Fifty-two years ago, on October 15, 1962, an unknown Bob Dylan performed 17 songs at the Gaslight Cafe in Greenwich Village, New York.
His performance was recorded and has circulated on bootlegs since the early ’70s.
Some of these songs were officially released on a CD, Live at The Gaslight 1962, in 2005. A couple others made it onto other official Dylan CDs. And some have not yet been officially released.
Here are all 17 of the songs, including the ones that have not yet been officially released.
“Barbara Allen”:
“A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”:
“Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright”:
“Black Cross”:
“No More Auction Block”:
“Rocks And Gravel”:
“Moonshine Blues”:
“John Brown”:
“Ballad Of Hollis Brown”:
“See That My Grave Is Kept Clean”:
“Cocaine”:
“The Cuckoo Is a Pretty Bird”:
“
“Ain’t No More Cane”:
“Motherless Children”:
“Handsome Molly”:
“Kindhearted Woman Blues”:
“West Texas”:
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[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Don’t know how I managed to miss this, but last month my friends at R.E.M.H.Q. did a cool post about an interview with Peter Buck I did prior to the release of New Adventures In Hi-Fi, back in 1996.
And they included a nice plug for my novel, “True Love Scars.”
You can check out the post and read the interview with Peter Buck here.
Coming up this Friday, August 17, 2014 at the Make-Out Room in San Francisco is the momentous LitQuake “Rock ‘N’ Roll Circus: A Cavalcade of Stars,” an evening of music critics reading from their latest books.
The lineup: Gina Arnold (author of the book “Exile In Guyville”), former San Francisco Chronicle pop music critic Joel Selvin (“Here Comes the Night: The Dark Soul of Bert Berns and the Dirty Business of Rhythm and Blues”), Kerouac/Grateful Dead biographer Dennis McNally (“On Highway 61: Music, Race, and the Evolution of Cultural Freedom”), Addicted To Noise founder/former Rolling Stone Senior Writer Michael Goldberg (“True Love Scars”), musician Bruce Cockburn (“Rumours of Glory”), rock journalist and author Denise Sullivan (“Shaman’s Blues: The Art and Influences Behind Jim Morrison and the Doors”), rock historian and college teacher Richie Unterberger (“Jingle Jangle Morning: Folk-Rock in the 1960s”) and best-selling authors Keith and Kent Zimmerman (“Shining Star: Braving the Elements of Earth, Wind & Fire”).
Providing music will be Camper Van Beethoven cofounder Victor Krummenacher.
The evening starts at 7 pm and admission is a cheap $10.
And finally, for today and maybe Tuesday the Kindle version of “True Love Scars” is available for $2.99. A bargain at three times the price. Soon it will be again priced at $9.99, so get it on the cheap now.
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[Rolling Stone has a great review of “True Love Scars” in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Here’s the remastered version of George Harrison’s version of Bob Dylan’s ‘If Not For You’
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[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in the new issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Check out Neil Young singing ‘Who’s Gonna Stand Up?’ with full orchestra.
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[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in the new issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
For Neil Young’s upcoming album, Storytone, there will be two versions of the ten-song set: the two album deluxe package will include one album in which Young performs the songs himself, and another in which he is accompanied by an orchestra.
The orchestral version was cut live with no overdubs. Young sang in the same room as the musicians. The album will be released on November 4, 2014.
“It’s the most different thing that I’ve ever attempted,” Young told Rolling Stone.
Back in early September I reported that the album would be called Storytone.
According to a Warner Bros. press release: Standout tracks from the album include the bittersweet album opener “Plastic Flowers,” the bluesy swing of “I Want To Drive My Car,” the aching “Tumbleweed,” or the heartfelt “When I Watch You Sleeping.” Each song evokes an entirely different feel within the context of its presentation.
More from the Rolling Stone story:
The orchestral Storytone is the first Young album where he plays no guitar or piano – he let other musicians take on instrumental duties so he could focus on his vocals. Two music-industry vets, Michael Bearden and Chris Walden, conducted, arranged and co-produced the album. He took himself out of his comfort zone,” says Bearden, who worked with Michael Jackson and is currently Lady Gaga’s musical director. Young gave the arrangers considerable freedom: “He basically told us to do what we felt,” says Bearden. Young had originally planned to take the concept even further, recording the orchestral versions with a single microphone, but he relented on that point.
More from the press release: All of the Storytone music was produced by The Volume Dealers (Neil Young and Niko Bolas), recorded and mixed by Al Schmitt with additional co-production, arrangements, orchestration, and conducted by Michael Bearden and Chris Walden.
The songs:
1. Plastic Flowers
2. Who’s Gonna Stand Up?
3. I Want To Drive My Car
4. Glimmer
5. Say Hello To Chicago
6. Tumbleweed
7. Like You Used To Do
8. I’m Glad I Found You
9. When I Watch You Sleeping
10. All Those Dreams
Three versions of “Who’s Gonna Stand UP?”
Orchestral:
Acoustic:
Live with Crazy Horse:
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[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
A rare March 1967 photo of Rick Danko and Bob Dylan taken prior to the ‘Basement Tapes’ sessions. It’s unknown where the photo was taken, but it’s not from the actual sessions. Photo courtesy Arie de Reus.
Today we’ve got another track off the much-anticipated The Basement Tapes Complete: The Bootleg Series Vol. 11, set for a November 4, 2014 release.
As you can hear if you listen to this one and the previously released “Odds & Ends,” the sound quality is much better than on the bootlegs we’ve lived with for so many years.
I’ve been listening as well to a streaming sampler of tracks off the 6-CD set and they really sound excellent.
When you consider that Dylan and The Band made more than 138 recordings of originals and covers during the summer of 1967, it’s mindblowing. I haven’t heard everything yet, but between the sampler and the bootleg recordings, I believe the official set will stand as one of the peaks of Bob Dylan’s recording career.
For now, enjoy “Lo and Behold!,” and while you’re at it, give “Odds & Ends” another listen.
“Lo and Behold!”:
“Odds & Ends”:
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[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in the new issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Kim Gordon, formerly a key member of Sonic Youth and now half of Body/Head, will have her memoir, “Girl in a Band,” published on February 24, 2015.
From the press release:
Often described as aloof, Kim Gordon truly opens up in Girl in a Band. Telling the story of her childhood, her life in art, her move to New York City, her love affairs, her marriage, her relationship with her daughter, and her band, this is a rich and beautifully written memoir. At the heart of the book is the examination of what partnership means—and what happens when it dissolves. An atmospheric look at the New York of the 80s and 90s that gave rise to Sonic Youth, as well as the Alternative revolution in popular music that Sonic Youth helped usher in, paving the way for Nirvana, Hole, Smashing Pumpkins and many other acts. One of the most revered people in modern rock and roll, Kim Gordon is also a highly regarded fashion icon, visual artist, and the source of much fascination.
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in the new issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
On October 28, 2014 the first complete book of Bob Dylan’s lyrics will be published in a limited edition of 3500 copies. Priced at $200 for the 960 page, 13.3 pound book, Amazon is currently taking advance orders for the book at a discounted price of $126.74.
The New York Times can a story today, which said, in part:
The songs are presented chronologically, including alternative versions released as part of Mr. Dylan’s archival “Bootleg Series.” The album covers, front and back, are reproduced.
The way the songs are laid out is meant “to help the eye see what the ear hears,” Mr. Ricks said. “If you print the songs flush left,” he added, “it doesn’t represent, visually, the audible experience.” So refrains, choruses and bridges are indented. And where Mr. Dylan intended a line, however long, to be unbroken, it sprawls across the 13-inch-wide page.
How did the editors know which lines were meant to be unbroken? Did Mr. Dylan provide feedback or comments? Mr. Karp said he had heard that Mr. Dylan provided notebooks and manuscripts. Mr. Ricks refused to elaborate.
“I think the right thing for us,” he said, “is not to go into the question of the particular kinds of help and assistance and advice that we were in a position to receive.”
From Amazon.com:
“The Lyrics: Since 1962” (Hardcover – October 28, 2014)
by Bob Dylan (Author), Christopher Ricks (Editor), Lisa Nemrow (Editor), Julie Nemrow (Editor)
Hardcover: 960 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster (October 28, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1476797706
ISBN-13: 978-1476797700
Product Dimensions: 13.1 x 12.4 x 2.8 inches
Shipping Weight: 13.3 pounds
A major publishing event—a beautiful, comprehensive collection of the lyrics of Bob Dylan with artwork from thirty-three albums, edited and with an introduction by Christopher Ricks.
As it was well put by Al Kooper (the man behind the organ on “Like a Rolling Stone”), “Bob is the equivalent of William Shakespeare. What Shakespeare did in his time, Bob does in his time.” Christopher Ricks, editor of T. S. Eliot, Samuel Beckett, Tennyson, and The Oxford Book of English Verse, has no argument with Mr. Kooper’s assessment, and Dylan is attended to accordingly in this authoritative edition of his lyrics.
In the words of Ricks: “For fifty years, all the world has delighted in Bob Dylan’s books of words and more than words: provocative, mysterious, touching, baffling, not-to-be-pinned-down, intriguing, and a reminder that genius is free to do as it chooses. And, again and again, these are not the words that he sings on the initially released albums.”
This edition changes things, giving us the words from officially released studio and live recordings, as well as selected variant lyrics and revisions to these, recent revisions and retrospective ones; and, from the archives, words that, till now, have not been published.
The Lyrics, edited with diligence by Christopher Ricks, Lisa Nemrow, and Julie Nemrow. As set down, as sung, and as sung again.
While you wait, here’s Dylan, Ry Cooder and Van Dyke Parks performing Woody Guthrie’s “Do Re Mi” at the Malibu Performing Arts Center in January 2009:
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in the new issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
