Proclaim The Creed: Live, 2021 - 2022

False Prophet - Live - Bloomington - November 7, 2021
I Contain Multitudes - Live - Cardiff - October 26, 2022
When I Paint My Masterpiece - Live - Tucson - March 4, 2022
My Own Version Of You - Live - North Charleston - March 27, 2022
I’ve Made Up My Mind To Give Myself To You - Live - Bloomington - November 7, 2021
I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight - Live - Tucson - March 4, 2022
Crossing The Rubicon - Live - Shreveport - March 18, 2022
To Be Alone With You - Live - Berlin - October 6, 2022
Key West - Live - Albuquerque - March 6, 2022
Melancholy Mood - Live - Philadelphia - November 30, 2021
Mother Of Muses - Live - Boise - June 28, 2022
Goodbye Jimmy Reed - Live - Albuquerque - March 6, 2022
Every Grain Of Sand - Live - Cardiff - October 26, 2022

Bonus

Black Rider - Live - Washington, DC - December 2, 2022
Gotta Serve Somebody - Live - Philadelphia - November 30, 2021
I Can’t Seem To Say Goodbye - Live - Nottingham - October 28, 2022
Key West - Live - Milwaukee - November 2, 2021
Key West - Live - Boise - June 28, 2022
Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I Go Mine) - Live - Cardiff - October 26, 2022
Watching The River Flow - Live - Albuquerque - March 6, 2022

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When Covid-19 spread across the world in 2020, Bob Dylan’s live show was necessarily put on hold. We received Rough & Rowdy Ways and Shadow Kingdom in the interim, but nothing could sate the excitement we collectively had for our guy to get back on the road once safer conditions prevailed. And in Fall 2021, they did.

Bob Dylan returned to concert halls around North America on a new tour - perhaps the first in his career - explicitly designed to promote his newest studio recording. The Rough & Rowdy Ways Tour would almost exclusively highlight songs from the eponymous album and its 2021 back-catalog counterpart, Shadow Kingdom. Slimming down the setlist selections even further from the already-tight 2019 shows allowed Dylan and his band to explore these magical songs with the depth they deserved.

“False Prophet” is fiercer than its album take, “I Contain Multitudes” is more evocative, and “My Own Version Of You” is alternately more menacing and funnier. “Key West” receives a definitive reading here, offering introspection and peace in equal measure. “When I Paint My Masterpiece” and “To Be Alone With You” are downright playful, and “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” sounds like it was made to be played in this jaunty arrangement. “Jimmy Reed” shuffles along with an infectiously fun vocal performance. These shows represent the triumphant, joyful communal experience fans had been awaiting over the preceding two years of hardship.

In an effort to focus on the best of the best, I’ve trimmed the standard opening tracks “Watching The River Flow” and “Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I Go Mine)” from this collection and played a bit creatively with the sequence. Don’t worry, though: listeners who’d like an accurate representation of the average concert will find these songs among the bonus material here. I’ve also included a Jerry Lee Lewis cover played in honor of its composer’s death in 2022 along with two additional versions of “Key West” that demonstrate that song’s unique evolution over the course of the 2021 and 2022 tours.

I hope it’s been worth the wait! Until next time, keep yourself healthy and listen to some good tunes.

Cheers,
CS

Update: Folks who downloaded this within the first 12 hours of publication on 3/31/24 will find that one of the tracks - "False Prophet" - has a pretty bad audio problem due to an export issue I ran into in Audacity. A revised version has now been published.

Autumn In Los Angeles: Unreleased Studio Recordings, 1980-1985 (Second Edition)

Autumn In Los Angeles: Unreleased Studio Recordings, 1980-1985

Mystery Train - Outtake - 1980
Caribbean Wind - Outtake - Shot of Love
Magic - Outtake - Shot of Love
Heart Of Mine - Outtake - Shot of Love
Shot Of Love - Outtake - Shot of Love
Let’s Keep It Between Us - Rehearsal - 1980
Don’t Fly Unless It’s Safe - Outtake - Infidels
Jokerman - Unreleased - David Letterman Show, 1984
Treat Her Right - Rehearsal - David Letterman Show, 1984
Dirty Lie - Rehearsal - 1984
Almost Done - Rehearsal - 1984
Don’t Start Me Talkin’ - Unreleased - David Letterman Show, 1984
Dark Groove - Outtake - Infidels
Come Together - Rehearsal - 1985
Nothing Here Worth Dying For - Rehearsal - 1985
Go ‘Way Little Boy - Unreleased - 1984 Studio Session
Who Loves You More - Outtake - Empire Burlesque
Freedom For The Stallion - Unreleased - 1985 Studio Session
Shake - Rehearsal - 1985
Something’s Burning Baby - Outtake - Empire Burlesque

Bonus

Trouble - Outtake - Shot of Love
To Each His Own - Outtake - Infidels
The Very Thought Of You - Outtake - Empire Burlesque

Lossless Version
MP3 Version

Please note that this is a re-release of April 2023's Autumn In Los Angeles, which adds the previously-omitted "Who Loves You More," corrects some information about the "Mystery Train" outtake, and includes the bonus songs in its tracklist. Think of this as an apology for taking so long with my 2021-2022 compilation!

