Tag Archives: album

Bob Dylan Sings From the Autumn of His Life

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fallen

Part two of his Sinatra sessions are heavy with meaning, and a whole lot of fun too

By Michael Goldberg

A fallen angel is an angel who has sinned and been cast out of heaven.

“Everybody knows that torch singers are ‘fallen angels,’…” – Torch Singing: Performing Resistance and Desire from Billie Holiday to Edith Piaf by Stacy Holman Jones

Bob Dylan showed up at Daniel Lanois’ house in Los Angeles sometime in the later half of 2014 with recordings of 21 songs he’d made at the beginning of the year at the legendary Capitol Records Studio B in Hollywood where Frank Sinatra, Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, the Beach Boys and many others once made records.

“He [Dylan] said, ‘Let me tell you, Dan: If you have the time, can I tell you how I grew up?’ So we sat in the kitchen. I hadn’t heard a note.
“He spoke for an hour and a half on how, as a kid, you couldn’t even get pictures of anybody [the artists],” Lanois, who produced two Dylan albums, 1989’s Oh Mercy, and 1997’s Time Out Of Mind, recounted to a reporter from the Vancouver Sun in February of 2015. “You might get a record but you didn’t know what they [the artist] looked like. So there was a lot of mystery associated with the work at the time. As far as hearing live music, he only heard a couple of shows a year, like the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra might come through.

“But the music he did hear really touched him and he felt that a lot of that music was written not only by great professional songwriters at the time, but a lot of it was written from the heart, from the wartime, and people just pining for a lover. He felt there was a lot of spirit in that music. He felt there was a kind of beauty, a sacred ground for him.

“After having said all that, we then listened to the music and I felt everything that he talked about. For one of America’s great writers to say, ‘I’m not gonna write a song. I’m gonna pay homage to what shook me as a young boy,’ I thought was very graceful and dignified.”

Ten of the recordings Lanois heard that day were released on Dylan’s wonderful 2015 album, Shadows in the Night. What happened to the others is something of a mystery.

Read the rest of this review at Addicted To Noise.

– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post –

Audio: The Juliana Hatfield Three Return With ‘If I Could’

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Earlier this year Juliana Hatfield let it be known that she had regrouped her mid-90s trio, The Juliana Hatfield Three, the group that made the excellent 1993 album Become What You Are.

The song is off a new crowdfunded album, Whatever, My Love, and it will be released early next year.

Here’s a note from Hatfield that she posted on the Pledgemusic page for the crowdfunding of the album:

Todd, Dean, and I have just begun recording with the lovely and talented Tom Beaujour (who worked with me and Matthew [Caws] on the Minor Alps album) at the Nuthouse in Hoboken, New Jersey, and so far it is going great. Some of you may have previously heard some version of some of the songs we are working on. For example, one of the songs we are exploring is “If I Could”. We have always loved this song but there have only ever been demos of it; it has never been properly finished or produced. There are multiple attempted versions of it but the nut has never been quite cracked, and this has always sort of haunted me. Now I feel like I finally have the chance to get it right with Todd and Dean.
We are also exploring electricized band versions of a couple of the punchier acoustic home-recorded songs from my last album, “Wild Animals”. And there will be some other surprises.

Stay tuned for updates – we will keep in touch during the recording and mixing and in-between processes with photos, videos, and music.

Thank you so very much for being here with us to help us and encourage us and support us.

JH3 2014

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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.]

Audio: Frank Sinatra & Bob Dylan Sing the Songs From ‘Shadows In The Night’

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Now that we know the songs that will be on Bob Dylan’s next album, Shadows In The Night, all of which are best known for Frank Sinatra’s recordings of them in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. I thought it would be fun to hear Sinatra’s versions, along with versions of three of them by Dylan.

In addition to Dylan’s version of “Full Moon And Empty Arms,” which was officially made available online last May, I’ve included a live version of “Stay With Me” from one of the Beacon Theater shows, and two versions of “That Lucky Old Sun,” one with Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers backing Dylan.

In a statement Bob Dylan said this about the upcoming album: “It was a real privilege to make this album. I’ve wanted to do something like this for a long time but was never brave enough to approach 30-piece complicated arrangements and refine them down for a 5-piece band. That’s the key to all these performances. We knew these songs extremely well. It was all done live. Maybe one or two takes. No overdubbing. No vocal booths. No headphones. No separate tracking, and, for the most part, mixed as it was recorded. I don’t see myself as covering these songs in any way. They’ve been covered enough. Buried, as a matter a fact. What me and my band are basically doing is uncovering them. Lifting them out of the grave and bringing them into the light of day.”

Enjoy.

