[www.theguardian.com]

"The raw, painful birth of Blood on the Tracks
Recorded, scrapped, then hastily revised, the mercurial creativity of Bob Dylan’s most personal and honest album is laid bare in a six-CD set, More Blood, More Tracks..."

please excuse if this link has been posted; i'm just on=site here for a quick flash as this came up on my "News Feed" in USA this Sunday morning.
running thru it now; seems informed and sensitive presentation so far...

I had the surreal experience of seeing Bob Dylan last night. Let me first state that I am proud to say I have now seen Bob - the epitome of a living legend. I am slightly more than a casual fan, but not a fanatic. I have a number of albums and enjoy them very much. The live show was a different matter. That said, I won't bother to see him again.

I had read the reviews and knew the setlists, but was hoping for some magic. There was none. In this case, more warhorses would have been welcome. His voice was as good as I have ever heard - based on albums. I was pleasantly surprised. The highlight (of course) was Like A Rolling Stone. Also, Ballad Of A Thin Man for the final song. This could have been such a great show, but wasn't.

Bob never said a word to the crowd - in fact, treating the crowd with disdain at best. I got the feeling that he was honoring us with his presence and we should be proud of anything we got. What an @#$%& and weirdo!

What could have been better?

1. A few more recognizable songs - Does anyone really think Early Roman Kings is better than Watchtower (not played)? Every female I spoke to wanted to hear Lay Lady Lay. Hell, why not play Tweeter as a tribute to Petty?

2. His smug attitude - hell, I'm old and tired too - I wasn't expecting Mick Jagger, but a few "thank yous" wouldn't have hurt. A mention of Macon's musical heritage? Ain't happening.

3. Why change ALL of the arrangements?

Again. I am a fan and admirer of his vast and very impressive body of work, but I will not waste my hard earned money on seeing him again. 90% of the people I spoke to felt the same way.

Dream setlist

Positively 4th Street
Just Like A Woman
Gotta Serve Somebody
Ring Them Bells
Subterranean Homesick Blues
Lay Lady Lay
Seven Days!
Lily, Rosemary, etc.
Sweetheart Like You
Tweeter And The Monkey Man
It Ain't Me, Babe
Mighty Quinn
The Times They Are A-Changin'
All Along The Watchtower
Knockin' On Heaven's Door
Tangled Up In Blue

Blowing In The Wind
Like A Rolling Stone

I'm sure I left out some great ones.



Okay, give me hell,,,,,,,,,,,

As a casual fan, you want the same performance that you heard on the album. So just listen to your albums.

I have heard the albums a million times that's why going to see Bob live is great because I get to hear him sing his songs performed differently. He's never boring if you understand his MO and he never sings the same way twice. That takes real skill. Unfortunately not enough people appreciate that. That's the same quality I used to love about the Stones when it was never the same way twice. Now its pretty close to the same all the time.

It seems wrong to say someone doesn't get it if they see Dylan and don't like him. By all accounts, he's not perfect, but the thing about it with him is thats what makes him special. I wish for a lot of the same things as you. I wish he talked more. He used to all the time in the 60s, he was a GREAT performer. I don't know what happened to that. I would love if he changed the setlist around a bit more. He does fine but the man has one of the most impressive song catalogues in history. Its amazing what never gets touched. I just heard Hurricane the other day and remember that I used to think the only way that might get touched again is when Hurricane dies. It did not.

But again, that is why Dylan is Dylan. Is it a pass? Probably, but its what many love about him. And I don't think they are wrong. I'd love to see the Dylan of the Last Waltz, putting on one of the greatest guest sets I've ever heard from anyone. But he's just not like that, and hasn't been for awhile. You go to the show, you know what to expect (and know what not to expect) and you kinda gotta roll with it. Its either for you or its not. But it just feels weird criticizing his shows. Maybe because he doesn't even have to be doing them at all? I don't know. Its not for everyone and yes I hear the old live stuff and wish he was more a storyteller nowadays but that just ain't him (babe). Again, you aren't wrong, but precisely those things you wished he'd do is exactly why most love him. A @#$%& you attitude from a performer is annoying, but there's a lot of guys it works for and is usually more rewarding than detrimental. Lou Reed and Neil Young are guys who said @#$%& you a lot to their fans and in the end, they were usually right. It was more interesting that way, its what we liked about them.

