Tag Archives: New York

Audio: Dig Neil Young’s Rare ‘Live At The Bottom Line – NYC, 1974’ Concert

In 1974 Neil Young played The Bottom Line in New York and his set included songs from his upcoming On The Beach.”

Here’s your chance to download the show.

Head over to the Aquarium Drunkard site and go for it.

Or stream it here:

Track listing:

Pushed It Over The End (AKA Citizen Kane Jr. Blues)
Long May You Run
Greensleeves
Ambulance Blues
Helpless
Revolution Blues
On The Beach
Roll Another Number
Motion Pictures
Pardon My Heart
Dance Dance Dance

– A Days Of The Crazy-Wild blog post –

Audio/Video: Bob Dylan at the Beacon – ‘Pay In Blood,’ ‘Early Roman Kings’ & 6 More

Murky, but it is Dylan.

Bob Dylan performed in New York at the Beacon Theater over the course of the last week or so.

Here are audio/video files from a few shows. The audio is quite good.

Enjoy.

“Beyond Here Lies Nothing,” Nov. 29, 2014 show:

Another fan video.

“Beyond Here Lies Nothing,” Nov. 29, 2014 show:

“Early Roman Kings,” Nov. 29, 2014 show (note that the video itself is mislabeled):

“Waiting For You” (excerpt), Nov. 29, 2014 show:

“Pay In Blood,” Dec. 2014 show:

“Tangled Up In Blue,” Nov. 29, 2014 show:

“Love Sick,” Dec. 2014 show:

“Simple Twist Of Fate,” Nov. 29, 2014 show:

Another fan video:

“Simple Twist Of Fate,” Nov. 29, 2014 show:

“Forgetful Heart,” Nov. 29, 2014 show:

“Long And Wasted Years”:

“Blowin’ In The Wind,” Nov. 29, 2014 show:

“Blowin’ In The Wind,” Dec. 2, 2013 show:

“Stay With Me,” Nov. 29, 2014 show:

“Stay With Me,” December 3, 2014 show:

Video: Foo Fighters Dave Grohl, Taylor Hawkins + Jesse Malin Cover Bob Dylan’s ‘From A Buick 6’

Jesse Malin handling vocals for “From A Buick 6.”

Jesse Malin and Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl and Taylor Hawkins covered Bob Dylan’s “From a Buick 6” at photographer Danny Clinch’s book release party last night (Tuesday, October 14, 2014) at the McKittrick Hotel in New York.

Plus check out Gary U.S. Bonds covering “From A Buick 6”:

More on the Danny Clinch event 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.]

— A Days Of The Crazy-Wild blog post —

Why Every Serious Dylan Fan Should Care About the Greil Marcus Curated Festival Albertine!

A still from Olivier Assayas’ “Après- Mai.”

When Bob Dylan arrived in New York in January 1961, he found himself in a cultural paradise, a city that offered him access to art and music and film that he could only have read about back in Hibbing, Minnesota.

But he had always been curious about the world.

According to Dylan in his autobiography, “Chronicles Volume One,” back in Hibbing he’d already been absorbing a fantastic amount of culture, reading “Voltaire, Rousseau, John Locke, Montesquieu, Martin Luther – visionaries, revolutionaries … it was like I knew those guys, like they’d been living in my backyard.”

Thelonious Monk, “Misterioso”:

He’d seen 100s of films and already had an encyclopedia of music in his head. Sure there were all the folk and blues and country records he’d heard, and many live performances he’d attended (Slim Whitman, Hank Snow, Web Pierce and others), but he’d listened to rock ‘n’ roll and jazz too. And pop music and classical!

As Dylan recounts in Chronicles, once he got to New York he had the opportunity to stretch even further. He saw Fellini films and hung out with Thelonious Monk at the Blue Note and attended performances by many jazz legends, read the poetry of Rimbaud and Baudelaire and Ginsberg and so many others, and even saw Jean Genet’s play, The Balcony.

Trailer for Fellini’s
“8 1/2”:

And he was still reading all the time: Robert Graves, Thucydides, Gogol, Balzac, Maupassant, Dickens, Dante and so many more.

It was not a narrow focus on folk music and on playing folk songs that allowed Bob Dylan to become one of the greatest artists.

No, it was his wide-ranging curiosity. Dylan has a curious mind that constantly seeks out and absorbs new information from wide-ranging and eclectic sources.

The point I’m making is that Dylan exposed himself (and continues to expose himself) to a all kinds of new information. All of that forms the backdrop for his own unique art.

And this leads me to Festival Albertine, a six-night event curated by arguably the leading Dylan expert, Greil Marcus.

“Engrenages” – Season 1 – Trailer:

Marcus’ worldview is certainly informed by his love of Dylan, who he was been listening to and writing about since the ‘60s. Marcus has written three books about Dylan, including his “Basement Tapes” masterpiece, “The Old, Weird America.”

Next month, Festival Albertine will take place from October 14 through October 19 in New York, and videos of the panel discussions will be available for all to see at the Albertine website after the festival ends.

This festival itself, like Marcus’ own approach to writing about culture and history, reminds me of Dylan’s curious mind.

