Self-Portrait II: Unreleased Recordings, 1985-1987

Self-Portrait II: Unreleased Recordings, 1985-1987

Trust Yourself - Live - Farm Aid 1985
Important Words - Outtake - Down in the Groove
Got Love If You Want It - Outtake - Down in the Groove
Sidewalks Fences and Walls - Outtake - Down in the Groove
A Couple More Years - Outtake - Hearts of Fire
I Shall Be Released - Live - Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration 1986
To Fall In Love With You - Outtake - Hearts of Fire
Just When I Needed You Most - Outtake - Down in the Groove
The Usual - Outtake - Hearts of Fire
Thank God - Live - Chabad Telethon 1986
Treasure Of Love - Unreleased - 1987 Studio Session
Across The Borderline - Live - Farm Aid 1986
Had A Dream About You Baby - Outtake - Hearts of Fire
Soon - Live - George Gershwin Celebration 1987
Maggie’s Farm - Live - Farm Aid 1985

Bonus Tracks

Old Five and Dimers - Outtake - Hearts of Fire
When The Ship Comes In - Live - Live Aid 1985
Lucky Old Sun - Rehearsal - Farm Aid 1985

 Lossless Version | MP3 Version

Bob Dylan was not at his best in the mid 1980s - he’s told us himself in Chronicles, Volume 1, but it’s certainly evident from the albums released during this era (Real Live, Knocked Out Loaded, and Down in the Groove are particularly challenging listens). A decay had set in after Shot of Love in spite of the handful of great songs written for and either published or left off of Infidels and Empire Burlesque. There are still luminous performances from this time frame, but they became rarer and were more often associated with older songs or covers of others’ work. The writing well had more or less run dry by 1985.

With that in mind, I see this collection as something of a sequel to 1970’s Self-Portrait. That album had been produced during another relatively quiet period where the artist had been abandoned by his muse, and similarly featured a combination of covers, rearranged live songs played at a special event, and a small number of original compositions. The results are less successful here, but still worth a listen.

Two bookends, “Trust Yourself” and “Maggie’s Farm,” are drawn from Bob Dylan’s impressive Farm Aid 1985 performance and suggest an alternative to what we got on the official albums from this time. The singer is equally committed to a new song and one written twenty years earlier but updated with a rockabilly arrangement not dissimilar to the 50s covers that were prominent on the following year’s tour with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Rehearsals for this event, along with audience recordings of other songs not captured in the radio broadcast from which these two recordings are sourced, were considered for the CD but ultimately omitted due to poor sound quality. While the 1986 Farm Aid is essentially just a televised excerpt from one of that year’s co-headlining shows with Tom Petty, I couldn’t help including Ry Cooder’s “Across the Borderline” since it’s such an excellent capture of a good performance.

Other live recordings here include a fascinating rewrite of “I Shall Be Released” from 1986’s Stevie Wonder-organized Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Concert and a one-off rendition of Fred Rose’s “Thank God.” Though “Thank God” was recorded at a soundcheck prior to the singer’s concert at Mountain View on August 5, 1986, it was broadcast a month later during a televised anti-drug event organized by The Lubavitchers Chabad Telethon; Dylan would later contribute harmonica to a live performance of “Hava Nagila” at the organization’s 1989 telethon alongside actor Harry Dean Stanton! The final live track is a solo acoustic rendition of “Soon,” which was played at 1987’s George Gershwin Tribute Celebration. It must have seemed like an odd choice of material at the time, as the performer was then best-known for his contributions to the folk and rock genres, but modern audiences now know that Bob Dylan was exploring the American Songbook in rehearsals as early as the Infidels sessions and would eventually produce three albums of this material during the 2010s.

