Big, big news for Bob Dylan fans...

Oh happy day!!

From my Paste blog ...

As a general rule, outtakes are outtakes for a good reason. They're not as good as the tracks that make it to the officially released albums. But let's make an exception for the greatest songwriter of the past 50 years, shall we? As an obsessive collector of "rare" Dylan for more than 30 years now, I can assure you that Dylan has discarded more than his share of masterpieces in the studio, and that some (but far from all; the man is nothing if not maddeningly inconsistent) of his live performances are truly legendary. I have dozens and dozens of cassette tapes that were reverently compiled and assiduously traded among the faithful, and if some of this was overkill (do we really need to hear a 45-second intro to "Like a Rolling Stone" that was interrupted by Dylan's coughing?), some of the ones that got away are mind-bogglingly great.

Columbia started to redress this criminal negligence in the early '90s with the release of The Bootleg Series Vols. 1 - 3, mining the vaults to produce a 3-disc box set that compiled more than 50 outtakes and previously unreleased gems from throughout Dylan's career. Subsequent installments of the Bootleg Series have seen (finally, at long last) the release of the legendary Manchester/Royal Albert Hall concerts from 1966, great live tracks from the mid-'70s Rolling Thunder Revue, an intact concert from NYC on Halloween, 1964, which saw Dylan bidding a not-so-fond farewell to the folkie/social protest years, and a mishmash of assorted effluvium to accompany Martin Scorsese's great documentary No Direction Home.

Vol. 8 of the Bootleg Series, entitled Tell Tale Signs, will be released on Columbia on October 6th. It's a 2-disc series of outtakes, demos and live tracks from the latest phase of Dylan's career, encompassing the studio albums Oh, Mercy, Time Out of Mind, Love and Theft, and Modern Times. For those of you who only know Dylan from his mid-'60s surrealistic peak, you may want to check out those albums (and the outtakes from those albums). They're a master class in how to age, sometimes gracefully and sometimes not, and how to integrate virtually every strand of American music into something utterly original, utterly Dylan.

Here's the tracklist:

DISC ONE

1. Mississippi 6:04 (Unreleased, Time Out of Mind)
2. Most of the Time 3:46 (Alternate version, Oh Mercy)
3. Dignity 2:09 (Piano demo, Oh Mercy)
4. Someday Baby 5:56 (Alternate version, Modern Times)
5. Red River Shore 7:36 (Unreleased, Time Out of Mind)
6. Tell Ol' Bill 5:31 (Alternate version, North Country soundtrack)
7. Born in Time 4:10 (Unreleased, Oh Mercy)
8. Can't Wait 5:45 (Alternate version, Time Out of Mind)
9. Everything is Broken 3:27 (Alternate version, Oh Mercy)
10. Dreamin' of You 6:23 (Unreleased, Time Out Of Mind)
11. Huck's Tune 4:09 (From Lucky You soundtrack)
12. Marchin' to the City 6:36 (Unreleased, Time Out of Mind)
13. High Water (For Charley Patton) 6:40(Live, August 23, 2003,Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada)

DISC TWO

1. Mississippi 6:24 (Unreleased version #2, Time Out of Mind)
2. 32-20 Blues 4:22 (Unreleased, World Gone Wrong)
3. Series of Dreams 6:27 (Unreleased, Oh Mercy)
4. God Knows 3:12 (Unreleased, Oh Mercy)
5. Can't Escape from You 5:22 (Unreleased, December 2005)
6. Dignity 5:25 (Unreleased, Oh Mercy)
7. Ring Them Bells 4:59 (Live at The Supper Club, November 17, 1993,New York, NY
8. Cocaine Blues 5:30 (Live, August 24, 1997, Vienna, VA)
9. Ain't Talkin' 6:13 (Alternate version, Modern Times)
10. The Girl on the Greenbriar Shore 2:51 (Live, June 30, 1992,Dunkerque, France)
11. Lonesome Day Blues 7:37 (Live, February 1, 2002, Sunrise, FL)
12. Miss the Mississippi 3:20 (Unreleased, 1992)
13. The Lonesome River 3:04 (With Ralph Stanley, from the album ClinchMountain Country)
14. 'Cross the Green Mountain 8:15 (From Gods and Generals Soundtrack)

