Music : The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3 : Rare And Unreleased, 1961-1991

Rating: - outstanding, essential.
This is an absolutely essential purchase for anyone that calls themselves a fan of Bob Dylan. Be really smart though, and wait till you can get it for under a tenner, like I did. Not that it's not worth full price - it is; but you can feel even more smug when you've got it for a bargain price.

Enough of my smugness! What about the product?

This collection of rare Dylan recordings (outtakes, live recordings and such) have been packaged on 3 CDs, and ordered more or less chronologically. CD 1 covers a period of just over 2 years from late 1961 (beginning with a brave performance from before the release of Dylan's first album in which he pretty much verbally destroys New York in front of a New York audience - "Hard Times in New York Town") through to early 1963.

CD1 is my favourite, since I'm more of a fan of his early folk than any of his other output. It's approaching 80 minutes long (as are the other 2 CDs), but the quality throughout is of such a high standard that sitting and listening to it seems to take only half that long. "No More Auction Block", "Let Me Die in My Footsteps", "Walking Down the Line", "Moonshine", "Who Killed Davy Moore" and "Man On the Street" are all classics that easily stand alongside anything in Dylan's back catalogue, and as such must rank as some of the best songs ever recorded.

As an earlier reviewer stated, some reverb has been added to these performances, but that's not to it's detriment. Sure, the original recordings sound great flat, but they sound even better when given space to breathe.

The second CD focuses on Dylan's early rock n' roll period, covering 9 years from the mid 60s through to the 70s. While I'm not as big a fan of this period, it's still a terrific disc, and contains more classics: "Seven Curses", "Sitting On A Barbed Wire Fence" with it's irresistible groove, "I Shall Be Released" and "Santa Fe" are all outstanding. Elsewhere, there are one or two moments that make you go, "why did they include that?" such as the abortive attempt at "Like A Rolling Stone" in ¾ time. It's still interesting to the completist, but makes for a less complete listening experience.

The third CD covering the late 70s, and stretching right up to 1991 is the weakest in my opinion. Bob's performances are still exemplary, but the production and style of his writing seem a little uninteresting, even "dad rock" for the most part. "Seven Days" and "Blind Willie McTell" still stand out as excellent tracks though.

So generally this is an excellent collection that any fan of Dylan is going to find invaluable. I do have one or two quibbles however. For the most part the write ups that accompany each performance are informative and interesting, but on more than a few occasions they are misleading, or present blatant mistakes. Three examples for you: "Paths of Victory" is described as `the most Guthrie like song that Woody never recorded'. In reality, this song sounds nothing like Woody Guthrie. "Kingsport Town" however, could be described aptly in that way.

In another instance the write up states that The Band's Levon Helm plays on a particular track, but upon checking the song by song musician list at the back of the booklet, you find that it was someone else entirely. The third example, and for me most unforgiveable, is where the line "fear to bring children into the world" is attributed to "A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall", when anyone who knows anything about Bob Dylan knows that the line is from "Masters of War".

Still, I didn't buy this collection for the booklet. I bought it for the excellent music it might (and does) contain.

One other minor quibble before I go: while I don't mind that these tracks have been remastered/remixed or whatever, since they do sound bloody great, I don't understand why the last track of disc 3, "Series of Dreams" has had a keyboard and guitar overdubbed onto it. Daniel Lanois apparently produced the track - this is the guy famous for working with U2, and who produced Dylan's "Oh Mercy" album. Now, by coincidence I happened to listen to "Oh Mercy" again a couple of hours before I listened to disc 3 for the first time, and I have to say, "Series of Dreams" sounds EXACTLY like a U2 song. "Oh Mercy" however manages to avoid sounding like U2 entirely. I can only say thank god for that.

So one final piece of advice. Get this record. I'm sure you won't regret it. It's the best thing I've bought for months.

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Rating: - At a bargain price
The mind boggles when you think of what people paid for bootlegs of mainly horrible quality.
But you begin to notice especially during the acoustic period how Dylan even copied himself-Mama you've been on my mind is ascloseasthis to Don't think twice its alright-which I think was copied off a Johnny Cash song.
There can't be much left now but a 3 CD set of the man's recent covers would be nice

