Bob Dylan has released at least three of the best rock albums. Period.
Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde On Blonde and John Wesley Harding are classics.
And his earlier albums, particularly Bringing It All Back Home, are exceptional too.
But Dylan has recorded many songs, and many versions of songs, that have not been officially released, or have only turned up decades later on the official bootleg series releases.
So sometimes I think about the albums that might have been.
Here’s one of my imagined Dylan albums, comprised entirely of tracks that didn’t make it onto official studio albums.
1 Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window:
2 Roll On John (1962)
3 Freeze Out (later titled “Visions of Johanna,” 1966):
,
4 She’s Your Lover Now (solo piano version, 1966):
5 Let Me Die In My Footsteps (outtake, early ’60s):
6 She Belongs To Me (outtake, 1965)
7 I’ll Keep It With Mine (Blonde On Blonde rehearsal, 1966)
8 Blind Willie McTell (1983):
9 Desolation Row (Outtake, 1965):
10 On A Rainy Afternoon (hotel room jam, 1966):
-– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
“Portlandia” star Carrie Brownstein suggested during an interview posted at Stereogum today that the Sleater-Kinney story isn’t over yet.
Asked if Sleater-Kinney will reunite, Brownstein said:
I’m not sure. It’s a hard question. This is something I was actually talking about with Tavi Gevinson who does Rookie Mag. I’m such a fan of hers and her writing, and we were having coffee in Portland and we were just talking about how when something is very tied to a certain time in your life — it’s sometimes hard to reenter that at a different age or with a different perspective. So, it’s like finding a way into the container that is Sleater-Kinney, finding a way of entering that with something that isn’t necessarily as urgent as it was for me when I was 22. What I appreciate about Sleater-Kinney is that we did six records and they all felt different. It was a band that was able to encapsulate different sensibilities because we were focusing on it as music and art and not as a statement. That was something other people ascribed to it more than we did. So I would be curious. I think we have more to say. I think we ended at a time when it wasn’t tapering off, actually. I would be curious to know what the rest of the story is with that band.
This footage of Nirvana was shot by Dave Markey (“The Year Punk Broke”) on December 30, 1993.
Watch the group perform The Vaselines’ “Jesus,” David Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold The World” and “All Apologies.” The sound is iffy at times.
Dave Markey writes:
20 years ago tonight (December 30, 1993) I stood on Kurt’s side of the stage at my hometown’s Los Angeles Forum and captured the last set I would see of this band. A band that I had worked with, toured with; people that I would call my friends. A band that both the world and myself really loved (can’t really say this has happened since.) Within just a few short months it would sadly all be over. Sharing a few songs here; a couple covers (Vaselines’ “Jesus” & Bowie’s “Man Who Sold The World”) and All Apologies. I’m glad to have documented this show, as well as their pre-fame fun in 1991.
-– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –
Forty-Four years ago, on January 6, 1971, according to Tim Dunn’s “The Bob Dylan Copyright Files 1962-2007,” Bob Dylan’s song “I Shall Be Free #10” was copyrighted.
What’s odd about that is that the song was written and recorded nearly six and a half years earlier. It appeared on Dylan’s fourth album, Another Side Of Bob Dylan, which was released August 8, 1964.
I guess it slipped through the cracks.
Some (Clinton Heylin for one) think this song is a throwaway. I disagree. It provides a good counterpoint to the heavier material on the album, and it contains plenty of great lines.
While it’s a humorous song, it’s also an example of Dylan beginning to move away from traditional, straightforward songwriting.
The more surreal writing of later albums (Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde On Blonde, John Wesley Harding) is alive and well in this song.
And it contains at least one classic Dylan line:
“I’m a poet, I know it, hope I don’t blow it.”
According to Clinton Heylin, there were some verses that Dylan chose not to record. Here’s one of them:
now malcolm x is on my trail
robert welch wants to throw me in jail
bishop sheen says i got no belief
rabbi greenbaum says I’m a thief
Below are two outtakes plus the version that’s on Another Side Of Bob Dylan.
“I Shall Be Free” (official version as it appears on Another Side of Bob Dylan), recorded June 9, 1964:
“I Shall Be Free #10” (outtake #2), recorded June 9, 1964:
“I Shall Be Free #10” (outtake), recorded June 9, 1964:
-– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
Rosanne Cash’s new album, The River & ZThe Sea, is now streaming at NPR’s “First Listen.”
From the NPR website:
Each song is rooted in the Southern soil connecting the old Cash homestead in Arkansas to the family’s ancestral Virginia homeland, expanding to survey the family’s artistic roots in Alabama and Tennessee. Some narratives are fictional, while others mine family lore. Each unfolds in a subtle arc made three-dimensional by Cash’s introspective lyrics and the genre-dissolving blend of country, soul and torch songs that she and her husband and producer, John Leventhal, cultivate.
