I bought myself an acoustic guitar for an early birthday present. In an odd coincidence, I just found out that a couple of my oldest friends just started playing within the last few months as well. It must be part of a ⅓-life crisis or something. Anyway, I’m afraid that if I store it in a hard-shell case, it’ll become a pain to get out and put back up. So I decided to make a little stand to keep the guitar conveniently at hand.
Tell Tale Signs is the official name of the 8th installment of Bob Dylan’s bootleg series. It pretty much picks up where Volumes 1-3 left off, meaning some of the songs and outtakes date back to the late 80s. It has plenty of fresh arrangements of pre-released songs, but there are some really great new songs on this collection as well.
Bob Dylan has never claimed to be a particularly good melodist. That’s part of the reason why he constantly rearranges his older songs, which is what drives so many passive fans (including my mother) crazy about his concerts. But if you were on a “never-ending” concert tour, wouldn’t you want to mix things up as well? It’s this desire to experiment with different melodies that has created such a huge market for Bob Dylan’s throw-away tracks. And by Dylan releasing the songs himself, he’s keeping his works off the black market and in the public domain.
It’s been sixteen years since Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits Volume 3 was released. Although several near-anthologies of Dylan’s work have been released in Great Britain and the US over that time (both in stereo and original mono), we all know that Dylan is always willing to wrap the same offering in a new package and charge willing fans whatever he wants for it. I wouldn’t be surprised if a fourth installment in the Greatest Hits series was released whenever Dylan takes a well-deserved break from his never-ending world tour.
Bob Dylan is known for spreading compilations over two CDs even though the music would fit on one. That’s so the consumer will perceive more value and justify the high cost. Knowing that, I would offer seventeen songs across two CDs with additional bonus tracks of older material to entice fans to buy early/online. I think this track list would make a good “Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits 4″ album covering the material he’s released since 1994.
One of my favorite Bob Dylan songs is the original recording of Born In Time, an outtake from the vaunted Oh Mercy sessions. As Wikipedia notes:
Two more outtakes, “Born In Time” and “God Knows”, were set aside and later re-written and re-recorded for Dylan’s next album, Under the Red Sky. Versions of both songs from the Oh Mercy sessions were also included on The Bootleg Series Vol. 8: Tell Tale Signs. “The Oh Mercy outtake of ‘Born In Time’ was one of those Dylan performances that so surrendered itself to the moment that to decry the lyrical slips would be to mock sincerity itself,” wrote an enamored Heylin.
The stripped-down bootleg of Born In Time is a classic. Though the audio quality is pretty poor, the depth of emotion in Dylan’s voice soars above the scratches and hisses on the tape. The later version of the song that appeared on Under The Red Sky was a soulless iteration. It’s almost comical in comparison. Dylan tried to rectify his error by releasing an earlier recording of the song on Tell Tale Signs: the Bootleg Series Vol. 8. It came pretty close to capturing the passion of the original, but it’s just not the same. Because there are several versions of the song floating around, including Eric Clapton’s decent cover, it can be hard to track down a proper set of lyrics for the original recording. The words differ from the lyrics on Bob Dylan’s official website, so I thought I’d post them here for posterity.
Bob Dylan was playing the arena at UNC Charlotte on Thursday night. As you know, I’m a bit of a fan. I bribed the wife into going up there with me by promising to take her sightseeing through the mountains all day on Friday. The show was great. Dylan varied the set list between his old and new material and layered a blues beat into most of the songs. We’d planned to visit several wineries the next day, but after a hefty electrical repair bill earlier in the week, we decided against it. Instead, we took back roads through the Carolinas, taking in as much Americana as we possibly could. Some of the pictures are posted below.
Most people who discover Bob Dylan’s music these days run across a song of his (or a cover of a song of his) in a film or on Pandora. If their interest is piqued, they’ll likely buy one of his greatest hits albums on a whim. The first Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits album was released in 1967 and was by all accounts a great compilation album. Despite the fact that only four years had passed, the folks at Columbia decided to ride the success of the first Hits album by pressing another one in 1971 that included songs from many of the same albums. Although the second Greatest Hits album would go on to become one of Dylan’s most successful records, it was only half-filled with fan favorites. Dylan insisted that some previously unreleased songs be included to appeal to existing fans, a gambit that payed off many times over. Dylan’s third Greatest Hits album, released in 1993, is an even stranger compilation of songs.
It happens to everyone at some point; you hear a Dylan song (or another band’s cover of a Dylan song) and your interest is piqued. You want to explore more of his music, but you don’t know where to start. He has dozens of albums and hundreds of songs, so it’s a little overwhelming.
I started my Dylan obsession with Blonde On Blonde and then moved on to his Greatest Hits, Volumes 1, 2 & 3. From there I moved to other albums I found in used CD stores, progressing with no respect to context or chronology. Chronology is important for Dylan’s albums. His sound has changed more frequently than the plot of a daytime soap and it can be hard to follow.
Another thing to remember is that Dylan’s songs, like most songs from the pre-internet days, were not meant to be cherry-picked. If you don’t listen to the album tracks in order, you’re not getting the full experience. That being said, I can’t deny that it’s cheaper and easier to just buy the songs that have stood the test of time.
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I’ve been listening to Dylan’s I’m Not There a lot lately. That might seem odd, considering that the track starts part way through the first verse and many of the lyrics are inaudible. The song was unfinished an never intended for release. It was recorded at the legendary Basement Tape / Big Pink sessions:
As Dylan recovered from injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident in July 1966, he summoned the Band and began to record both new compositions and traditional material with them. All of the sixteen Dylan compositions are thought to have been recorded in 1967 in the basement of Big Pink, a house shared by three of the members of the Band, while the eight Band songs were recorded at various times and locations between 1967 and 1975; overdubs were also added in 1975 to some of the Dylan songs
The song wasn’t formally released until it was included in the I’m Not There Motion Picture Soundtrack. Even though the cut of the song is rough, the melody is hypnotic and the listener can get the sense of what Dylan was trying to say. Despite the relative popularity of the song, it’s hard to find a decent transcription of the lyrics. I thought I’d give it a shot.
I tried to do the 100 Push-Up Challenge last summer, but lost interest after about a month. Now that my wife and I have bikes, we’ll be riding to stay in shape. Cycling is really big around here.
Within a couple of miles (in any direction) from my house, I have a farmers market, a local butcher, a chain grocery store, and several restaurants. So I can use the bike to run several errands, as long as it’s not too hot. In honor of this new challenge to ride my way to a thinner waistline, I turn to the master for inspiration.