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RollingFreak

But it just feels weird criticizing his shows. Maybe because he doesn't even have to be doing them at all? I don't know.

I guess financially he doesn't need to do them (and if he really would maximise the profits he might follow the hopes of Elmo Lewis, pretty much manifested by the example of The Rolling Stones), but I always get the impression that he actually needs to do them. That's what he is and what he does. Some sort of 'elixir of life' for him.

Sometimes I get the feeling that it must be exhausting for him to always re-live, re-think and re-imagine the songs than 'just' perform them, almost like re-creating the art in the front of audience, but I guess that's the muse in him speaking, and making no compromises. He is an unique performer.

- Doxa



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2018-10-29 15:14 by Doxa.

Well I don't know exactly when Dylan let You Tube play his music, but the Along the Watch Tower version from the live album Before the Flood rocks!!!

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Elmo Lewis
Dream setlist

Positively 4th Street
Just Like A Woman
Gotta Serve Somebody
Ring Them Bells
Subterranean Homesick Blues
Lay Lady Lay
Seven Days!
Lily, Rosemary, etc.
Sweetheart Like You
Tweeter And The Monkey Man
It Ain't Me, Babe
Mighty Quinn
The Times They Are A-Changin'
All Along The Watchtower
Knockin' On Heaven's Door
Tangled Up In Blue

Blowing In The Wind
Like A Rolling Stone

I'm sure I left out some great ones.



Okay, give me hell,,,,,,,,,,,

Dylan has played all these songs during the NET (except for: Lily, Rosemary etc, Sweetheart and Tweeter) - most of them far too often

Wow! Even Seven Days and Quinn?

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Elmo Lewis
Wow! Even Seven Days and Quinn?

Seven Days - played a good amount in 1996

Mighty Quinn - played a handful of times in 2002

Of course, they were both probably in unrecognizable forms . Again, the beauty of Dylan. He might not play stuff alot, but he's played most and you never know when its gonna show back up.

For those living in Spain, the El Pais website has a preview of More Blood, More Tracks. I don't know if it has the same contents as the version posted by NPR, though. For those who can give it a try, here's the link: [elpais.com]

EDIT: It turns out it's the same tracks posted by NPR.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2018-10-29 19:55 by Cristiano Radtke.

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RollingFreak

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Elmo Lewis
Wow! Even Seven Days and Quinn?

Seven Days - played a good amount in 1996

Mighty Quinn - played a handful of times in 2002

Of course, they were both probably in unrecognizable forms

Not "7 Days" it was as straightforward and bland as Ron wrote it...

every artist tries to built an audience and a following. muddy, elvis, chuck berry, the beatles, the rolling stones, neil young, bruce springsteen.

bob dylan is the only one who goes out and does what he wants and makes the audience catch up. his appearance on the scene in 1961. going electric, americana, the gospel tours, ect, ect. he's always out ahead and he's always right because bob dylan has something to say.

reviews A couple reviews from Orlando Oct 26

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mrjones
reviews A couple reviews from Orlando Oct 26

Clearly written from the perspective and positive outlook of fanatical diehards, but nice to read them nevertheless.

_____________________________________________________________
Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......

