Bob Dylan's debt to the hidden industry that he (unwittingly) helped create. http://www.salon.com/ent/music/feature/2003/01/07/dylan_boots/print.html "Some of these bootleggers, they make pretty good stuff"
Bob Dylan's debt to the hidden industry that he (unwittingly) helped create. - - - - - - - - - - - - -
By Steven Hart
Jan. 7, 2003 | Bob Dylan must be the first musician in history whose unreleased songs are as well known, and in many cases better, than his officially issued work. Certainly no other artist has been so bedeviled by underground recordings. The 40 or so albums that make up the official Dylan canon are all but lost in a sea of bootlegs so vast that collectors have organized them into subcategories, any one of which contains enough entries for months, even years of study.
After decades of failing to stop the bootleggers with complaints and litigation, Dylan and his record company decided to beat them at their own game by launching "The Bootleg Series" in 1991. The most recent installment, "Live 1975: The Rolling Thunder Revue" (Columbia/Legacy), contains superb music, but it illustrates two uncomfortable facts. First, that for well over half his career, Dylan's art has been better served by the bootleggers than by his own label -- or, indeed, by Dylan himself. And second, that underground releases must get a good share of credit for sustaining interest in Dylan as a continuing creative force. The official Columbia releases are fine for charting the first incandescent phase of Dylan's career. But from the mid-1970s onward -- decades marked by long silences, artistic fumbling and a parade of bungled albums -- the real story of Dylan's artistry comes not from Columbia, but from bootleg labels with names like TMOQ, Swingin' Pig, Dandelion, Q, Crystal Cat, Rattlesnake, Wild Wolf and Scorpio. Considering the twists and turns that have marked Dylan's career, it's only fitting that the man himself can be credited with sparking the subindustry that so irritates and benefits him. It all started when word got out that Dylan was refusing to release a batch of songs recorded in 1967 with the musicians who would become the Band. And so, in the summer of 1969, some enterprising souls issued a vinyl album of several Basement recordings, mingled with Dylan performances from the early folkie period, under the
title "Great White Wonder." (Clinton Heylin's "Bootleg: The Secret History
of the Other Recording Industry," is the indispensable record of how this happened.)
And yea verily, "Great White Wonder" did beget "Troubled Troubador," which did beget "Waters of Oblivion," which begat "Little White Wonder," after
Great White were unfuckingtouchable back in their day, what is a good bootleg
Beaver Fever <Beaver...@live.com> wrote:
Great White were unfuckingtouchable back in their day, what is a good bootleg
Hey meth-boy, we’re not talking about Great White the bar band whose pyrotechnics killed 100 people and injured 230…
The whole nature of this revived thread
is to bring to life once more the joys of
reading and replying to thread on rec.music.gdead
when it was still worth reading.
Oh, yeah, Bob Dylan was a great listen
way back then, even before
the internetz.
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