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Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan other

Bob Dylan: Infidels outtakes (Rough cuts)

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Bob Dylan - Rough Cuts (Infidels Studio Sessions) - Front

 For the first time in his career, Dylan books a month of sessions to record an album. The sessions will take place at the Power Station in New York, across the way from Sony Studios. Dylan coproduces the album with Mark Knopfler. The band they have devised for the sessions ranks as one of his most inspired gatherings. The rhythm section is Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare. The two-pronged guitar attack is to be provided by Knopfler and ex-Stones axeman Mick Taylor. Keyboardist Alan Clark has been enlisted from Knopfler’s band. The sessions result in 16 original new songs, 14 cover versions, and a couple of instrumentals (copyrighted under the titles, “Dark Groove” and “Don’t Fly Unless It’s Safe”).
~Clinton Heylin (Still on the Road: The Songs of Bob Dylan Vol. 2, . 1974-2008)

Here we have some brilliant outtakes from the Infidels sessions. Most importantly the electric versions of “Blind Willie McTell”.

Studio A
Power Station
New York City, New York
April 11 – May 17.

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Concert films, Rolling Stones, Video

Video of the day: The Rolling Stones – Ladies & Gentlemen

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The Rolling Stones Ladies & Gentlemen

Ladies and Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones is a concert movie featuring the British rock band The Rolling Stones that was first released in 1974. Directed by Rollin Binzer and produced by Binzer and Marshall Chess, it was filmed in 16mm by Bob Freeze and Steve Gebhardt of Butterfly Films owned by John Lennon during four shows in Fort Worth and Houston, Texas, during the band’s 1972 North American Tour in support of their classic 1972 album Exile on Main St.

This is the BEST Rolling Stones concert video!

The best bootleg concert might be “Brussels Affair” (Brussels, 17 October 1973), now officially released @ stonesarchievestore.com, but the best video is this one.

The Rolling Stones Ladies & Gentlemen2

It was released on Blu-ray in 2010:

Prior to 2010, after initial showings in 1974 the movie was only commercially available in the early 1980s in Australia on VHS by Video Classics, of which bootleg copies had since been circulated. ………  On 16 September 2010, a digital re-mastered version of Ladies and Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones was shown in select theaters in the United States, presented by Omniverse Vision, Eagle Rock Entertainment and NCM Fathom. Re-mastered in HD digital, the film also features an introduction by Mick Jagger, interviewed in summer 2010 at the London Dorchester Hotel. This segment features Jagger reflecting on memories of the tour during this legendary time, and the status of The Rolling Stones. This film was released at selected Showcase Cinemas in UK the following day, on Friday 17 September 2010. On 12 October 2010, it was issued on DVD and Blu-ray. Supplements to the concert footage includes tour rehearsal footage from the Montreux Jazz Festival, a 1972 Old Grey Whistle Test interview with Mick Jagger, and a 2010 interview with Mick Jagger.

FANTASTIC stuff.. from the BEST band in the world! .. here goes..

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Bob Dylan, Bob Dylans's best songs, Cover versions

Bob Dylan’s Blind Willie McTell cover versions audio and video

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Blind-Willie-McTell cover versions

Well, God is in heaven And we all want what’s his 
But power and greed and corruptible seed Seem to be all that there is

Blind Willie McTell was voted the best 80s song in our little poll, deservedly so.

“Blind Willie McTell” is a song by Bob Dylan, titled after the blues singer Blind Willie McTell. It was recorded in 1983 but left off Dylan’s album Infidels and officially released in 1991 on the The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991. The melody has a resemblance to  “St. James Infirmary Blues”. For the song, Dylan, seated at the piano and accompanied by Mark Knopfler on the twelve-string acoustic guitar, sings a series of plaintive verses depicting allegorical scenes which reflect on the history of American music and slavery. Each verse ends with the same refrain: “Nobody can sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell”.

Following three albums with overt Christian themes, Infidels struck most major rock critics as dealing largely with secular concerns, and they hailed it as a comeback. The mysterious exclusion of “Blind Willie McTell” complicates the story. When bootleggers released the outtakes from Infidels, the song was recognized as a composition approaching the quality of such classics as “Tangled Up In Blue”, “Like a Rolling Stone” and “All Along the Watchtower”.

Bob Dylan – Blind Willie McTell (audio, Bootleg series 1-3):

This is the spookiest important record since Heartbreak Hotel, and is built upon the perfect interweaving of guitar, piano, voice and silence – an interweaving that has the space for the lovely clarity of single notes – a guitar string stroking the air here, a piano note pushing back the distance there. And if anything, the still-unreleased performance is even better,  for its more original melody (less dependent upon the conventional St. James Infirmary structure) and its incandescent vocal, which soars to possess the heights of reverie and inspiration. No one can sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell, but no one can write or sing a blues like Blind Willie McTell like Bob Dylan.
– Michael Gray

Bob Dylan – Blind Willie McTell (audio, electric version):

“One of Bob Dylan’s absolute masterpieces, “Blind Willie McTell” is the jewel of The Bootleg Series and arguably one of the finest songs ever written. Recorded in 1983 for the album Infidels, it was deemed superfluous to requirements, and all that remains is one take of the song with a full band (yet to be officially released) and this haunting demo, with Dylan playing piano with accompaniment from Mark Knopfler.”
– Thomas Ward (allmusic)

The best!

