Yeah before I buy those big overpriced box sets, I always go with either the original pressings or the cheaper Mofi offerings that always eventually go on sale.
A Simple Twist Of Fate - The Bob Dylan Thread
- Thread starter Joe Mac
- Start date
Yeah before I buy those big overpriced box sets, I always go with either the original pressings or the cheaper Mofi offerings that always eventually go on sale.
Badams
Member
I loved the film. Lots of great footage as well as cool moments for Joan Baez, Patti Smith, Joni Mitchell, and Allen Ginsberg among others. The Desire material remains underrated in my opinion and works really well live. Also, was not aware that Mick Ronson was one of the guitarists on this tour.
Aron
Well-Known Member
Watched the film last night. I loved seeing the live footage from those shows. It felt like a bit of a revelation seeing an in his prime-Dylan that animated on stage in front of a crowd. Those close up shots on his face as he is singing live were absolutely fascinating. Dude was locked in for those performances.
All that said, the film overall was somewhat disappointing for me. I had read ahead of time in terms of what was real and what was obviously not real. Unfortunately, knowing that at least some of the material is phony calls pretty much everything outside of the music performances onstage into question for me. Even some of the behind the scenes footage seems questionable since some of it was from "Renaldo and Clara", which itself was a weird hybrid of a film production. Frankly, the only bit from the recent Dylan interview footage that seemed legit was when he said he didn't remember anything about the Rolling Thunder Revue tour. Everything else seemed rather iffy to me. Not trying to go full on conspiracy theory on it, but, so many of the participants no longer with us, and several of the other talking head interviews have already been proven to be fabricated for this "Bob Dylan Story". That pretty much leaves us with Dylan's interview segments, and we know he likes to play with what is truth and what is fiction, and Joan Baez, who really doesn't get into much detail in what she has to say.
Like I said, the live footage feels special, and it is worth watching the movie just to see those performances. I just wish we had gotten a different take on this. That period and that tour is mysterious and interesting enough on its own, in my opinion, to warrant that, particularly for the generations since who weren't around for it. A concert film would be great...a concert film/honest documentary would have been amazing. We got neither here, and while what is here is enjoyable to a certain extent, it feels like punches were pulled to protect the mystery and myth. And with the players involved in this project, that is a bit of a letdown for me.
All that said, the film overall was somewhat disappointing for me. I had read ahead of time in terms of what was real and what was obviously not real. Unfortunately, knowing that at least some of the material is phony calls pretty much everything outside of the music performances onstage into question for me. Even some of the behind the scenes footage seems questionable since some of it was from "Renaldo and Clara", which itself was a weird hybrid of a film production. Frankly, the only bit from the recent Dylan interview footage that seemed legit was when he said he didn't remember anything about the Rolling Thunder Revue tour. Everything else seemed rather iffy to me. Not trying to go full on conspiracy theory on it, but, so many of the participants no longer with us, and several of the other talking head interviews have already been proven to be fabricated for this "Bob Dylan Story". That pretty much leaves us with Dylan's interview segments, and we know he likes to play with what is truth and what is fiction, and Joan Baez, who really doesn't get into much detail in what she has to say.
Like I said, the live footage feels special, and it is worth watching the movie just to see those performances. I just wish we had gotten a different take on this. That period and that tour is mysterious and interesting enough on its own, in my opinion, to warrant that, particularly for the generations since who weren't around for it. A concert film would be great...a concert film/honest documentary would have been amazing. We got neither here, and while what is here is enjoyable to a certain extent, it feels like punches were pulled to protect the mystery and myth. And with the players involved in this project, that is a bit of a letdown for me.
Aron
Well-Known Member
Also, if someone wanted to produce a legit documentary on Scarlet Rivera, that would be pretty amazing too. A lot of mystery surrounding her too, and this Rolling Thunder film only raised more questions for me.
I just watched it last night and thought it was great. The live footage is amazing obviously, but I mostly just loved seeing all these crazy interesting personalities like Allen Ginsberg, Scarlet Rivera, Patti Smith, Ronnie Hawkins, etc...
Even though a lot of stuff is staged and you can't really tell what's fake or not, I still think Dylan is probably one of the most fascinating interviews in music. I think the myths, legends and mysteries surrounding him have always been a big part of what makes him great and never would except a straightforward answer from him to any question.
She walked around with a freakin' sword!!! I want more of that please!
Murfocakes
Well-Known Member
My favourite Rolling Thunder era track is Abandoned Love. Such a track. I could listen to it all day
TrainFan73
Frothy
I didn’t know that parts of it were staged until after, I was a little confused by some of it as a result, it all made more sense after finding out.
