Bob Dylan: The Bootleg Series

* 1st song on Vol 5/1975 should shut up forever anyone who still thinks "Dylan can't sing"

* "Wallflower" - one of his most underrated songs, David Bromberg's version is great

I adore that vol 5 version of 'Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You' - track one, even using the phrase 'Rolling Thunder'. Thrills!

If you want to hear great acoustic Bob, you can't beat the three songs on Before the Flood: Don't Think Twice, It's Alright Ma and Just Like A Woman. All three are the best versions of those songs, and beat the piss out of the Royal Albert Hall acoustic stuff.

i'm also happy for the recently uprooted love of "shes your lover now". i about break everytime it just quits like that. Vol. 7 proves that the blonde on blonde sessions, though interesting, don't quite pack the punch of the final versions. i can't imagine what would have become of syln. the vol. 2 version is rough, but warm. b o b has a late night frosty glow. it coulda been better or worse.

the vol. 2 version of santa fe is great, better than the genuine basement tape's version....it makes you need to belt along with it.

i've gone on week long binges with each of the live records. Rolling Thunder got me to like "The Hurricane". The "It's Alright Ma" from 1964 brought back the almost crushing power of that song for me. And I still get chills with the 66 version of "Like A Rolling Stone".

all said, i love this series. i think it provides a brilliant look into how grand the dylan universe is.

dunno about "FA" but "MYBOMM" was covered by a few people--as the Scorsese doc makes clear, his publisher made sure his songs got covered.

I've had the the first box for a few years and been meaning to pick up vols. 4-7. Some faves from it that haven't been mentioned much:

Seven Curses (I'm sucker for mystical revenge/stolen virginity/evil lawmen/wronged man folklore stuff)
Sitting On A Barbed Wire Fence ("She's turnin' me into an old man/and man, I ain't even 25!")
If Not For You (It's prettier than the official version)
Nobody 'Cept You (Good call kornrulez)
Seven Days (Since i dig this and the rolling thunder biograph tracks, how urgent is it for me to pick up Vol.5? And also is the 1st version w/the dvd worth tracking down?)
Foot of Pride (The homesick blues, nearly 20 years of schoolin' later, and still on the day shift)
Tell Me (Bob can do Pop)

Xpost
thanks for answering my question before I posted it. that sounds cool.

-- Matos-Webster Dictionary (michaelangelomato...), October 6th, 2005.

Most notably and beautifully by Rod Stewart.

1st Disc Standouts:
"Hard Times in New York Town"
"House Carpenter" (Is this a cover or an original? It's become one of my Dylan favorites)
"Talkin' Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues"
"Rambling, Gambling Willie"
"Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues"
"Who Killed Davey Moore?"
"Last Thoughts On Woody Guthrie" (if for nothing else, those ending lines:

"You'll find God in the church of your choice
You'll find Woody Guthrie in Brooklyn State Hospital

And though it's only my opinion
I may be right or wrong
You'll find them both
In the Grand Canyon
At sundown"

Sung with such beauty, control, and weight, I can't get over it. Devastates me every time.

Listened to some Live 64, did not think much of it really. But I shall persevere.

Crawl Out Your Window is on Biograph, I think, Pinefox. Should you wish, I could copy it for you when I rescue it from "storage". I also have a J. Hendrix version recorded for the BBC Light Programme.

glockenspiel!

It's a cover - it's a ridiculously old trad song. A great version is on Harry Smiths' Anthology of American Folk Music.

seconded; amazing song/performance, totally spellbinding

Madness. I can't really say if it's the best disc but it's definitely the one I've listened to most. 'Foot of Pride','Every Grain', 'Blind Willie McT', 'Angelina', 'Seven Days' = throwaway??

So classsssssic.
Also turned me on to "St James Infirmary", from which the melody is lifted. Checl out Bobby Blue Bland's version if you have the chance.

Vol. 1-3 I heard before a lot of the albums, and it's the thing that made me obsessive about Dylan. Had a 90 cassette of tracks, mostly discs 1 & 2, that I completely wore out that summer and beyond. It started with "Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie". Upon hearing the original version of say "If Not For You" without the "Ready George?" and a certain wobbly reckless energy of a lot of the tracks on 1-3, the originals sounded rather polished or staid. "Santa Fe" is another good example. Even "Idiot Wind" at the end of Vol. 2 is more biting and mean than the album vers.

