The Shadow (1994)

I think the emblematic moment for The Shadow is the first scene in the nightclub, where Lamont Cranston meets Margot Lane.  It's a nicely designed set, art deco like much of the movie, and Alec

Baldwin is pulling off the mysterious-playboy thing reasonably well, and Penelope Anne Miller likewise with the femme fatale.  But as their Scene begins, the music, which up to this point had been a pleasantly old-fashioned big-strings score, switches to sub-David Sanborn smooth jazz.  Typical cheesy romance soundtrack circa 1994.

If the Shadow is a superhero, he's a very old-fashioned one - a generation before Superman and Batman, two or three before Spiderman.  Does he even have superpowers?  In some versions he can "cloud men's minds," achieving not just a degree of mind control but also invisibility;  that's the version the film follows, which certainly qualifies him.  But remember:  Batman doesn't have any superpowers.  Just a willingness to pose as a superhero, and the strength, tech, and craziness to pull it off.  Even if that's all the Shadow has, he still qualifies - but barely, because he's doing it in a pop-culture world that's just barely conceiving the superhero.  The Shadow is half superhero and half ordinary (extraordinary) crimefighter.  He's the pulp roots of the superhero.  With a nice touch of the noir - it's his own personal acquaintance with "the evil that lurks in the hearts of men" that gives him his power.  He's a reformed sinner, and so he knows how to deal with sinners.

Does the film get that?  Not really.  It's light and frothy and superficial, and it only barely nods in the direction of the evil that lurks in the hearts of men.  It's not interested in really plumbing the depths, really exploring the darkness.  It's content to give us a twinkly-eyed head-fake in the direction of the darkness, while really putting its energy into the shiny surfaces of the pulp's action orientation.

Rather than bring the "evil that lurks in the hearts of men" to life in a way that would feel evil in the '90s, they make it a period piece, playing up the roaring-'20s style.  Giving jaundiced '90s viewers a look at darkness as imagined in a less cynical age - or darkness as a cynical age imagined a less cynical age imagined it.  In other words, I think the various holes and absurdities in the plot are meant to suggest a certain gonzo naīvete in the pulps, too:  if this is Genghis Khan's grandson (i.e., Mongolian, by way of a China-based empire), why is he in a sarcophagus sent from Tibet?  And why does it have a Latin inscription?  Et cetera.  The film is full of ridiculousness like that (another fave:  why does the Tim Curry character just happen to have a big tank handy that he can fill with water at a moment's notice to drown Alec Baldwin?  I mean, what other reason does he have for owning such a thing?), but I think we're supposed to enjoy all that as being evocative of the adventure-at-all-costs mentality of the pulps.

But you know, I can go along with that.  A movie that took the Shadow seriously would have been interesting, but a committed, well-done throwback could have been interesting too.  In fact, my gripe is that the movie doesn't go far enough.  It's not ready to go full-on weird period-piece - it also wants to be a big mainstream mid-'90s superhero blockbuster franchise-building film with the Slurpee cups and the Happy Meal toys and all that shit.  So it's not going to risk having Alec Baldwin and Penelope Anne Miller flirting to, say, "Begin the Beguine."  They're going to give us smoove jazz. 

So it's too '90s steroidal to satisfy the pop-culture-antiquarian crowd, but of course, the popcorn-munching 15-year-old boy is just mystified.  Who the hell's the Shadow and why should I care? says he.

Herman Melville: Omoo (revisited)

I hardly remembered Omoo at all, it turned out.  It left only a vague impression on me the first time
through.  I think, revisiting it, that in part that's because the book itself isn't as impressive as the first one.  Not as interesting a read, certainly;  not as vividly realized;  and not as passionate.

He's intending it, I think, as a mirror image of the first one.  If in the first one he's presenting himself as a disaffected castaway from Western civilization, willing and able to appreciate utopia among the cannibals, here he's presenting himself as cast out of that paradise, wandering the wastelands of civilization again.  The wholeness of purpose of the earlier book is replaced by an aimless fragmentation in the later. 

Cast out of paradise.  Of course it's his choice:  he wants to leave the Typee valley.  That was always his intention.  But his stay drags on so long, and he writes of it in such luminous terms, that the reader is left to wonder if he really wants to leave (he=author, he=reader).  It's only his discovery that the Typees are, in fact, cannibals (and only in a limited, highly ceremonial, almost respectable way) that decides him to leave.  And this discovery is presented in a tone more tragic than horrific:  it's as if he's discovered that paradise has in fact no place for him.  Not that he's discovered paradise to be less than paradisiacal.

