Although it appears to the naked eye that Bob Dylan’s The Basement Tapes Complete: The Bootleg Series Vol. 11 contains 138 recordings, it turns out that the sixth disc contains a hidden track with two more songs on it.
Although only 21 tracks are listed for disc six, there are in fact 22.
And track 22 — two minutes and 26 seconds in length — includes part of a raucous rock ‘n’ roll version of “900 Miles From My Home,” the folk song that appears on disc 5, and an alternate take of “Confidential,” the 1956 Sonny Knight hit that Dylan also covers on disc five.
And then you hear Dylan fooling around: “All right ladies and gentleman, thank you thank you. That was Floyd and Lloyd. Right now we have Pete and Sneat. Sneak one in on Pete.”
(Thanks to Pete Read for that last line: “Sneak one in on Pete.”)
Here is Sonny Knights’ version of “Confidential”:
Woody Guthrie’s “900 Miles” with vocal:
Woody Guthrie’s instrumental version of “900 Miles”:
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[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
In early October I was interviewed about my novel, True Love Scars, on this cool punk radio show, Cheap Hooch, that’s broadcast online every Sunday from 4 pm ’til 6 pm.
I talk about some of the themes in the book and more. Plus you’ll get to hear “Hey Bartender,” one of the songs that shows up early in the book, as well as artists referenced in the book including The Stooges and Mott The Hoople. Holly Hooch, the DJ, also plays some great songs by David Bowie, the Flamin’ Groovies and much more.
The show begins with Holly Hooch talking about how she messed up and didn’t get directions to the studio to me in time, but then I end up calling in Holly and her friends in the studio interview me on the phone. It’s a good interview and theres good music too. I’ve become a big fan of Cheap Hooch Radio.
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in the new issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Bob Dylan’s next album of new studio recordings will be all covers of songs Frank Sinatra recorded, a source told Billboard.
Two days ago I broke the news that the album, titled Shadows In The Night, would be released during 2015.
Front of insert.
The only other detail yet revealed about the album is that it will include Dylan’s cover of Frank Sinatra’s 1945 hit, “Full Moon and Empty Arms.” A source told that to Rolling Stone back in May of this year, when the album was scheduled for a 2014 release. The release date apparently changed when it was decided to release the Basement Tapes this year.
“Full Moon and Empty Arms”:
Now that we know the entire album will consist of songs associated with Sinatra, it’s near certain that “Stay With Me,” another song associated with Sinatra that Dylan is now using for an encore, will be on the album, although that has not been officially confirmed.
“Stay With Me” as performed at the Dolby Theater, October 26, 2014.
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[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Bob Dylan’s next album will be titled Shadows In The Night, and released in 2015, according to an insert included in Dylan’s new boxed set, The Basement Tapes Complete: The Bootleg Series Vol. 11.
In May of this year, Bob Dylan released a cover of Frank Sinatra’s 1945 hit “Full Moon and Empty Arms” on his website.
“Full Moon and Empty Arms”:
“Full Moon and Empty Arms” was written by Ted Mossmann and Buddy Kaye and based around Sergei Rachmaninoff’s 1901 composition “Piano Concert No. 2 in C Minor.”
The retro nature of “Full Moon And Empty Arms,” sparked speculation that Dylan’s next studio album of new recordings would be a cover album of standards.
”This track [“Full Moon And Empty Arms”] is definitely from a forthcoming album due later on this year,” a spokesperson for the singer who wouldn’t confirm the title told Rolling Stone in May.
A month later a source who has heard the album enthused about it to me. “It really is a great album,” my source said, offering no additional details.
Obviously plans changed, and it was announced earlier this year that most of Dylan and The Band’s Basement Tapes recordings would be released as Dylan’s next album. The Basement Tapes Complete: The Bootleg Series Vol. 11, a 6-CD set (as well as a 2-CD version of highlights), will be released on Tuesday, November 4.
Now, based on an insert in the box that The Basement Tapes Complete: The Bootleg Series Vol. 11, comes in, I can tell you that the title of Dylan’s next album is Shadows In The Night,, that it will be released in 2015 and that for now at least, the Shadows In The Night image seen on Dylan’s website is the cover (unless of course something changes).
No track listing has been released.
In addition to “Full Moon and Empty Arms,” which is still expected to be on the album, Jerome Moross and Carolyn Leigh’s “Stay With Me,” which was recorded by Frank Sinatra in December 1963 and released a month later, could be included.
Dylan performed “Stay With Me” for the the first time the other night at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles. So this is speculation. There is no confirmation that “Stay With Me” will be on the album. “Stay With Me” was the main theme of the Otto Preminger film “The Cardinal.”
“Stay With Me” as performed at the Dolby Theater, October 26, 2014.
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[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Page one of Bob Dylan’s 1967 lyrics to “Liberty Street.”
Yesterday I got access to a copy of Bob Dylan’s two pages of handwritten lyrics for “Liberty Street,” a song completed by Taylor Goldsmith of the band Dawes for the album Lost On the River: The New Basement Tapes (produced by T Bone Burnett).
I like what Dawes has done with the song, creating a piano ballad along the lines of “Dear Landlord.” Dawes’ voice is too smooth for me, and I’d love to hear Dylan sing this one (and bring his distinctive, bluesy approach to the piano part).