Vol. 4 opened my eyes in a big way to the pre-'66 material, as I'm sure it did for a lot of people. I actually prefer disc 1, particularly the devestatingly sad "Desolation Row" and Dylan's expressive harp playing thoughout. Almost like he's testing the audience with his harp playing, similar in aggression to part 2 "Play it fucking loud". I find the guitar playing on disc 1 tattered, like he means it, it all fits the mood nicely.

Vol. 5 I bought when it came out and only listened a handful of times. Need to return to it. I remember it sounding very punk rock, though.

Vol. 6 is the 1964 disc, right? Never bought that.

Vol. 7 don't have yet.

but anyway, i love the bootleg series' one and all, but part of me wishes that Dylan (or Columbia) would do like Elvis Costello and just reissue the albums each with a bonus disc of outtakes/live stuff/etc. Of course they just did that big SACD reissue series a few years ago, so that's unlikely to happen any time soon.

The fall reissues have an extra disc, but as they mostly have Peel sessions, they are pointless if you have that "Ah, the Fall Peel Sessions box set, you guys" set.

Latest discoveries:

'Tangled Up In Blue' - a centrepiece of the set to me when I first heard it - is it in E, and the LP version in G?

'Call Letter Blues' is doing more for me than before: some poignancy in the words.

I have never loved 'Idiot Wind' but am now impressed by the relative tenderness of this (NYC?) version as vs the LP.

The bootleg 'If You See Her' is a lot better than the LP's, surely.

Is 'Golden Loom' the first time Bob and Emmylou H sang together? Assuming it's her.

It's funny how that is country, then 'Catfish' is blues. I have always thought 'Catfish' kind of unimportant, but actually I like the depth of its sound, the reverb around those slides and harmonicas.

Is the barking dog the reason that this 'Every Grain of Sand' was not used? I like this song a lot considering that it's religious.

The whole set is an amazing way to take a rapid-fire time-tour through Dylan's career, hearing the flavour of one year (those Desirous violins) for a track or two before the next sound comes along.

Unlike PJM, I like Live 1964 a lot.

This glockenspiel rumour remains mysterious to me.

But christ, so many great things: 'Barbed Wire Fence', 'Train To Cry', '... Go Now' on bootleg 2. Peerless!

yah the box set has the next night.

https://www.flaggingdown.com/p/a-show-by-show-listening-guide-to

On a lunch break quickie, just listened to some of 20-track The 1974 Live Recordings Sampler on Spotify, starting with several of the songs not on Down In The Flood, where they would have fit for sure, incl. startling speediness, though no bellowing here, and every word comes through: "Something There Is About You," "Wedding Song" (unabashed and bashing, guitar like bongos near the end, but not too loud, for me, anyway), "The Ballad of Hollis Brown" I'm tempted to call proto-rap, but in '74 terms, it's got that Waylon Jennings-associated marching "eat-shit" tempo---with incisive guitaRR fills x flying words--just in case we got a little too happy with that, next up is "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll," just a tad slower, pain of imagery coming through, solo guitar again strong but not too loud---and having acoustic and electric renditions back and forth, track to track is part of the very effective zig-zag sequencing here, also incl. subsets of idiosyncratic love ballads and other things whisked away like layers ov table cloths.
Mind you, a lot of Down In The Flood's staples, "Watchtower" etc., are on here as well, from whatever nights and venues---but damn.

Stupid Amazon (I know I know, but I got a birthday gift card that was the only reason I could afford this thing in the first place) bumped the delivery of my box set out like 3 weeks.

thanks, Dow! that sounds great. wonder where my Third Man order is.

FYI, while I was digging for updates about my shipping, I saw folks on reddit saying that Third Man said they'll be shipping theirs out within the next two weeks.

thanks! may break down and stream.

Not a perfect recording - I'm guessing a cassette recording and it has some distortion in spots - but at least it's a soundboard recording and not an audience recording from far away.