Frank Sinatra, “I’m A Fool To Love You”:

Frank Sinatra, “The Night We Called It A Day”:

Frank Sinatra, “Stay WIth Me”:

Bob Dylan, “Stay With Me,” live at the Beacon Theater, NYC, Nov. 29, 2014:

Frank Sinatra, “Autumn Leaves”:

Frank Sinatra, “Why Try To Change Me Now”:

Frank Sinatra, “Some Enchanted Evening”:

Frank Sinatra, “Full Moon And Empty Arms”:

Bob Dylan, “Full Moon And Empty Arms”:

Frank Sinatra, “Where Are You?:

Frank Sinatra, “What’ll I Do”:

Frank Sinatra, “That Lucky Old Sun”:

Bob Dylan & Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, live, True Confessions Tour, 1986:

That Lucky Old Sun by Bob Dylan and Tom Petty on Grooveshark

Bob Dylan, “That Lucky Old Sun,” live, Irvine Meadows Amphitheate, Irvine, CA, June 29, 2000:

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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 To Release New Album, ‘Shadows In The Night,’ in 2015

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Cover of Bob Dylan’s upcoming 2015 album.

Bob Dylan’s next album will be titled Shadows In The Night, and released in 2015, according to an insert included in Dylan’s new boxed set, The Basement Tapes Complete: The Bootleg Series Vol. 11.

In May of this year, Bob Dylan released a cover of Frank Sinatra’s 1945 hit “Full Moon and Empty Arms” on his website.

“Full Moon and Empty Arms”:

“Full Moon and Empty Arms” was written by Ted Mossmann and Buddy Kaye and based around Sergei Rachmaninoff’s 1901 composition “Piano Concert No. 2 in C Minor.”

Also on Dylan’s site was what looked like an album cover, a mostly black and blue image with a picture of Dylan and the words: “Bob Dylan Shadows In The Night.”

The retro nature of “Full Moon And Empty Arms,” sparked speculation that Dylan’s next studio album of new recordings would be a cover album of standards.

​”This track [“Full Moon And Empty Arms”] is definitely from a forthcoming album due later on this year,” a spokesperson for the singer who wouldn’t confirm the title told Rolling Stone in May.

A month later a source who has heard the album enthused about it to me. “It really is a great album,” my source said, offering no additional details.

Obviously plans changed, and it was announced earlier this year that most of Dylan and The Band’s Basement Tapes recordings would be released as Dylan’s next album. The Basement Tapes Complete: The Bootleg Series Vol. 11, a 6-CD set (as well as a 2-CD version of highlights), will be released on Tuesday, November 4.

Now, based on an insert in the box that The Basement Tapes Complete: The Bootleg Series Vol. 11, comes in, I can tell you that the title of Dylan’s next album is Shadows In The Night,, that it will be released in 2015 and that for now at least, the Shadows In The Night image seen on Dylan’s website is the cover (unless of course something changes).

No track listing has been released.

In addition to “Full Moon and Empty Arms,” which is still expected to be on the album, Jerome Moross and Carolyn Leigh’s “Stay With Me,” which was recorded by Frank Sinatra in December 1963 and released a month later, could be included.

Dylan performed “Stay With Me” for the the first time the other night at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles. So this is speculation. There is no confirmation that “Stay With Me” will be on the album. “Stay With Me” was the main theme of the Otto Preminger film “The Cardinal.”

“Stay With Me” as performed at the Dolby Theater, October 26, 2014.

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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 Days Of The Crazy-Wild blog post —

Exclusive! Bob Dylan’s Handwritten Lyrics For ‘New Basement Tapes’ Song, ‘Liberty Street’

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Page one of Bob Dylan’s 1967 lyrics to “Liberty Street.”

Yesterday I got access to a copy of Bob Dylan’s two pages of handwritten lyrics for “Liberty Street,” a song completed by Taylor Goldsmith of the band Dawes for the album Lost On the River: The New Basement Tapes (produced by T Bone Burnett).

I like what Dawes has done with the song, creating a piano ballad along the lines of “Dear Landlord.” Dawes’ voice is too smooth for me, and I’d love to hear Dylan sing this one (and bring his distinctive, bluesy approach to the piano part).

Dawes took quite a few liberties with Dylan’s words, only using a portion of the original lyrics, and by leaving out some key lines, turns it into a very different song, which is fine. I’m sure Dylan would dig that. Still, it’s worth noting a few of the missing lines. Dawes used some lines from these verses, as you’ll see:

In one verse, Dylan writes:
“6 months in Kansas City, can’t find no room and board,
6 months in Kansas City, what can’t lead to what kind of reward,
All my friends in jail lost out,
Some who ain’t got no bail bust out, but then find the tracks did make you come back,
Down on your knees, ain’t it a pity, not even a breeze,
6 months in Kansas City, make a man ready to do anything.”

And the one that follows:
“6 months in Kansas City! Woe! Can’t be begging for no last meal,
Things sure don’t look too pretty! Cause a man to rob and steal
All my friends confounded, indeed
Some lost and some drown and some turn to greed.”