Fans are lucky to have access to a larger-than-average number of Bob Dylan studio recording sessions spanning 1980 to 1985, including tour rehearsals and outtakes from Shot of Love, Infidels, and Empire Burlesque. Following the publication of Columbia’s Bootleg Series 13: Trouble No More and Bootleg Series 16: Springtime in New York, a handful of these tracks remain officially unreleased. I’ve compiled the best of these into a 20-track collection structured to reveal the evolution of Bob Dylan as a recording artist over this tumultuous five-year period when he returned to secular music after two years working primarily on religious material.

The first section comprises rehearsals from Fall 1980 and the Shot of Love sessions in late 1980 and early 1981. The former provides us with a variant of original composition “Let’s Keep It Between Us” that’s distinct from the version released on Springtime in New York; It’s hard to love the sleepy studio takes of “Let’s Keep It Between Us” once you’ve heard the incendiary live performances from Fall 1980, but I find the rehearsal to still be an engaging exercise in hearing how a song can grow from studio to stage.

The Shot of Love outtakes are more interesting, not least because they all escaped inclusion on the two Bootleg Series volumes dedicated to this period. You’ve got excellent alternate interpretations of “Caribbean Wind,” “Shot of Love,” and “Heart of Mine,” a recording of “Mystery Train” that’s a little looser than the officially-released outtake, and the otherwise-undocumented original composition “Magic” that’s still in a gestational stage somewhere between rough sketches like “Wind Blowing On The Water” and completed lyrics like those that would appear on the final album.

The vast majority of completed songs from Bob Dylan’s Infidels sessions are present on Springtime in New York, but I wanted to make sure that a few lingering gems didn’t escape the notice of dedicated fans. Specifically, the instrumental tracks “Don’t Fly Unless It’s Safe” and “Dark Groove” are used to bookend other tracks recorded from 1983 to 1984. Besides these outtakes, I’ve highlighted the singer’s legendary 1984 appearance on the David Letterman show backed by The Plugz with two performed songs (Infidels’ “Jokerman” and Sonny Boy Williamson’s “Don’t Start Me Talkin’”) and a brilliant rehearsal of Roy Head’s “Treat Her Right.” For more insight on this event, I strongly recommend reading Ray Padgett’s interview with Plugz bassist Tony Marsico over at Flaggin’ Down The Double E’s. The Infidels era is rounded out with two tour rehearsals from early 1984: the respectively beautiful and eerie “Almost Done” and “Dirty Lie.” While neither would ever be performed by their writer, “Dirty Lie” was finally completed and published by The Secret Sisters at Bob Dylan’s suggestion in 2014.

Autumn In Los Angeles’ final group of songs is anchored by their association with the Empire Burlesque era. Among these, “Come Together,” “Shake,” and “Nothing Here Worth Dying For” are believed to come from rehearsals conducted as the prelude to an abandoned 1985 tour with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (Dylan and Petty would reunite for tours in 1986 and 1987, as documented on the Thousand Highways Collection’s A Voice Without Restraint and Determined To Stand). “Come Together” is just a bit of fun riffing on The Beatles’ seminal Chuck Berry pastiche, original composition “Shake” sounds like an evolution on the aforementioned “Treat Her Right” and would later feature in Bob Dylan’s 1986 Farm Aid performance, and “Nothing Here Worth Dying For” is a lovely chorus in search of verses; much like “Almost Done” and “Dirty Lie,” it’s a shame that “Shake” and “Nothing Here Worth Dying For” were never properly finished. I’m sure that listeners will also enjoy a pitch-corrected version of Allen Toussaint’s “Freedom for the Stallion,” which has circulated for years as a helium-voiced sped-up version, and the Lone Justice outtake of “Go ‘Way Little Boy” featuring Bob Dylan singing a song he’d written for them. “Who Loves You More,” which was erroneously omitted from my original version of this set, is a fiery embryonic blues track from the Empire Burlesque sessions. The set ends with an alternate version of Empire Burlesque’s “Something’s Burning Baby” that includes some additional lyrics.

Until next time, keep yourself healthy and listen to some good tunes!

Cheers,
CS