Hopefully they have a tape of the following night's performance that's equally good if not better. For my money, that may be the best live rendition of this song he's ever done.

I'll have to take that back - now that I can hear him more clearly on this soundboard recording, it's clear he flubs quite a few words, so it's a shakier performance, but the song's third performance (at the early show on Jan. 6 at the Spectrum in Philly) sounds like the best one. Still a soundboard cassette with some annoying distortion in one spot, but Dylan sounds even more vulnerable and exposed and just nails it - worthy of being deemed a master take had they ran a multitrack recorder for this show.

This is nice - apparently taken from a U-Matic copy of the broadcast master used by the BBC's Old Grey Whistle Test. Basically it's an official low-generation copy that was sent to another broadcaster elsewhere in the world that leased the program. (It's the same Hard Rain concert video that Dylan originally made for NBC in the U.S.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kL5tG4W5wsE

The Hard Rain LP wasn't really "soundtrack" of the TV special, as sometimes assumed, but anyway, several keepers: incl. performances from other gigs. but anyway some def. keepers: rangy rockin' "Memphis Blues Again," and even "Lay Lady Lady" (rippling, "Let's take a chaaance, who real-ly cares/something something, let's go up-stairs..."). Non-tentative "Oh Sister" (far better thane-take studio original, which Emmylou said she was quite or maybe totally unfamiliar with), up-tempo with slide guitar "Shelter From The Storm"---

So we've talked on here about Dylan's People intimating that this Series per se may be coming to an end, but I still hold out hope for more expanded reissues of original releases, having for instance just read wiki on the Empire Burlesque sessions--just so many songs along the way; some are still among thee missing:

As Clinton Heylin reports, Dylan recorded in sporadic sessions, as had become his norm, rather than "block-booking studio time" and recording in one concentrated period. The result was "an unprecedented expenditure of" time for recording a Dylan album, from July 1984 to March 1985 (although The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan had been recorded over a similarly long period)
....During one session between July and September 1984 (at the Power Station), Dylan demoed a song called "Go 'Way Little Boy", with Ron Wood and "cowpunk" rockers Lone Justice. Dylan and Wood also played on Lone Justice's version of "Go 'Way Little Boy", which was recorded at the same session and was ultimately released as a B-side to their single "Sweet Sweet Baby (I'm Falling)". A blues number entitled "Oh Baby" was also recorded with the same lineup but has never surfaced.
...despite positive feedback from his peers, Dylan ultimately omitted "New Danville Girl" from Empire Burlesque.
...Around this time, Dylan also revived from the Infidels sessions "Someone's Got a Hold of My Heart". "A song about being torn apart by irreconcilable demands," according to Clinton Heylin, in revision it was stripped of "just about every religious allusion from the original." Dylan retitled it "Tight Connection to My Heart" and set it aside for further overdubbing.

One final song was recorded on March 3, a brand-new composition no more than a few days old. Recorded live-to-tape with no editing, overdubbing or embellishment, "Dark Eyes" was also sequenced as the last song of the album.

"Dark Eyes" features only Dylan on guitar and harmonica. According to earlier interviews and Dylan's autobiography Chronicles, it was written virtually on demand when Arthur Baker suggested something simpler for the album's final track. Dylan liked the idea of closing the album with a stark, acoustic track, particularly when the rest of the album was so heavily produced. However, Dylan didn't have an appropriate song. He returned to his hotel in Manhattan after midnight, and according to Dylan:

"As I stepped out of the elevator, a call girl was coming toward me in the hallway—pale yellow hair wearing a fox coat—high heeled shoes that could pierce your heart. She had blue circles around her eyes, black eyeliner, dark eyes. She looked like she'd been beaten up and was afraid that she'd get beat up again. In her hand, crimson purple wine in a glass. 'I'm just dying for a drink,' she said as she passed me in the hall. She had a beautifulness, but not for this kind of world."

The brief, chance encounter inspired Dylan to write "Dark Eyes", which was quickly recorded without any studio embellishment. It is often quoted for its last chorus: "A million faces at my feet, but all I see are dark eyes."

