Coming later this month is a 6-CD deluxe edition of the Velvet Underground’s incredible third album, which is titled The Velvet Underground.
The box includes two CDs recorded live at The Matrix in San Francisco in 1969 plus a previously unreleased album dating back to 1969. Read more about it here at Consequence Of Sound.
Meanwhile check out two tracks from the set:
Until Nov. 7 at 1 am you’ll need to listen to this first one here.
“I Can’t Stand It”:
“I’m Waiting For The Man”:
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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.]
Rolling Stone brought Garth Hudson back to the Big Pink house where many of the Basement Tapes songs were recorded in 1967.
Garth Hudson in the basement.
It’s fantastic to see Garth at Big Pink. He shows us the room where Dylan would write songs and then takes the stairs down to the basement and we get to see where the music got made.
Plus Garth plays some solo piano in the basement.
Great eight minute mini-documentary.
More photos:
A tape used to record in the “Red Room” at Dylan’s house.Garth outside the house.According to Garth, Dylan would write at a desk in front of that big window, then bring song downstairs and they’d record it.Garth says Dylan wrote at this desk on the main floor at Big Pink.The basement.Another shot of the basement.
Another tape box.
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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.]
[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.]
Three videos songs from Lost On The River: The New Basement Tapes.
These are tremendous.
The footage is from the Showtime documentary “Lost Songs: The Basement Tapes Continued” that will air on Showtime on November 21.
The documentary was directed by Sam Jones, who is best known for the Wilco Documentary, “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart: A Film About Wilco.”
Jim James, “Down On The Bottom”:
Rhiannon Giddens, “Hidee Hidee Ho #16”:
Elvis Costello, “Six Months In Kansas City”:
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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.]
[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.]
Although it appears to the naked eye that Bob Dylan’s The Basement Tapes Complete: The Bootleg Series Vol. 11 contains 138 recordings, it turns out that the sixth disc contains a hidden track with two more songs on it.
Although only 21 tracks are listed for disc six, there are in fact 22.
And track 22 — two minutes and 26 seconds in length — includes part of a raucous rock ‘n’ roll version of “900 Miles From My Home,” the folk song that appears on disc 5, and an alternate take of “Confidential,” the 1956 Sonny Knight hit that Dylan also covers on disc five.
And then you hear Dylan fooling around: “All right ladies and gentleman, thank you thank you. That was Floyd and Lloyd. Right now we have Pete and Sneat. Sneak one in on Pete.”
(Thanks to Pete Read for that last line: “Sneak one in on Pete.”)
Here is Sonny Knights’ version of “Confidential”:
Woody Guthrie’s “900 Miles” with vocal:
Woody Guthrie’s instrumental version of “900 Miles”:
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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.]
In early October I was interviewed about my novel, True Love Scars, on this cool punk radio show, Cheap Hooch, that’s broadcast online every Sunday from 4 pm ’til 6 pm.
I talk about some of the themes in the book and more. Plus you’ll get to hear “Hey Bartender,” one of the songs that shows up early in the book, as well as artists referenced in the book including The Stooges and Mott The Hoople. Holly Hooch, the DJ, also plays some great songs by David Bowie, the Flamin’ Groovies and much more.
The show begins with Holly Hooch talking about how she messed up and didn’t get directions to the studio to me in time, but then I end up calling in Holly and her friends in the studio interview me on the phone. It’s a good interview and theres good music too. I’ve become a big fan of Cheap Hooch Radio.
[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.]
Bob Dylan and band at the Paramount Theater, Oakland, CA.
I’m jazzed that the folks over at bobdylan.com have included a link to my review of Bob Dylan’s recent killer show on October 30, 2014 at the Paramount Theater in Oakland, CA in the “Hype” area of Dylan’s website.
“Hype” is where they link to articles about Dylan that they like.
You can get directly to the review with this link.
And if you haven’t yet read my new column about The Basement Tapes Complete: The Bootleg Series Vol. 11,here.