A deluxe set will include a third bonus disc featuring:

1. Duncan & Brady 3:47 (Unreleased, 1992)
2. Cold Irons Bound 5:57 (Live at Bonnaroo, 2004)
3. Mississippi 6:24 (Unreleased version #3, Time Out of Mind)
4. Most of the Time 5:10 (Alternate version #2, Oh Mercy)
5. Ring Them Bells 3:18 (Alternate version, Oh Mercy)
6. Things Have Changed 5:32 (Live, June 15, 2000, Portland, OR)
7. Red River Shore 7:08 (Unreleased version #2, Time Out of Mind)
8. Born in Time 4:19 (Unreleased version #2, Oh Mercy)
9. Tryin' to Get to Heaven 5:10 (Live, October 5, 2000, London,England)
10. Marchin' to the City 3:39 (Unreleased version #2, Time Out of Mind)
11. Can't Wait 7:24 (Alternate version #2, Time Out of Mind)
12. Mary and the Soldier 4:23 (Unreleased, World Gone Wrong)

I always look forward to a Bootleg Series release... Many of the Dylan outtakes in this series are better than the orginals IMO. The guy has such an intuitive, improvisational approach in his delivery its not uncommon to find little revelations throughout many of his throwaway takes.

I'm listening to She's Your Lover Now, one of many tracks Dylan scrapped from the original Blonde on Blonde sessions. The fast version of this tune may actually be my favorite Dylan recording of all time. I think it's a mini-masterpiece, on-par with any of the "official" tracks on that album.

She's Your Lover Now is fantastic.
It is more of a single in my mind, than fitting on Blonde on Blonde.

Rolling Stone has a tremendous review of Tell Tale Signs.

Although I've yet to listen to it, Tell Tale Signs is available for preview at NPR.

Thom is thrilled with it, saying it's just as good as having a whole new Dylan album.

This collection deserves a set of its own, so, accordingly, I've split these posts off from the "Dylan at 65" thread.

The eighth volume in Bob Dylan’s official “bootleg” series, Tell Tale Signs, arrives in stores today, handsomely packaged and sounding for all the world not like a collection of leftovers, but like a lost Dylan masterpiece. Its 27 songs– including outtakes, alternate recordings, soundtrack material, and live cuts from 1989’s Oh Mercy all the way through 2006’s Modern Times– confirm that this current period of Dylan’s career is among the best, if not the best, and that the music he’s making today is as challenging, rewarding, and vital as anything he’s ever done.

I loved what I heard on NPR last week, so Anne's giving it to me for a birthday present this week. (I'll be off lecturing in Abbotsford on my birthday, so she suggested I pick that up and take it along on the trip. Does she know me or what?)

I know I'm in the minority, but I like Dylan's late-80s and 90s stuff better than his early material. So this release is a gold mine.

Abbotsford? Where?

I'm not far behind you, Jeffrey; I think Dylan's latter-day phase (particularly Time out of Mind through Modern Times) is as rewarding as any part of his career. And from a songwriting perspective, I'd put Oh Mercy right up there with those albums, though I think Lanois' production hurts them more than it helps them. (His style seems to fit Time out of Mine a lot better.)

Then, of course, there's Love and Theft-- my favorite of all of Dylan's albums. Interesting that there are no outtakes, alternate takes, or leftovers from those sessions presented here-- it's as if that album arrived fully formed, in an almost instantaneous burst of creativity, with no leftovers at all.

Anyway, this new set redeems any production-related missteps from Oh Mercy, and works together astoundingly well as an album in its own right-- enough that it stands alongside any of the proper studio albums as a testament to the creative richness of this period of Dylan's career.

Peter: I'm speaking at THIS: http://www.christianteachers.ca/conventionhome.cfm

I've been listening to it this afternoon and it is indeed a feast. Ring Them Bells... simply... wow. Ditto Cross the Green Mountain.

I'm definitely an early Dylan freak. Everything pre-John Wesley Harding is bible. For me the jury's still out on whether these songs will endure and penetrate future generations. This batch of outtakes is fantastic though.

"Ring Them Bells" has been my favorite Dylan song for years. I cannot wait to hear this version.

