The Rock n Roll Curmudgeon Rides Again
Author’s Disclaimer: I want to thank all the readers and viewers of Lightwood for makingPart One of this essay the most read article in the least amount of time in Lightwood’sgrand literary, three-year history. Now if only I could pay the mortgage with all those clicks, views and impressions.
(Publisher’s note: You can always donate to Lightwood on our donation button. And we’re always looking for music reviews. And now, back to Mike Jurkovic.)
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Perhaps, in a small way via a simple twist of fate, we have that suave crooner, Bing Crosby to thank for the tumult of titles that have come before any Bootleg Series. It was Der Bingle after all who, just after World War II and weary of recording his radio show live every ding-dong day, advanced money to Alexander Poniatoff, the cash-strapped founder of the nascent tape recording manufacturer Ampex, to build tape machines so Bing could record several shows a day, freeing his time for his more sundry pursuits of golf, booze, and babes.
Then in 1963 the Dutch company Phillips developed the tape cassette. Originally used for dictation machines, by 1970 these little pocket babies were everywhere, and so we have, as far as Mr. Dylan is concerned: Great White Wonder, The Genuine Bootleg Series, Folksinger’s Choice, Thin Wild Mercury Music, Blood On The Tracks: New York Sessions, A Tree With Roots: The Genuine Basement Tapes, The Gaslight Tapes, Cowboy Angel Blues, Contract With The Lord, Plymouth Rock, Paint The Daytime Black, The Dylan/Cash Sessions, Town Hall, The Minnesota Hotel Tapes. . .The titles are endless and, like the man himself, contain multitudes.
First available in Japan and Europe in 1982, CDs hit American shores in the spring of ’83
and became popular in ’85. With 74 minutes available the bootleg market exploded. Why 74 minutes? Origin stories conflict, but two main stories run thusly: Chasing the endorsement of legendary conductor Herbert Von Karajan, Sony and Philips knew the new format needed to meet Karajan’s one condition: The new technology had to hold the whole of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony without interruption. The second story still holds Beethoven at the center, but this time it was Sony’s then president Norio Ohga’s desire to hear the Ninth uninterrupted.
Now that we’re in the 80’s let’s begin this totally subjective retrospective with the bootleg series release lowest on my ranking: Volume 16: Springtime in NY. Let’s remember that, as usual, the whole world was in a perilous flux in the 80’s. Reagan was elected and from there the trickle down becomes an ugly deluge of events. The Soviets invade Afghanistan. Lennon, Sadat, and Indira Gandhi are assassinated. Everyone gets their MTV. AIDS appears. Big hair rules. Post-its, the computer, and the mobile phone begin their march to dominate and dumb down the whole world.
And that was just the decade’s first half. The second half includes Chernobyl and the space shuttle Challenger exploding. Thatcher wins election. So too Bush 41. Fox New begins to twist reality and the Exxon Valdez springs a leak. At least, on the bright side, The Simpsons debuted and the Berlin Wall came down.
So why shouldn’t Dylan be in the same funk as the rest of us? Volume 16 answers that. Are there highlights, sure, it’s Dylan after all and there’s always a surprise and a handful of rewards. The alternate “Jokerman. “Angelina,” “Blind Willie McTell,” “Too Late,” “Dark Eyes.” But all the covers are spotty at best, and the whole thing just seems to be a sloppy, if not hasty, mis-step by the producers of a multi award winning series.
Next comes Volume 7: No Direction Home. Let’s admit it, if it weren’t for Martin Scorsese’s terrific documentary of the same name, this one wouldn’t exist, though “Chimes of Freedom” from Newport ’64 is a thing to cherish for the ages. So much of this is covered by other series releases that it’s really old news.
As fun as it is to hear the Dylan/Cash sessions in their entirety, The Bootleg Series Vol. 15: Travelin’ Thru, 1967–1969 runs a wee bit thin with only the few surviving slightly altered alternatives to John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline fill up the set.
From here on it might be safe to say, by way of trying to entirely purge myself of any responsibility, that things get judged with a certain emotional depth and familiarity with the material. For the novice, The Bootleg Series Vol. 9: The Witmark Demos: 1962–1964 serves up several seminal signposts (“Blowing In The Wind,” “Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” “The Death of Emmet Till,” “Masters of War,” etc) but for collectors, there was little new here.
The same fate befalls collectors and completists with The Bootleg Series Vol. 6: Bob Dylan Live 1964, Concert at Philharmonic Hall. For newcomers and the inquisitive, this two-disc set is an absolute must. A pure Dylan performance of cocky exuberance, highlighting both the protest darling and the emerging impressionist bard (“Gates of Eden,” “Mr. Tambourine Man”) It’s just that, for us, the legion of obsessives, Midnight Beat’s All Hallows Eve & More (the more being the Broadside Radio Show, WBAI FM radio, NY May 1962) clued us into this one-night-in-a- lifetime performance decades ago.
A dear Hudson Valley Dylanologist long close to my heart warned me early on in this mad venture that there was no right or wrong here, but my last selection for this particular drive-by will undoubtedly get me cast into ABBA hell by many. Erroneously titled from the very first bootlegged day (the performance was really recorded at the Manchester Free Trade Hall5/17/66, not Royal Albert Hall), The Bootleg Series Volume 4: Live 1966: The “Royal Albert Hall” Concert still startles with its energy and venom, but it’s old hat to collectors, especially in the form of Scorpio’s still earth shaking, Guitars Kissing and the Contemporary Fix with its wider, more in-your-face sound.
Next time: The Cutting Edge, More Blood On The Tracks, The Basement Tapes.
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Mike Jurkovic is a frequent contributor of poetry and music reviews for Lightwood. He is a prolific writer and activist and heads CAPS, Calling All Poets, a reading series and small publishing house. Read more of his work here on Lightwood by entering his name and clicking on our Search button.
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