And so he goes a-wandering again.  Which is what the title of the second book means:  omoo=wander, he tells us.  But he goes wandering as someone deeply marked by his experience of paradise (in the second book he's even known as Typee, as if his knowledge of the place has made him part of it, even as he's cast out of it), someone with its perfection as a standard by which to judge civilization's imperfections.

For that's what the second book's about, no doubt.  He's still in the islands of the Pacific, in Tahiti most of the time, but he makes it clear that unlike Nukuhiva, these islands are far from untouched by Western civilization.  Most of them are under its political sway - Tahiti has just been usurped by the French, even as Nukuhiva itself had been as the earlier book got underway, but while he was able to escape the French to the Typee valley earlier, now there's no escape from them, no part of Tahiti that he can find that is unspoiled by Westerners.  And it's not just the French, of course:  he's constantly reminding us that British missionaries ruined Tahiti first, and that the Americans are at this very moment ruining Hawaii.

And it's not even just the white man's baleful influence on the Polynesians that dismays him - although his fervor in denouncing that is one of the book's saving graces.  What white men do to each other is just as bad.  What was missing from the last book is present here, a detailed depiction of life aboard a whaler, and inasmuch as that's a microcosmic society, it pretty clearly represents a doomed, damned civilization.

That's all in there.  The conceptual framework is all in place, and on that level I find the book very satisfying.  But it's not as interesting to read.  Part of it might just be that Melville was rushed - the prose isn't as carefully balanced, as polished, as good as in the first book.  It reads like the work of an author in a hurry, or perhaps bored by his story.  But part of it might be the inevitable consequence of this framework, as conceived by this author.  To make this kind of disjointed, disenchanted narrative work would have required the talents of an author with a more consistent, committed comic touch than Melville has, and maybe a greater love of wandering.

It could be that he's holding back.  I've just started Mardi, and while I do expect it to get sloggy, as all reports agree it does, so far it reads like an author liberated - he's committed himself to the exhilaration of myth and deep thought.  The systematic nature of Typee (as much ethnography as narrative) may have satisfied that urge within him, and triggered the passionate writing therein;  maybe the decision to observe only in passing in Omoo, or to concentrate on narrative over analysis, left him bereft of true inspiration.

Herman Melville: Typee (revisited)

Mardi has been sitting on my shelf for a couple of years, and I finally decided I'm going to read it. But first I wanted to re-read Typee and Omoo, since Mardi continues on from them.  This actually makes my third time through Typee;  not many books that aren't in my line of research have I read that many times.

It never fails to entertain, this book.  Even though the narrator's situation is static for most of the book, and the writing is given over to descriptions and ruminations of a naturalistical, anthropological, political, and almost philosophical nature, the book is always lively, vivid, and eminently readable.  Its aspirations to scholarship make it deeper than a mere sea-yarn, but it never loses its sea-yarn urgency.  A curious hybrid, Typee.

What struck me most this time through was how little time and energy Melville puts into convincing his readers that he was justified in jumping ship at Nukuheva.  It seems to have been common enough - even from the internal evidence of his narrative what he and Toby were doing was unusual but not unthinkable, and whalers short of men seemed to know they could pick some up among the deserters in the Pacific islands.  Nevertheless it's clear that Melville signed a paper saying he'd serve on his whaler, and he was breaking a contract by absconding;  he knew that if he was caught before his ship gave up looking for him that he'd be taken back by force, and that the French navy occupying parts of Nukuheva wouldn't consider it an injustice worth intervening in. 

He presents himself to us from the outset, then, as someone breaking faith with his employer and his shipmates.  So one might expect him to go to great lengths to justify his behavior.  And indeed he does mention the harsh discipline, short commons, and bleak prospects that obtained on his ship.  But all of this is dispensed with in a single, short chapter, most of which is taken up with general descriptions of the hardships of the whaler's life, as opposed to particular indictments of the Dolly and its officers.  All he really says in his own defense is that "in all contracts, if one party fail to perform his share of the compact, is not the other virtually absolved form his liability?"  I.e., he considered his captain to have been cruel and unfair enough to justify Melville in breaking his contract.  And he expects us to believe him, with only the most cursory of evidence.