A number of critics have noted the bizarre sources of inspiration behind some of the songs. As mentioned, some lines were lifted from old Humphrey Bogart pictures, but at least a few were taken from the sci-fi television show Star Trek. Author Clinton Heylin wrote that "one of the best couplets—'I'll go along with the charade / Until I can think my way out' (from "Tight Connection to My Heart")—actually comes verbatim from a Star Trek episode, 'Squire of Gothos'." Some[who?] say this line was originally used in the Humphrey Bogart movie Sahara, though this is erroneous.

sorry, cursor kept jumping around, should have checked more---should be

The Hard Rain LP wasn't really "soundtrack" of the TV special,since it incl. performances from other gigs. but anyway several keepers, such as

Non-tentative "Oh Sister" (far better than one-take studio original

The O Jays, "Emotionally Yours" (title track of alb)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cx5L2mWFwOk

Yeah, that's a good one - the O'Jays must really love that song because they cut two different versions of that tune for the album, an "R&B" version and a "gospel" version.

Re: the Bootleg Series, the Springtime in New York mixes for the Empire Burlesque material were great, but it's a little frustrating that only ONE of the master takes was remixed ("Tight Connection"). tbf, the alternate take of "Emotionally Yours" is a better performance than the master take.

Are there any given reasons why Dylan won’t let people access those 1992 Supper Club shows that were recorded and filmed?

A version of "Ring Them Bells" showed up on Tell Tale Signs so they're apparently in releasable shape.

Dylan was re wording original material with Noel Redding in the early 90’s. None of that appears on any Bootleg sets

Bob Dylan has announced his initial batch of 2025 tour dates, featuring a handful of stops in small towns across the midwest.

Billed as a continuation of his “Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour,” the brief run kicks off on March 25th with a previously announced show in Tulsa, Oklahoma (get tickets here), and continues on with dates in Wichita, Kansas; Mankato, Minnesota; and Green Bay, Wisconsin.

https://consequence.net/2025/01/bob-dylan-2025-tour-dates/

"you, you just sit around and ask for ashtrays... can't you REACH?"
― 100% WJE (Jody Beth Rosen), Friday, 7 October 2005 06:41 bookmarkflaglink

Alternate take of “Tombstone Blues” from Vol. 7, has some unnecessary backing vocals but excellent guitar fills.

anytime i listen to "thief on the cross" i imagine it's that famous youtube drummer playing ZZ Top.

Just heard the “Real Albert Hall” release for the first time. Holy shit, that band.

Will check it out. Do I need to pay any mind to the acoustic set?

It's great for contrast. He usually sounds mighty stoned on the 1966 acoustic sets. (Because he is.)

R.I.P. Clem Burke, he actually played with Dylan:

Bob communicated through his music, but we did go to dinner quite a few times. One of the first things that Bob asked me was: 'What happened to Blondie?' I was working with Dave Stewart at that time, and he was like: 'You guys were this big thing. What happened?' I was sitting in the back of a Mercedes between him and Dave Stewart, going to dinner, and I said: ‘One word: drugs.’ And he got it. I had a great time playing with him. I thought we were recording the next Blonde On Blonde. We recorded a lot of stuff. I’ve still got a cassette tape of all the tracks.

Unfortunately, what's been released turned out to be Knocked Out Loaded, and the one great thing on that album was from an earlier set of sessions held for Empire Burlesque.

Anyway, posting it here because I wonder if there are any gems on that cassette - it didn't really seem like any made it on to Springtime in New York.

some footage of their sessions here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_zn4oHORc8

I imagine a lot of it is like this — maybe not exactly finished songs.

apparently one song they worked on was called "pipe organ ska" which sounds intriguing haha

Aw nice! Didn't realize they filmed some of it! (Maybe it was just stuff they're doing for the cameras?) They don't sound bad at all, which makes the resulting album all the more disappointing.