(And I wish I'd never heard Sufjan's version. I love Sufjan, but his version gets stuck in my head, and it feels so, so wrong.)

Regarding "Red River Shore," the liner notes suggest that Dylan ended up leaving the best song off of Time Out of Mind. Listening to it once again right now, I'm becoming more and more inclined to agree.

My review.

I agree with coltrane as I'm a big early-Dylan fan, and love his electric trilogy, and still think those songs will stand the test of time best.

Still, Tell Tale Signs competes for top billing among my favourite releases of this year so far for sure. I really, really like it.

This is a wonderful, insightful review, Josh. Although I don't buy the notion of the latter-period Dylan as the best Dylan, I think you're right to draw attention to the overlooked Good As I Been To You and World Gone Wrong as pivot points in Dylan's career. In many ways, he's been following the implications of that trad ("trad" being defined as virtually every nook and cranny of American music ever written) path ever since.

Tell Tale Signs is a flat-out masterpiece, a reminder that Dylan's restless imagination is not content to fix on one idea and re-work it again and again. He's simply incapable of repeating himself, lyrically or musically. Different versions of the same songs are, in essence, brand new songs. And, astoundingly, many times they're better than the versions that made it to the officially released albums.

I will go on record saying that all of the Oh Mercy tracks here are better then their album counterparts, and I'd probably say the same about the Time Out of Mind tracks. Heck, I even like "Someday Baby" better here than I do on Modern Times.

I do wish they'd ended Disc 1 with "'Cross the Green Mountain" and moved the live reading of "High Water" to Disc 2; if they'd done that, the first disc would stand as a true latter-day masterpiece, in every sense of the term. But even as it is, it's not too far off the mark. I think this set is immediately an essential addition to Dylan's discography.

I must relinquish my tenacious hold on Son Lux's At War With Walls and Mazes and simply admit that Bob Dylan's Tell Tale Signs, the eighth installment of Columbia's Bootleg Series, will be the best album of 2008. These songs are, by the way, the leftovers, the ones that Bob and/or his producers didn't deem fit for inclusion on the official releases of the past twenty years. Which again simply proves that there is the rest of the musical world, and there is Bob Dylan. I'll put it this way. With Vol. 8 there are now 8 multiple CD sets of Dylan leftovers. And if Dylan had only released those leftovers, he would be the greatest and most important songwriter of the past 50 years. Sorry, Ryan Lott. I hope you don't mind giving up the top spot to someone of that magnitude.

As most people here know, I'm not a fan of Daniel Lanois' heavy-handed production, so it is a great, great pleasure to hear some of the more familiar songs freed from their sonic sarcophagus. Unwind the gauzy sheets from that mummy and you find that he can still rock and carry a tune. The live tracks bite and sting. The alternate versions of the previously released songs are, almost without exception, more raw, more urgent, and simply better than the versions that appeared on Oh, Mercy, Time Out of Mind, and Modern Times. And the previously unreleased songs? There are two songs here -- "Red River Shore" and "'Cross the Green Mountain" -- that are as nuanced and deeply layered and insightful as anything Bob Dylan has ever written. Awash in rueful regret, full of tender expressions of love, they reflect the hard, beautiful stuff of real life, and they are astonishing. And Bob Dylan left these songs on the cutting room floor.

The man simply has no peers. He plays in a world that celebrates youth, and he can still school the kids at the ripe old age of 67. Long may he howl.

I listened to Cross the Green Mountain yesterday for the umpteenth time this week and just wept. Thank God for tinted windows on the minivan. What a beautiful, beautiful song.

Andy wrote:


If I had to choose a personal favorite at this point, nothing would come even close to this monster of a collection. I hate to have the same artist at the top of my recommendation list two years in a row. It just seems fanboyish and lacking in any objectivity. But for crying out loud, what am I supposed to do in view of such a feast?

I keep listening to the year's much hyped new releases. For every review celebrating something as the "most ________ of the year" and the "best record I've heard so far," I've either been disappointed, or dazzled just enough for a temporary fling, only to be sent back to the old-fashioned style and substance* of Sam Phillips, Loudon Wainwright, Lizz Wright, Ron Sexsmith, and Allison Moorer. Songwriters striving to serve the vision and not impress the listener. Tell Tale Signs is a treasure trove of timelessness. Built to last. I suspect that a few years down the road, these are the recordings that will still be in heavy "rotation" on my iPod, and that most of the audacious and verbose new Dylan apprentices will be footnotes.

