# Bob Dylan - More Blood, More Tracks



## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

Anybody get this, episode 14 in the Bootleg series, includes the complete NYC sessions for Blood on the Tracks, and the five re-recorded songs in Minnesota? I got it yesterday and it's not only for completist muppets like me. Play this and you'll be struck dumb, it's so compelling to listen to. Sure, it has about sixteen versions of every song, and it's stacked heavy with acoustic ballads, but they're gems, they're pearls. He sings with such conviction, and flexibility in how the songs are arranged, it's almost like listening to one long, unstoppable ballad.

Blood on the Tracks is one of those records where Dylan marshalled all his troops into one county and dominated: his lyrics are piercing, his melodies are large, his vocals bite. This new boxset is the process that spawned the record. A controversy arises among Dylan nuts as to whether or not he improved the record when he famously stalled its release to go to Minneapolis and re-record five of the songs. Now we can compare and make decisions, make playlists, produce our own Blood on the Tracks.

My own take on it is, he improved Tangled Up In Blue, but didn't improve You're a Big Girl Now, or If You See Her, Say Hello. Idiot Wind is magnificent on the album but the difference between the re-recorded version and the NYC one is so vast that they're different species, almost. I prefer the NYC original though, where it's sung through gritted teeth, and the fury we feel from the Minnesota version has not yet been vented. The fifth re-do is Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts, which is a song I tend to be indifferent towards, and I don't prefer either version over the other.

That leaves me with a problem, had I been there when Bob sequenced this record: I'd only have the re-recorded Tangled Up in Blue - which would unbalance the record maybe, because there would be a same-ish tone and sound to the rest of it. So maybe he was right all along to redo some songs at a faster tempo, and with a different band? This argument will rumble on and on, and the great boxset I'm listening to now, even as we speak, will not resolve it...


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Yes, like Kieran, I'm down that particular rabbit hole too! I just got it yesterday and I've only just started listening. It's one of my all time favourite periods of Bob and what I've heard so far is just brilliant. Obviously non fanatics need not apply but for those of us who are committed (and we probably should be) fans this is a delight.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Dylan can't sing.


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

Captainnumber36 said:


> Dylan can't sing.


:lol::lol:

Actually, I'm listening to him singing right now and he's singing quite beautifully, with great intensity and rare conviction. The bloke's a great singer - always was!

:tiphat:


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## Belowpar (Jan 14, 2015)

That must be why Lamont Dozier told Levi Stubbs to sing "Reach out", like Dylan. Lots of others paid 'homage' to him.

Define singing and Dylan's expressivity gets him in there every time.

PS re the recording the second band was really sloppy compared to the earlier session musicians. This is one of those "Bootlegs" you finally get to hear, that really lives up to the hype. If you like BOTT at all, its well worth getting the contrasting version to compare.


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## Room2201974 (Jan 23, 2018)

Captainnumber36 said:


> Dylan can't sing.


Best vocal quality: No
Decent range: No
Perfectly on pitch: No, heck lots of times he's microtonal.

And none of that matters. His ability to shade a word or a line with a certain expressiveness conveys a world of meaning that other singers can only dream about obtaining. Like the way he sings the word "Delacroix" on _Tangled Up In Blue_, or that totally pi$$ed off feeling he conveys in _Idiot Wind_: " You're an idiot babe it's a wonder that you still know how to breathe. " _Blood On The Tracks_ is filled with this, so is _Time Out Of Mind_.

This Bob gestalt doesn't work for every song but when it does, you'll notice that the song in question hits the nail more squarely on the head than just about any pop artist. Without the pathos of Dylan's voice _Time Out Of Mind_ is just a collection of good songs instead of a masterpiece that few know how to paint.

The songs of _Blood On The Tracks_ are about a relationship breaking apart. And so are the vocal shadings. It's like listening to a Vermeer.


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## Belowpar (Jan 14, 2015)

Room2201974 said:


> It's like listening to a Vermeer.


You seemed on a roll but now I wonder if you need to turn the sound up?


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

Belowpar said:


> PS re the recording the second band was really sloppy compared to the earlier session musicians. This is one of those "Bootlegs" you finally get to hear, that really lives up to the hype. If you like BOTT at all, its well worth getting the contrasting version to compare.


Yeah, I feel that way too. In fact, I think If You See Her and You're A Big Girl sound a bit "fake" compared to the NYC versions, if you know what I mean. Even his singing sounds like he's straining for feeling, whereas there's a fierce bite to the intended NYC release of You're A Big Girl Now, as well as a more beautiful performance by the musicians. "I'm goin' outta my mind," sung through gritted teeth, sounds exactly like he is going out of his mind, but it never loses its musical exactness, and becomes more compelling for sounding so real. In the Minnesota version, I think he's not getting it.

