in absence of the band. Lanois elaborated their discussion on the song “Standing in the Doorway”. “I said ‘listen, I love “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands”. Can we steal that feel for this song?’ And he’d say ‘you think that’d work?’ Then we’d sit on the fender of a truck, in this parking lot in Miami, and I’d often think, if people see this they won’t believe it!”[11] With Time Out of Mind, Lanois “produced perhaps the most artificial-sounding album in [Dylan]’s canon,” says author Clinton Heylin, who described the album as sounding “like a Lanois CV”.

Dylan talked about his difficulty at the recording sessions in an interview with Guitar World magazine. “I lose my inspiration in the studio real easy, and it’s very difficult for me to think that I’m going to eclipse anything I’ve ever done before. I get bored easily, and my mission, which starts out wide, becomes very dim after a few failed takes and this and that.” In the same interview Dylan cited Buddy Holly as an influence during the recording sessions.

In relation to past works like Highway 61 Revisited, Blood on the Tracks, and Infidels, Dylan said:

Those records were made a long time ago, and you know, truthfully, records that were made in that day and age all were good. They all had some magic to them because the technology didn’t go beyond what the artist was doing. It was a lot easier to get excellence back in those days on a record than it is now…..The high priority is technology now. It’s not the artist or the art. It’s the technology that is coming through. That’s what makes Time Out of Mind… it doesn’t take itself seriously, but then again, the sound is very significant to that record. If that record was made more haphazardly, it wouldn’t have sounded that way. It wouldn’t have had the impact that it did…. There wasn’t any wasted effort on Time Out of Mind and I don’t think there will be on any more of my records.

— Bob Dylan in Guitar World (1999)[13]

The album’s cover art is a blurry photo of Dylan in the recording studio, taken by Lanois.

Part III follows shortly.

——

We also have a Facebook site with over 13,000 members.

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A Dylan cover a Day: From a Buick 6

Posted on December 31, 2021 by TonyAttwood

by Tony Attwood

I’m cheating up to a point. Jochen found the Ken Hamm version of this song – but the link we put up when he wrote his review has now disintegrated, so I’ve found another one. Now you can listen again, or for the first time.

This is what doing a cover is all about. Thinking what the song is… by which I mean what the essence of it is, and think what you are doing with that essence. That doesn’t mean that one can’t change what is going on, but it does mean knowing why you are doing it, rather than just trying something for the sake of being different.

This version does that totally.

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The mysteries of Bob: Performances and recordings since 1989. Part 1

Posted on December 31, 2021 by TonyAttwood

by mr tambourine

I’m sometimes intrigued by how much Dylan fans actually don’t know or aren’t aware of about Bob, even though they have, and show, a desire to know a whole lot more than they already do.

By no means am I trying to suggest that I know more than anybody or that I figured out what it’s all about. In fact, I don’t even consider myself to be a great Dylan fan or a great researcher. I just see myself as a person who’s lucky enough and was at the right place at the right time to learn all the things that I have learned over the years.

However I haven’t stumbled upon a person like Bob whose life is so complex and so relevant, but yet so rarely talked about.

When you take a look at celebrities, whether the ones when Dylan was starting out, or the ones that have come and gone throughout his career and life, especially the big ones, you pretty much know what to expect of them.

Even the great literary figures, or the great scientists, or world leaders… All of those people are familiar to the public; you can see why they are who they are.

Dylan, on the other hand, is a complete mystery. So many things in his life and career are guesses or speculations. God knows how many misconceptions are there about him. No wonder he never wanted to talk about his personal life too much.

Yes, we’ve had books written about him, movies made about him, even Dylan himself gave us Chronicles volume 1 back in the day. But does that reveal anything much? Not really.

There’s so much more out there.

It’s a pattern that there’s always something not many people know about out there in existence. But I would like to start out with 1989 and try to give you some rare info you might not have caught, even if you did the research.

1989 is the beginning of Dylan’s complete disappearance from the public eye. Not that he was very easily spotted before that, but in the years 1961-1988 you can still find a handful of stories. 1989 is the beginning of major silence.

In the 1961-1988 period, you can find a lot of interviews, many have at least audio, while some even have footage. But from 1989, it became rare for Dylan to do any interviews.

I’m not gonna get into details why Dylan decided to hide so much, as I don’t have any proof. I wouldn’t mind guessing of course, but then I could keep guessing all day and it probably wouldn’t take us anywhere.

Instead I want to start with the Oh Mercy sessions in 1989.

Bob covers this period in his memoir Chronicles volume 1, and gives us a lot of alternate lyrics to the songs. But something he hasn’t covered in the book, that exists on Bjorner’s Still On The Road page, in the Oh Mercy sessions, is a song by the name of Three Of Us Be Free.

Any info about this song is hard to find, but luckily, I know where to look and have found some information regarding this song. I looked at one of my favorite sources for these things, and it’s a site Searching For A Gem, which has a special section called “Starlight In The East – Dylan’s unreleased songs”.

Here, you have thousands of songs, in alphabetical order. Not all of them are unreleased, as some of them eventually got released, since the site was apparently first edited many years ago, in the really early days of the internet.

As for the song “Three Of Us Be Free”, here is the info we have:

According to Michael Krogsgaard, the song was recorded in two takes at Studio On The Move, New Orleans, LA, 14-15 Mar 1989, during the “Oh Mercy” sessions. This was originally identified as an alternate title for BROKEN DAYS, later released on “Oh Mercy” as EVERYTHING IS BROKEN, but in his book “Still On The Road – The Songs Of Bob Dylan Vol. 2: 1974-2008” (Constable, 2010), Clinton Heylin thinks it’s is a different, still released, song

Make of it as you will.

All we know so far is that it’s the only song from the Oh Mercy sessions which we haven’t heard about.

Also, I think the only songs whose alternate versions we haven’t heard, whether officially released or in circulation are Man In The Long Black Coat and Where Teardrops Fall. According to Bjorner, there are multiple takes of Where Teardrops Fall, while Man In The Long Black Coat seems to have only two takes.

If we were heading to 1990, this was one of the last times ever that you could get informed about Dylan’s studio work, or even what he was up to behind the stage, whether we’re talking about rehearsals, soundchecks or his private life. This is when it all became more mysterious than ever.

Let’s first take a look at the Under The Red Sky sessions.

Seems like the first sessions took place on January 6 1990 in Oceanway Studios in Los Angeles.

During these sessions, Bjorner lists these songs as being performed:

Handy Dandy
Handy Dandy
10,000 Men
God Knows
Cat’s In The Well

Then Bjorner also lists more sessions and takes at Record Plant Studio, The Complex Studio, The Sorcerer Studio Los Angeles, California from Mid March to Early April 1990, produced by Don Was, David Was and Jack Frost.

Wiggle Wiggle
Under The Red Sky
Unbelievable
Born In Time
Born In Time
T.V. Talkin’ Song
T.V. Talkin’ Song
2 x 2
2 x 2
Shirley Temple Don’t Live Here Anymore
Under The Red Sky
Unbelievable
Unbelievable
Born In Time
Born In Time
T.V. Talkin’ Song
T.V. Talkin’ Song
2 x 2
2 x 2
Wiggle Wiggle
Some Enchanted Evening (Rodgers-Hammerstein II)

Of the unknown songs that you see on this list, obviously, Shirley Temple Don’t Live Here Anymore stands out.

Once again, Searching For A Gem, through Starlight In The East, provides info about this song:

“Out-take from the Don Was-produced album “Under The Red Sky”, which may have been recorded at The Complex, Los Angeles, CA, 19-20 Apr 1990. This song was originally intended to be recorded by dance artist Paula Abdul! It was recorded in the early 1990s by Was (Not Was) as MR. ALICE DOESN’T LIVE HERE ANY MORE but not released. They performed it live on radio as part of a Dylan tribute called “Oh Merci”, broadcast on KCRW radio, Santa Monica, CA, on 04 Jul 1993. Thanks to Gil Walker for this quote from Don Was: “There’s one song that we wrote with Bob Dylan when I was producing “Under the Red Sky.” We were sitting around watching “I Dream of Jeannie” in the lounge, and I thought, ‘This was kind of a waste. You work all your life to be able to hang out with your hero and then you end up watching “I Dream of Jeannie.”‘ So at the time, my wife [then in A&R for Virgin Records] had signed Paula Abdul so she was about to record her second album. So I said, ‘Let’s write a song for Paula Abdul.’ So Bob shut the TV off and he, David and I wrote “MR. ALICE DOESN’T LIVE HERE ANY MORE.” Thanks to Harold Lepidus for news that the song is now included on the Was (Not Was) Rykodisc album “Boo!” (Rykodisc RCD-10943, USA, 2008) and thanks to Jack from Canada for the scan.”