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Rating: - Beat the boots?
In 1969 Columbia Records issued Nashville Skyline and followed it a year later with Self Portrait. For many Dylan fans weaned on his earlier material this new direction seemed comparatively lightweight. 1969 also saw long-time Dylan fan Ken Douglas along with Dub Taylor produce the first Dylan bootleg Great White Wonder. As Dylan's official releases remained patchy, hitting rock bottom with the self-titled "Dylan" album, Dub and Ken continued to release, on their Trade Mark of Quality label, a string of albums containing material plundered from the archives. Albums like "John Birch Society Blues" and "Seems Like A Freeze Out" contained classic Dylan material that outshone the official offerings from Columbia.
By and large Dylan's label seemed to ignore the grassroots demand for archive and unreleased material until 1985 with the release of the boxed set "Biograph". For many collectors, this was an unsatisfactory compilation as it mixed previously available material alongside unreleased songs.
Eventually, 1991 saw Columbia released this album - the first in a series containing exclusively bootleg style material. Should you buy it? Yes, as almost every song is a gem worthy of inclusion. Undoubtedly, this is indispensable Dylan.
However, I have reservations about the choice of material and the way it has been compiled. A previous reviewer highlights the fact that the producers have chose to add reverb and many purists will question the need to "enhance" the recordings rather than simply restoring them. In addition, the songs have been taken from a diverse range of sources and from over a wide ranging time period. Live and studio material is sometimes placed uneasily together. In short, there is, sometimes, a lack of coherence.
Clearly the notion of a Dylan bootleg being released by Columbia is an oxymoron. So, what are the genuine bootleggers doing? On a seven-volume (fourteen disc) retrospective detailing Dylan's live performances up to 1966 on the Hollow Horn bootleg label, by contrast, no reverb or any other gimmicks have been added; material has been collected, collated and presented in a logical, chronological and thematic way making it a much more enjoyable listening experience.
Nice try Columbia, but you need to do better to beat the bootleggers.

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Rating: - Mark Wilder and Tim Geelan. How dare you?
This collection is of course indispensable, outstanding, mind boggling! However the best bits on volume 1 have been rendered unlistenable by the addition of phoney 1991 digital reverb by Mark Wilder and Tim Geelan. Did you chaps never bother to listen to the records around that period? Bob Dylan, Freewheelin', Times, Another Side? They were dry as a bone. What were you thinking?? Why didn't you add a few break beats while you were at it? Were your ego's so big that you had to put your little stamp on these important recordings? Oh dear. I demand a remix

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Rating: - The cornerstone of my Dylan collection
This box set of The Bootleg Series volumes 1-3 is the cornerstone, heart, and soul of my personal Bob Dylan collection. The 58 tracks on these CDs were, are, and always will be a Dylan fan’s dream come true; prior to 1991, fans were forced to go deep underground in wild efforts to come up with bootlegged copies of this type of never-released Dylan material (and there is a lot of it). The tracks in this box set cover Dylan’s first thirty years as a performer, stretching from 1961 to 1991. The variety of material here is incredibly diverse in style as well as format. Among these rare and previously unreleased songs can be found folk music, satirical protest songs, rock & roll as Dylan defined it, blues, a tinge of country, and more; there are demos, early live coffeehouse performances, concert performances, home recordings, rehearsal tapes, outtakes, and alternate takes, and concert performances. Some of the songs are incomplete: Suze (The Cough Song) ends after Dylan starts coughing, another song ends when Dylan stops and says his voice is gone, and a few seem to end in midstream for no obviously discernible reason. In one track, you hear a dog barking in the background intermittently. One is not a song at all; Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie is a poem Dylan wrote in honor of Guthrie, giving us seven minutes of spoken words from this normally reticent musical legend.

Among the most amazing things about these recordings is the knowledge that Dylan rejected many of these songs for his albums. These are songs the vast majority of singers can only hope to match once in their lives, yet Dylan often held songs back because he didn’t feel they were quite right or performed the way they needed to be performed. The list of such outtakes is too long to list here, but several of them are, to me, some of the best songs Dylan ever wrote and recorded: Farewell, Angelina; She’s Your Lover Now; Nobody ‘Cept You; You Changed My Life; Need a Woman; Foot of Pride; Blind Willie McTell; and Series of Dreams (which did find its way on to the Greatest Hits Volume 3 collection). Without a doubt, though, the most amazing and most mysterious song of Dylan’s career is Angelina, a breathtaking work of art unlike anything else Dylan has written or performed. Some of the alternate takes here are fascinating as they differ significantly from the released versions, especially If Not For You and When the Night Comes Falling From the Sky. I could write a paragraph about every one of these 58 tracks, but luckily John Bauldie has already taken care of this for me in the booklet that accompanies the CDs. This booklet features not only a number of fascinating pictures and a list of the musicians playing on each song; it includes a fairly definitive description of the history of every single track. The back of the box is itself a treasure trove of information, listing the recording date of each track and identifying its source (and, if it is an outtake, it lists the album it was cut from).

As great a songwriter and musician as Bob Dylan is, this collection gives you insight into the man that cannot be found in his studio recordings and concert performances. Bob Dylan has dropped and forgotten more amazing songs than most performers will ever even look at. I really can’t say enough about this collection and how truly amazing it is. I’ve owned this box set for twelve years now, and the music is just as fascinating and awe-inspiring today as it was back in 1991. These are recordings no Dylan fan can do without.