*Okay, so Nick Cave is the exception. Not much old-fashioned about his brash Dig Lazarus Dig bluster. But I keep playing that one too.

Pitchfork turns in a good review, but, bafflingly, fails to even mention "'Cross the Green Mountain" at all.

I lived in this album for about a week or so; it's tremendous. Count me among the group [small it may be] who almost prefer Dylan's latter-day work. Though his early stuff--and especially Blonde on Blonde and Blood on the Tracks--is great, and BoT will always be my "favorite" Dylan album, there's a craggy wisdom in his newer stuff. His voice has ceased even to be a voice and is more of a landscape for his songs. And the songs themselves are astounding. "Red River Shore" is breathtaking, stunning--when he hit the last verse, I nearly jumped out of my skin. "Cross the Green Mountain," (previously released on the Gods and Generals soundtrack) is excellent. The demo version of "Dignity" pares away all the over-produced nonsense of the finished product and delivers like--well, like a blade of steel. And "The Lonesome River" may be the first time I've heard Dylan sing with someone and both of them come out reasonably well (poor Joan Baez! And don't get me started on the duets with Johnny Cash).

I feel like I'm over-praising, and it's true that some of the alternate tracks (for instance, "Everything is Broken") are inferior to the finished version. But, as has been said, "inferior" for Dylan would be "groundbreaking" for anyone else (lately, anyway. I have a twisted love for "Wiggle Wiggle," but it's as silly coming from Dylan as it would be coming from anyone else. ).

Just opened it and am listening to track 1. How exciting! I finally own another Dylan CD(s), thanks to a Barnes and Noble gift card from my mother in law.

Both of these are fantastic. Green Mountain comes from the Gods and Generals soundtrack, or so the liner notes tell me. I wish the movie had been as good as the song.

I'm a big fan of The Essential Bob Dylan 2-disc set, and make no claims to know much more about the artist than what's on that collection, as fine as it is. I've heard Dylan's albums since Time Out of Mind and haven't been blown away as others have. Until now.

I can't make any kind of informed statements about these songs, not even in comparison to their earlier recorded counterparts. I don't know the songs well enough, although I must have heard them a few times when I listened to those latter-day Dylan CDs. Instead, I'd like to ask about a specific song not mentioned in this thread. I'll probably be told it's a masterpiece, but there's something about it that puts it right on the edge for me -- the edge between masterpiece and overly earnest laugher (if there is such an "edge" between those two very distinct things). It's the song "Dignity."

What does everyone think of "Dignity"? I'm honestly undecided, so persuade me. I could go either way on that song. It stands out from the rest of the 2-disc collection, but the rest is very, very good. I'm wondering if "Dignity" is that much better, or much, much worse than the songs surrounding it.

Well, of course, the two versions here are both very different-- not just in their arrangements, but even in the lyrics. To that end, I think the one on Disc 1 is vastly superior, partly because I like the gospel piano feel of the thing, but also because I think the personification of dignity as a woman in the second version is a little awkward. (Don't the liner notes make a similar observation?)

But even with that distinction aside, I'd say it's a very good song, neither the best nor the worst on the collection.

A live version of that song is on Dylan's Unplugged album too.

Right. And the song first appeared on Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits, Vol. 3. It was the only previously unreleased track on the album, and was the mediocre bait used to hook Dylan fans who probably already owned all or most of the songs that appeared on the Greatest Hits album. That version was produced by Daniel Lanois, and has Lanois' shimmering, gauzy fingerprints all over it. Then the live version appeared on the Unplugged album. Then the two stripped-down and previously unreleased versions appeared on Tell Tale Signs: The Bootleg Series Vol. 8. Of all the versions, I prefer the gospel piano version (Version 1) on Tell Tale Signs. I think it's a good song, but not a great song. I prefer the stripped down approach, but in general I prefer stripped down to overprocessed/overproduced.