Elvis Costello also took a shot at this one, and I do prefer his version, which he calls “Six Months In Kansas City (Liberty Street),” but that may be because I’m a big Elvis fan. Soon enough you’ll be able to decide for yourself, as the album will be out on November 10.

Goldsmith starts the song with Dylan’s second line, “He came from the old religion, but possessed no magic skill, Descending from machinery, he left nothing in his will.”

He also uses Dylan’s next two lines — “The crops are failing, the women wailing” — before rewriting Dylan’s first line — “I see by the papers that” — to complete the verse with “it’s in the paper at your feet.”

Although Dylan wrote a couple of possible choruses, Goldsmith made his own using Dylan’s title for the song which appears to have been “Liberty Street (Six Months In Kansas City).”

Goldsmith’s chorus: “Six months in Kansas City, down on Liberty Street.”

The strangest thing Goldsmith does is leave out what to me is a really key pair of lines: “Thank you for not helping me out, for not treating me like a fool.”

Instead, for his next verse Goldsmith jumps to the bottom of the first page and slightly changes Dylan’s lyric to: “It was sad to see it, that little lady goin’ in, arrested for arson, once they’d asked her where she’d been.”

The second page of Dylan’s “Liberty Street” lyrics.

Then he grabs a line from later in the song — “Down on your knees, ain’t it a pity, not even a breeze — and turns it into: “Down on her knees, not even a breeze, another victim of the heat.”

And back to the chorus: “Six months in Kansas City, down on Liberty Street.”

For his final verse, Goldsmith goes to Dylan’s final verse for the lines “Things sure don’t look too pretty, cause a man to rob and steal, I got [unintelligible word] six more months out here, can’t be begging for my meals.”

And turns some lines from the first page — “Now look here Baby Snooks, don’t matter how many books, you got underneath your thumb” — into “Now look here Baby Snooks, doesn’t matter what books, you got underneath your seat,” before ending with “Six months in Kansas City, down on Liberty Street.”

About the song, Goldsmith says in a press release:

“Liberty Street” was one of the last songs I put together for the record. We didn’t see the lyrics for this song until we got into the studio. Bob Dylan has a way of saying lines like ‘Six months in Kansas City down on Liberty Street’ and it having an immediate, yet sometimes ineffable, power. When I started putting these words to music, the structure of the words dictated the way the chords rolled out so it came together really fast. And the recording of it was our first take.”

“Liberty Street”:

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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.]

— A Days Of The Crazy-Wild blog post —

Video: Sleater-Kinney Reunite, Announce New Album, Tour

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Janet Weiss, Carrie Brownstein, Corin Tucker

One of my favorite bands of all time, and one of the most important to emerge during the ’90s, Sleater-Kinney are back from an eight-year hiatus and will release a new album, No Cities To Love, on January 20, 2015.

During the break Corin Tucker has released to Corin Tucker Band albums and devoted time to her family. Most recently she was recording and performing as part of a supergroup with R.E.M.’s Peter Buck that they were calling super-Earth. Carrie Brownstein played in Wild Flag and co-created and co-starred in “Portlandia.” Weiss has played drums in a number of situations including Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks.

First song to be released is “Bury Our Friends,” with a lyric video featuring director and longtime Sleater-Kinney friend, Miranda July.

“Bury Our Friends”:

In an email to NPR, guitarist/singer Carrie Brownstein wrote:

“I feel like creativity is about where you want your blood to flow. Because in order to do something meaningful and powerful there has to be life inside of it. Maybe after The Woods that blood had thinned; we felt enervated, the focus had become disparate and diffuse. We drifted apart in order to concentrate on other elements of our lives and careers. Sleater-Kinney isn’t something you can do half-assed or half-heartedly. We have to really want it. And you have to feed that hunger and have the energy to. I’m not saying we need to be in a dark place to be in Sleater-Kinney. In fact, we could be in the best places in our lives. But we have to be willing to push, because the entity that is this band will push right back.

“We had no desire to revisit sounds and styles and paths we had treaded before. But in order to move forward, Corin and I worked together in a way that was more reminiscent of earlier albums like Dig Me Out. Meaning that we would write just the two of us and then bring songs to Janet later on in the process. I think we had to go back to an earlier model of writing in order to reacquaint ourselves with the language of the band. It’s a sonic vernacular that isn’t easily translated into other contexts in which we’ve played. This was a very deliberate writing process, there were many edits and iterations of the songs. We thought a lot about melody and structure.