Now let’s listen to 10 very good takes on Blind Willie McTell!

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Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan other, Cover versions

5 great cover versions of Blind Willie McTell by Bob Dylan

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Blind-Willie-McTell cover versions

Seen the arrow on the doorpost
Saying, “This land is condemned
All the way from New Orleans
To Jerusalem”
I traveled through East Texas
Where many martyrs fell
And I know no one can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell

Let’s start this party by reminding ourselves what a fantastic song this is. Here are the official released Bob Dylan version from The Bootleg Series Volume 1-3:

“One of Bob Dylan’s absolute masterpieces, “Blind Willie McTell” is the jewel of The Bootleg Series and arguably one of the finest songs ever written. Recorded in 1983 for the album Infidels, it was deemed superfluous to requirements, and all that remains is one take of the song with a full band (yet to be officially released) and this haunting demo, with Dylan playing piano with accompaniment from Mark Knopfler.”
– Thomas Ward (allmusic)

And the outtake, the electric version from the Infidels sessions (audio), my favorite:

Ok, so here are those wonderful cover versions.

The magnificent Mick Taylor did this great version in Germany in 2009 (Rockpalast):

This cover version by Dream Syndicate from a free single given away with Bucketfull of Brains. No dates of the recording are listed. Apologies as it cuts just before the end of the song (audio):

“I started playing it live because I heard the Band doing it. Most likely it was a demo, probably showing the musicians how it should go. It was never developed fully, I never got around to completing it. There wouldn’t have been any other reason for leaving it off the record. It’s like taking a painting by Monet or Picasso – goin’ to his house and lookin’ at a half-finished painting and grabbing it and selling it to people who are ‘Picasso fans.'”
– Bob Dylan

Levon Helm Band “Blind Willie” Live at Pompano Beach Amphitheater, Pompano Beach, FL 11-4-2010:

I want to include a very fine interpretation in Swedish by Mikael Wiehe (Spotify):

Finally a jazz/blues instrumental, wonderfully done by Jef Lee Johnson (Audio):

– Hallgeir

Other cover versions of Bob Dylan’s songs

Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan recording sessions, Music Calendar

Today – Bob Dylan – 15th Infidels recording session in 1983 – 30 years ago

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infidels

…..I did the album, and I call it that, but what it means is for other people to interpret, you know, if it means something to them. Infidels is a word that’s in the dictionary and whoever it applies to… to everybody on the album, every character. Maybe it’s all about infidels.
~Bob Dylan (to Kurt Loder in March 1984)

Foot of Pride:

 “Bob’s musical ability is limited, in terms of being able to play a guitar or a piano,….. It’s rudimentary, but it doesn’t affect his variety, his sense of melody, his singing. It’s all there. In fact, some of the things he plays on piano while he’s singing are lovely, even though they’re rudimentary. That all demonstrates the fact that you don’t have to be a great technician. It’s the same old story: If something is played with soul, that’s what’s important.”
~Mark Knopfler

“I’ve made shoes for everyone, even you, while I still go barefoot”
~Bob Dylan (from “I and I”)

Studio A
Power Station
New York City, New York
27 April 1983

Produced by Mark Knopfler and Bob Dylan

  1. From Paul
  2. Foot Of Pride
  3. Foot Of Pride
  4. Foot Of Pride
  5. Foot Of Pride
    ….Composing it was alright, it probably had a bunch of extra verses that probably… most likely weren’t necessary, they should have been… they should have been combined. But, the reason why it was never used was because the tempo speeded up, but there wasn’t any drum machine used on that, the tempo just automatically took off, for some vague and curious reason.
    ~Bob Dylan (to Eliot Mintz – March 1991)
    –
    Foot of pride is in fact, in the words Dylan used to describe the composition “Like A Rolling Stone,” “a long piece of vomit”. … it’s about how pride destroys us and turns us into monsters.
    ~Paul Williams (BD performing artist 1974-86)
  6. Union Sundown
  7. Union Sundown
  8. (Unidentified Song)
  9. (Harmonica)
  10. (Unidentified Song)
  11. I And I
  12. I And I
  13. I And I
  14. I And I
  15. I And I
  16. I And I
    …according to author/critic Tim Riley, “updates the Dylan mythos. Even though it substitutes self-pity for the [pessimism found throughout Infidels], you can’t ignore it as a Dylan spyglass: ‘Someone else is speakin’ with my mouth, but I’m listening only to my heart/I’ve made shoes for everyone, even you, while I still go barefoot.'” Riley sees the song as an exploration of the distance between Dylan’s “inner identity and the public face he wears”.
    ~Wikipedia
    –
    “I and I”, the other epic from these sessions, is a beautiful song, powerfully sung, with a wonderfully moody and evocative instrumental setting….
    ~Paul Williams (BD perfroming artist 1974-86) 
  17. I And I
  18. I And I
  19. I And I
  20. Julius And Ethel
  21. Julius And Ethel

infidels back

Musicians:

  • Bob Dylan (vocal, harmonica, keyboards & guitar)
  • Mark Knopfler (guitar)
  • Mick Taylor (guitar)
  • Alan Clark (keyboards)
  • Robbie Shakespeare (bass)
  • Sly Dunbar (drums)

6, 7, 20, 21 Clydie King (backing/shared vocal)

Related articles here @ JV:

References:

Playlist of the day:

Other APR 27:

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