Thanks, guys. I've been listening to Tell Tale Signs while I work, and again in the car during my commutes, since I bought the collection on Monday. I started into the jacket essay and liner notes but have only read the first half, if that. I confess that until Josh's reply post, I don't think I was aware that the song in question is on both discs! Shows how attentive I've been, eh?

I don't apologize for this. It's the way I do my listening these days -- not focused, for an hour or two at a time, but here and there, gaining a sense of the whole recording through osmosis. It's not ideal, but I've found that I can get a pretty good sense of a record's quality after absorbing it in fits and starts over several days. I don't prefer this method to the more focused approach that characterized my listening habits for many years, but it is what it is, and frankly, I'm grateful that I can still get excited about recordings this way.

I hate to tell you this...

But that grossly overpriced special edition of this album, the one with the third bonus disc... well, that disc is the best of the three in my opinion.

A friend of mine who owns this edition gave me a listen to Disc 3, and I loved every single track.

The live version of "Things Have Changed" is a whole new version of the song, and what a revinvention it is. It was recorded live in Portland, and I'm going to be asking friends of mine there if they were lucky enough to be at that show. Whew!

"Tryin' to Get to Heaven" is also a complete makeover, a dreamy, sad, slow version that doesn't sound like anything I've heard him do before. "Can't Wait" and "Marchin' to the City" also get slower, more intense versions than before, and they're beautifully recorded.

It also has my favorite version of "Born in Time", a live version of the variation that's included on Disc One. He's settled into that approach to the song, and is clearly having fun with it.

"Ring Them Bells," while the music is just an alternate take from the Lanois "Oh Mercy" session, features a far more emotional vocal from Dylan. And that's the most arresting thing about this whole disc... Dylan's vocals are more emotional, more expressive than I've come to expect from him. He's really *singing.* I'm transfixed.

If you ever get a chance to hear this, don't hesitate. I'm not going to tell you to spend 105 bucks, but, well... if you *were* going to spend 105 bucks on an album, then...

This may well become more than just my favorite disc of the set. As I listen to the super-slo-mo version of "Can't Wait," I'm thinking this might be my favorite Dylan disc... period.

1. Duncan & Brady 3:47 (Unreleased, 1992)
2. Cold Irons Bound 5:57 (Live at Bonnaroo, 2004)
3. Mississippi 6:24 (Unreleased version #3, Time Out of Mind)
4. Most of the Time 5:10 (Alternate version #2, Oh Mercy)
5. Ring Them Bells 3:18 (Alternate version, Oh Mercy)
6. Things Have Changed 5:32 (Live, June 15, 2000, Portland, OR)
7. Red River Shore 7:08 (Unreleased version #2, Time Out of Mind)
8. Born in Time 4:19 (Unreleased version #2, Oh Mercy)
9. Tryin' to Get to Heaven 5:10 (Live, October 5, 2000, London, England)
10. Marchin' to the City 3:39 (Unreleased version #2, Time Out of Mind)
11. Can't Wait 7:24 (Alternate version #2, Time Out of Mind)
12. Mary and the Soldier 4:23 (Unreleased, World Gone Wrong)

Ok, so what I want to know from those who have heard all three discs is this: are there songs on here that you would put on a two-disc Dylan collection? Yes, I do mean that - just two discs, to sum up Bob Dylan. Any songs here that are that good?

In fact, now that the Bootleg collection is, if not complete, at least up to date, how much do the current collections ('The Essential Bob Dylan'?, etc) need revising?

I think "Red River Shore" and "'Cross the Green Mountain" both qualify as essential. But see my caveat below. And that would mean that you'd have to bump two more essential songs from that 2-disc set. But I'll stand by my statement that they're "essential" anyway.


Sometimes Greatest Hits collections aren't adequate to summarize the high points. And that's certainly the case with Bob Dylan. I'd say that the first eight albums (Bob Dylan through John Wesley Harding), Blood on the Tracks, Slow Train Coming, Infidels, Time Out of Mind, Love and Theft, Bootleg Series 1 - 3, Bootleg Series 4 (the live '66 tracks), and Bootleg Series 8 (outtakes and alternate versions from the '80s and '90s) are all essential, plus another thirty or so tracks from the albums not included in that list. You need at least a 20-disc Essential Tracks box set. After that, you can pick and choose.