Marcus has reached out to radical French filmmakers and experimental novelists, a Foucoult expert, and the genius mathematician John Nash, TV show auteurs and rock, film and book critics, fashion experts and screenwriters, graphic novel creators and political science professors, and organized a wide-ranging series of panels on topics ranging from “Extremist Fiction in Ordinary Language” to “Olivier Assayas in the Post-May Period.”

All of them and more will be at Festival Albertine.

The trailer for “Après- Mai”:

For more about the festival, please check out my previous post on it here.

If you care about Bob Dylan, you should care about Greil Marcus, and if you care about Greil Marcus, you should care about Festival Albertine.

Enough said.

[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 —

Audio/Video: Bob Dylan Records The Song That Changed Everything – June 15 & 16, 1965

20140613-210346-75826313.jpg

Forty-nine years ago, on June 16, 1965, Bob Dylan and a handful of ace session musicians including the great blues guitarist Michael Bloomfield and a upstart organ player, Al Kooper, recorded the take of “Like A Rolling Stone” that established Bob Dylan as one of the great rock ‘n’ rollers of all time.

The session took place in Columbia Studio A in New York, where Dylan was comfortable working, and where he had recorded his previous albums.

Dylan had started recording the song the previous day but didn’t cut a killer take.

The musicians:

Michael Bloomfield, guitar, Joe Macho, Jr., bass, Bobby Gregg, drums. Al Kooper, organ; Paul Griffin, piano; Bruce Langhorne, tambourine.

Greil Marcus writing about the fourth take on June 16, 1965, the take with the magic:

Take 4 — 6.34

“Four,” Wilson says. As it happens, this will be the master take, and the only time the song is found.

“One two, one two three”: the bang that sets it off is not quite as big as in the take just before, but it somehow makes more space for itself, pushes the others away for the fraction of a second necessary to mark the act. Gregg, too, has found the song. He has a strategy, creating humps in the verses and then carrying everyone over them.

As big as the drums are, Griffin plays with light hands; you can imagine his keys loosening. At the very start, piano and bass seem the bedrock — but so much is happening, and with such gravity, you cannot as a listener stay in one place. You may have heard this performance thousands of times, but here, as it takes shape, the fact that it does take shape doesn’t seem quite real. The false starts have created a sense that there can be no finished version, and even if you know this is where it happens, as with all the takes before it you are waiting for it to stop short.

Bloomfield is playing with finesse, passion, and most of all modesty. He has a sense of what to leave out, of when to play and when not to. He waits for his moments, and then he leaps. And this is the only take where, for him, everything is clear.

There is a moment, just after the first “How does it feel?” when Kooper’s organ, Bloomfield’s guitar, and Gregg’s cymbals come together in a single waterspout, and you can feel the song running under its own power. You wonder: what are the musicians thinking, as this astonishing story, told with such a sensation of daring and jeopardy, unfolds in front of them for the first time?

Kooper holds down a stop at the fade, long after everyone else has quit playing. “Like wild thing, baby,” someone says, beside himself. “That sounds good to me,” Wilson says, happiness all over his voice.

You can read Marcus’ description of the entire June 16 session here.

The song that changed everything:

“Maggie’s Farm” into “Like A Rolling Stone” at Newport Folk Festival, July 25, 1965:

Like A Rolling Stone by Bob Dylan on Grooveshark

Hollywood Bowl, Sept. 3, 1965:

Like A Rolling Stone by Bob Dylan on Grooveshark

Liverpool, England, May 14, 1966:

The Royal Albert Hall, London, May 26, 1966:

Like A Rolling Stone by Bob Dylan on Grooveshark

Not sure when or where this is from or who is playing the solo but it smokes:

Like A Rolling Stone by Bob Dylan & Neil Young on Grooveshark

Bob Dylan with Michael Bloomfield, Warfield Theater, San Francisco, November 15, 1980:

Like A Rolling Stone (San Francisco, Nov. 15, 1980) by Bob Dylan on Grooveshark

— A Days Of The Crazy-Wild blog post —

Video: Lykke Li Does ‘I Follow Rivers’ at The Apollo Theater in NYC

Lykke Li at the Apollo Theater.

Lykke Li performed at The Apollo Theater in New York last night.

Check out “I Follow Rivers”:

Plus here’s “No One Ever Loved,” her contribution to the film “The Fault In Our Stars.”

Thanks Stereogum!

[In August of this year I’ll be publishing my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.]

– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-

Video: Historic 1974 Early Footage of Patti Smith – ‘Paint It Black,’ ‘Piss Factory’ & More

Patti Smith, 1974, Max’s Kansas City.

In 1974 Patti Smith performed at Max’s Kansas City backed by Lenny Kaye and Richard Sohl.

These videos find Smith performing songs that she soon dropped from her set, including “Picture Hanging Blues” and “We Three.”

The video was shot by photogrpaher Bob Gruen.

Although the quality is crude, this is amazing and if you dig Patti Smith you’ve got to see it.