As for Some Enchanted Evening, Searching For A Gem has an answer as well:

“Out-take from “Under The Red Sky”, recorded at The Complex, Los Angeles, CA, March 1990 – could it be the standard from “South Pacific” by Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein, recorded by Bob for “Shadows In The Night”, 2015?”

Even though Bjorner lists it as definitely a song by Rodgers and Hammerstein, not Kern and Hammerstein, but okay.

Would also like to add that I’ve heard rumours that there are incredibly longer versions of Handy Dandy and Under The Red Sky, that go up to 30-60 minutes. Not sure how accurate that is.

I’ve looked at Searching For A Gem for some possible info, but I haven’t found any.

We’re still in 1990, past the Under The Red Sky sessions, and unto the rare July/August 1990 rehearsals before tour.

I found this on Bjorner, and he states these were rehearsed:

Unidentified Studio
Unidentified Location, U.S.A
July-August 1990
Rehearsals before tour.

In The Pines (Huddie “Leadbelly” Leadbetter)
Man Of Constant Sorrow (trad. arr. by Bob Dylan)
A Long Time A-Growin’ (trad.)
Hey La La (Hey La La) (McBride)
Precious Memories (arr. by Bob Dylan)
House Of Gold (Hank Williams)
Peace In The Valley (Thomas A. Dorsey)
Everybody’s Rockin’ (Neil Young)
(Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay (Steve Cropper – Otis Redding)
Stand By Me (Charles Albert Tindley)
Moon River (Henry Mancini – Johnny Mercer)
Shut Your Mouth
Trouble
On A Night Like This
Eternal Circle
Spanish Harlem Incident
Heart Of Mine
Had A Dream About You, Baby
One More Cup Of Coffee (Valley Below)
When Did You Leave Heaven? (W. Bullock – R. Whiting)

What’s special about these songs? To find out let’s get into detail using Bob Dylan’s official website as a source.

In The Pines

This song was performed by Bob only five times live, and all the performances happened before this rehearsal. Dylan hasn’t done it since this rehearsal.

Man Of Constant Sorrow

This song was only performed nine times before this rehearsal, and it was performed 13 times since then, but only five times in 1990. It was then not played until 2002, when it was performed in a electric arrangement, that was very intense.

A Long Time A-Growin’

This song was only performed twice, in 1961, and not played live since this rehearsal in 1990.

Hey La La

Only performed three times in 1989 live and never again, not even after this 1990 rehearsal.

Precious Memories

Only performed 3 times, twice in 1989 and once in 1990 but before this rehearsal, on January 12 1990. Not performed since the rehearsal.

House Of Gold

Only performed twice live, both times in 1989 and not since.

Peace In The Valley

Performed only once in 1989 and never again.

Everybody’s Rockin’

Never performed live

The Dock Of The Bay

Performed once live, after this rehearsal

Stand By Me

Performed once live, after this rehearsal. Also read during the Musicares 2015 speech.

Moon River

Performed twice live, both times after this rehearsal, once in 1990 and once in 2018

Shut Your Mouth

I used Searching For A Gem for this, here: “Included in a list of songs rehearsed at Montana Studios, New York, July-August 1990, in the section marked “electric B.D.” and not in the section marked “electric covers”, but no other details are known.” This song was never played live.

Trouble

Performed seven times live, but in 1989 only.

On A Night Like This

Never played live

Eternal Circle

Played 3 times live in 1963 and 1964 only.

Spanish Harlem Incident

Performed only once live in 1964 and not again

Heart Of Mine

It was previously played only once in 1989, which was the first performance since 1987 of the song. Not played in 1990 at all. However, it was performed only once after 1989, and that was in 1992 and not since then.

Had A Dream About You Baby

Performed only four times in 1988 and not again

One More Cup Of Coffee

Not performed in 1990 after this rehearsal, even though it was played 3 times earlier in the year. Played live 7 more times in 1991, 1993, 2007 and 2009.

When Did You Leave Heaven?

Not played in 1990 after this rehearsal, but played twice in 1991 and never again.

The rare appearances for these songs overall in Bob’s career, makes this rehearsal precious to behold. Unfortunately, it’s not in circulation currently. Hopefully someday.

One of the Holy Grails for hardcore Dylan fans is to one day get a hold of the Bromberg Sessions of 1992.

Here’s some info using Wikipedia:

“Since launching the Never Ending Tour in June 1988, traditional covers became a feature at virtually every Dylan concert, often as part of an acoustic set. After recording Under the Red Sky in 1990, Dylan would not release an original song until 1997, and during that time, he would increasingly rely on his stockpile of covers for ‘fresh’ material. Dylan called these covers “the music that’s true for me”.”

Dylan scheduled studio time at Chicago’s Acme Studios in early June 1992, hiring long-time associate David Bromberg as his producer. An album’s worth of cover songs were recorded at these sessions with the accompaniment of a full band. The recording engineers were Blaise Barton and Dan White. For reasons unknown, Dylan scrapped the release of this album, deciding to record solo acoustic material instead. Two songs from the Bromberg sessions, “Duncan and Brady” and “Miss the Mississippi”, would eventually be released on the album The Bootleg Series Vol. 8: Tell Tale Signs: Rare and Unreleased 1989–2006. All of the songs for Good As I Been to You were recorded later at Dylan’s garage studio at his home in Malibu, sessions that are believed to have taken place from late July to early August 1992.

Basically, Dylan abandoned the Bromberg Sessions, to work later on Good As I Been To You.

Now, let’s take a look at the full list of songs from those sessions from Bjorner:

Acme Recording
Chicago, Illinois
3-5 June 1992
Produced by David Bromberg.

Rise Again (trad.)
Nobody’s Fault But Mine (Blind Willie Johnson)
The Lady Came From Baltimore (Tim Hardin)
Polly Vaughan (trad.)
Casey Jones (trad.)
Duncan And Brady (trad.)
Catskills Serenade (David Bromberg)
World Of Fools (David Bromberg)
Miss The Mississippi And You (Jimmie Rodgers)
Sloppy Drunk (Jimmie Rodgers)
Hey Joe (Billy Roberts)
Northeast Texas Woman (Willis Alan Ramsey)

The reason why there’s hype for these sessions is because of not only the released Duncan And Brady and Miss The Mississippi, but also the circulating recordings of Polly Vaughan, Catskills Serenade and Sloppy Drunk are some of Dylan’s finest performances of the decade. Especially Polly Vaughan and Catskills Serenade have some of Dylan’s most emotional and finest vocals of the decade.

As far as Good As I Been To You goes, not much to say but that the album had an outtake, You Belong To Me.

Here’s some Wikipedia info:

When time came to sequence the album, producer Debbie Gold was unable to convince Dylan to include “You Belong to Me”. Though it wasn’t authentically traditional, it was popular enough to be covered by Jo Stafford, Patti Page and Dean Martin. The most popular version was recorded by the Duprees, one of the final Italian doo wop groups to make a wave in the early 1960s. Dylan’s version from the Good As I Been to You sessions eventually appeared in Oliver Stone’s controversial 1994 film Natural Born Killers and on its accompanying soundtrack album.

The series continues.

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Never Ending Tour Part 6: Atlanta Aftermath and Manchester Moonshine

Posted on December 30, 2021 by TonyAttwood

A full index to the Never Ending Tour series is here. The articles for the earlier parts of 2002 are

Part 1: Never Ending Tour, 2002,, Seattle Showdown
Part 2 Tickling the Ivories
Part 3: Manchester and other outstanding performances
Part 4: Magnificent performances
Part 5: Accidentally friends and other strangers

This article below was written as Part 5, with Part 5 being part six. Unfortunately an editorial cock-up meant that Part six was published as part five on Boxing Day, so here is Part five. Now called part six. If you follow my drift.

NET, 2002, Part 6 Atlanta Aftermath and Manchester Moonshine

By Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet)

‘I ain’t no pig without a wig
I hope you treat me kind.’

By Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet)

As we have seen in the earlier posts of 2002, this was remarkable year for the NET, as from October Dylan put down his guitar and began playing piano on stage. Two outstanding gigs prior to October were Atlanta and Manchester, both with excellent soundboard recordings, although the sound produced in each concert was very different. And, to my ear, the mature Dylan has rarely sounded better.

In Atlanta, we get a hard, scrubby sound, tight and punkish, while the Manchester sound is a little looser and not so hard-edged. A good way to catch the difference between these performances is to listen to ‘All along the Watchtower’ played at both concerts. So let’s start where the concerts often ended. The Atlanta recording is so clear you can hear each instrument distinctly without the instrumental blurring you find in many performances of this song. If it’s the apocalypse you want, this is as urgent and claustrophobic as it gets. You can hear that wind begin to howl…

Watchtower (A)

That’s great rock music. But is it any greater than this one from Manchester? The bit of echo in the voice gives the song an eerie touch that fits. A bit more spooky. Take your pick.

Watchtower (B)

‘Forever Young’ has always seemed to me to be a song poised between hope and despair, between wistfulness and resolution. The grittiness of the Atlanta performance doesn’t leave much room for pipe dreams, or the hope that we may stay forever young at heart. The youthfulness and power of the album version gives way to the cracked hopes of the old. All the upsinging in the world can’t change that. It’s a desperate prayer.

Yet there are lines here I carry with me in the great confusion of the world:

‘May you have a strong foundation when the winds of changes shift.’

I can feel those winds of changes right now, all our certainties blowin’ in the wind. What else can we do but know the truth and see the light surrounding us?

Fine opening harp solo.

Forever Young

‘High Water’ seems perfectly made for the hard, jangly Atlanta sound. We last heard this in Part 2 of the 2002 posts, the Seattle concert, with Dylan playing piano. You might like to compare that performance with this Atlanta one. While I like the piano version for its uncluttered sound, I’m leaning towards this one for its gritty urgency – ‘Things are breakin’ up out there/high water everywhere.’

High Water

‘Just like a rolling stone,’ is a song that always suffers in comparison to the famous 1965 studio version, or the 1966 live shows. There’s nothing quite like that jeering tone. As with ‘Visions of Johanna’ it’s hard to get past the originals. But this blistering attack on bad faith has weathered the weary years and is as cogent as it ever was. There is no sugar coating this bitter pill. Another abrasive Atlanta performance.

Like a Rolling Stone

Before leaving the Atlanta gig we can’t miss our old friend, ‘Tangled Up in Blue.’ It may be closer to the famous 1975 acoustic version so popular on You Tube than others we have heard. It’s the raw acoustic sound that does it, the sense of a life lived ‘on the lam’ as he expressed it in ‘Standing in the Doorway.’ We are driven on, one scene to the next, by our inner demons, but we can never escape our pasts.

In keeping with his practice in 2002, we get the harp solo at the beginning of the song.

Tangled up in blue.

Talking about harp intros and ‘Standing in the Doorway,’ here’s a strong performance of that song from the Summer Tour (date unknown, sorry). Dylan rarely plays the harp on this song. Don’t know that this performance reaches the heights that we found in 2000, but this Time out of Mind song never fails to be a moving experience to listen to. There’s an emotional fragility in these live performances that doesn’t quite come over on the album version for me. As with many of Dylan’s ‘she’s gone and left me’ songs, there is an undertone of vulnerability, a strong thread of hurt.

Standing in the Doorway

‘Don’t think Twice’ may often sound more tender than it is. There’s just enough tartness in it make anybody think twice. A touch of hurt. After all, it’s a song of disappointment, a confession of failure – ‘we never did too much talkin’ anyway.’ A sad commentary, but maybe a lucky escape. Women who want your soul rather than your heart tend to make a mess out of you. I have two performances worth contrasting. The first is from Manchester, with a harp intro and a warm vocal delivery. A crowd pleaser this one.

Don’t think twice. (A)

Equally crowd pleasing is this performance from 15^th November (Philadelphia). As he has done before Dylan turns the song into a celebration. A jubilant performance, urged on by the enthusiasm of the crowd.

Don’t think twice. (B)

A song I often associate with ‘Don’t Think Twice’ is ‘One too many mornings’ as they both seems to come from the same place. A quiet performance from Manchester, tenderly delivered, the melody given a gentle lilt with Larry’s steel guitar. Dylan no longer has to try to sound old and wise – he is old and wise.

One too many mornings

The Manchester performance of ‘It’s all right Ma’ is driven by a fast, skipping little riff. It’s all here and works well, but I wonder if the bouncy tempo suits the gravity of the song. Arguably this is Dylan’s most comprehensive and powerful protest song. A protest song that transcends protest to become a proclamation of resilience. Even in cold irons you may be free if you walk upside-down. Those false gods can’t touch you.

My eyes collide head-on with stuffed
graveyards, false gods, I scuff
at pettiness which plays so rough
walk upside-down inside handcuffs
kick my legs to crash it off
say okay, I have had enough
what else can you show me?

Larry’s playing the cittern once more, giving the performance that tinkly sound.

It’s all right ma

The jokiness and humour in many of the “Love and Theft” songs seem new but that may be because the humour stands out in comparison to the overriding seriousness of Time out of Mind. If we go back to the early 1960s we find seriously funny songs like ‘Bob Dylan’s 115^th Dream’ and ‘Talking WW3 Blues.’ That satirical humour survives through to the mid 1960s and underlies ‘Stuck inside of Mobile,’ another madcap tale of Dylan’s adventures in America. This could be Dylan’s 116^th dream. Bizarre events still rule:

When Ruthie says come see her
In her honky-tonk lagoon
Where I could watch her waltz for free
'Neath her Panamanian moon

I said, "Oh, come on now
You must know about my debutante"
She said, "Your debutante knows what you need
But I know what you want"

The focus of the humour here is not so much political madness but love, sex, and seduction; the satirical drive is the same. Only at the end of the song is the humour dropped, for a more desperate, claustrophobic edge. The real horror of the situation is having to ‘go through all these things twice.’ A groundhog nightmare from which we cannot awaken:

Now the bricks they fall on Grand Street
Where the neon madmen climb
They all fall there so perfectly
It all seems so well timed

And here I sit so patiently
Waiting to find out what price
You have to pay to get out of
Going through all these things twice

The album performance has a kind of smoothness that Dylan doesn’t try to capture in his NET performances. This 2002 performance is rough in the best sense. The events in the song are not just strange and funny, they are dangerous and threatening. Stolen post offices and locked mailboxes are not just oddities in Dylan’s crazy, circus world, but indicators of the human condition. (And oddly prophetic given the shutting down of post offices in much of the western world in the last thirty years. Our local post office was stolen some years back.)

Larry plays the acoustic guitar on this Manchester performance, taking a bit of the jangly edge out of the song.

Stuck inside of Mobile

It’s not a completely wild leap to go from ‘Mobile’ to ‘Cold Irons Bound,’ just a step further into the darkness where the pain of lost love and the claustrophobia of the world is amped up. We go from ‘deep inside my heart, I know I can’t escape’ to ‘I’m waist deep, waist deep in the mist/ It’s almost like, almost like I don’t exist.’

Dylan hasn’t changed the format of the song, that will come later, but it’s rewarding to hear Dylan singing the verses with just the drums clicking in behind. The song sure does suit a more minimal treatment. Notice that once again the crackle seems to have vanished from Dylan voice which is sharp enough to cut like those Chicago winds. (Summer Tour, date not known sorry.)

Cold irons bound

‘Love’s no evil thing,’ Dylan sings ‘Sugar Baby’ but it can be a bruising experience, and appearances can be deceptive. Even a gorgeous, magical hippy chick might turn into a tyrant demanding tributes, which is what happens in ‘She belongs to Me.’ You don’t want to ‘wind up peeking through her keyhole down upon your knees.’

Knowing what a powerful, throbbing song this will become in the post 2012 period, I find it fascinating to watch Dylan slowly evolving the song. Getting the beat behind it in place, inching towards a more bluesy vocal performance, and discovering how the harmonical might work with the song.

She belongs to me.

Let’s finish with ‘Tell me it isn’t true;’ more love and betrayal. I find this performance more compelling emotionally than the album version, which is just a little too smooth. In this one from 1^st February, Fort Lauderdale, the pain of it all is to the fore. A masterful performance.