I think Melville is willing to be seen as a deserter.  He could have made himself out a victim, but instead he lets us see him as someone who just runs away.  Which puts his adventure in the Typee valley into a new light, for me.  He's not presenting this as a series of tragedies (out of the whaler's frying pan into the cannibal's fire) so much as a choice that led to unexpected but not wholly negative consequences.

Because of course life among the Typee is presented as utopian:  it's an ideal society (except for the unpleasant custom of delectating upon ones defeated foes), and one perfectly hospitable to the narrator (except that they won't let him leave).  All of Melville's naturalistical, anthropological, political, and almost philosophical descriptions and ruminations are devoted to delineating this utopia.  And of course the pretense is that he found it by accident.  But the weak defense of his desertion suggests that on some level he is, and is willing to be seen by his readers as, someone who's looking for utopia, willing to find it here.

I think of Melville back home in New York, writing this book, conscious, as he must be conscious, that he's explicitly rejecting Euro-American civilization's claims of supremacy, and all the religious and military domination justified by those claims.  He must have been perfectly willing to define himself as an outsider in American polite society:  there's something pugnacious about this book.  And that starts with his desertion from the Dolly.  He's deserting American society and all its legal and ethical trappings when he deserts his ship.  He's willing to enter the noncivilized world and stay there for as long as it takes him to find something better - a better ship, ideally, but maybe a better society. 

Outsider status permeates every aspect of this book, though.  It starts with the narrator making himself an outsider to his ship's company by deserting them.  For the bulk of the book he's an outsider in Typee - as welcome as they make him, he never even contemplates the possibility that he might one day belong among them, even though late in the book he presents us with the specter of a Euro-American who has become naturalized into island society.  From the moment-of-narration standpoint, as one who has returned to America and elected to tell his tale, he's setting himself up as an outsider to those institutions (the missionary and military apparatus steadily spreading through the Pacific) he criticizes, and to the society whose values they epitomize.  But then isn't he already an outsider before he ever writes the book?  He's an educated man laboring on a whaler - he's a sailor capable of the most informed and refined reflections on his condition - and then he's a member of polite society who has been salted by life as a common sailor, and then life among the cannibals.  Nowhere has he fit in.  And he's fine with that.

The first move of Melville's literary career was one of desertion.

Bob Dylan: Another Self Portrait, post #4

Another Self Portrait is of the opinion that Self Portrait and New Morning were essentially one project, one long series of sessions with only an arbitrary division.  In my previous post I noted that I'm not really sold on this.  But I'm glad Columbia is, because that gave them an excuse to look at the June 1970 New Morning sessions in ASP.  And this is where the set is strongest.

That's partly, of course, because the New Morning sessions themselves were so strong.  By June 1970 Dylan finally had enough new originals to begin thinking about an album for real, and he came up with more as the sessions progressed (the album would eventually comprise not just the June sessions visited in ASP but a last-minute, and very productive, session in August).  The New Morning songs were good, solid songs:  not as haunted as some of those on John Wesley Harding, but more substantial than anything on Nashville Skyline.    When the reviews proclaimed Dylan is Back, it was more than just a reaction to Self Portrait;  it was a justified feeling of relief that after a silent 1968 and a year and a half of dabbling in 1969 and 1970, Dylan had made an album of committed songwriting again.  Of course, it would be his last real album until 1974's Planet Waves (and four years was an eternity in 1970s rock music), but there was no way to know that in 1970;  at the time, it must have seemed like the beginning of something, rather than the end.

But it's not just the welcome new originals that make the June sessions so important.  It's the fact that, as previously noted, he continued to experiment with covers of folk songs old and new.  But in June he was singing with more passion, more grit, more soul than he had been able to muster for years.  March 1970 had some very bright spots, but June was dazzling.