We also have a variety of songs recorded during the meandering studio sessions that produced Down in the Groove. Some of the covers are more effective than others, as “Sidewalk, Fences, and Walls” recalls the would-be soul voice Dylan had adopted two years earlier on Allen Toussaint’s “Freedom for the Stallion” and would rarely revisit in the decades ahead. “Important Words” and “Just When I Needed You Most” are stranger picks - the former echoes the standards Dylan would occasionally pull out on-stage during the early years of the Never-Ending Tour, while the latter resembles the pop songs that Dylan played with better results during his 1980 and 1981 concerts - but I think the arrangements are sympathetic enough to merit inclusion here. James Moore’s “Got Love If You Want It” has a particularly interesting history, as it was originally released on a promotional cassette version of Down in the Groove before being cut from the final LP’s tracklist. “Treasure of Love,” which was recorded at the home of Ted Perlman prior to Dylan’s appearance on the aforementioned Gershwin event, may or may not have been planned for Down in the Groove; it’s a baffling cover that’s not remotely in the singer’s traditional style, but serves as a fun, listenable novelty if nothing else.

Our final group of studio outtakes are drawn from sessions that produced the soundtrack to 1986’s Hearts of Fire. Though the film is an unmitigated disaster - Bob Dylan is not leading man material - the studio sessions are much more successful. Among the covers, John Hiatt’s “The Usual” is a great rocker in spite of some unpleasantly misogynist lyrics and Shel Silverstein’s “A Couple More Years” sounds very different from the big band arrangement it received on Dylan’s 1980 Musical Retrospective Tour; the background noise is a result of this capture being pulled directly from the film, where the song is performed in a barnyard setting. “Had A Dream About You Baby” is a rare original composition from this era, but it’s more of a rough set of lyrics thrown together over a pretty slick blues riff. “To Fall In Love With You” is even less complete, consisting of half-finished lines strung together between an evolving chorus in the style of 1967’s “I’m Not There”, but it’s so beautiful that it makes you wish they had tried it a few more times. In the end, it’s a reminder that Bob Dylan was facing a deficit of lyrical inspiration in the mid-1980s. We’re lucky that, with the benefit of hindsight, we now know that better times were only a couple years away.

- CS

Note: The bonus tracks here include content that I didn’t think was good enough to make it onto the CD but was still interesting. Hearts of Fire outtake “Old Five and Dimers” originally appeared on Thousand Highway’s delisted Ashes and Dust compilation, but I found that it grated upon relistening; your mileage may vary. “When The Ship Comes In” is noteworthy for being the only time that the song was played live since 1964, but its dubious quality reflects the broader lack of passion on display at Dylan’s Live Aid 1985 appearance. Finally, this rehearsal of “Lucky Old Sun” ahead of the 1985 Farm Aid show is full of vim and vigor but marred by a fairly poor recording. Give them a listen if you enjoy the main collection and are left wanting more!

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

 

 

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

Mystery Train - Rehearsal - 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
Trouble - Outtake - Shot of Love
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
Freedom For The Stallion - Unreleased - 1985 Studio Session
Shake - Rehearsal - 1985
Something’s Burning Baby - Outtake - Empire Burlesque

[delisted - a new version is now available]

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 Fall 1980 Musical Retrospective Tour from Fall 1980 and the Shot of Love sessions in late 1980 and early 1981. The former provides us with a great cover - Junior Parker’ “Mystery Train” - and a variant of original composition “Let’s Keep It Between Us” that are distinct from the versions released on Springtime in New York; of them, I prefer the unreleased recording of “Mystery Train” even if it feels a bit less rehearsed than the officially-released take. 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 them 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,” an early experiment that would later produce “Trouble,” and the otherwise-undocumented original composition “Magic.” The latter two are 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 that never happened (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. 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

Thousand Highways in 2023

Good news, folks! I've decided to celebrate the tenth anniversary of this website by publishing several new compilations throughout 2023. Among these will be revised versions of delisted collections that remove officially-published tracks and a few long-time requests; it's true, I'm finally producing sets dedicated to 1994 and 2006.

Looking forward to sharing these with you on a monthly basis as the year progresses. The first one, which covers unreleased recordings from 1980 to 1985, should be out within the coming week.

Thanks,

CS

DIY Playlist: Empire Burlesque Revisited

 

As a follow up to my Infidels Revisited DIY Playlist, posted earlier this month, I dipped into The Bootleg Series Volume 16: Springtime in New York to produce a more enjoyable version of Bob Dylan's Empire Burlesque record. Interestingly, I think the outtakes made available for this album offer an even more compelling vision than might have been available for Infidels.