On ‘More Blood, More Tracks,’ Familiar Bob Dylan Songs Cut Closer to the Bone


The 14th release in Bob Dylan’s Bootleg Series unearths the original sessions for his 1975 album “Blood on the Tracks.” Credit: Barry Feinstein

By Jon Pareles
Oct. 30, 2018

Bob Dylan had crucial second thoughts just as he was about to release “Blood on the Tracks,” the indelible 1975 album filled with songs of separation, heartache, sorrow, rage and regret. Now it’s getting a revealing close-up. “More Blood, More Tracks: The Bootleg Series Vol. 14,” due Friday, unveils all of the initial sessions: the solo, duo and small-group versions of songs that Dylan replaced, for half of the album, with more extroverted full-band recordings. There are an exhaustive deluxe six-CD version with every surviving take and a one-CD compilation of alternate versions of the album’s 10 songs plus one that was omitted, “Up to Me.”

The songs from “Blood on the Tracks” are artfully multifaceted: romances, travelogues, tall tales, parables and possibly memories, all at once. Although it was written and recorded while Dylan’s marriage to the former Sara Lownds was disintegrating — she filed for divorce in 1977 — he later insisted that its songs, including “Tangled Up in Blue,” “Idiot Wind” and “Shelter from the Storm,” were by no means confessional. In “Chronicles: Volume One,” his elliptical 2004 memoir, he claimed that the lyrics had been inspired by Anton Chekhov short stories.


Pages from a Dylan notebook appear in the hardcover book that accompanies the deluxe six-CD version of the set. Credit: Graham S. Haber/The Morgan Library & Museum, via Sony

While making the album and tinkering with lyrics, Dylan pared away obvious references to his own career. He set aside “Up to Me,” a song about artistic ambition versus small-mindedness, and he replaced lines from an early take of “Idiot Wind” that complained, “Imitators steal me blind.” Regardless of its origins, listeners through the decades have been riveted by the album’s pain and longing; it’s one of Dylan’s masterpieces.

The album Dylan had initially planned to release was recorded in four days in September 1974, in the New York City studio where he had made his first albums: A&R Studios, formerly Columbia Studio A. In that familiar setting he recorded solo, with his acoustic guitar and harmonica, and for one session with a band of folk-rooted sidemen, Eric Weissberg and Deliverance. They finished only one song that satisfied Dylan, “Meet Me in the Morning.”

He whittled the band down to just its bassist, Tony Brown, who shadowed Dylan’s idiosyncratic timing with uncanny grace through the remaining sessions, yielding the reflective, almost conspiratorial performances of “Simple Twist of Fate” and “Buckets of Rain” on the original album, along with the busker’s bounce of “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go,” a song about blissful love that can’t help envisioning its end. Dylan brought in two other studio musicians, Paul Griffin on keyboards and Buddy Cage on pedal steel guitar, to add ghostly overlays.


While the lyrics on “Blood on the Tracks” are among Dylan’s most emotional, he has insisted that they are not confessional. Credit: Barry Feinstein

Almost all of the songs were in the same key and performed with a bare minimum of backup. So the original “Blood on the Tracks” would have been nearly as sparse as Dylan’s early 1960s solo recordings and his lean, pointedly ascetic 1967 “John Wesley Harding.”

But while LP jackets were being printed and advance vinyl pressings were sent out, Dylan decided to revisit the songs with a pickup band of local Minneapolis musicians who were hastily assembled during the last week of December 1974. He had rewritten (and improved) some lyrics, and with more musicians in the room and, perhaps, more distance on the songwriting, he delivered the songs more forcefully, facing them outward rather than inward.

When “Blood on the Tracks” was released in January 1975, half of the New York City recordings were replaced with the Minneapolis sessions (although with album covers already printed, that studio band went uncredited). Meanwhile, to give the music a subliminal edge, Dylan had the tracks sped up by 2 to 3 percent, shortening the running times by a few seconds and very slightly raising the pitch. Insiders who had heard the original album mourned what they considered to be a push toward pop. A handful of songs from the New York sessions that trickled out on Dylan’s first Bootleg Series compilations suggested they had a point.