I keep talking about June.  But of course the New Morning sessions began in May, with the George Harrison session.  The initial Bootleg Series release included a seductive take of "If Not For You" from this session, with George's unmistakeable guitar;  ASP includes two more tracks, a previously-uncirculating version of "Time Passes Slowly" and the only new original recorded that day, "Working On A Guru."  The former boasts George and Bob harmonizing on a refrain that was dropped from future takes;  "la-la-la" is all they sing, but it's all they need to sing.  The latter was probably too similar in feel to the other uptempo numbers on New Morning to make the final cut, but it's a gem, and it's nice to finally have it official-like.  And of course one hopes that eventually this whole session will be released;  it's not as uniformly strong as Dylan's previous high-profile collaboration, with Johnny Cash, at least in part because George hardly sings at all, but it has its moments.  Another nice update of "One Too Many Mornings" (it's one of Dylan's most malleable songs);  too-weird-not-to-prize runthroughs of "Yesterday" and "Cupid";  the pre-country moonshine of "When's My Swamp Gonna Catch Fire" and "Fishing Blues". 

But June.  What makes the 1973 Dylan album so essential is the inclusion of several scintillating covers from these sessions.  "Mary Ann" and "Sarah Jane" are the equal of pretty much anything Bob's ever done, as far as pure singing is concerned.  They're that soulful, that assured, that complete.  Some of the other cover choices are too left-field to be truly effective - "Mr. Bojangles," "Big Yellow Taxi" - but he's still in fine voice.  They're more interesting as performances than most of what he was doing in March.  To these, ASP adds one more cover, and it's a beaut:  "Bring Me A Little Water," a Leadbelly tune often known as "Sylvie."  According to Olof, there are still a few more covers missing from these sessions;  I'm glad to have this one, and greedy for more.  (The best of his 1970 self-covers, a bluesy "Tomorrow Is A Long Time," circulates, and should have been here.)

Where ASP really does itself proud is in the alternate takes it includes of New Morning originals.  A few of these, such as the string-laden "Sign On The Window" and "If Not For You" and the electric-piano "Went To See The Gypsy," have been circulating for a while, and I'm honestly shocked to see them here, alongside the horn-overdubbed "New Morning."  The elaborate arrangements of these fly in the face of the stripped-down aesthetic Columbia is trying to sell for the March sessions.  But the orchestral "Sign On The Window" is a particular favorite of mine.  I'm overjoyed to have it legal.  The new alternates of "Time Passes Slowly" and "If Dogs Run Free" are similarly revelatory:  the former has an organ vamp copped from Joe Cocker, while the latter is performed like a regular Dylan song, complete with a chorus, as opposed to the jazz pastiche on the album.

All these alternate takes do precisely what they're supposed to:  give us a completely different way of looking at this album.  Now we can hear just how much experimentation Dylan put in before he settled on the album arrangements.  In many ways the discarded versions are livelier, more colorful than what he settled on;  but they're less intimate, less light-hearted. 

To sum:  ASP is puzzlingly weak in the 1969 portion of its self appointed task.  But in its treatment of 1970 it's stronger than I would ever have expected.  I still have my quibbles.  I still would have preferred a conscientiously complete look at these sessions, a release, say, that concentrated just on the March sessions and gave us at least one version of everything recorded then.  But nothing in Columbia's history with Dylan evinces that kind of methodicalness, so I hardly expect it.  If they're going to be scattershot, one can only hope that they hit as often as they do in the 1970 part of ASP.

But they also gesture toward 1971.  So there's a little more to consider.

Bob Dylan: Another Self Portrait, post #3

As we've noted, Self Portrait was comprised of a bunch of songs recorded in April-May 1969, a few numbers from the Isle of Wight, and a bunch of songs recorded in March 1970.  Another Self Portrait ignores the April-May 1969 sessions, although the 1973 Dylan compilation had picked up a couple of outtakes from them.  Conversely the Dylan album ignored the early '70 sessions, while Another Self Portrait lavishes attention on them. 

SP included fourteen tracks from 3/70.  ASP includes 11 more unique recordings, plus "stripped" versions of seven of the SP tracks - that is, the same takes but denuded of the overdubs added for the finished album.  Of the 11 unique recordings:  One is a third take of "Alberta" to complement the two on the original album.  One is another take of "Spanish Is The Loving Tongue," first attempted in 4/69 and then recorded again in 6/70 during the sessions that resulted in New Morning; this last version was released on the flip side of the "Watching The River Flow" single in 6/71, and is the best of the three, I think.  Another is an early take of "Went To See The Gypsy," which of course would be rerecorded for New Morning.  And another is an unexpected revival of "House Carpenter," which he had recorded for his first album.  "Railroad Bill" is another song he used to do back in his folkie days.  But the other six are new:  we've never heard Dylan singing them before. 

