Tag Archives: Bob Dylan

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Song of the Day #783: ‘If You See Her, Say Hello (Demo)’ – Bob Dylan

For me, the biggest highlight of Volumes 1-3 of Bob Dylan’s Bootleg Series are the New York versions of a few Blood On the Tracks songs.

As the story goes, Dylan recorded the whole album in New York then decided at the last minute that he wasn’t happy with some of the tracks and laid down new versions in Minneapolis. Those Minneapolis recordings are the songs we all know and love from the finished album.

But the New York tracks, largely acoustic versions of such classics as ‘Tangled Up in Blue,’ ‘Idiot Wind,’ ‘You’re a Big Girl Now’ and Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts,’ are equally revelatory. In fact, on the whole I think I prefer those original versions to the songs on the official release.

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Song of the Day #777: ‘Santa Fe’ – Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan’s Bootleg Series Vol. 1-3 was the first box set I ever bought, and remains one of only two I own. I’ve always viewed box sets as extravagant purchases, the musical equivalent of buying a solid gold hat. Paying $50+ for something that won’t even fit on the shelf alongside your other CDs? No, thank you.

But the promise of this first set of bootleg recordings — 58 tracks spanning Dylan’s earliest days to his most recent — was too much to pass up. So I laid down my hard-earned cash and cradled that package like a newborn.

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Song of the Day #776: ‘Let Me Die In My Footsteps’ – Bob Dylan

So after last week’s look at Bob Dylan’s 2009 Christmas album, I now jump 47 years back in time to a 1962 track that a young Dylan recorded for The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan but wound up not including on the album.

Dylan’s Bootleg Series, which includes eight released volumes and a ninth due next month, is an extraordinary supplement to his catalog of live and studio albums. Dylan has treasure troves of unreleased material, much of which tops his official output, and it’s a treat to see those songs so lovingly resurrected.

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Song of the Day #770: ‘O’ Little Town of Bethlehem’ – Bob Dylan

I started the Dylan Weekends series back in the closing days of January. And here we are in the closing days of August, a full seven months later.

It took me that long to explore every studio album Dylan has released so far — 34 of them — while leaving out 20 other albums consisting of either greatest hits, live performances or unreleased tracks.

It is to those albums that I will turn my attention next, specifically the amazing bootleg series that is surely the best project of its sort ever attempted.

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Song of the Day #769: ‘Little Drummer Boy’ – Bob Dylan

Fans who’ve followed Bob Dylan over his five decade (and counting) recording career, as well as non-fans who I’ve subjected to six months (and counting) of Dylan Weekends, know to expect the unexpected. But even the die-hards were likely thrown by Dylan’s most recent release, 2009’s Christmas in the Heart, an album of Christmas standards.

Was this a throwback to his Christian phase? A joke? Another acoustic covers collection along the lines of Good As I Been To You and World Gone Wrong? It was none of the above, or maybe all of the above and something else besides.

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