The new Bootleg Series looks great pic.twitter.com/cvH7XAOyqr

— Jokermen (@JokermenPodcast) September 4, 2025

https://variety.com/2025/music/news/bob-dylan-bootleg-series-through-the-open-window-boxed-set-1236521826/

wow

TALKIN’ BEAR MOUNTAIN PICNIC MASSACRE BLUES
September 6, 1961 – The Gaslight Cafe, NYC

WANT

I love those early recordings (prominently featured in the latest Heylin iirc) and will listen for sure, but returns are diminishing in this neverending series

this is all necessary stuff, but yeah, there's plenty of it that I won't be playing over and over. The Carnegie Hall and Town Hall shows are essential early Dylan, though, it's good that those will be out in full.

I want to say that there was an insider on the Hoffman forums saying that the series may be winding down and after this there is no strong consensus on what the next box would be.

kind of feel like they've been saying that for a decade now (maybe not quite that long). there's been talk of Oh Mercy collection, maybe a Rundown studio collection (late 70s/early 80s), the Bromberg Sessions ... but yeah, they're going to run out sometime! Unless it turns out that Bob has been secretly recording entire albums a la Bruce in the last 30 years.

oh mercy could be great - that "most of the time" acoustic kind of blood on the tracks feeling take that was on tell-tale signs is so great

are there outtakes from the as good as i've been to you/world gone wrong era?

maybe More Empire, More Burlesque for Alfred?

there are a couple world gone wrong outtakes on tell tale signs — not sure if there are more in the vault? Probably. If so, they'd fit in with the Bromberg Tapes (some of which have come out, but there are apparently a bunch more). There's Burlesque stuff on Springtime in New York, but there might be more stuff from the 85-87 era. This is obviously scraping the barrel a bit haha.

Wasn’t You Belong To Me from the Natural Born Killers strck an outtake from the GAIBTY/WGW sessions? I remember being appalled at that version and then gradually liking it before I was much of a Bob fan. It would be nice to have a version of that free of dialog/fades.

I bet the boxes start becoming smaller sets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eyIZsQSDU0

(a fan edit, but it works!)

I want expanded version of s/t debut, mainly for songs that didn't make it to LP, and yeah I know some of them have prob been breadcrumbed here and there, but want them all and all together dammit. Same for all original releases up through um--Desire? An album that needs all the help it can get. I don't mean every take, necessarily (and yes we've already got The Cutting Edge and Springtime in New York) just mainly the master takes of prev unreleased. (I'm thinking twofers, in other words).
Also early live sets in full, and official Minnesota Hotel Tapes, other Dinkytown stuff, and this can be done, with money and Dylan's People, incl lawyers, @ work (like w official Dead release of the Betty Board Cornell set, or the Complete Basement Tapes for that).

Same for all original releases up through um--Desire?

are there Love & Theft era outtakes?

^^^
I don't see them being as eye opening as the TOOM outtakes, because Lanois wasn't working on L&T drenching everything in swamp gas.

might be some l&t alternate takes, but I don't think there are missing songs or anything. then again, dylan's alt takes can sometimes sound like entirely different songs.

The new box set is frustrating because if they're truly using new and better sources/master tapes we haven't heard before, then legendary recordings like the Gaslight Café performance from Oct. 1962 and the Bonnie Beecher apartment recordings from December 1961 should be heard in their entirety. (At least we're getting Carnegie Hall in presumably a fresh mix - I give that a slight edge over Town Hall, but both are two of his greatest recorded shows ever.) It's already eight CD's so I realize adding more tracks could raise the cost to a large degree, but having these incomplete is still frustrating when this could very well be the final "early" Dylan release for a very long time. I do have the boots but you can tell there's room for improvement: for example, the Starbucks Gaslight CD clearly uses a better master.

maybe More Empire, More Burlesque for Alfred?

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown),

hell yeah

wouldn’t it be interesting if they did a series releasing one performance for every year from 1961 onward

I never heard the complete alternate full-band Desolation Row on Bootleg Series Vol. 10 (Take 5 Remake, Complete). It lacks some of the existential menace of the acoustic version on the album or the electric version from No Direction Home. The organ and piano sound so jaunty they make Desolation Row sound pretty fun.

Good backstory to Minnesota Party Tape linked on the thread known only as Dylan.
What are the origins of the 50s tracks in recent box? Another party?

No Direction Home version >>>>>> album version

the full band cutting edge version is interesting but what's al doing on the organ? not a great recording