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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.]
Bob Dylan and The Band The Basement Tapes Complete: The Bootleg Series Vol. 11 (Six-CD set)
Columbia Records
Note: Because the Basement Tapes are, for me, about a time long past, and a place long gone, and the feeling of wonder I still had as a teenager back in 1970 when I first heard some of the Basement songs, I have taken an unconventional approach to this review, mixing fact and fiction, thoughts about the actual music with seemingly unrelated text about young love.
It was time to split the city. The Summer of Love was a bust. They were selling “Love Burgers” on Haight Street. If you’re too young to know, Haight Street in San Francisco was a kind of ground zero for the ‘60s counterculture in 1966. But it wasn’t 1966 anymore, and things had changed. A creepy-crawly vibe would soon turn all the colors black.
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May of 1970, me and my chick in the back of that Ford pickup with all the camping gear. We’re heading for Big Sur. A bunch of us in five vehicles, maybe six. This was a long time ago. I was 16 and so was Sarah. We make a couple of stops along the way; the last one is to get gas and ‘cause some of us need to use the can. It isn’t a town, isn’t a full block same as you find in a town or a city. It’s some beater houses and a motel and the Texaco. What it is, is a no-name, one of those places you drive through to get from here to there.
Only reason I even get out of that pickup is ‘cause of the Coke machine.
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The Basement Tapes are a myth. They’re one of those stories that serious music fans, the type of fan that most people would call a collector, and others might call crazy, a nut, get lost in. As the myth has been told and retold since the late ‘60s, Bob Dylan, then one of the greatest, if not the greatest, rock stars in the world, had a motorcycle accident.
After recovering from his accident in the seclusion of an 11-room house in the Byrdcliffe Colony near Woodstock, Dylan called up his band, a handful of musicians who had been known as The Hawks when they backed Canadian rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins, and they joined him, soon renting houses not far from where Dylan was residing, one of which came to be known as Big Pink.
Over the summer, in the basement of Big Pink, they recorded over 100 tracks, including some new Bob Dylan compositions that remain some of his best. When it was all over, Dylan moved on, heading to Nashville to record John Wesley Harding, an album of all new songs, none of which had been recorded in the basement.
As for what eventually became known as the Basement Tapes, acetates were made of 14 songs and sent out to artists with the hopes they’d be covered. The tapes with the rest of the songs were shelved.
Eventually the bootleggers got their hands on those 14 songs, and soon we, the serious, obsessed Dylan fans, heard them too. And as word spread that there were more recordings, many more recordings, we lusted for them the way collectors of ‘78s lust after original pressings of Skip James records, or those of Geeshie Wiley and Elvie Thomas.
And so, for the serious Dylan fan, for us nuts, those tapes became the Holy Grail.
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It’s one of those ancient curved-corners all-red Vendo Coke machines. The V-81a. Filled with cool-ass bottles of Coke. Warhol’s “Green Coca-Cola Bottles” kinda cool-ass bottles.
Ever seen that Warhol deal? Homage to Duchamp, Warhol’s bottles. Warhol was heavy into Coke. Said Coke symbolized the egalitarian nature of American consumerism. Said it didn’t matter if you were Liz Taylor or a bum, a Coke was a Coke, and no amount of money could get you a better one than the one the bum on the corner was drinking. ‘Course what Warhol didn’t say was Liz Taylor could afford to get her cavities filled. The bum gonna end up with a mouth full of rotten.
I guess that’s what America’s all about. The phony-ass everyone’s equal trip. Authentic real, there’s a hierarchy. Fortune or fame, enough of either can put you up on your high horse, up on the steeple with all the pretty people. Warhol was wrong, Coke tastes a whole lot different if you’re drinking it out on the veranda of some place in Beverly Hills, than in the fucking gutter.