I’m not really expecting a straight forward doc on Dylan ever. Not while he’s alive. He’s always been an Art is more honest than reality kind of guy anyhow.
I’m not really expecting a straight forward doc on Dylan ever. Not while he’s alive. He’s always been an Art is more honest than reality kind of guy anyhow.
I really enjoyed it but it was mental and the most prescient line in the whole thing was when Dylan said towards the beginning:
“Life isn’t about finding your self or finding anything, it’s about creating yourself.”
TrainFan73
Frothy
Also, at some point, I should dive head on into Street Legal to Good as I Been to You. I’ve spent almost no time with any of those albums. World Gone Wrong is the beginning of me Really being a fan and checking out his new stuff.
Aron
Well-Known Member
Interesting speculation regarding future Bootleg Series entries in this Rolling Stone piece.
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/...Aqcy2riM5UtEuUy9PcryWpeSwbeqp2ELhbJWt7hvjED28
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/...Aqcy2riM5UtEuUy9PcryWpeSwbeqp2ELhbJWt7hvjED28
Badams
Member
Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall has always been one of my favorite Bob songs lyrically and the ramped up blues-rock version is great. Definitely prefer it to the original version.
Aron
Well-Known Member
Back at the old forum, we started a thread about the Bob Boilen book "Your Song Changed My Life". Folks were supposed to read the book, which had essays from various musicians about the song that impacted them the most, and then write their own essays featuring a song of their choosing. Only a few of us that started off in that thread ended up writing their own essays. I figured since mine was on Dylan, this would be the place to share it. It's very long, so, feel free to jump on past this one if a wall of words isn't your thing.
My life has been filled with various musical phases. I realized very early on in life that music was something I really liked. I was fascinated by my parents’ turntable, and their record and 8-Track tape collections. I would hole up in my room as a little kid listening to Disney records on my child friendly record player. I was also lucky enough to grow up in an era in this country when there were still music classes in public schools. I don’t really play any instruments, but those were always some of my favorite classes, and my memories of those sessions are far stronger than my memories tied to the more traditional curriculum of that time.
My high school years aren’t a time I necessarily look back fondly on. The neighborhood in Houston I lived in was declining. There was more gang activity, and things could get rather kind of scary at times. Beginning with my junior year, I often spent my lunch period up in the library rather than the cafeteria. The one thing I had going for me was that I was a really good student. I found my way into the AP English courses at some point because I tended to do well with writing exercises. It was the one thing that always came pretty naturally for me.
The AP English teacher that junior year of high school was Mr. Kralosky. Mr. Kralosky was a stocky, muscular, intimidating guy who almost never smiled. His wife had taught me Social Studies a few years earlier in middle school. She was a really lovely lady, but, in contrast, students would try and transfer out of her husband’s class because he was so tough. I don’t know what it was, but for some reason, he and I actually got along quite well right off the bat.
At some point, we had an assignment that covered non-conformists throughout history. This was one of our big assignments for the year. We were given a multi-paged single spaced document with various names on it that were considered non-conformists. Writers. Painters. Actors. Musicians. Politicians. It was a very comprehensive list. We had to pick a name on the list, research them and then deliver a speech to the class discussing how they tied back to being a non-conformist. I scanned the list, and signed up to do my speech on Bob Dylan. I had heard of Dylan, and even heard some of his songs here and there, but given my musical journey to this point, I hadn’t REALLY listened to his stuff. I did my basic research, but I felt the only way I would really be able to talk about the guy was to buy his “Greatest Hits” CD. So I did just that. And I liked it well enough, but it didn’t set my world on fire or anything. I recognized one or two of the songs, and after sort of aligning certain songs with the research I had done, I felt I had a pretty solid speech prepared. The speech went well. I was able to field a few questions at the end, and I got a good grade. I thought that was pretty much that.
Shortly after that assignment, the first of the now ongoing “Bootleg Series” sets was released. I saw it in the store several times, and just passed by. Something about that assignment was still lingering with me though. I was working part time by this point, and I had a little extra money, so I just decided to buy that box set to see if all the glowing reviews I was reading were true. There was something about that cover photo for the box that hooked me too. Prime-era Dylan, at the mic, in his shades…it was a very cool image to me.
I listened to the three discs in that box set exclusively for months. Much of this material was vastly different than what I had heard on the “Greatest Hits” CD, in terms of style and tone. The entire first disc was pretty much folk tune outtakes that weren’t ever included on his actual albums. In retrospect, it was kind of a strange starting point to get into an iconic artist like Dylan, but it was the thing that started it all for me. Again, you have to remember that, up to this point, I’m listening to mostly New Wave, “College Rock” and FM radio hits. To suddenly dive head first into a collection of unreleased tunes, from an artist I wasn’t terribly familiar with outside of a school project, was a pretty big change in direction. But it was so pivotal.