1. When The Night Comes Falling From The Sky (Fast Version) - Springtime in New York
2. Emotionally Yours - Springtime in New York 
3. Tight Connection To My Heart - Springtime in New York
4. I'll Remember You - Empire Burlesque
5. Seeing The Real You At Last - Springtime in New York
6. Something's Burning Baby - Empire Burlesque
   
7. Trust Yourself - Empire Burlesque
8. New Danville Girl - Springtime in New York
9. Dark Eyes - Springtime in New York

You'll note that two songs from the officially-released album are missing here: "Never Gonna Be The Same Again" and "Clean-Cut Kid." I'm not a fan of the former and the latter really only shines in a live setting; if you're inclined to include a version of "Clean-Cut Kid," I suggest the version featured on Springtime in New York and I'd slot it between "Emotionally Yours" and "Tight Connection To My Heart," pushing everything else back and increasing the tracklisting to ten songs. The biggest issue is one of tone, since everything else on the record is related to either romantic matters, spiritual matters, or both; "Clean-Cut Kid" is more of a piece with the Infidels album, though the studio outtake associated with Empire Burlesque is better than the one that would've appeared on Infidels.

With regard to what is here, I really like kicking off this album with the fast outtake of "When The Night Comes Falling From The Sky," one of two semi-apocalyptic tracts here (along with "Something's Burning Baby"). These strike an interesting tonal balance between the genuinely eschatological songs of Dylan's Gospel Era and the earthly romance that had pervaded his work from since the mid-1960s. We'd see much of this moving forward in 1989's Oh Mercy and 1997's Time Out of Mind, but you can see the origins of it here in songs that are as concerned with relationships as they are with the end times. As far as performances, I think the so-called Fast Version featured on Springtime in New York is heads above the Bootleg Series Volume 1-3 and Empire Burlesque renditions. Roy Bittan's piano solo is especially engaging.

"Emotionally Yours" is, like "When The Night Comes Falling From The Sky (Fast Version)," one of the highlights of Springtime in New York for me. It's absolutely wild that this take didn't make the final album, as it represents one of the singer's best vocal tracks from 1985 to 1989. The perhaps-maudlin lyrics avoid falling into the trap of sentimentality through a stunningly sympathetic performance.

"Tight Connection To My Heart" and "I'll Remember You" are the last of the strictly romantic songs, both offering a relatively positive impression of love even if they - per Bob Dylan's tendencies - reflect wistfully on what might have been rather than what is. The mix of "Tight Connection" on Springtime in New York is comparatively vibrant, freed as it is from 1980s artifice, even if its lyrics fall short of those in the original draft. "I'll Remember You" is one of Empire Burlesque's strongest tracks and remains so in light of its now-circulating outtake.

The Springtime in New York outtake of "Seeing The Real You At Last," on the other hand, is extraordinary. Where the snarling vocals and rough blues of the recording were smothered underneath synthesizers and reverb on Empire Burlesque, it hews much closer here to the live performances that would pop up throughout the Never-Ending Tour. Plus it's got an extra verse! Shame about the vocal distortion on this version, but I don't think it's intrusive enough to prevent the song from being more listenable than its more heavily-produced predecessor.

"Something's Burning Baby" and "Trust Yourself" are pulled directly from the original album. This is partially due to the absence of any outtakes on Springtime in New York - studio logs suggest that both were only recorded once during the sessions - and also due to how effective they were on Empire Burlesque. An alternate mix of the former circulates in bootleg circles with a different final verse, but the heightened Empire Burlesque production actually favors this one. "Trust Yourself" would be presented as a grungier, harder-rocking track at Farm Aid 1986 but I think the moody take present on the studio album is a decent rendering.

"New Danville Girl" is a meandering epic that was bewilderingly omitted from Empire Burlesque back in 1985 and I'm so happy to drop it in as the climactic song here. I don't have any especially unique observations on this - read more well-informed writers like Paul Williams for insight into the lyrics - but "New Danville Girl" pulls together so many of the album's themes into a single, committed track. 