Tell me it isn’t true

That’s it for now. Don’t forget if you have not already seen and heard them the previous episode contained some of the non-Dylan songs covered in 2002 for, like 1999 and 2000, the year was rich in cover songs.

Kia Ora

——

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A Dylan Cover a Day: Fourth Time Around

Posted on December 29, 2021 by TonyAttwood

by Tony Attwood

A list of the articles published previously in this meandering series is given at the end of the piece.

I’ve never counted 4th Time Around as a major Dylan composition and given that Bob has only played it 37 times across the years I guess we can conclude he’s not that knocked out by it either. But as you will see below Jochen in his review of the song did discover some more than interesting renditions. So rather than by pass the song in my little series I thought I would try and find something even more engrossing.

I started out with high hopes with a version from Old Crow. After all they have delivered what I think is the definitive Visions of Johanna, so surely they must know a thing or three…

But the opening tells us exactly where we are with the Dylan soundalike harmonica.

I don’t mean that the performance is not of value, but it simply doesn’t add anything new to the song, and that for me is part of the point. The harmonies are beautiful as is the wailing of the accompaniment, but still, I really thought Old Crowe might go further.

So I kept on meandering around looking for my desired complete reinterpretation, and certainly in terms of musical re-arrangement by Ryley Walker does come up with the goods, but somehow it doesn’t drive me on to want to hear it through to the end.

You’ll probably know the beautifully gentle version from the “I’m not there” soundtrack by Yo La Tengo. This does keep me listening, not because the music has changed but because the vocals are so engaging. And the production team know when they are onto a good thing… they don’t play games, but instead, let it roll along. And when we get to the dirt where everyone walked… well, yes I’m there.

Chris Whitley’s version has come up on this site before, and oh that voice is so unusual and haunting, and thank goodness the musicians and producer know how to perform behind it.

I’d never thought of doing it the way Terry Melcher does. And having listened a few times I am still not sure that this actually works with this song. It is that moment of “When I got up to leave” that trips people up, but by having the full ensemble of voices in the next line, yes it works.

I think it is just the mandolin that puts me off – that and the feeling that every instrumentalist is trying to get heard, which really isn’t the point.

Which brings me on to Jewels and Binoculars who featured in the review of Dark Eyes and Gates of Eden and probably several other places as well.

But now after all the meandering I have to admit it is Jochen who has led me (not for the first time) to the most extraordinary and beautiful reworking of the song with the working through by Orien Lavie – if you don’t know “Her morning elegance” you really should watch the video.

However back to where I am supposed to be…

So Jochen wins again and indeed wins twice because he also found The Young Relics which he called “Jumping, neurotic and contagiously energetic, including a pleasantly surprising, completely unexpected change in rhythm; halfway a full organ brutally descends down, calming the nervous guitar, smothering all the unrest, crushing every last splinter of Norwegian wood.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself. Or actually to be honest, couldn’t have said it.

———-

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Bob Dylan Released and Unreleased 11. 1963: Westinghouse.

Posted on December 29, 2021 by TonyAttwood

By Aaron Galbraith and Tony Attwood

This made for TV movie was recorded in 1963 at Westinghouse TV Studio and starred The Brothers Four, Barbara Dane, The Staples Singers and Bob Dylan.

The promotional poster is pretty cool too!

Unfortunately this has never been made available on DVD as far as I know (officially that is).

The complete set list is shown below. Fortunately the three Dylan performances are available on YouTube along with a couple of other tracks.

Introduction / Rock Island Line

Blowin’ In The Wind
Song Of The Ox Drivers
The Tenderfoot
Sit Down Servant
Payday At Coal Creek
Man Of Constant Sorrow
Wish I Was In Bowling Green
Famine Song
Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out
Backwater Blues
Pastures Of Plenty
Ballad Of Hollis Brown
Great Day
Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream
Finale / This Land Is Your Land

Here is the introduction along with Rock Island Line, totally worth a watch just for Bob’s introductory walk past!

Tony: I love seeing TV productions from this era for the way that they were trying to adapt the traditions of the theatre and live musical performances into what TV could do. It really is quite fascinating to see how in some of these TV productions great performers were manipulated into being dummies and puppets forced to mime their recordings, or act in a way that the TV station owners thought was appropriate.

Actually I should have said much earlier in this series, I’m amazed at how you are finding all of these Aaron.

Blowin’ In The Wind

A Man Of Constant Sorrow. This was included in the No Direction Home movie and accompanying Bootleg Series 8.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_Pvaoqqbxhc

Tony: “I know something you don’t know”. Now that is quite a thought. Could the whole of Dylan’s songwriting be referenced to that? The commentaries here are really interesting.

And Bob’s voice is in particularly fine fettle here.

The Ballad Of Hollis Brown

Tony: Ah… I wanted to see the banjo player as well. Where is he or she? (Incidentally, Bob’s not putting on any sort of show is he – except for the walk-off at the end.)

Aaron: Let’s round things off with the finale of This Land Is Your Land.

“And a couple of problems…” No mention of racism and gun violence then. I wonder what Bob thought of all this in 1963. For by the time this TV programme was recorded Bob had already written “Oxford Town”, “Hollis Brown”, and “Hard Rain”.

But still a great bit of archive material Aaron. Thanks for finding it.

Dylan released and unreleased

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Dylan cover a day: from the sublime to the missing harmonies.

Posted on December 28, 2021 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood

Next on our list should be Floater, but there is only one interesting and/or exciting cover of this, and Jochen got there before me. You’ll find the video in his article, and I do recommend it.

The same is true with the next song on the alphabetical list: Foot of Pride. But since in the original article I didn’t include the actual video (just the sound track) here it is again:

For me this version just captures the lyrics totally (even if Lou didn’t know the lyrics, and was reading them from a screen).

Next is Forever Young – which of course is a complete contrast. It is one of those songs that has over one hundred cover versions by recognised performers, so what we choose is a matter of personal opinion. And as ever I am looking for something different and yet artistically valid. By which I mean the emphasis is on artistic integrity rather than a producer saying, “I don’t know guys, it’s not working, can we put a bit of echo in?” or words to that effect.

Cathal Gavin almost gets there, until suddenly someone adds a bizarre percussive sound with echo on the off beats. It is a great shame because otherwise it is a brilliant rendition of the song.

There are some decent instrumental versions around too showing a huge range of imagination in the way the music is handled.

Lisa Viggiano does a funny pause at one place which I don’t think works, but overall the interpretation is very interesting, varying each element of the music that can be changed without destroying the integrity of the song. Interesting ending too. I had to double check that I’d not cut the piece off

But in the end I reach the conclusion that the song is, no matter how hard one tries, always just out of reach. I’ve listened to a couple of dozen versions in writing this piece and yet I still can’t find what I am looking for.

Gentle, soft, with vocal harmonies. And try shutting the percussion up, just for a change. Is that too much to ask? Seemingly yes – unless I just happened to miss it among all the covers out there.

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Dirt Road Blues (1997) part 4: Gross as beetles

Posted on December 28, 2021 by TonyAttwood

by Jochen Markhorst

IV Gross as beetles

Gon’ walk down that dirt road until my eyes begin to bleed
Gon’ walk down that dirt road until my eyes begin to bleed
’Til there’s nothing left to see, 
   ’til the chains have been shattered and I’ve been freed

Apart from the very thin link some eccentrics try to see in “Paperback Writer”’s based on a novel by a man named Lear, The Beatles only once encounter King Lear, and that really is just a happy accident. In the chaotic final phase of “I Am The Walrus”, we hear, with some difficulty, a dialogue from Act 4, Scene 5:

“If ever thou wilt thrive, bury my body and give the letters which thou find’st about me to Edmund, Earl of Gloucester: seek him out upon the English party. O, untimely death! Death!”
“I know thee well: a serviceable villain, as duteous to the vices of thy mistress as badness would desire.”
“What, is he dead?”
“Sit you down, father: rest you.”

… and not “Paul is dead”, which is, by the way, one of the weakest arguments that the conspiracy clowns put forward as “proof” of McCartney’s death on 9 November 1966. By now we know for sure that there is no deep, hidden meaning behind the King Lear fragment. Studio engineer Geoff Emerick revealed that he and Lennon added some random radio chatter to the mix – and coincidentally, Emerick says, there was an integral King Lear broadcast on the BBC. Lennon confirms this in the famous radio interview with New York DJ Dennis Elsas, September 1974, and also reveals that he didn’t even have a clue what it was:

“I just heard a radio in the room that was tuned to some BBC channel all the time. We did about, oh I don’t know, half a dozen mixes and I just used whatever was coming through at the time. I never knew it was King Lear until somebody told me, years later. ’Cause I could hardly make out what he was saying.”

