Bob Dylan - Live At Carnegie Hall 1963
Wow, this is a treat. I picked up a copy of “Bob Dylan - Live At Carnegie Hall 1963″ on eBay. It arrived this moring and I’m giving it a spin now. As far as I know, the 6-track EP has never had an official release, so it’s not available in record stores, but it isn’t hard to find copies online. Ebay and Amazon Marketplace are good starting points. The EP was only put out as a “promotional copy” for reasons not entirely clear.
It captures a solo Dylan at peak-performance during his early folk years. The audio quality is astounding. It could have been recorded yesterday. Just Dylan’s voice and guitar, it is as clear as a bell. The performance itself leaves no doubt that the man’s charisma and talent was in evidence right from the start. It is robust and self-assured. What’s more, while clearly distinctive, his voice is still decades away from becoming a parody of itself - and it may surprise some how melodic it is.
The track list is:
- “The Times They Are A-Changin’“
- “Ballad of Hollis Brown“
- “Boots of Spanish Leather“
- “Lay Down Your Weary Tune“
- “North Country Blues“
- “With God on Our Side“
Wikipedia also usefully informs us that two other songs from this night’s show, “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” and “When the Ship Comes In“, were released on The Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home: The Soundtrack.
As far as I know there isn’t actually an officially released live album of early Dylan singing predominantly his own compositions. The closest you’ll get to that is snippets of D.A. Pennebaker’s documenatry Dont Look Back. Of course, that captured the cusp between his “folk” period and his (in)famous switch to electric - as British luddites shrieked “traitor”. Another promo album Live at the Gaslight 1962(released in 2005) was chiefly cover versions of folk standards. But I digress. As I say, it’s a mystery why - if the material of this quality exists to put this EP together and assorted tracks on the ‘Bootleg’ compilations - there isn’t a decent full ‘live’ album preserving vintage Dylan singing Dylan at the height of his powers as a folk icon.
The highlight on this EP, for me, is the scathing rendition “With God On Their Side”. Which is apt, because my next article on Dylan will be a re-evaluation of his three religious albums, which I recently bought to plug the gap in my collection.
Comments
| 29 August, 2008, 4:53 pm |
Point of pedantry but the English folkies are surely better known for shouting ‘Judas!’ On bob’s 1st electric tour aren’t they? Least they are in this corner of the country they are, though it’s pretty likely that someone also shouted traitor as well.
| 29 August, 2008, 5:34 pm |
All hindsight, of course, because I wasn’t there at the time but… it always seemed odd to me that the folk purists got so upset when Dylan went electric. I mean, you listen to those early albums now and it’s clear that not only was he miles ahead of the likes of Pete Seeger and all the other old twats in terms of sheer talent, he was also so outrageously different. It’s why all the English pop stars loved him, because they could relate to that difference, that desire to break free of the boundaries. And anyway, there were loads of early clues as to where he would end up, with things like Mixed Up Confusion and the full band version of Corrina Corrina. Going electric was the most natural thing in the world for him to do - he must have regretted not doing it sooner (the great Another Side of Bob Dylan would have definitely benefited from using a band).
I’ll look forward to your assessment of the born again albums - very underrated. My favourite is Shot of Love which, for my money, contains one of Dylan’s very best love songs - Heart of Mine (although the live version on Biograph is better).
| 29 August, 2008, 6:09 pm |
I can’t get any of your links to work, Brett (404 Page not Found).
Anyway, I always liked Ballad of Hollis Brown by Dylan. I just don’t recall hearing the original until today:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwqik5z0F90&feature=related
Nice! You’re right, Brett. The sound quality is exceptional.
First time I heard it was the (more sinister sounding) cover version by Nazareth:
| 29 August, 2008, 7:23 pm |
I can’t hear any discontinuity, apart from the obvious one when he plugged in. You’ve got to allow for how odd some folkies can be, not all of them but there’s a definite strata of extreme weirdoes.
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