"Dark Eyes" serves as a quiet coda, reminding us of more spiritual concerns even as the passion of the preceding song fades into the distance. I went back and forth between the Empire Burlesque and Springtime in New York recordings, especially since the former has a tighter harmonica line, but ultimately chose the outtake because the vocal is a little looser. It's forever fascinating to me that a searching, uncertain Bob Dylan performance is often more engaging than a tighter, well-rehearsed one. Maybe that connects even better to the deeply unsettling atmosphere provoked by this song.

I hope you enjoy this alternate impression of Empire Burlesque. I never enjoyed the original album, but love listening to this playlist quite a bit! Let me know what you think in the comments below.

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

Thanks,

CS

DIY Playlist: Infidels Revisited

 

The Bootleg Series Volume 16: Springtime in New York has finally shed a brighter light on the Infidels and Empire Burlesque sessions. While The Bootleg Series Volume 1-3 gave us a taste of this content back in 1991, it's nice to have a fuller picture. It's also a joy to finally have some of the previously circulating outtakes in significantly higher quality.

This seemed to be an ideal opportunity to produce my own DIY playlist presenting an idealized version of Bob Dylan's flawed mid-'80s releases. The first of these, Infidels Revisited, strips out a song or two from the original 1983 album but replaces them with a host of more engaging, less produced tracks.

1. Jokerman - Springtime in New York
   
2. Sweetheart Like You - Springtime in New York
3. Someone's Got a Hold of My Heart - Springtime in New York
4. Julius and Ethel - Springtime in New York
5. Lord Protect My Child - Springtime in New York
6. Foot of Pride - The Bootleg Series Volume 1-3
7. I & I - Infidels
8. Union Sundown - Springtime in New York
9. License to Kill - Infidels
10. Man of Peace - Infidels
11. Blind Willie McTell - Springtime in New York
12. Don't Fall Apart on Me Tonight (Version 2) - Springtime in New York
    

I was excited to finally have the alternate versions of "Jokerman," "Don't Fall Apart on Me Tonight," and "Union Sundown" in particular, as each features a much stronger vocal delivery than the ones selected for Infidels. The latter is also noteworthy for a more scathing verse concerning the political dimensions of unfettered capitalism. I almost included the slow take of "Don't Fall Apart on Me Tonight" featured on Springtime in New York, but ended up preferring the up-tempo version as a nice wind-down from the intensity of "Blind Willie McTell."

I went back and forth on the inclusion of "Sweetheart Like You" here since it contains some of the singer's most notoriously sexist lyrics. The rest of the song is too good to lose, though, so it made it in. The same issue appears in "Foot of Pride," which opens on a disappointingly regressive couplet before going on to offer one of Dylan's best studio performances of the era. "Too Late," the song's earlier incarnation, is interesting but lacks the lyrical and vocal precision that would appear as the sessions progressed.

"Julius and Ethel" is briefer and more fun than "Neighborhood Bully," so it replaced it in my preferred Infidels tracklist. "Tell Me" is likewise absent since it feels a bit strained in both of the released outtakes. Sequencing actually proved to be a bit of a challenge here since some of the best songs are musically similar - see the introductions to "Lord Protect My Child" and "License to Kill" or the overall tone of "Someone's Got a Hold of My Heart" and "Don't Fall Apart on Me Tonight - but I think spacing them out allowed their unique charms to shine. 

"Blind Willie McTell" serves as the natural climax of the set. This isn't surprising, since it's among Bob Dylan's best compositions, but choosing a version was pretty difficult. The solo piano version is plainly superior, in my estimation, but the band version works better amid the rest of the Infidels material. It was also tricky to determine where it fell in the sequencing, but I found that offering it as a spookier counterpoint to "Man of Peace" and then resolving the tension with "Don't Fall Apart on Me Tonight" made for a lovely three-song cycle.

I hope you enjoy this playlist! You can purchase the songs individually online or compile them using the Infidels, The Bootleg Series Volume 1-3, and Springtime in New York. I recommend buying the full collections since you might prefer different takes and can easily substitute them in for my choices. Be sure to let me know what you think in the comments below. Next week we'll be covering a revised version of Empire Burlesque. 

Until then, keep yourself healthy and listen to some good tunes.