To what extent Dylan consciously incorporates his admiration for King Lear, or for Shakespeare at all, into his oeuvre is debatable. Associations are more common than in Beatles songs, in any case. From the Basement songs “Tears Of Rage” and “This Wheel’s On Fire”, lines to King Lear can be drawn, coincidentally or not, in the same scene Lear uses the expression handy dandy, the name of the protagonist of Dylan’s nursery rhyme “Handy Dandy”, coincidentally or not, and “time out of mind” is a Romeo And Juliet quote, coincidentally or not. And this third verse of “Dirt Road Blues” is, coincidentally or not, very similar to the dramatic low point in the dismantling of the poor Earl of Gloucester from King Lear. Gloucester, who after having his eyes gouged out, with bleeding eye sockets asks his son to lead him to a cliff so that he will find freedom in a leap to his death.

Coincidence probably, but still, it is a remarkable and gruesome image, bleeding eyes. Usually used to freak out the audience, in horror films and films with supernatural stuff. And occasionally poetically – as at the end of Alfredson’s magisterial 2011 adaptation of Le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. When, from a distance, Jim Prideaux shoots his close friend the traitor Bill Haydon in the head with a small calibre bullet just below the eye, a single drop of blood runs like a tear down the cheek of the dying Haydon – mirroring the one single tear running down the cheek of assassin Prideaux.

In the art of song, the image is less common. Alright, since the rise of trash metal and gothic punk, of bands with names like Anthrax and Primal Scream, eyes start to bleed a bit more often, but there the image seems to be derived from, and have the same function as in horror movies; to gross out the listener. “Tears of blood” or similar word combinations to express the horror of bleeding eyes are actually rarely used in the art of song, and, moreover, hardly unambiguous. Like in Sandy Denny’s somewhat pathetic “Here In Silence”;

Morning leaves a bed of echoes,
Tears of blood in weeping meadows,
Can you see me, can you hear me,
Can you leave me here in silence?

… and even when the grandmaster John Prine uses the image (in “The Hobo Song”, 1978), he balances dangerously close to the edge of unbearable sentimentality. No, actually only the 1931 Mississippi Sheiks song “I’ve Got Blood In My Eyes For You” expresses approximately what Dylan also seems to want to express here;

I was out this mo'nin, feelin' blue
I said-a, 'Good-lookin' girl can I make love with you?'
Hey-hey-hey, babe
I've got blood in my eyes for you

Dylan’s admiration for the Mississippi Sheiks is unquestioned. He records their “The World Is Going Wrong”, “Sitting On Top The World” and “I’ve Got Blood in My Eyes For You”, the DJ Dylan plays them three times on Theme Time Radio Hour, and in the liner notes to World Gone Wrong he is clear enough:

“BLOOD IN MY EYES is one of two songs done by the Mississippi Sheiks, a little known de facto group whom in their former glory must’ve been something to behold. rebellion against routine seems to be their strong theme. all their songs are raw in the bone & are faultlessly made for these modern times (the New Dark Ages) nothing effete about the Mississippi Sheiks.”

“I’ve Got Blood In My Eyes For You” is a heart-breaking song about a despondent, lonely john who in his misery tries to buy an emotional bond with a hooker but is rejected. The chorus line I’ve got blood in my eyes for you here seems to express either something like “extreme desire”, “consuming yearning” or “extreme disappointment”. Not a one-to-one congruence with Dylan’s use of bleeding eyes, but at least in the same quadrant of the emotional colour scale; utter despair caused by love suffering. In “Dirt Road Blues”, however, Gon’ walk down that dirt road until my eyes begin to bleed and its continuation have the somewhat uncomfortable connotation that the protagonist doesn’t want to see something or someone anymore. The postscript, after all, reveals that “blindness” will set him free, has the unsettling implication that the narrator is unbearably haunted by images of her in his mind’s eye.

On a side note: in hindsight, it is a pity that Lennon and Geoff Emerick did not turn on the radio one minute earlier:

“The crows and choughs that wing the midway air
Show scarce so gross as beetles”

Now, that would have given the Paul-is-dead-conspiracists a field day.

To be continued. Next up: Dirt Road Blues part 5

——–

Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books, in English, Dutch and German, are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:

———-

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A Dylan Cover a Day: Farewell Angelina

Posted on December 27, 2021 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood

I’ve been working my way through Dylan songs in alphabetical order, but have come into territory where either we have songs with no covers, or nothing that I think is worthy of a mention, or we’ve already been through all the covers before (Every Grain of Sand for example), and there’s not much to add.

But moving on at full speed I eventually got to Farewell Angelina and here I have found a couple of things I would really like to draw to draw your attention to… starting with Adjö, Angelina by Mikael Wiehe and Ebba Forsberg in Swedish.

As I have commented before on versions in a language one doesn’t speak, more than anything it forces one to contemplate what the musical arranger has done and how the performers are responding. I do hope you have the time to listen.

Back to English and this by an unknown artist. We’ve had it on the site before, and it is superb in my view. Exquisitely rendered guitar accompaniment and a voice that works so well with the accompaniment.

Perhaps one of the oddest things I have seen since I last went on the internet is the discussion that follows has people getting rather angry denouncing this recording because it is not Bob Dylan performing, and calling others idiots for thinking it is. Perhaps by way of extension of that we ought to be blaming Bob for writing the song and thus generating the arguments in the first place. Perhaps everytime I make a mistake in something I write I should blame Nikola Tesla.

But I must throw this in too. For me this recording, and indeed the others I am choosing to highlight in this little piece is absolutely a reassertion of the fact that there are people out there with a real sense of adventure and creativity.

So moving on, whoever would have thought of changing the beat, the melody and the chord structure and still got something out of it that is such absolute fun.

Well I suppose someone called Daisy Mayhem. And when the occasional vocal harmonies come in as well, oh, what can I say? This next piece is such fun, so uplifting, so utterly enjoyable, it just brings a big smile to my face, and an uplift in my heart. I do hope you can find the time to play this all the way through.

I want to play in this band!

Actually, apart from the fact I don’t think they are recruiting old men at the moment, they are a New England band and if you want to know more about them, here is their web site. Normally at moments like this everyone says, “Oh I’ve known about them of years,” and “You mean you’ve only just discovered them – where have you been living Tony?” to which I reply truthfully, “Northamptonshire”, and since even more people in England don’t know where that is (confusing it with Northumberland as like as not) we tend to leave it at that.

Daisy Mayhem is a cartoon character (well, you probably knew that, but I had to look it up – obviously I come from the wrong cultural background).

The point here is that with a lot of Dylan’s music, someone with a really good musical ability and instinct will be able to play in every sense of the word. I beg you to play that version above and just sit back and enjoy it.

And because they have given me such pleasure today, I am going to offer a couple of other tracks from them.

I hope you got something out of that!

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Bob Dylan: Trying To Get To Heaven

Posted on December 27, 2021 by TonyAttwood

by Larry Fyffe

The narrator in the following song lyrics just can’t comprehend why his fiery lust for a gal is not returned in kind:

When you are near
It's just as plain as it can be
I'm wild about you, gal
You ought to be a fool about me
(Bob Dylan: Spirit On The Water)

Likewise, so the situation is in the song lyrics below:

But Lord knows I'm a-wild about you, black gal
I'm just as crazy as I can be
Lord, Lord, I'm wild about you, black gal
You ought to be a fool about me
(Sonny Boy Williamson: Black Gal Blues)

In the next song lyrics, the narrator heads out after a relationship’s gone bad:

Might take a train, I might take a plane
But if I have to walk
I'll be going to Chicago just the same
I'm going to Chicago on the Western Road

(Bob Dylan: Western Road)

In the following song lyrics, the narrator can’t wait to be off to a place where he’s sure there are lots of opportunities to meet “crazy little women”:

Well, I might take a train, I might take a plane
But if I have to walk
I'm going just the same
Going to Kansas City, Kansas City here I come
(Wilbert Harrison: Kansas City ~ Stoller/Leiber)

In the recording below the music begins at about 1′ 10″

In the lyrics beneath, cold floodwaters are a-rising where ‘hot wet’ women ought to be a-waiting the singer:

Big Joe Turner looking East and West
From the dark room of his mind
He made it to Kansas City
Twelfth Street and Vine
Nothing standing there

(Bob Dylan: High Water)

The bluesman’s songs include lines such as:

I'm like a one-eyed cat peeping in a seafood store

(Big Joe Turner: Shake, Rattle, And Roll ~ Calhoun)

Musta justa been a bit of bad luck. There’s gotta be a better place to meet easier woman than the place the narrator below is at now:

Gonna be standing on the corner
Twelfth Street and Vine
With my Kansas City baby
And a bottle of Kansas City wine
(Wilbert Harrison: Kansas City ~ Stoller/Lieber)

A philosophical explanation is needed to explain the present sorrowful state of male/female relationships.