“I spent a lot of time writing choruses for this record. Melody is what I was most picky about. I really drove Corin crazy sometimes. We would have choruses that we would work on for hours, days, maybe on and off over a matter of weeks. And we’d think we had solved it, but then I would listen to it later on and decide to discard it, that it wasn’t good enough. I did that with my guitar parts too. In the end we were all more scrutinizing with our own parts than we ever have been. I think we didn’t want to take any second of the song for granted, everything had to have an intention and earn its place.”

No Cities To Love Track List:

1. Price Tag
2. Fangless
3. Surface Envy
4. No Cities To Love
5. A New Wave
6. No Anthems
7. Gimme Love
8. Bury Our Friends
9. Hey Darling
10. Fade

And there will be a tour:

2015 Tour Dates:

02-08-15 Spokane, WA @ Knitting Factory
02-09-15 Boise, ID @ Knitting Factory
02-10-15 Salt Lake City, UT @ The Depot
02-12-15 Denver, CO @ Ogden Theater
02-13-15 Omaha, NE @ Slowdown
02-14-15 Minneapolis, MN @ First Avenue
02-15-15 Milwaukee, WI @ Turner Hall
02-17-15 Chicago, IL @ Riviera
02-22-15 Boston, MA @ House of Blues
02-24-15 Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club
02-26-15 New York, NY @ Terminal 5
02-28-15 Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer
03-01-15 Pittsburgh, PA @ Stage AE
03-18-15 Berlin, Germany @ Postbahnhof
03-19-15 Amsterdam, The Netherlands @ Paradiso
03-20-15 Paris, France @ Cigale
03-21-15 Antwerp, Belgium @ Trix
03-23-15 London, UK @ Roundhouse
03-24-15 Manchester, UK @ Albert Hall
03-25-15 Glasgow, UK @ O2 ABC
03-26-15 Dublin, Ireland @ Vicar Street

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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 Days Of The Crazy-Wild blog post —

Audio: Hear Bob Dylan’s ‘New Basement Tapes’ Song, ‘Spanish Mary,’ Sung By Rhiannon Giddens

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Here is “Spanish Mary,” the latest song off Lost On The River: The New Basement Tapes to be made available prior to the album release on November 10, 2014.

In a press release, Giddens, who wrote the music for the song and sings the lead vocal, says of the track:

“Out of all the lyrics I looked through for the New Basement Tapes project, the one for ‘Spanish Mary’ attracted me first – here was a ballad, and I know ballads! It’s also set in the Caribbean, so I felt the deep African sound of the minstrel style banjo (circa 1856) was appropriate. It was an absolute thrill to get to set music to Dylan’s lyrics, what an opportunity! This project is marked with utter generosity from everyone involved.”

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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 Days Of The Crazy-Wild blog post —

Audio: Neil Young’s ‘Storytone’ Double Album To Include Solo & Orchestral Versions

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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 Days Of The Crazy-Wild blog post —

Audio: Listen to Ex Hex’s Killer Debut Album, ‘Rips,’ Right Now!

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Photo by Jonah Takagi.

The music has been killer right from the first tracks released last by Mary Timony and her latest band, a trio called Ex Hex.

Now there’s an album, a really good one, called Rips, which it does.

This is a kind of punk/ riot grrrl rock post-Ramones, post-Sleater-Kinney.

Simple, powerful music with loud guitars and great vocals that will get you up onto your feet.

Joining Timony are bassit Betsy Wright and drummer Laura Harris.

Listen to the entire album now at NPR.

[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.]

A MESSAGE FROM THOM YORKE AND NIGEL GODRICH (& A New Thom Yorke Album!)

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This showed up in my email this morning:

A MESSAGE FROM THOM YORKE AND NIGEL GODRICH

As an experiment we are using a new version of BitTorrent to distribute a new Thom Yorke record.

The new Torrent files have a pay gate to access a bundle of files..

The files can be anything, but in this case is an ‘album’.

It’s an experiment to see if the mechanics of the system are something that the general public can get its head around …

If it works well it could be an effective way of handing some control of internet commerce back to people who are creating the work.

Enabling those people who make either music, video or any other kind of digital content to sell it themselves.

Bypassing the self elected gate-keepers.

If it works anyone can do this exactly as we have done.

The torrent mechanism does not require any server uploading or hosting costs or ‘cloud’ malarkey.

It’s a self-contained embeddable shop front…

The network not only carries the traffic, it also hosts the file. The file is in the network.

Oh yes and it’s called

Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes.

Thom Yorke & Nigel Godrich

You can get the album for $6 here.

You can watch a video for the track “A Brain In A Bottle” Here.

Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes Tracks:

01 A Brain In A Bottle.mp3
02 Guess Again!.mp3
03 Interference.mp3
04 The Mother Lode.mp3
05 Truth Ray.mp3
06 There Is No Ice (For My Drink).mp3
07 Pink Section.mp3
08 Nose Grows Some.mp3

[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.]

— A Days Of The Crazy-Wild blog post —

Thom Yorke & Nigel Godrich