“More Blood, More Tracks,” strips away any gloss. In the six-CD package, the takes that appeared on the original album are returned to accurate speed and mixed more austerely, with considerably less reverb around Dylan’s voice and guitar and different balances on band tracks. (The six CDs include all the takes recorded in New York; there are no surviving outtakes from the Minneapolis sessions, but the master tapes are remixed.) The pricey full package also includes a hardcover volume featuring a trove of Dylan lore: a page-by-page reproduction of a spiral notebook of lyrics, full of cross-outs and alternatives. The one-CD version is a well-chosen playlist among many that could traverse the New York sessions.

From the beginning, none of the performances on the complete set is tentative or demo-like. Dylan had clearly thought through the songs beforehand, chosen his guitar strategies and decided where the dramatic peaks were. His first performances in the studio were apparently so incandescent that the engineers didn’t pay attention to the sound of his vest buttons clacking against his guitar — the only distraction in his very first take of “Simple Twist of Fate,” which rises from and falls back to a stoic near-whisper, like a startling rumor being passed along.

The New York recordings, solo or close to it, bring out the solitude in the songs: The singer endlessly wandering, bereft of the woman he loved, wondering what could have been different, coming to terms with it all. Stripped of arrangements that have been familiar for decades, Dylan’s voice comes through as more insistent, while the lyrics land more sharply. The complicated storyline of “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts” becomes more immediately comprehensible in a solo performance. And without the Minneapolis band’s organ crescendos, “Idiot Wind” becomes a more private attack, as much plaint as indictment: “You’ll never know the hurt I suffered nor the pain I rise above/And I’ll never know the same about you, your holiness or your kind of love.”


The “Blood on the Tracks” that Dylan had initially planned to release was recorded in four days in September 1974. Credit: Ken Regan

But in the end, Dylan knew best. The Minneapolis versions unleashed the suppressed anger in “Idiot Wind” and brought the momentum of a band to the long quasi-narratives of songs like “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts.” The New York versions of the songs were monochromatic and slightly forbidding, and they played down Dylan’s dry humor: “She was married when they first met, soon to be divorced/He helped her out of a jam, I guess, But he used a little too much force,” he sang in early versions of “Tangled Up in Blue,” a song in which he continues to juggle pronouns (I/he) and personae.

The Minneapolis arrangement of “Tangled Up in Blue” that opens “Blood on the Tracks” — switched to first-person, transposed to a higher key and ornamented with glimmering guitar strumming — doesn’t telegraph the troubles to come. Instead, it entices an unsuspecting listener into the album’s emotional labyrinths.

Dylan was right the first time about his decision to re-record half of “Blood on the Tracks.” But years later, it’s fascinating and illuminating to hear what might have been.

[www.nytimes.com]

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Elmo Lewis


Bob never said a word to the crowd - in fact, treating the crowd with disdain at best. I got the feeling that he was honoring us with his presence and we should be proud of anything we got. What an @#$%& and weirdo!

Bob's a performer not an entertainer. He doesn't need to jerk the audience off with some "hello [insert name of town] how are you?".

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dcba

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Elmo Lewis


Bob never said a word to the crowd - in fact, treating the crowd with disdain at best. I got the feeling that he was honoring us with his presence and we should be proud of anything we got. What an @#$%& and weirdo!

Bob's a performer not an entertainer. He doesn't need to jerk the audience off with some "hello [insert name of town] how are you?".

He doesn't, although it would be nice if he said anything. Just to make each night unique, to actually engage with an audience. If he never did it, that would be one thing, but he did used to love talking to the audience. I don't mind that he doesn't, but I can't pretend to not understand the arguments that he's just there to sing his songs and leave. There's no way to truly no whether he's actually interested in being up there or not.

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dcba

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Elmo Lewis


Bob never said a word to the crowd - in fact, treating the crowd with disdain at best. I got the feeling that he was honoring us with his presence and we should be proud of anything we got. What an @#$%& and weirdo!

Bob's a performer not an entertainer. He doesn't need to jerk the audience off with some "hello [insert name of town] how are you?".

Shares your personality , I guess

"No Anchovies, Please"

For 3000+ people paying at least $100 a ticket, a "thanks for coming" would have been nice.

He won't get me again.

Bob will be Bob. He likes to f%ck with people, and when you're on a 'never ending tour', some nights you'll feel more outgoing than others.

I've seen him a few times since 1988. Some nights he's all smiles and sunshine, dancing around, and making eye contact with the audience. Other times, he's been totally aloof, scowling at his band, and never cracking a smile or glancing at the crowd.

Usually, he at least introduces the band, but he's the master of inconsistent.

I've even seen videos from the 90's, where he allows people from the audience to come up on stage, one by one, to give him a hug or whatnot while he's playing. Kid you not.

That Bob...

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Elmo Lewis
For 3000+ people paying at least $100 a ticket, a "thanks for coming" would have been nice.

He won't get me again.

You shouldn't take it so hard.

It's not all about you.


Dylan lets the music do the talking. While his re-arrangements of songs at shows can feel like "Name That Tune," I think that the Brian Wilson take on some of songs during this current tour is unexpected and exhilarating.

He's very much alive and still taking chances. Still an artist, and not a Bob Dylan tribute band.

[www.youtube.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2018-10-31 16:46 by loog droog.

video: [www.youtube.com] Here's Bob with a little audience participation-notably the girl in the short red jumper.

Having seen Bob many times since '79, at this point in time I would find it odd and peculiar if he acted jovial and happy-go-lucky, greeting the audience with a smile - I might even question his sanity.
Like mosthigh said above, Bob will be Bob, and occasionally he'll do a little jig or smile at a band member. But more often than not, he's dead serious with a scowl focusing on the music he's presenting.
I guess it might be off putting if you're not familiar with seeing him live, but he's not your typical clown-like frontman - he's Bob Dylan - take it or leave it.

_____________________________________________________________
Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2018-10-31 03:57 by Hairball.

Here's a link to my review feature on More Blood More Tracks for The Arts Desk, and it's one of the most compelling sets, even if it is just one album across six long discs. If you like more blood with your tracks, this one's for you.

[www.theartsdesk.com]

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MadMetaphoricalMax
Here's a link to my review feature on More Blood More Tracks for The Arts Desk, and it's one of the most compelling sets, even if it is just one album across six long discs. If you like more blood with your tracks, this one's for you.

[www.theartsdesk.com]

Nice review, congratulations and thanks for sharing!

Tangled Up in Blue (take 1) can be listened here: [www.newyorker.com]

The story goes like this: “At The Last Waltz, Neil Diamond came off stage and Bob Dylan is just about to go on. As he came off, Diamond said, ‘you’re really gonna have to go some to follow me, man, I was so great.’

And Bob says, ‘What do you want me to do, go on stage and fall asleep?’” That is from a Ron Wood interview in Q Magazine 1992.

okay, that's a great fable but a fabricated quote. is this true, then?

During the mid-’70s, Ian McLagan finds himself in a room with Dylan and Led Zeppelin’s infamously brutish manager Peter Grant, where he witnesses the following exchange: “Hello, Bob. I’m Peter Grant, I manage Led Zeppelin.” After a short silence, Dylan replies: “I don’t come to you with my problems.”

I adore both of those quotes. I genuinely hope they're true.

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Cristiano Radtke

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MadMetaphoricalMax
Here's a link to my review feature on More Blood More Tracks for The Arts Desk, and it's one of the most compelling sets, even if it is just one album across six long discs. If you like more blood with your tracks, this one's for you.

[www.theartsdesk.com]

Nice review, congratulations and thanks for sharing!

Tangled Up in Blue (take 1) can be listened here: [www.newyorker.com]

Thanks Christiano.
Tim, it's Super Great to read you, ty!

I witnessed a riveting, magnificent performance in Huntsville last night -- astonishing even. I sure hope somebody recorded it.

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Glam Descendant
I sure hope somebody recorded it.

If it pops up on Dime I'll send the FLACs to you.