In the following song, the watery female, the “spirit on the water”, corresponds to the fiery male “standing on the corner” of the concrete sidewalk in Kansas City:

She messes up big time, hovers above the waves; fails to bring the balancing spirit of her male companion down with her from the mysterious rings of Swedenborg’s heavenly planes.

As a consequence of her emotionally wrought behaviour, land-bound humans lose the chance to bind back together in the divine bridal chamber of the sea.

Nevermore will that be.

A spectre similar to that of Edgar Allan Poe’s lost Lenore appears:

Spirit on the water
Darkness on the face of the deep
I keep thinking about you baby
I can hardly sleep
(Bob Dylan: Spirit On The Water)

And another:

Bertha Mason shook it, broke it
Then she hung it on a wall
Says, "You'll dance with whom they tell you to
Or you don't dance at all"
It's tough out there
(Bob Dylan: High Water)

Bertha’s a locked-up, mad woman from Charlotte Bronte’s novel “Jane Eyre”.

The Joker has the last laugh:

She could not leave her number, but I know who
placed the call
'Cause my uncle took the message, and he wrote 
it on the wall
(Chuck Berry: Memphis, Tennessee)

——

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NET, 2002, Part Five: Accidentally friends and other strangers

Posted on December 26, 2021 by TonyAttwood

A full index to the Never Ending Tour series is here. The articles for the first three parts of 2002 are

Part 1: Never Ending Tour, 2002,, Seattle Showdown
Part 2 Tickling the Ivories
Part 3: Manchester and other outstanding performances
Part 4: Magnificent performances

By Mike Johnson (Kiwipoet)

In 1999 and 2000 we saw Dylan bring to the stage traditional songs, the kind of antique music we hear on Love and Theft. In 2002, he again does a lot of cover versions, although this time, while some of the old songs get a hearing, he leans towards contemporary songs or songs written by contemporaries as a tribute to some artists he clearly admires. Towards the end of the year he was playing up to three cover songs per concert.

Some of these are family songs like Neil Young’s ‘Old Man.’ It has a catchy melody and strong lyrics and is instantly recognisable to Dylan’s audience. It was inevitable that Dylan and Young should cross paths over the years, and be together on stage a few times. ‘Old Man’ is Neil Young’s anthem, and Dylan doesn’t mess with the song, that is, attempt to Dylanise it, but plays it straight, just as Neil Young might have played it. This one’s from 30^th Oct, Saint Paul.

Old Man

It is not surprising that Dylan would want to cover a song by those ‘British bad boys,’ the Rolling Stones. Of course, Dylan doesn’t prance about on stage like Mike Jagger, but he sure knows how to belt out a rock song, and ‘Brown Sugar’ is the quintessential rock song. The Stones might not be as famous as Dylan for the element of protest or social comment in their songs, but ‘Brown Sugar’ comes close:

‘Gold Coast slave ship bound for cotton fields
Sold in the market down in New Orleans
Skydog slaver know he's doin' all right
Hear him whip the women, just around midnight’

Again he plays it straight, with all the sass and flourish it needs. Jagger and Richards did write some great dancing songs. It came out in 1971 but it sounds very sixties to me. This is also from Saint Paul.

Brown Sugar

Dylan’s relationship with The Beatles, given his avowed friendship with George Harrison and his rivalry with John Lennon, was more contentious. Dylan does a lovely spoken introduction to ‘Something’ in which he expresses his affection for Harrison. Of course, it is a Harrison song, and this performance is a loving tribute indeed. And Charlie Sexton has captured Harrison’s guitar perfectly. Uncanny, how close it sounds to Harrison. The song has a similar sentiment to Dylan’s ‘Something There Is About You’ from Planet Waves, 1974.

This is from ‘Something.’

‘Something in the way she moves
Attracts me like no other lover
Something in the way she woos me
I don't want to leave her now
You know I believe and how’

And this is from ‘Something There Is About You.’

‘Somethin' there is about you
That strikes the match in me
Is it the way your body moves
Or is it the way your hair blows free?’

This performance is from 30th Nov, New York.

Something

By far the most substantial tribute however is to the song writer Warren Zevon, who being born in 1947 was a few years younger than Dylan, but died of cancer in 2003. His illness was known in 2002, and Dylan expressed his appreciation of Zevon publicly by singing three of his songs, sometimes two at one concert. Many who had never heard of Zevon were introduced to him by these performances.

He does Dylanise Zevon’s ‘Mutineer,’ just in his phrasing, and turns up with a particularly compelling version. Indeed, the song has a mysteriousness to it worthy of Dylan, and what a marvellous tribute this is to the dying songwriter. This one’s from the groundbreaking Seattle concert (Oct 4).

Mutineer.

‘Accidentally like a Martyr’ has a very Dylan like title. Interestingly, while written in 1978 it contains the phrase ‘time out of mind,’ reminding us that the phrase refers to ‘a time in the past that was so long ago that people have no knowledge or memory of it.’ (Google)

‘The days slide by
Should have done, should have done, we all sigh
Never thought I'd ever be so lonely
After such a long, long time
Time out of mind’

This is another one from the Seattle concert, and is a fine vocal performance. Critic and Bobcat Andrew Muir, who attended the Seattle concert, describes his response this way: “Accidentally Like A Martyr” hit me like the proverbial large railway vehicle moving at high speed. The vocals conveyed an astonishing depth of feeling and insight and an immense gravity. You couldn’t fail to understand immediately that this song was of import.

Interpretations of the song vary, but fate seems to play a big role in love and religion. You might stumble upon martyrdom as you might stumble upon anything.

Accidentally like a Martyr

As far as I know, Dylan played Zevon’s ‘Boom Boom Mancini’ only once, and that was at the Seatle concert. There is a good background to this song by Tony Attwood. The song deals with the relentless nature of boxing, and is about Boxer Mancini whose Korean opponent, Duk Koo Kim, died after fighting him. Dylan condemns boxing in ‘Who Killed Davy Moore,’ an early Dylan song, but lionises the boxer Rubin Carter in ‘Hurricane’ in 1976.

Zevon comes to this Dylan like conclusion:

‘They made hypocrite judgements after the fact
But the name of the game is be hit and hit back’

The song starts with a threatening beat, much like ‘Serve Somebody,’ and develops into a fine rocker.

Boom, boom Mancini

Bruce Hornsby’s, ‘The End of Innocence’ is another contemporary song (1989), which Dylan has sung before, but which gets a particularly clear, sharp and loving performance in 2002. The song has an anti war theme, and seems to attack Ronald Reagan, ‘this tired old man we elected king.’

This performance is from St Paul (30^th Oct)

End of Innocence

With Neil Young, Warren Zevon, Jagger/Richards, George Harrison and Bruce Hornsby in the line up for Dylan’s tributes in 2002, it’s unsurprising that we should find Van Morrison, the Irish songwriter among their number. ‘Carrying a Torch’ is one of Morrison’s effusive, mystical ballads. Both Dylan and Morrison understand the ecstatic roots of rock music, which they use to express a spiritual vision of the world. This one’s from New York (13^th Nov), a quiet and understated performance.

Carrying a Torch

These are Dylan’s tributes to his contemporaries, but the older songs he loves have not entirely gone. ‘Duncan and Brady’ is a traditional murder ballad originally recorded by Wilmer Watts and his Lonely Eagles in 1929, but covered by many other performers. Despite its subject matter it’s a brisk, upbeat song. Dylan uses it to kick off the Aspen concert (1^st Sept). Interestingly, an alternative title of the song is ‘You’ve Been On The Job Too Long,’ the line Dylan uses to finish ‘Black Rider’ from Rough and Rowdy Ways.