Idiot Wind, when he snarls "blowing every time you move your jaw, from the Grand Coulee Dam to the Mardi Gras," you can't help but be struck dumb with wonder.

I suppose his predicament was that the album might sound a little one-note, in a way, in that it's all folk ballads in the same key. I know that after Time Out of Mind came out, he moaned about the lack of faster songs that didn't get on the record, a situation he remedied spectacularly on Love & Theft. But I've been playing the originally intended album, based on the NYC sessions, in the car and I think it was way ahead of even the released record. Really, only the Minnesota version of Tangled Up in Blue matches the NYC sessions, in my opinion, but I can live with Idiot Wind and Lily, Rosemary- too.

By the way, an interesting thing I didn't realise was that Call Letter Blues and Meet Me in the Morning both were recorded side by side in the studio. I had thought that Meet Me in the Morning was a much later attempt, a rewritten song from the tune of Call Letter Blues...


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

Room2201974 said:


> Best vocal quality: No
> Decent range: No
> Perfectly on pitch: No, heck lots of times he's microtonal.
> 
> ...


Yeah, he really knows how to express the meaning of the songs through his performance, like a great character actor in a timeless movie. This one's for the Cap'n:


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## philoctetes (Jun 15, 2017)

BOTT is a major gallery in the world-class museum of Bob.

People miss the whole point of folk music. It wasn't that he couldn't sing, or play harmonica, but that nobody else did those things like Bob. This is what makes him an American original, if I may use the cliche, like Leadbelly, Big Mama Thornton, Muddy Waters....

I must admit that vocals can be an objective criticism when applied to someone who isn't putting out good songs, and that would be the Bob Dylan I hear on many of his albums since the 80s, when he began to sound more like Jimmy Durante than a sage beyond his years. I don't need to hear anybody else's voice on a lot of those great songs in his prime, though OTOH a lot of those songs have been covered well.

I saw him live once and it blew me away, his band could do anything, playing mostly new arrangements, and Bob's rasp was fit for the whole songlist.

I see there is a sampler on Spotify, maybe see you in the rabbit hole...


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Kieran said:


> Yeah, he really knows how to express the meaning of the songs through his performance, like a great character actor in a timeless movie. This one's for the Cap'n:


I like the studio version way better. Not a fan of Live albums. Blood on the Tracks is the most listenable Dylan album to me.


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

Phil loves classical said:


> I like the studio version way better. Not a fan of Live albums. Blood on the Tracks is the most listenable Dylan album to me.


This version is one of the out-takes from the NYC sessions for the song. Debate rages still as to whether or not he was wise to stall delay of these sessions and decamp to Minnesota to fiddle with them anew. My mind is still open, but now we have the lot of them, we can make our own versions!


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

The disc I got, at Wal-Mart for 11.99, is called volume 14 of the Bootleg series, but it's only 1 disc. It is a fantastic new glimpse into Dylan, going back to the basics, which shows his strengths as a writer AND a singer/guitarist. He's a great storyteller here, and the songs seem to be little "tableaux" or scenes like a great painting; it definitely is epic art. My favorites are "Jack of Hearts" and "Tangled Up In Blue."





The box set, $114. Above that, the single disc for $11.99


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

I love Blood on the Tracks. Not heard this release yet but it sounds interesting.


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

millionrainbows said:


> The disc I got, at Wal-Mart for 11.99, is called volume 14 of the Bootleg series, but it's only 1 disc. It is a fantastic new glimpse into Dylan, going back to the basics, which shows his strengths as a writer AND a singer/guitarist. He's a great storyteller here, and the songs seem to be little "tableaux" or scenes like a great painting; it definitely is epic art. My favorites are "Jack of Hearts" and "Tangled Up In Blue."


His singing and guitar work are very tender and expressive on this, aren't they? Certainly, we hear the great care he took over these songs. He doesn't treat them shabbily, as he has with many other great songs during his life. I don't know what's on the single disc set, but it makes for a great partner copy for the original release...


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

Merl said:


> I love Blood on the Tracks. Not heard this release yet but it sounds interesting.


It's worth it for following Dylan's studio process. He doesn't try too many different versions of the songs, just adding (sparse) instruments after starting off acoustic. In The Cutting Edge from the Bootleg Series, covering 1965-1966, we hear radically different early versions of songs like Visions of Johanna and Like a Rolling Stone, among others, but with this set, the songs are fully written before he entered the studio, but there's maybe more switches in tone, as if he's settled on the melodies, but is working out how best to perform them. The repetition is quite mesmeric....


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