That whole box set changed my life, and I could pick any number of songs that fit that description. If I had to pick just one, I would go with ‘Farewell Angelina’. This was an outtake from Dylan’s “Bringing It All Back Home” album, which would become one of my favorites out of his vast catalogue. It was an album that ultimately saw Dylan straddling the line between folk artist and rock artist. His previous album, “Another Side Of Bob Dylan” had seen a noticeable shift in lyrical content from what had come before. The songs became less structured…more abstract and dreamlike lyrically, but, on that album, Dylan remained a folk artist. That new adventurousness was refined on “Bringing It All Back Home”, with songs like ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ transporting the listener to a totally new place than they had ever been before. This was a different kind of pop song, one that may not have made total sense on the surface, but which made the listener feel…something new and exciting.
‘Farewell Angelina’ is a song that was quickly snatched up by Joan Baez, and, according to the liner notes from the box set, it wasn’t known for many years that Dylan had even attempted to record the tune himself. Reading that tidbit lent the track a mysterious quality to me right off the bat. Listening to the song for the first time, I remember quickly noticing that there was no chorus in the song. Just verse after verse filled with wild and colorful characters and images. There had been a few tracks on “Greatest Hits” that shared this characteristic, but those had not hit me as squarely as ‘Farewell Angelina’. The words seemed very stream of conscious to me, but the lines in those verses flowed together so beautifully. It was unlike anything I had ever heard before, and it really tore down all boundaries of what I thought a song should and could sound like. When people were first describing to a young me what songs were, they would often say that it was poetry set to music. This song was the closest physical account I had ever come across up to that point of fitting that description. And musically, it was so simple. It was just Dylan, an acoustic guitar and a harmonica. But this was so far removed from the early folk stuff collected on the first disc of that box set. This wasn’t a protest song, or a talking blues number. This felt more like collage art.
Dylan isn’t known for having a traditionally beautiful voice, but I absolutely loved his vocal on the track. He sounded so weary as he slowly delivered these fantastic lines. There are so many great individual turns of phrase in the song, but my favorite verse is the following:
The jacks and the queens
They forsake the courtyard
Fifty-two gypsies
Now file past the guard
In the space where the deuce
And the ace once ran wild
Farewell Angelina
The sky is folding
I’ll see you after awhile
I loved the imagery with the players from the deck of cards, and when he slipped in the poker terms “folding” and “see” in the final two lines, I was just floored. It was so clever, and so different from anything else I had ever heard up to that point in my life. I wanted to hear more songs like this one. I wanted to have my mind blown in the same way that song had blown my mind. And in that moment, I became a Bob Dylan fan for life…like so many people before me, and so many since then. His songs didn’t just entertain me. They also educated me. I learned so much about vocabulary, history, spirituality and boundary breaking from listening to those songs. I had a similar reaction to ‘Farewell Angelina’ that I had when I first learned that poems didn’t have to have a traditional rhyming pattern. Essentially, all bets were off. My own writing was also impacted. Outside of papers where grammar and punctuation were evaluated, I began playing around with sentence structure and phrasing, so that my writing became more conversational. I began to write the way I wished I could talk, and that began after listening to songs like ‘Farewell Angelina’.
There was also an attitude from much of his work that made me feel stronger when I listened to it. A bit of defiance here, and some self-reliance there, which was something I really needed at that time in my life. Over the years, Dylan’s songs have saved me over and over again. I can always return to them, and it is like putting on a pair of comfortable shoes. They’ve made me laugh when I’ve needed a laugh. They’ve pulled me out of a funk when I’ve gotten myself into a funk. They’ve pushed the reset button in my brain when I’ve gotten out of sorts.
I just can’t imagine how life would have gone had Mr. Kralosky not given us that assignment in English class. It may have taken me many more years to cross paths with Dylan’s work, and even then, things may not have clicked in the same manner in which they did. I may have found a different entry point, and not had that revelatory moment that I had when listening to ‘Farewell Angelina’ for the first time. I’m forever thankful that it played out the way it did.
My life has been filled with various musical phases. I realized very early on in life that music was something I really liked. I was fascinated by my parents’ turntable, and their record and 8-Track tape collections. I would hole up in my room as a little kid listening to Disney records on my child friendly record player. I was also lucky enough to grow up in an era in this country when there were still music classes in public schools. I don’t really play any instruments, but those were always some of my favorite classes, and my memories of those sessions are far stronger than my memories tied to the more traditional curriculum of that time.
