Showing posts with label Bob Dylan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bob Dylan. Show all posts

Monday, February 23, 2009

Dylan's Dignity


According to the amazing Worldwide Was fan site:
"
Dignity - Sweet Pea Atkinson & The Was (Not Was) Quintet - September 21st, 2004. Sweet Pea on vocals, David on harp, Don on string bass, Wayne Kramer on guitar, David McMurray on sax and, possibly Randy Jacobs on guitar and Narada Michael Walden on drums. From a forthcoming album that consists of covers of Bob Dylan songs performed in the style of early 50’s Chicago blues." I don't hear a sax but I do hear piano. Wonder who's tinklin'? (And if the album was "forthcoming," it still is!)

Bob Dylan originally recorded the song
for 1989's Oh Mercy. A few (though not all) versions are online here.

From Wikipedia:
"They moved on to the next song, "Dignity", which was recorded with Dylan, Stoltz, and Green. Though they managed to complete a polished performance, Lanois suggested something more ambitious with a Cajun band. Curious to see what Lanois had in mind, Dylan agreed to recut the song. The next evening, a session was held with Rockin' Dopsie and His Cajun Band, but the results were disastrous. The group experimented with different keys and tempos, but according to Dylan, everyone was frustrated with the results. Dylan still preferred the original version recorded the previous day, but it wasn't considered finished by Dylan or Lanois. (In his autobiography, Dylan refers to the original version as a "demo".) As the session continued into the early morning hours, the group gave up and began playing old standards like "Jambalaya", "Cheatin' Heart", and "There Stands the Glass". It was during this time that Dylan tried out another new song, "Where Teardrops Fall". "I showed it quickly to Dopsie and we recorded it", Dylan later wrote. "Took about five minutes and it wasn't rehearsed."

The next day, they listened to every take of "Dignity" recorded with Dopsie and his band, and all of them were rejected. "Whatever promise Dan had seen in the song was beaten into a bloody mess", Dylan recalled. "Where we had started from, we'd never gotten back to, a fishing expedition gone nowhere. In no take did we ever turn back the clock. We just kept winding it. Every take another ball of confusion.

...Another outtake, "Dignity", was one of the first songs written for Oh Mercy. Dylan viewed "Dignity" as a strong contender for the album, and an extensive amount of work was done on it. However, Dylan was dissatisfied with the recorded results, resulting in his decision to omit it.

...Easily the two most celebrated outtakes from Oh Mercy's sessions, Dylan would not only perform "Dignity" and "Series of Dreams" live, he'd eventually issue them on official releases... "Dignity" was performed live during a 1994 appearance on MTV Unplugged, and the same performance was later issued on the accompanying album. A radically remixed version of "Dignity" featuring new overdubs was released on Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Volume 3, while the original Lanois production would not see release until the soundtrack album of the television show, Touched by an Angel."

(Interestingly, Dylan's next album, Under The Red Sky, was produced by... Don and David Was.)

Dylan's demo version and an alternate take are on the 2008 collection Tell Tale Signs: Rare and Unreleased 1989-2006 (Bootleg Series Vol. 8).

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Rare Bob Dylan

"Spanish Is The Loving Tongue"

Have no idea why this isn't on any currently-available Dylan album — Bootleg series or otherwise. It was originally the B-side of the 1971 "Watching The River Flow" single. A different version showed up on the "Dylan" album, released after he (briefly) left Columbia Records in 1972. Inexplicably, that version isn't available for streaming on the album's Bobdylan.com page. Wonder why? Something related to publishing, I'd guess.

But the sole legit appearance
of this version, featuring just Dylan's voice and piano (other than the single), was on "Masterpieces" a compilation released only in Australia, New Zealand and Japan prior to Dylan's 1987 tour of the region.

I think this version is the real deal. Enjoy!


Monday, December 1, 2008

Bob Dylan on marketing


So Dylan just put out another (the eighth, so far) of the "Bootleg Series" compilations of unreleased material. I have most of them because they're great. If you like Dylan, they're indispensable.

The latest one is a 2-CD set, which is available everywhere that still sells CDs, and online through the usual outlets. But there's also a 3-CD version that includes all the songs on old-fashioned vinyl lps, too, and a hardcover book. It goes for about $170 bucks, too rich for me!

But damn, I want those 12 extra songs, so I started poking around online and made a rather interesting discovery. They're here on Dylan's website. Listen to 'em free along with the other 2 CDs... and everything else Dylan ever recorded and released legitimately.

Sure, you can't download and burn 'em onto your hard drive or iPod or a CD but you can listen, which is brilliant marketing.

Of course, Bob is an old advertising guy. Here's a commercial he shot a few years back with one of his grand kids.



And here's another one he did with his car.