Which is, right there, fucking awesome.  This is a major cache of material.  These 11 alone amount to an old vinyl elpee's worth of music.  And they're by and large really good takes.  I still think perhaps the best single recording to surface from these March sessions is "Copper Kettle" from the original album;  "It Hurts Me Too" and "Gotta Travel On" are close.  But of the new ones, "Tattle O'Day" and "Pretty Saro" are brilliant, and the rest are very nice too. 

What about the stripped versions of the previously-released recordings?  I never hated the overdubbed versions, to be honest, and I still think I prefer the gussied-up "Copper Kettle" - I long ago outgrew whatever fetish I may once have had for the lone troubadour with his acoustic guitar, and I actually enjoy hearing Bob experiment with different production styles, different ways to find a rapprochement with pop music.  But I do agree that the unadorned versions of "Days Of '49," "Belle Isle," and "Little Sadie" recover a kind of experimental fragility that's nice to hear.

Because experimenting is what he was doing.  It's never been clear that he was really trying to make an album with these sessions, or with the 4-5/69 sessions.  I'm still not sold on the idea that Self Portrait and New Morning were part of one big project, which is what ASP is suggesting.  But I do think it's likely that from February 1969 all the way through August 1970, he was entering the studio fairly regularly, more or less just because he could, but without necessarily having new songs or a particular project in mind.  Twice, with Johnny Cash and with George Harrison, he was jamming with friends who happened to be accomplished musicians, just as he had done with the Band in 1967;  at other times he was in the studio with session musicians, some of whom (like David Bromberg, Al Kooper, and Charlie Daniels) were fairly strong personalities too.  And always, as in '67, he was rummaging through old songs, trying to find something he connected with, waiting for his swamp to catch fire.  In 1967 this had led to a slew of new originals, culminating in John Wesley Harding.  In February 1969 this unlocked a sudden, small burst of songwriting that became Nashville Skyline, but he has said that this was more or less an accident, and it didn't happen again;  by April 1970 he had only written a couple more new songs, but for whatever reason he decided to put out an album with what he had on hand, maybe to get the record company or the fans off his back, and that was Self Portrait.  But in June he was right back in the studio again, and with the same approach:  lots of covers.  Only this time he had a few more originals, and eventually enough to make an album.  I'll discuss that in a future post.

In other words, if the Basement Tapes of 1967 were Dylan's epic trawl through the murky waters of American vernacular music, quite possibly the sessions that would define his career, seeing him connect his 1964-1966 modernism with his pre-1964 folk roots, then his sessions in 1969 and 1970 can be seen as a continuation of that effort.  Nothing he did in 1969 or 1970 quite equals what he did in 1967, but then I consider the Basement Tapes to be the acme of American music, period. 

And now with ASP we have really a pretty good handle indeed on where he was at, what part of the Basement he was in, in March 1970.  There are still a few missing tracks - Olof lists takes on "Dock Of The Bay" and "Come All Ye Fair And Tender Ladies" that I'd like to hear, among other things.  But to be honest this is more than I ever expected to hear from these sessions.  And the new stuff is good.  It makes me reassess the period, and I liked the original album.  So chalk one up for Columbia.

But the best was still yet to come.

Bob Dylan: Another Self Portrait, post #2

Aside from a few Isle of Wight tracks, the original Self Portrait was comprised of studio recordings made between April 1969 and April 1970 (although the last new recordings for it were made in March '70 - the April sessions were just for overdubs, according to Olof).  Another Self Portrait casts a wider net than that, including quite a few tracks from the New Morning sessions of May and June '70, and even a few '71 tracks.  I'll address that decision in a future post.

*

It also includes a small number of outtakes from Nashville Skyline, and that's what I want to take up now.  The set gives us alternate takes of "I Threw It All Away" and "Country Pie."

The rationale for this is unclear, to say the least.  Nashville Skyline was recorded in February 1969 and released in April;  Self Portrait contains nothing from these sessions.  They were separate projects.  There are a number of revealing outtakes from the NS sessions that could have been included on SP if SP had been meant to include the NS sessions, but they weren't. 

I insist on this distinction because the set, and its liner notes, explicitly argue that the SP sessions were indistinguishable, indivisible, from the New Morning sessions (I'll address that in a future post).  And by including these NS outtakes they're implicitly arguing that the SP sessions were indivisible from the NS sessions.  Which isn't true.