My high school years aren’t a time I necessarily look back fondly on. The neighborhood in Houston I lived in was declining. There was more gang activity, and things could get rather kind of scary at times. Beginning with my junior year, I often spent my lunch period up in the library rather than the cafeteria. The one thing I had going for me was that I was a really good student. I found my way into the AP English courses at some point because I tended to do well with writing exercises. It was the one thing that always came pretty naturally for me.
The AP English teacher that junior year of high school was Mr. Kralosky. Mr. Kralosky was a stocky, muscular, intimidating guy who almost never smiled. His wife had taught me Social Studies a few years earlier in middle school. She was a really lovely lady, but, in contrast, students would try and transfer out of her husband’s class because he was so tough. I don’t know what it was, but for some reason, he and I actually got along quite well right off the bat.
At some point, we had an assignment that covered non-conformists throughout history. This was one of our big assignments for the year. We were given a multi-paged single spaced document with various names on it that were considered non-conformists. Writers. Painters. Actors. Musicians. Politicians. It was a very comprehensive list. We had to pick a name on the list, research them and then deliver a speech to the class discussing how they tied back to being a non-conformist. I scanned the list, and signed up to do my speech on Bob Dylan. I had heard of Dylan, and even heard some of his songs here and there, but given my musical journey to this point, I hadn’t REALLY listened to his stuff. I did my basic research, but I felt the only way I would really be able to talk about the guy was to buy his “Greatest Hits” CD. So I did just that. And I liked it well enough, but it didn’t set my world on fire or anything. I recognized one or two of the songs, and after sort of aligning certain songs with the research I had done, I felt I had a pretty solid speech prepared. The speech went well. I was able to field a few questions at the end, and I got a good grade. I thought that was pretty much that.
Shortly after that assignment, the first of the now ongoing “Bootleg Series” sets was released. I saw it in the store several times, and just passed by. Something about that assignment was still lingering with me though. I was working part time by this point, and I had a little extra money, so I just decided to buy that box set to see if all the glowing reviews I was reading were true. There was something about that cover photo for the box that hooked me too. Prime-era Dylan, at the mic, in his shades…it was a very cool image to me.
I listened to the three discs in that box set exclusively for months. Much of this material was vastly different than what I had heard on the “Greatest Hits” CD, in terms of style and tone. The entire first disc was pretty much folk tune outtakes that weren’t ever included on his actual albums. In retrospect, it was kind of a strange starting point to get into an iconic artist like Dylan, but it was the thing that started it all for me. Again, you have to remember that, up to this point, I’m listening to mostly New Wave, “College Rock” and FM radio hits. To suddenly dive head first into a collection of unreleased tunes, from an artist I wasn’t terribly familiar with outside of a school project, was a pretty big change in direction. But it was so pivotal.
That whole box set changed my life, and I could pick any number of songs that fit that description. If I had to pick just one, I would go with ‘Farewell Angelina’. This was an outtake from Dylan’s “Bringing It All Back Home” album, which would become one of my favorites out of his vast catalogue. It was an album that ultimately saw Dylan straddling the line between folk artist and rock artist. His previous album, “Another Side Of Bob Dylan” had seen a noticeable shift in lyrical content from what had come before. The songs became less structured…more abstract and dreamlike lyrically, but, on that album, Dylan remained a folk artist. That new adventurousness was refined on “Bringing It All Back Home”, with songs like ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ transporting the listener to a totally new place than they had ever been before. This was a different kind of pop song, one that may not have made total sense on the surface, but which made the listener feel…something new and exciting.
‘Farewell Angelina’ is a song that was quickly snatched up by Joan Baez, and, according to the liner notes from the box set, it wasn’t known for many years that Dylan had even attempted to record the tune himself. Reading that tidbit lent the track a mysterious quality to me right off the bat. Listening to the song for the first time, I remember quickly noticing that there was no chorus in the song. Just verse after verse filled with wild and colorful characters and images. There had been a few tracks on “Greatest Hits” that shared this characteristic, but those had not hit me as squarely as ‘Farewell Angelina’. The words seemed very stream of conscious to me, but the lines in those verses flowed together so beautifully. It was unlike anything I had ever heard before, and it really tore down all boundaries of what I thought a song should and could sound like. When people were first describing to a young me what songs were, they would often say that it was poetry set to music. This song was the closest physical account I had ever come across up to that point of fitting that description. And musically, it was so simple. It was just Dylan, an acoustic guitar and a harmonica. But this was so far removed from the early folk stuff collected on the first disc of that box set. This wasn’t a protest song, or a talking blues number. This felt more like collage art.