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On July 29, 1966, Bob Dylan, who as a kid idolized James Dean, had an accident while riding a 500cc Triumph Tiger 100 motorcycle on a road near his manager’s house in West Sugerties, not far from Woodstock, New York. Dylan was on break from a grueling world tour during which fans of his folk music booed his new rock ‘n’ roll sound. One of ‘em called him Judas.
“I was on the road for almost five years,” Dylan told Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner during a 1969 interview, looking back to that fateful day, the day of the motorcycle accident. “It wore me down. I was on drugs, a lot of things. A lot of things just to keep going, you know? And I don’t want to live that way anymore. And uh… I’m just waiting for a better time – you know what I mean?
Wenner asks a follow-up question.
“Well,” Dylan says. “I’d like to slow down the pace a little.”
Dylan did slow the pace. “I thought that I was just gonna get up and go back to doing what I was doing before…,” Dylan told Wenner. “But I couldn’t do it anymore.”
Dylan’s crazy schedule of touring and recording – he cut three of the best rock albums ever made, in 15 months! – was over. Instead he holed up with his family at the Byrdcliffe house, known as Hi Lo Ha, having replaced hectic New York with a pastoral scene. Working with filmmaker Howard Alk, Dylan completed a documentary, “Eat The Document,” using footage D. A. Pennebaker shot of the 1966 tour. The film was commissioned for the ABC television series Stage ’66, but was rejected by ABC and has never been officially released, although a bootleg version circulates, and periodically shows up online.
Still in upstate New York, at some point in early 1967 Dylan and some members of The Hawks began a series of informal music sessions in what was referred to as the “Red Room,” a sitting room at Hi Lo Ha that was no longer painted red, if ever it was. The music they made was recorded on a reel-to-reel tape recorder – one that took seven inch reels of quarter-inch tape — by Garth Hudson, one of the musicians who was also participating in the sessions along with Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko and Richard Manuel. Later they would be joined by Levon Helm.
The genesis of the sessions may have been pressure Albert Grossman exerted on Dylan to come up with more songs, songs for other artists to cover. Grossman owned half of Dylan’s publishing, so it was in Grossman’s financial interest to get more songs out of Dylan while he was still a big star.
Dylan told Jann Wenner, “No, they weren’t demos for myself, they were demos of the songs. I was being PUSHED again … into coming up with some songs. You know how those things go.”
Still, whatever the outside pressure, what happened when the tape was rolling was enjoyable, both for the musicians and for Dylan.
“The Basement Tapes refers to the basement there at Big Pink, obviously, but it also refers to a process, a homemade process,” Robbie Robertson was quoted as saying in Sid Griffin’s book about the Basement Tapes, “Million Dollar Bash.” That quote also appears in the liner notes Griffin wrote for The Basement Tapes Complete: The Bootleg Series Vol. 11, the 6-CD set was released on November 4, 2014.
“So some things we recorded at Bob’s house, some things we recorded at Rick’s house…we were here and there, so what it really means is ‘homemade’ as opposed to a single location in a formal studio.”
Talking about the sessions to Jann Wenner, Dylan said just moments after he spoke of being “PUSHED” to demo new songs, “They were just fun to do. That’s all. They were a kick to do. Fact, I’d do it all again. You know, that’s really the way to do a recording—in a peaceful, relaxed setting—in somebody’s basement. With the windows open … and a dog lying on the floor.”
[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.]
James Williamson was the raw powerhouse guitar on The Stooges’ third album, Raw Power. He also played tremendous guitar on the underrated Iggy solo album, New Values.
Check out Williamson’s new album, Re-Licked, which is out now, and which finds Williamson remaking a bunch of Stooges songs that were never released with a bunch of great vocalists: Jello Biafra, Mark Lanegan, Alison Mosshart, Ariel Pink, The Orwell’s Mario Cuomo, The BellRays’ Lisa Kekaula, Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie, The Icarus Line’s Joe Cardamone and Carolyn Wonderland.
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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.]