Duncan and Brady

‘Searching for a Soldier’s Grave’ is another old favourite of Dylan’s. Written by Jim Anglin, Hank Williams considered it “one of the purdyest songs I reckon anybody ever wrote.” (https://dylanchords.info/00_misc/searching_for_a_soldiers_grave.htm) Others have been less kind. It has a patriotic tinge to it, and the lyrics are far from subtle, but this is a sweet, downright purdy performance from the Seattle concert. Dylan keeps it low and quiet, not letting it get too raucous in the choruses.

Searching for a Soldier’s Grave

Finally, we come to that humble little song ‘This World Can’t Stand Long,’ also by Jim Anglin. It’s both simple and yet profound, a little ditty that somehow says it all. When Dylan sings ‘things are breakin up out there,’ in ‘High Water’ we can hear the echo of Anglin’s understated little ballad first recorded in 1947, full of post war melancholy. This performance is from Aspen (1^st Sept).

This world can’t stand long.

That’s it for 2002, bringing us not just to the end of another year on the road for Dylan but a whole era, spanning ten years from 1991/2, ebbing and building to these four superlative years from 1999 to 2002. From October 2002, a new movement begins, a new and harder road opens, a road that will take us to some strange places.

As an augury of changes and difficulties to come, not only did Dylan lay down his guitar in 2002, but at the end of the year guitarist Charlie Sexton leaves the band and would not rejoin it again until 2009. It is generally agreed that Sexton is the best NET guitarist Dylan ever had, and his sharp, whiplash sound would be sorely missed. Sexton and the versatile Campbell, along with bassist Garnier, put together a powerhouse of a band that became a formidable force in rock music. At their best there’s nothing to match them.

In 2003, Sexton would be replaced by Billy Burnette. In his book on the NET, ‘One More Night,’ Andrew Muir comments: ‘Billy Burnette is not remembered fondly by most Dylan fans. However…you cannot help but wonder if this is fair judgement.’ Burnette only lasted until 18^th April 2003 and was then replaced by Freddie Koella who was replaced by Stu Kimball in 2004. How they fared we will see in coming posts, but this turnover of guitarists points to a rocky road ahead.

In the meantime, stay safe. Listening to Bob Dylan is a tried and tested method of staying sane in these plague years. That’s because of his indomitable spirit.

Kia Ora

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A Christmas Day Special: Chris Smither sings Bob Dylan

Posted on December 25, 2021 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood

It is Christmas Day in the UK – the biggest holiday of the year. And so I thought I would do something different. I wasn’t sure what but then Jochen and I were having one of our occasional email exchanges (we live in different countries as I have mentioned before) and he reminded me that he had already reminded me that I should be mentioned Chris Smither’s covers. (People reminding me that I have already been reminded is becoming quite a part of my life these days).

And so rather than drop Chris Smither’s songs into the articles in A Dylan Cover A Day, I thought I’d do this terrific musician the honour of a special for himself – which he most certainly deserves. If you want to know about this extraordinary performer there is a Wiki page on him of course, and of course he has his own website

https://youtu.be/gHPXGD6SRS8

So what is he doing? Well, most obviously he’s using open tuning on the guitar, which I am not sure Bob does very much if at all (forgive me I’ve never checked – I just can’t recall where Bob does this. Do tell if you’ve spotted it). If you are not familiar with the way guitarists like to get more out of their guitar, there is a standard set up for the tuning of guitar strings (E A D G B E – going from the lowest to the highest) but there is nothing to stop anyone changing the tuning.

The most popular alternative tunings gives a chord of D or G when the open strings are played, but others are possible. Perhaps the most interesting thing is that if one then plays some of the chord fingerings from the standard tuning, while the guitar is tuned in an alternative way, all sorts of interesting and unusual chords emerge. It is an approach that has inspired many a performer looking for a way of giving the guitar a new sound, and of playing some chords one has not used before.

And if that did not move you enough try this

Already you should have a feel for what this musician is doing – and I really have not heard this sort of approach to Dylan before. OK maybe there are others out there, but I live in rural Northamptonshire, and the local folk are still discussing the notion of introducing this new fangled postal service idea to the area, so news from elsewhere is a little slow.

This third example of his work again works in the same way – it is one that Jochen particularly reminded me of this morning, and indeed it is one that was used to illustrate a point in one of Larry’s articles, as well as in Jochen’s article “It takes a lot to laugh it takes “Chris Smither to make me cry”

Now there may be Dylan songs performed by Chris Smither but I haven’t found any yet. However I have now diverted onto Spotify, and if you have a Spotify account do type in Chris Smither’s name and start playing. From the very first track on the page dedicated to his music “Leave the light on” your life is likely to be changed – believe me it really is.

But in case you haven’t got a Spotify account here’s some more…

Chris clearly has his own style, but he retains the essence of Bob’s music and then merges the two so we get a new insight into each song. Here all the atmosphere is created by the opening tuning and the constant pulse which I imagine is a foot tap.

His changes to the music itself are not profound – it is the sound that is different and which gives us different insights…

He does occasionally venture elsewhere but after listening to all the songs above, and quite a few more in the Spotify collection, I wasn’t really for this…

I think I’m going to have to come back to this later to try and take it in fully. But I think first I am going to play “What was it you wanted” again. I do hope Bob has heard this. And maybe sent Chris a postcard of appreciation.

Anyway, there it is. There is also a lot more of Chris Smither on Second Hand Songs although no more Dylan covers. And if you have worked your way through those records above, I hope you have enjoyed something therein.

What with it being Christmas I’m visiting my children and grandchildren just now, so the timing of posting articles maybe slightly out for a couple of days (it depends if my grandchildren will allow me onto the internet while I’m visiting… “Oh Granddad I’m on line and you’re slowing the connection down” says the five year old) but one way or another I’ll be back soon.

Happy Christmas everyone, whether you celebrate Christmas or not. And thank you for reading Untold Dylan. Without you, it wouldn’t mean a thing.

Tony

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Dylan cover a day: Duquesne Whistle

Posted on December 24, 2021 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood

If you have been following this little series you may have noticed that I have meandered somewhat, moving out of the strict alphabetical order occasionally, to go back to songs I missed, and then mistakenly written a review of a song’s covers already covered.

I’ve now tried to sort this list out somewhat …

The next one on my list was Drifter’s Escape, but I’ve already done an article on that before thinking of this series – so I’ve listed that piece above, and updated a link or two that had gone missing within the article.

All of which meandering brings me to Duquesne Whistle – which is fortunate because there is one and only one cover version that needs to be played. For it is so, so good, no one surely could ever take this song any further. And why would they even try?

Just sit back and enjoy the sheer fun, liveliness and pleasure that this song in this interpretation is.

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Dirt Road Blues (1997) part 3: But your brains are staying south

Posted on December 24, 2021 by TonyAttwood

by Jochen Markhorst

III But your brains are staying south

Gon’ walk down that dirt road, ’til someone lets me ride
Gon’ walk down that dirt road, ’til someone lets me ride
If I can’t find my baby, I’m gonna run away and hide

For a quarter of a century, the Dutch author Arnon Grunberg has been bivouacking at and around the top of the literary Olympus in the Low Lands, and translations of his novels are read all over the world thanks to rave reviews in The New York Times, Le Figaro, the L.A. Times and the Frankfurter Allgemeine, among others. His output cannot be categorised; like Dylan, Grunberg jumps from one genre to another.

One of his greatest successes is the 2006 psychological thriller Tirza, a novel that reveals a soul connection to the spiritual father of songs like “Cold Irons Bound”, “Soon After Midnight” and the 2021 rewrite of “To Be Alone With You”. Lyrics with a brooding, lugubrious undercurrent that only comes to the surface at second glance.

In Tirza, we meet a somewhat dull, middle-class single father who idolises his youngest daughter in an almost unhealthy way. The farewell approaches; Tirza has finished her final exams and is on the threshold of an independent life. Before university life swallows her up, she and her boyfriend go on an adventurous holiday to Africa. Dad Jörgen brings them to the airport and then she is gone. And stays gone – there is no sign nor word from Tirza anymore, and the father, growing desperate and already instinctively suspicious of the boyfriend, decides to travel after her, decides to go look for her. He trudges over the dirt roads of Namibia, he can’t find his baby, and gradually he takes the reader with him in his intention to stay here, never to return to Amsterdam, to run away and hide. In the meantime, he found a kind of surrogate daughter, nine-year-old Kaisa, and when he tells her his life story, the bomb hits; Jörgen tells Kaisa that months ago he killed his own daughter and her boyfriend, on the way to the airport.

