“We haven´t played this in.. we haven´t played this in.. how many years? … 6 years we haven´t played this song, 16 years”
-Bob Dylan @ Academy of Music, New York in 1971
Well it was actually 2 years and 4 months, Dylan & The Band played “Like A Rolling Stone” @ Isle Of Wight, England – 31 August 1969.
The second session @ Minneapolis’ Sound 80 Studios, and the last recording session for “Blood On The Tracks”.
With the first session being a success, Dylan was more relaxed for this session. He knew & trusted the people he was working with. He was also more open to suggestions. The first song he wanted to try was the pivotal “Tangled Up In Blue”; the master take here proved to even top the brilliant New York version.
In New York “Tangled Up In Blue” had been recorded in the key of E (open tuning configuration), in Minneapolis Dylan first tried it in the key of G. Odegard then suggested: “..I think it would be better, livelier, if we moved it up to A with capos. It would kick ass up a notch” (quote from the book “A Simple Twist of Fate: Bob Dylan and the Making of Blood on the Tracks”). And so they did.. & the master take of one of the greatest songs in history was recorded.
Producer: David Zimmerman
Engineer: Paul Martinson
Continue reading Dec 30: Bob Dylan Blood On The Tracks, 6th & final recording session 1974
Man thinks ’cause he rules the earth he can do with it as he please
And if things don’t change soon, he will
Oh, man has invented his doom
First step was touching the moon
I’m not sure the exact date this cool video was shot, but I’m pretty sure it has to be @ The Power Station in NYC – April/May 1983.
If anyone got more hard facts… please enlighten me.
Power Station
New York City, New York
April / May – 1983
I heard the sound that Gordon Lightfoot was getting, with Charlie McCoy and Kenny Buttrey. I’d used Charlie and Kenny both before, and I figured if he could get that sound, I could…. but we couldn’t get it. (Laughs) It was an attempt to get it, but it didn’t come off. We got a different sound… I don’t know what you’d call that… It’s a muffled sound.
~Bob Dylan (to Jann Wenner November 29, 1969)“I didn’t intentionally come out with some kind of mellow sound……. I would have liked … more steel guitar, more piano. More music … I didn’t sit down and plan that sound.”
~Bob Dylan 1971This quiet masterpiece, which manages to sound both authoritative and tentative (a mix that gave it a highly contemporary feel), is neither a rock nor a folk album—and certainly isn’t folk-rock. It isn’t categorisable at all.
~Michael Gray (BD Encyclopedia)
Continue reading Dec 27: Bob Dylan released John Wesley Harding in 1967
Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there—
The classic first appeared in a newspaper in Troy, New York, on December 23, 1823 but no one claimed authorship until 13 years later. Clement Clarke Moore, a professor and poet, said that he wrote the piece for his children and didn’t realize that his housekeeper had sent it into the newspaper to be published. However the family of Henry Livingston, Jr. contended that their father had been reciting “A Visit from St. Nicholas” for 15 years prior to the poem’s publication, writes Stacy Conradt for mental_floss. Regardless of the true authorship, the poem is now an American classic.
– Marissa Fessenden (smithsonian.com)
Continue reading Bob Dylan Reads “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” On His Holiday Radio Show (2006)