Cheers,

CS

P.S. If you haven't heard it, please buy Daniel Romano's Outfit Do (What Could Have Been) Infidels By Bob Dylan & the Plugz. It's an extraordinary interpretation of the official Infidels tracklist in the style of Dylan's appearance on Letterman with The Plugz by a talented indie artist. For my money, it's better than the actual album!

DIY Playlist: The Best of the 1970 Anniversary Collection

 

In 2020, Columbia Records released their standard 50th Anniversary Collection covering all unreleased 1970 recordings by Bob Dylan. Unlike previous sets, this one had a plethora of bizarre one-offs from the sessions that produced Self-Portrait and New Morning. Passed over for 2013's Another Self-Portrait, it would be easy to assume that most of these recordings were either incomplete or disappointing. That is true for many of the session's most tantalizing songs - "Universal Soldier" and "Little Moses" are attempted only briefly - but other songs offer a fascinating window into the evolution of Dylan's own compositions and expansion of his cover repertoire.

The 15 songs I've selected from the release's 74 total represent a combination of these originals and renditions of others' songs. Several come from the brief session that featured Dylan and Harrison jamming together on 9 tracks, a session that I tend to enjoy more than most of my fellow fans. I strove to produce a listenable quasi-album in the spirit of The Bootleg Series, though I'll acknowledge that few of the tracks would have been essential enough to merit inclusion on Another Self-Portrait.

There are exceptions to that general wisdom: "Jamaica Farewell" is pleasant and seemingly complete, an editor could have chopped this twice-through performance of "Long Dark Veil" into a more commercial product, "Tomorrow is a Long Time" is an unsympathetic but groovy arrangement (I've selected an alternate take to the one which has circulated among collectors for years), and "Lily of the West" reflects the intensity of the song's lyrics better than the heavily overdubbed version on 1973's Dylan. A very Nashville-style "I Forgot to Remember to Forget Her" might be the highlight of the set for me. 

Less essential but still engaging are a version of "If Not For You" in which Dylan is heard teaching his band the guitar melody, a solo piano performance of "Sign on the Window," and a previously-unheard arrangement of "Went to the See the Gypsy" featuring a country twang. I opted not to include New Morning songs that include minor lyrical variations because they tended to be flawed in some other key way. The alternate take of "Winterlude" is very nice but breaks down in its final verse. An early version of "Sign on the Window" with the lyrics "Brighton girls are all the same" is likewise interesting but sounds musically unfinished. You can browse the set for these tracks at your leisure.

With all of that said, here is a playlist of what I consider to be the standout recordings from Bob Dylan's 1970 Anniversary Collection:

1. Untitled 1970 Instrumental #1
2. If Not For You (take 1)
3. Jamaica Farewell
4. Tomorrow is a Long Time
5. Went to See the Gypsy (take 6)
6. Mama You Been On My Mind
7. I Forgot to Remember to Forget
8. It Ain't Me Babe
9. Sign on the Window [no take information]
10. Matchbox (take 1)
11. Come All You Fair and Tender Hearted
12. Alligator Man (country version)
13. Lily of the West
14. Long Black Veil
15. Song to Woody (take 1)

Happy New Year, everybody! May it bring you joy, peace, and prosperity.

Cheers,

CS

State of A Thousand Highways in 2020

Hello folks,

I just logged back in for the first time in a while and discovered that people have been speculating on my whereabouts. Truth be told, I'm heavily occupied with other creative endeavors and political activism these days; I'd get more specific but believe that part of my role here is ensuring that I don't personally profit from content ultimately owned by Bob Dylan and Columbia Records. 

It's been a great time creating this collection, which represents my favorite unreleased recordings, but I don't think I have much else to add to it for now. I was planning to create a 2019 live album but found that I couldn't meaningfully improve on Looks Like I'm Moving: 2019, the record produced by Expecting Rain users BennyBoy and JudasPriest.

All of that said, you never know when inspiration might strike. I won't write off returning to create more content for you someday and will continue maintaining my MediaFire subscription to preserve access to the music currently available. Heaven knows you'd need a lot of time to work through it all.

Until next our paths cross, thanks for listening.

- CS