It is a mind-boggling plot twist that hits with the force of a grenade and makes the reader scroll back. Similar to mindfuck films like The Sixth Sense and Shutter Island: the plot twist forces the viewer to re-contextualise the entire story up until that point. What did we miss, could we have seen this coming? And yes, the foreshadowing of the surprising catastrophe is usually hidden in small, unobtrusive hints that, at first sight, are at most a tiny bit unsettling.

Something like that, such a small, unobtrusive hint, seems to be hidden in this closing line of the first verse of “Dirt Road Blues”. Up to and including “If I can’t find my baby”, nothing is out of the ordinary; still a classic dirt road blues, a lament of a poor, lovesick sod. But then: “I’m gonna run away and hide.” That, in twelve words, is the bewildering plottwist of Tirza – the protagonist who despairs of not being able to find his baby, and is then overcome by a run-and-hide urge. An urge that can only be explained by a preceding outrage, of course – either the protagonist is threatened and flees danger, or the protagonist has committed an atrocity and must now run-and-hide to avoid the consequences.

The second stanza does not clarify anything, but it does perpetuate the unease:

I been pacing around the room hoping maybe she’d come back
Pacing ’round the room hoping maybe she’d come back
Well, I been praying for salvation laying ’round 
   in a one-room country shack

… although it is a flashback, it is not a clarifying flash-back – the plot is still ambiguous. The narrator takes the listener back to a moment after the breaking point, to a moment when despair has already begun. And chooses reassuringly “ordinary” idiom to describe his despair, idiom as we know it from dozens of songs, from songs like Mel Tormé’s “Comin’ Home Baby”;

I'm pressin' on, baby, now
And pacing up and down the floor
Oh, hear me holler, and hear me roar
Say you'll be with me
Gonna be with you ever more 
I'm comin' home

… and from Muddy Waters’ “All Aboard” (“I’m hopin’ and tusslin’ she’d come back”), or George Jones’s monumental “He Stopped Loving Her Today” (“He still loved her through it all / Hoping she’d come back again”), or The Everly Brothers’ “Chained To A Memory”;

I get up in the morning
I'm pacing the floor
Like I'm expecting you to walk in the door
I keep forgetting I won't see you anymore
Guess I'm doomed to be chained to a memory

… and dozens of other songs from Dylan’s personal jukebox in which pained protagonists are pacing around and are consumed by the desire that she’d come back. Just like the ending of this verse, laying ’round in a one-room country shack, does not raise any eyebrows; that too is a setting we know from plenty of blues songs, again a setting the conditioned listener has long associated with heartache and love affliction of an unhappy first-person chronicler. In Dylan’s case, it probably got under his skin via Johnny Cash’s version of Billy Joe Shaver’s “Georgia On A Fast Train”, or via Willie Nelson (who plays the song again at Farm Aid 2013) – although neither of these can match the raw charm of Billy Joe’s 1973 original;

It’s more likely, however, that the walking music encyclopaedia has a flopped single by Johnny “Guitar” Watson from 1958 in his record case: “Gangster Of Love b/w One Room Country Shack”, produced and accompanied by the man who is held in such high esteem by Dylan, Bumps Blackwell. Presumably, Dylan was initially struck – again – by the sound, which is indeed close to the Time Out Of Mind sound. And is this décor an accidental by-catch;

I'm sittin' here, thousand miles from nowhere
In this one room country little shack

And my only worldly possession
Is this raggedy old cotton sack

On the other hand: given the subcutaneous suspense, the insinuated horror and the choice of scenery, it cannot be ruled out that Dylan was inspired by Louisiana Red’s signature song “Sweet Blood Call”, the lurid monologue of a psychopathic bad man, with the repulsive opening line “I have a hard time missing you baby, with my pistol in your mouth” and with, in the third verse, the scenery that Dylan will choose for his “Dirt Road Blues”:

I see your eyes are rollin'
Must mean your love for me has come back
Must mean you're satisfied again
With our little wooden country shack
I have a hard time missing you baby, with my pistol in your mouth
You may be thinking about going north woman, but your brains are staying south

Not inconceivable, a line from “Sweet Blood Call” to Dylan’s “Dirt Road Blues”, and not only because of that in itself meagre similarity in scenery. Roughly since Time Out Of Mind, Dylan has developed a growing fascination for what, for the sake of convenience, can be called murder-suggesting ballads; ominous narratives surrounding sinister protagonists and macabre incidents, which are mainly diffusely, implicitly evoked – Dylan is not yet as explicit as in “Sweet Blood Call” or as in comparable bloody folk and blues songs (“Knoxville Girl”, “Delia’s Gone”, “Crow Jane”). Here, it remains with that disturbing suggestion I have been praying for salvation; words that suggest the narrator is seeking deliverance from sin and its consequences.

But he apparently does not receive that salvation, in that remote one-room country shack. He is standing in the doorway, and then decides to go down the dirt road, decides to run and hide…

To be continued. Next up: Dirt Road Blues part 4

Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books, in English, Dutch and German, are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:

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Dylan cover a day: Dignity

Posted on December 23, 2021 by TonyAttwood

By Tony Attwood

Now this is a problematic song and a half. “Dignity” (the song) does something that I can’t for the moment, associate with any other popular song. It’s core is the pragmatisation of the concept – turning the notion of “dignity” which is perceived but which cannot be touched, and is quite difficult to describe, into a reality. No wonder Bob was unsure of what he had got and took so long to release it.

It was recorded in the spring of 1989 but not released until the end of 1994, ironically on one of the Greatest Hits albums. How very Dylan.

It is a difficult song to grasp at first and I think a difficult song to cover. Indeed listening to a range of covers in preparation for this little piece, I’ve been interested to listen to the eminent recording artists who have had a bash, and really failed to deliver anything worthy of the song.

But as ever I’ve found (and indeed already knew) a handful that are worth a listen if you have a spare 15 minutes or so.

The Low Anthem’s version really is worth trying – but please don’t just judge it by the opening lines – it grows in a way that I doubt that Bob could ever have imagined. I find this beautiful, and it gives me a new set of insights into the meaning of the lyrics – which still puzzle me just as they did when the song was first released.

And because I like contrasts here is a real big contrast with Denny Freeman enjoying himself no end exploring the music only. I am not sure this really works in full, because the chord sequence and melody are so distinctive that Mr Freeman finds it hard to get away from them… but as a bit of light listening it’s nice, and very much a piece to take away the blues.

Last one for the day – and taking exactly the same beat and time as Denny Freeman, but now forcing me to focus on the sound, since I don’t speak the language. And Francesco de gregori dignità (“Il Principe dei cantautori”) (“The Prince of the singer-songwriters”) knows how to keep the original and then vary from time to time, which is why at this time, this is my favourite cover of the song.

And my lack of Italian helps me once again appreciate what a masterpiece of sound this is in a way that I can’t do if it is all just an instrumental. I need the words, even when I can’t understand them at all.

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Dylan cover of the day 40: Gotta Serve Somebody

Bob Dylan: The Last Train’s A-Coming Round The Bend

A Dylan cover a Day: 39 “Gates of Eden” as never before

Dirt Road Blues (1997) part 5: The purple piper plays his tune

The mysteries of Bob: Performances and recordings since 1989. Part III

The mysteries of Bob: Performances and recordings since 1989 Part II

A Dylan cover a Day: From a Buick 6

The mysteries of Bob: Performances and recordings since 1989. Part 1

Never Ending Tour Part 6: Atlanta Aftermath and Manchester Moonshine

A Dylan Cover a Day: Fourth Time Around

Bob Dylan Released and Unreleased 11. 1963: Westinghouse.

Dylan cover a day: from the sublime to the missing harmonies.

Dirt Road Blues (1997) part 4: Gross as beetles

A Dylan Cover a Day: Farewell Angelina

Bob Dylan: Trying To Get To Heaven

NET, 2002, Part Five: Accidentally friends and other strangers

A Christmas Day Special: Chris Smither sings Bob Dylan

Dylan cover a day: Duquesne Whistle

Dirt Road Blues (1997) part 3: But your brains are staying south

Dylan cover a day: Dignity

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