“Paint It Black”:

“Land”:

“Hey Joe”:

“I’m Wild About That Thing”:

“Picture Hanging Blues”:

“Piss Factory”:

“The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game”:

“We Three”:

“We’re Gonna Have A Real Good Time Together”:

[In August of this year I’ll be publishing my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.]

– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-

Art: Bob Dylan’s ‘Drawn Blank Series’ Exhibited Simultaneously in New York & Perth, Australia — See Gallery of Dylan Art

Bob Dylan, artist.

He may be touring the world.

And recording new albums.

And OKing the release of archived recordings.

But Bob Dylan is also putting his art out into the world in a major way.

This week his “Drawn Blank Series” is not only being exhibited at the Ross Art Group gallery in New York.

At the same paintings based on the original drawings he did some years ago are on exhibit at Weatherby Fine Art in Perth Australia.

And of course last October, Halcyon Gallery in London had Dylan’s “Mood Swings” exhibit, in which iron works by Dylan were exhibited along with paintings and signed limited editions.

Dylan created more than 300 drawings during his 1989-1992 world tour, and later reworked many of them in watercolour and gouache.

Here are some of Dylan’s paintings:

[In August of this year I’ll be publishing my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.]

– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-

Secrets of ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ Revealed in Dylan’s Working Manuscript for the Song

First page of “Like A Rolling Stone” manuscript.

Oh to have been a fly on the wall as Bob Dylan wrote some of his now classic songs.

Until time travel becomes possible, the closest we may get to observing Dylan the songwriter in action are the four pages from the working manuscript for “Like A Rolling Stone” that Sotheby’s will auction on June 24, 2014 in New York.

On the pages, along with many of the lines that ended up in what some believe is Dylan’s greatest song, a song that certainly changed people’s ideas of what rock ‘n’ roll could be upon it’s release in July of 1965, are lyrics that Dylan clearly was considering for inclusion, but which didn’t make the cut.

The chorus, for instance, didn’t fully come together until page four of the manuscript. On page one there is a version of the chorus that reads:

“How does it feel
How does it feel
To be (or not to be) on your own
Direction (road back home)
Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone.”

Right below the second “How does it feel,” Dylan has added “Is it ain’t quite real.”

And at the side of the page it says “Al Capone” with a line drawn to the word “direction” in the chorus.

Page two.

On the second page of the manuscript is a version of the chorus with “path unknown” as one of the lines.

At the top of page three is written: “How does it feel/ Behind the wheel.”

At the bottom of page three the chorus is again a work in progress:

How does it feel to be on your own
It feels real (dog-bone)
Does it feel real.”

Then he wrote “New direction home” but put a line through “new” and wrote “no” under it.

Then: “When the winds have (unreadable word that could be “flown”)
“Shut up and deal like a rolling stone
Raw deal
Get down and kneel.”

Page three.

By page four this is the chorus:

“How does it feel, how does it feel
To be on your own
Like a dog without a bone
Now you’re unknown
Forever complete unknown
New direction home
No direction home
Like a rolling stone.”

“If you look at these four pages, you can see that at this stage there are rhyme schemes that he didn’t pursue, and I suppose the chorus is the biggest surprise,” Richard Austin, Sotheby’s manuscript expert, told the New York Times. “Here you have a chorus that is such an iconic piece of history, but it clearly didn’t arrive fully formed. And you wonder, if he chose another rhyme, would it have had the same impact?”

Dylan has written names of songs and books on the pages, which may or may not relate to the song itself: “Pony Blues,” a song by Charley Patton; “Midnight Special” (and above it “Mavis”); “On the Road”; and “Butcher Boy,” which likely refers to “The Butcher Boy,” an old folk song that the Clancy Brothers recorded.

“It was ten pages long,” Dylan once said of the manuscript for “Like A Rolling Stone.” “It wasn’t called anything, just a rhythm thing on paper all about my steady hatred directed at some point that was honest. In the end it wasn’t hatred, it was telling someone something they didn’t know, telling them they were lucky.”

Page four.

There’s also a mostly discarded verse that reads:

“You never listened to the man who could (illegible) jive and wail
Never believed ‘m when he told you he had love for sale
You said you’d never compromise/ now he looks into your eyes
and says do you want make a deal.”

And what ended up being the third verse reads like this in part:

“You never turned around
To see the frowns
On the jugglers and the clowns
When they all came down
And did tricks for you to shake the money tree.”

There’s a line drawn through that entire last line.

The four manuscript pages for “Like A Rolling Stone” could sell for as much as $2 million.

Get the back story from the New York Times and Rolling Stone.

Dylan singing “Like A Rolling Stone”:

– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-

Video: Bob Dylan, Bonnie Raitt, Play ‘Million Miles’ Live

Bob Dylan, Toronto, 1998.

Two live versions of Bob Dylan playing “Million Miles” (off Time Out Of Mind) plus a live take on the song by Bonnie Raitt.

Bob Dylan at the Maple Leaf Gardens, Toronto, ON, Canada, October 29, 1998:

Bob Dylan at the Theater, Madison Square Garden, New York, NY, January 16, 1998:

Bonnie Raitt at Amager Bio in Copenhagen, Denmark, July 21st, 2013:

-– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –