While the official version of “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?” was released on December 21, 1965, a different version was mistakenly released as the A-side of what was supposed to be the “Positively Fourth Street” single three months earlier on September 7, 1065.
As a kid I heard “Positively Fourth Street” on the radio, loved it and went to the record store down the hill from where I lived and bought a copy.
I was surprised to discover a different song on the A-side but it was just as great as “Positively Fourth Street.”
Lucky me.
Another cover for the single.
Michael Bloomfield and Al Kooper both play on this version, which according to Clinton Heylin, was recorded on July 30, 1965 at Columbia’s Studio A in New York:
Here it is as well in better fidelity:
Forty-nine years ago, on December 21, 1965, the official version recorded with the Hawks on October 4, 1965, was released.
[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.]
[Please note: The original inspiration for this post was the above photo, which I saw online and which was misidentified as being a photo of Bob Dylan, Suze Rotolo and her older sister Carla Rotolo. After the post went up it was brought to my attention that the woman identified as Carla Rotolo was actually Lena Sepncer, who ran the club Cafe Lena. Since the post was already live I edited it accordingly.]
The above photo by Joe Alper, taken in the early ’60s, is of Bob Dylan, his one-time girlfriend Suze Rotolo (the girl with Dylan on the cover of The Freewheelin’Bob Dylan) and Lena Spencer, who ran the Caffe Lena club in Saratoga Springs, NY where Dylan played.
Here is a video which includes a picture of Suze’s older sister, Carla.
In Suze Rotolo’s book, “A Freewheelin’ Time,” in a section called “Ballad” she writes:
For a long time my mother had made it clear she didn’t think much of Bobby. By the time Freewheelin’ came out, she and Fred had long since moved to New Jersey. It was easier all around to avoid contact… My mother had objected to Bob from the moment she laid eyes on him back in 1961, but the animosity between my sister and Bob developed over time. Both my mother and Carla were running interference on our relationship, and he couldn’t help resenitng that. I couldnt handle the constant pressure…”
Here are some of the lyrics from Dylan’s “Ballad In Plain D,” which appeared on Another Side Of Bob Dylan in 1964. Dylan had never performed this song live.
Through young summer’s breeze, I stole her away
From her mother and sister, though close did they stay
Each one of them suffering from the failures of their day
With strings of guilt they tried hard to guide us
Of the two sisters, I loved the young
With sensitive instincts, she was the creative one
The constant scapegoat, she was easily undone
By the jealousy of others around her
For her parasite sister, I had no respect
Bound by her boredom, her pride to protect
Countless visions of the other she’d reflect
As a crutch for her scenes and her society
Thanks to BlindBoy ElstonGunn for sharing this photo!
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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.]
Not that I can keep from letting it go to my head (that’s long been a lost cause), but it is exciting that culture critic Roy Trakin has included my novel, True Love Scars, in his best books of 2014 list. The book is #4 in his list.
Writes Trakin:
Just call it a portrait of the young rock critic as a freakster bro, coming of age in the glorious peace-and-love innocence of the ‘60s dream, only to crash precipitously, post-Altamont into the drug-ridden paranoia of a ‘70s nightmare, characterized by the doom and gloom of the Stones’ sinister “Sister Morphine” and the apocalyptic caw-caw-caw of a pair of ubiquitous crows. The one-time Rolling Stone journalist turned-Internet pioneer with his groundbreaking mid-‘90s Addicted to Noise site has always been on the cutting edge and here he perfectly captures a horny, but romantic, teenager growing up in Marin County back in what he calls the Days of the Crazy-Wild, where getting your parents to let you grow out your hair was proof alone of your manhood. If you lived through those momentous times, or even if you didn’t, Goldberg conveys that rush of ideas, music and literature that made it such a heady era, while still ruefully acknowledge its fleeting, self-destructive aftermath in what amounts to his version of fellow one-time Stone scribe Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous.
And here’s a short audio clip of me reading and Henry Kaiser riffing from my reading last weekend:
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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.]
T Bone Burnett has produced Rhiannon Giddens’ debut solo album Tomorrow Is My Turn< ,/em> which is set for a February 10, 2015 release.
Giddens, of course, is a member of the New Basement Tapes band, and was a major contributor to Lost On The River: The New Basement Tapes.
I like her version of “Shake Sugaree,” and “Black is the Color” is interesting.
Joan Baez, of course, recorded “Black is the Color” in the ’60s, and Bob Dylan had the line “Where black is the color, where none is the number” in “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.”
I’m looking forward to hearing what Giddens does with Geeshie Wiley’s amazing “Last Kind Words.”
Check out three songs off the album.
“Black is the Color”:
“Don’t Let It Trouble Your Mind”:
“Shake Sugaree”:
Album track listing:
1
Last Kind Words (Geeshie Wiley)
4:14
2
Don’t Let It Trouble Your Mind (Dolly Parton)
3:45
3
Waterboy (Jacques Wolfe)
3:45
4
She’s Got You (Hank Cochran)
4:17
5
Up Above My Head (Sister Rosetta Tharpe)
3:09
6
Tomorrow Is My Turn (Charles Aznavour/Marcel Stellman/Yves Stéphane)
4:38
7
Black Is the Color (Traditional, arr. Rhiannon Giddens)
3:47
8
Round About the Mountain (Traditional, arr. Roland Hayes)
3:29
9
Shake Sugaree (Elizabeth Cotten)
4:25
10
O Love Is Teasin’ (Traditional, arr. Rhiannon Giddens)
4:31
11
Angel City (Rhiannon Giddens)
3:52
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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.]
Yesterday afternoon, Saturday December 13, 2104, I read from my novel, True Love Scars, as the acclaimed, Grammy-winning experimental guitarist Henry Kaiser improvised. And then Henry did a short, brilliant instrumental. The reading took place at Down Home Music in El Cerrito, CA.
I called the event a “post-beat happening.”
It was thrilling to read as Henry’s music lit up the room. When you’re on a stage and you’re in the groove, and the music, music you’ve never heard before, is exactly right for what you’re doing, you levitate.
Two sections I read were about how Bob Dylan’s music changed the narrator’s life. I’ve included both of those and then another excerpt which is the first few pages of the novel. Plus an instrumental improvisation by Henry that concluded the reading.
Down Home Music was an incredible environment for a reading. A room filled with CDs and vinyl and a wall of music books and music posters on the walls and incredibly knowledgeable folks running the place.
Where else is an impulse buy going to be a Roscoe Holcomb DVD?
Yep, I now own that DVD.
There was a nice write-up in advance of the reading in the East Bay Express and that brought a great group of folks into the store to hear me and Henry do our thing.
I read about 30 minutes while Henry utilized a guitar, a whammy bar and more than a dozen pedals to create a sonic backdrop for my words. Actually, it was more than a backdrop, as you’ll see if you listen to the first excerpt, below.
1) The impact of “Like A Rolling Stone”:
2) “It was Dylan, man!”:
3) How the book begins:
4) Henry’s concluding instrumental:
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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 November Fredrik Wikingsson got a private Bob Dylan mini-concert at Philadelphia’s Academy of Music.
Lucky Wikingsson had been picked for an episode of a Swedish film series called “Experiment Ensam” where, according to Rolling Stone, “a lone person takes part in events that are usually reserved for large crowds.”
Dylan and his band perform a cover of Buddy Holly’s “Heartbeat,” a beautiful downbeat version of Fats Domino’s “Blueberry Hill” and Chuck Wills’ “It’s Too Late (She’s Gone).” The mini-concert ends with the blues standard, “Key to the Highway.”
[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.]
Jenny Eliscu talks to Elvis Costello and others about The New Basement Tapes album. Includes an unreleased version of “Hidee Hidee Ho” that ELvis sings.
The New Basement Tapes – Live on the Sirius XM, November 14, 2014.
Recorded on November 14, 2014 in Hollywood, CA. Featuring:
Elvis Costello – piano, Rhiannon Giddens – fiddle, vocals, Taylor Goldsmith – bass, vocals, Jim James – guitar, vocals, Marcus Mumford – guitar, vocals, Jay Bellerose – drums, Griffin Goldsmith – drums. Setlist:
00:00 intro
02:01 Diamond Ring (Goldsmith)
05:48 interview 1
10:37 Hidee Hidee Ho – “bootleg volume 2 version” (Costello)
12:25 interview 2
16:00 Down On The Bottom (James)
20:44 interview 3
29:31When I Get My Hands On You (Mumford)
32:53 interview 4
38:27 Lost On The River #20 (Giddens)
42:50 outro
Plus on November 12, 2014 the group did this radio performance:
00:00 Married To My Hack (Costello)
02:41 When I Get My Hands On You (Mumford)
05:48 Florida Key (Goldsmith)
10:01 Spanish Mary (Giddens)
15:27 Down On The Bottom (James)
19:42 Kansas City (Mumford)
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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.]
Big surprise today when I opened the latest East Bay Express and discovered that my reading Saturday with Henry Kaiser at Down Home Music is their pick for “Lectures & Lit” this week, and one of this weekend’s “Top Five Events.”
How cool is that!
I’ll read from my novel, True Love Scars, and experimental guitarist Henry Kaiser will improvise on electric guitar.
It’ll happen at 3 pm at Down Home Music, 10341 San Pablo Avenue, El Cerrito, CA. And it’s free, of course.
Writes Arts and Culture Editor Sarah Burke:
True Love Scars is a rock ’n’ roll novel about harboring nostalgia for the 1960s, getting lost in a drugged-up dream-world, finding love, and then losing it tragically.
[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.]
Here’s Bob Dylan singing “Yestersay” with George Harrison on guitar.
This was recorded May 1, 1970 at Columbia Studios in New York.
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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.]
The best Bob Dylan site, with the exception of Dylan’s own site, is Expecting Rain, and the man behind Expecting Rain is Norway-based Karl Erik Andersen.
[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.]