Dawes took quite a few liberties with Dylan’s words, only using a portion of the original lyrics, and by leaving out some key lines, turns it into a very different song, which is fine. I’m sure Dylan would dig that. Still, it’s worth noting a few of the missing lines. Dawes used some lines from these verses, as you’ll see:
In one verse, Dylan writes:
“6 months in Kansas City, can’t find no room and board,
6 months in Kansas City, what can’t lead to what kind of reward,
All my friends in jail lost out,
Some who ain’t got no bail bust out, but then find the tracks did make you come back,
Down on your knees, ain’t it a pity, not even a breeze,
6 months in Kansas City, make a man ready to do anything.”
And the one that follows:
“6 months in Kansas City! Woe! Can’t be begging for no last meal,
Things sure don’t look too pretty! Cause a man to rob and steal
All my friends confounded, indeed
Some lost and some drown and some turn to greed.”
Elvis Costello also took a shot at this one, and I do prefer his version, which he calls “Six Months In Kansas City (Liberty Street),” but that may be because I’m a big Elvis fan. Soon enough you’ll be able to decide for yourself, as the album will be out on November 10.
Goldsmith starts the song with Dylan’s second line, “He came from the old religion, but possessed no magic skill, Descending from machinery, he left nothing in his will.”
He also uses Dylan’s next two lines — “The crops are failing, the women wailing” — before rewriting Dylan’s first line — “I see by the papers that” — to complete the verse with “it’s in the paper at your feet.”
Although Dylan wrote a couple of possible choruses, Goldsmith made his own using Dylan’s title for the song which appears to have been “Liberty Street (Six Months In Kansas City).”
Goldsmith’s chorus: “Six months in Kansas City, down on Liberty Street.”
The strangest thing Goldsmith does is leave out what to me is a really key pair of lines: “Thank you for not helping me out, for not treating me like a fool.”
Instead, for his next verse Goldsmith jumps to the bottom of the first page and slightly changes Dylan’s lyric to: “It was sad to see it, that little lady goin’ in, arrested for arson, once they’d asked her where she’d been.”
The second page of Dylan’s “Liberty Street” lyrics.
Then he grabs a line from later in the song — “Down on your knees, ain’t it a pity, not even a breeze — and turns it into: “Down on her knees, not even a breeze, another victim of the heat.”
And back to the chorus: “Six months in Kansas City, down on Liberty Street.”
For his final verse, Goldsmith goes to Dylan’s final verse for the lines “Things sure don’t look too pretty, cause a man to rob and steal, I got [unintelligible word] six more months out here, can’t be begging for my meals.”
And turns some lines from the first page — “Now look here Baby Snooks, don’t matter how many books, you got underneath your thumb” — into “Now look here Baby Snooks, doesn’t matter what books, you got underneath your seat,” before ending with “Six months in Kansas City, down on Liberty Street.”
About the song, Goldsmith says in a press release:
“Liberty Street” was one of the last songs I put together for the record. We didn’t see the lyrics for this song until we got into the studio. Bob Dylan has a way of saying lines like ‘Six months in Kansas City down on Liberty Street’ and it having an immediate, yet sometimes ineffable, power. When I started putting these words to music, the structure of the words dictated the way the chords rolled out so it came together really fast. And the recording of it was our first take.”
“Liberty Street”:
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[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in the new issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Today we get another track from Lost On the River: The New Basement Tapes.
This one is titled “Liberty Street.” While the lyrics were written in 1967 by Bob Dylan, the music was written earlier this year by Taylor Goldsmith of the band Dawes.
About the song, Goldsmith say in a press release:
“Liberty Street” was one of the last songs I put together for the record. We didn’t see the lyrics for this song until we got into the studio. Bob Dylan has a way of saying lines like ‘Six months in Kansas City down on Liberty Street’ and it having an immediate, yet sometimes ineffable, power. When I started putting these words to music, the structure of the words dictated the way the chords rolled out so it came together really fast. And the recording of it was our first take.”
“Liberty Street”:
The album will be released on November 10, 2014.
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[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in the new issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Listen to 12 songs off Bob Dylan’s soon to be released The Basement Tapes Complete: The Bootleg Series Vol. 11 at NPR “First Listen.” The 6-CD box set is out November 4, 2014.
The songs:
Edge Of The Ocean (Disc 1, Track 1)
You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere (Take 1) (Disc 3, Track 17)
I Shall Be Released (Take 1) (Disc 3, Track 19)
Quinn The Eskimo (Take 1) (Disc 4, Track 4)
This Wheel’s On Fire (Disc 3, Track 21)
Johnny Todd (Disc 2, Track 1)
Don’t Ya Tell Henry (Disc 4, Track 21)
I Don’t Hurt Anymore (Disc 2, Track 19)
Silent Weekend (Disc 5, Track 12)
Crash On The Levee (Take 1) (Disc 3, Track 10)
One Too Many Mornings (Disc 5, Track 2)
I’m Your Teenage Prayer (Disc 2, Track 8)
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[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in the new issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Neil Young played at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia on October 8 and 9, 2014. I’ve got a bunch of videos from those shows, plus a new song from an earlier show in Boston.
There are two new songs here: “Plastic Flowers” and “When I Watch You Sleeping.”
“Thrasher,” Oct. 8, 2014:
“Thrasher,” Oct. 9, 2014:
“Plastic Flowers,” Oct. 9:
“Ohio,” Oct. 8:
“Heart of Gold,” Oct. 8:
“Old Man,” Oct. 8:
Plus another new song from Boston’s Wang Theater, October 6, 2014:
“When I Watch You Sleeping”:
“Southern Man”:
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in the new issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Bon Iver performs Bob Dylan’s “With God on Our Side” at McMenamin’s Edgefield in Troutdale, OR on September 24, 2011.
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[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
“All Along the Watchtower” and “Blowin’ in the Wind”:
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[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