Or maybe (more likely) it's that they mean us to conclude that the SP sessions are best heard in the wider context of what Dylan was doing in 1969-1971.  And that I agree with - by all means, more context.  But then I wonder:  why these outtakes?  I have nothing against alternate takes, and the more released Dylan the better I always say, but these alternate takes of "I Threw It All Away" and "Country Pie" don't really reveal much, to be honest.  Not about NS, and not about SP.  And meanwhile they fail to pick up the alternate "Lay, Lady, Lay" that was released as an iTunes bonus track on preorders of Together Through Life a few years ago.  That's no longer available, and it is revealing:  Dylan's vocals are pretty similar to the album version, but without the steel guitar and bongos, and with a more prominent Hammond, the arrangement is altogether more muscular.  It's a shame that this has disappeared into the netherworld.

It's about choices.  I rejoice to have these tracks, unrevealing though I find them.  But at the expense of what?  There's a whole album's worth of circulating outtakes from Nashville Skyline - the session he did with Johnny Cash and Cash's band - which included Carl Perkins!  A Million-Dollar Trio, more or less (although Carl doesn't sing anything).  This is where the NS remake of "Girl From The North Country" comes from, of course, and about 55 minutes of it circulate.

It's a great session.  Sometimes Dylan lays back out of deference to Cash, and sometimes he leans into it a bit more;  but it all has that casual, sunny, sincere bonhomie of the released track.  And repertoire-wise it's very interesting, including quite a few Cash tunes, but also some other Sun Records rockabilly numbers, and some ancient, ancient country songs such as "Mountain Dew" and "Careless Love" and two of Jimmie Rodgers' Blue Yodels.

Bob yodels.

And nothing has been released aside from "Girl From The North Country."  If you want to make the case that the SP idea - an album of country-ish covers - had its start in the NS period, then this is your argument right here.  Bob Dylan futzing around in the studio with a bona fide country giant and his cowboy band, somehow finding his way all the way back to Bascom Lamar Lunsford and the Singing Brakeman.

Another Self Portrait ignores it completely.

*

If Self Portrait (before it became a fuck-you) had an idea at its heart, that was probably it:  a covers album.  Classic country numbers done straight, together with trad folk and folk-revival originals done in a country style.  Dylan was in a songwriting slump, but he also had roots in the, duh, folk tradition, so the idea of a covers album probably didn't seem as strange to him as it did to his audience, which by this time had wholly embraced the ethic of original songwriting that he himself had done a lot to establish.

The Johnny Cash session was clearly just a lark, or an attempt to reconnect with the Basement-rummaging vibe he'd enjoyed with the Band in '67.  But later in the spring of 1969 he entered the studio and began laying down covers in somewhat more earnest.  Sessions in April and May produced one new original, the pastiche "Living The Blues," plus covers of "Take Me As I Am (Or Let Me Go)," "Take A Message To Mary," "Let It Be Me," "I've Forgotten More Than You'll Ever Know," and "Blue Moon."  All of these made it to Self Portrait.  Two more covers, "Spanish Is The Loving Tongue" and "A Fool Such As I," were released on the 1973 Dylan comp (another fuck-you but this time from Columbia to Dylan, who had just jumped labels).

These sessions have to count as the first Self Portrait sessions, right?  They produced a significant part of the final album, and unlike the Cash session it was clear that they were meant for something - a big, professional band, elaborate arrangements.  The SP elaborate-production aesthetic starts here.  And from a historical point of view they're interesting, in that they show Dylan persevering with his Nashville Skyline voice, that silky croon.  In 1970 he traded this in for, usually, something closer to his old folk voice.

Artistically it must be admitted that these aren't the strongest of the SP sessions.  A lot of it I put down to his decision to stick with the croon:  what sounded fresh and playful in February is by this point starting to sound unnatural.  On a few tracks he finds his old joy in rhythm and phrasing - "A Fool Such As I" is pretty successful.  But for the most part these are the tracks that gave SP a name for blandness, and the '73 album a reputation as more of the same.

So I guess I'm not surprised that Columbia didn't take this opportunity to collect the two Dylan tracks - otherwise available only on the Complete Albums Collection, since Dylan is out of print as a separate album.  Not surprised, but a bit disappointed.