Dylan isn’t known for having a traditionally beautiful voice, but I absolutely loved his vocal on the track. He sounded so weary as he slowly delivered these fantastic lines. There are so many great individual turns of phrase in the song, but my favorite verse is the following:
The jacks and the queens
They forsake the courtyard
Fifty-two gypsies
Now file past the guard
In the space where the deuce
And the ace once ran wild
Farewell Angelina
The sky is folding
I’ll see you after awhile
I loved the imagery with the players from the deck of cards, and when he slipped in the poker terms “folding” and “see” in the final two lines, I was just floored. It was so clever, and so different from anything else I had ever heard up to that point in my life. I wanted to hear more songs like this one. I wanted to have my mind blown in the same way that song had blown my mind. And in that moment, I became a Bob Dylan fan for life…like so many people before me, and so many since then. His songs didn’t just entertain me. They also educated me. I learned so much about vocabulary, history, spirituality and boundary breaking from listening to those songs. I had a similar reaction to ‘Farewell Angelina’ that I had when I first learned that poems didn’t have to have a traditional rhyming pattern. Essentially, all bets were off. My own writing was also impacted. Outside of papers where grammar and punctuation were evaluated, I began playing around with sentence structure and phrasing, so that my writing became more conversational. I began to write the way I wished I could talk, and that began after listening to songs like ‘Farewell Angelina’.
There was also an attitude from much of his work that made me feel stronger when I listened to it. A bit of defiance here, and some self-reliance there, which was something I really needed at that time in my life. Over the years, Dylan’s songs have saved me over and over again. I can always return to them, and it is like putting on a pair of comfortable shoes. They’ve made me laugh when I’ve needed a laugh. They’ve pulled me out of a funk when I’ve gotten myself into a funk. They’ve pushed the reset button in my brain when I’ve gotten out of sorts.
I just can’t imagine how life would have gone had Mr. Kralosky not given us that assignment in English class. It may have taken me many more years to cross paths with Dylan’s work, and even then, things may not have clicked in the same manner in which they did. I may have found a different entry point, and not had that revelatory moment that I had when listening to ‘Farewell Angelina’ for the first time. I’m forever thankful that it played out the way it did.
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MattS
Well-Known Member
Honestly, I can dig it. Hearing that Cash duet stuff, in particular, is something I am very interested in hearing. Won't lie, I am more stoked for the idea of a Time out of Mind-era box. That album is amazing.
Badams
Member
Aron
Well-Known Member
I think the "Infidels"/"Empire Burlesque" era set could be really interesting. We kicked that idea around a bit ourselves in the old forum Dylan thread. Particularly if there are demos of some of the songs that strip away the 80's production, or even if they remix them a bit. Could be a reclamation project along the lines of the "Another Self Portrait" set. Not sure how many outtakes there are from that period though. We may have already gotten the best of those.
Aron
Well-Known Member
Stumbled across this interview with Patti Smith where she talks about why she didn't go on the Rolling Thunder Revue tour. Actually, it is less of an interview than her providing observations and insight on that topic. Her comments about the song 'Wallflower' were included in the liner notes for the first Bootleg Series collection, but, other than that, I had never read this before. Very interesting stuff. It is also kind of cool to read this after having watched the Netflix film, as some of the scenes she describes are featured in the movie.
https://njnnetwork.com/2009/12/why-...XITq_926mxkjCe0lPBtrhWQlRc1nmGRFtTsq1s0hr-96g
https://njnnetwork.com/2009/12/why-...XITq_926mxkjCe0lPBtrhWQlRc1nmGRFtTsq1s0hr-96g
daddyfatsnax
Member
Hey @Joe Mac quick dylan question. i've seen you talk before about your growing bob mofi collection, what's your top 5 (not bob albums, but Mofis specifically, though feel free to elaborate on all things robert zimmerman, 'tis the space) on vinyl? I've picked up a few already: bringing it all back home, blood on the tracks, and basement tapes.
Question to anybody: What's a random song you really like dylan's vocals on? I've always really liked "One More Cup of Coffee"
Question to anybody: What's a random song you really like dylan's vocals on? I've always really liked "One More Cup of Coffee"
Yeah I’ve been picking them up, I have 5 now, with a 6th one step on the way...
I think in order of favourite as a Mofi rather than just Bob
Bringing It All Back Home mono
Desire
Highway 61 Revisited mono
Nashville Skyline Rising
Blood On The Tracks (my favourite Dylan album and an astounding pressing but this 33 isn’t as good as those 45s!)