In fact, Another Self Portrait ignores the April-May sessions entirely.  And that is a surprise and a disappointment, because the two circulating unreleased songs from these sessions are, predictably, the strongest:  raucous covers of two Johnny Cash songs, "Ring Of Fire" and "Folsom Prison Blues."  The sound is fuzzy on the circulating recordings, so it's hard to know if the performances are really as wild and garage-like as they sound, but what's not obscured is the rockabilly drive of the arrangements, and the corresponding aggression of Dylan's vocals.  These should have been released.  They would have utterly changed people's perception of 1969 Dylan.

*

In sum, Another Self Portrait is motivated by a fine and generous impulse to include 1969 in its overview of the album, but makes really bad choices.  Leaves the interesting stuff in the can.

Bob Dylan: Another Self Portrait, post #1

I picked this up when it was released, but it's taken me a while to begin to digest it, and to figure out what I wanted to say about it.  I think I know now.

First, some general remarks.  I've always liked the original Self Portrait album, probably more than your average Dylan fan, definitely more than the punters and the critics.  I agree that, as released, as a unit, it's a mess, probably a fuck-you;  but within that mess are moments of great beauty, if not quite genius.  And bootlegs and whatnot have shown me that there was a lot of good stuff left off the album.  So I was surprised, but not at all dismayed, to learn that the Bootleg Series was going to take a good long look at the sessions.  Great choice.

But the result is just as much of a hodgepodge (if not a fuck-you) as the original album.  Moments of great beauty, but presented in such a disorderly, haphazard fashion that the package ends up obscuring as much as it reveals.  Which is a shame, because it reveals quite a lot.

*

I'm going to start with two egregious examples of Columbia burying the lede.

The big one is the Isle of Wight set.  This has long been my vote for Next Bootleg Release.  It had all the requirements:  great historical significance, nice performance, notoriety, and yet rarity value because the circulating tapes were so spotty.

Hearing it here in its entirety in excellent sound only confirms me in my love for this show.  In the acoustic numbers it contains some of Dylan's best ever singing - on "Wild Mountain Thyme" he does things that I've only ever heard Aaron Neville pull off.  And on the electric stuff he modulates skilfully between an abandon that looks forward to Tour '74 and a smooth control that recalls (of course) Nashville Skyline.  But with the Band.  I mean, hearing the Band put their stamp on a few Nashville Skyline and John Wesley Harding numbers is deeply, deeply satisfying.  This show is a missing link, a key part of the Dylan story.  So I'm glad they released it.

But shocked and scandalized that they released it only in the super-deluxe mondo-expensive edition of the set.  Meaning only the most dedicated of fans are going to get it.  This is far too good to be bonus material.  This is headline quality music.  Should have been its own standalone release, as far as I'm concerned.

The other buried lede, and this may be even bigger, is the studio version of "Minstrel Boy."  The sole new original at the Isle of Wight show (not counting "The Mighty Quinn," which was known if not previously released), the song was a key part of the Self Portrait album.  So it's a real nice touch that they included a studio take of it here.  Particularly since this comes from the Basement Tapes sessions of 1967, and yet has never circulated (despite the plethora of unreleased material from those sessions that does circulate - and when are they going to release a complete box of Basement tracks?).

But here's where the lede gets buried.  Because Levon Helm's voice is in unmistakeable evidence on this recording - and nowhere else on the circulating Basement tracks.  He had dropped out of the Band (the Hawks) during their 1965-6 world tour backing Dylan, and didn't rejoin until late '67, just as they were gearing up to become the Band.  For decades there have been rumors of Basement Tapes with Levon, but everything that circulates from 1967 of the Band backing Dylan lacks Levon.  So the release of a Basement song that includes him is huge.  It's evidence that Dylan did keep laying down tracks with them after Levon returned - and it suggests that there's more where this came from.  Again, for decades there have been rumors of another reel or two or more of Basement stuff, perhaps in the possession of Garth Hudson.  Maybe it's true.  Maybe there's more where this came from.

But the liner notes are mum on the subject.

(To be honest, I'm not a hundred percent convinced that it is from 1967.  Dylan's voice sounds like '67, but some of his Isle of Wight singing slips back into that Basement vibe, so this could just as easily come from rehearsals for that concert.  It could, perhaps, be 1969.  But I have no reason to think that other than, I guess, a general feeling that Columbia isn't telling this story as carefully as they should.)

More later.