it was in another lifetime…

More of everything on this 6th day of the month. It’s kind of the blogging advent calendar if you like.

There used to be a question asked in the early hours of the morning. “Do you Dylan?” This was usually followed by an attempt to play something obscure by the master. Dave always won with a battered copy of the New York sessions for Blood On The Tracks. We listened intently for Dylan’s buttons scratching the guitar as he played.

The Bootleg series version allegedly has some of these moments but I am not such a Dylan student that I can tell you were they are except during Simple Twist of Fate because I just now heard it.

With the advent of the bootleg series though the mystery of those hidden away recordings is over. Now everybody can Dylan. You don’t have to try too hard it’s readily available either officially released in those beautifully curated albums or on some download site.

It’s great to hear it all and it would still be good to have to hunt just a little. it is however fascinating to hear how these songs have developed over the years. Even when they were being written.

I wonder if Dave still has that copy of the old bootleg? It’s probably just about unplayable now.

There was also the occasional foray of “I don’t Dylan but I do Dead.” This would result in an endless discussion of which version of Scarlet Begonias should be played resulting the appearance of a box of cassettes from the closet many of which had been sent by mail from the USA. Those pre-Internet bootleg trading groups were a marvel. Dave got an address of someone in the USA from a hippy sitting on the stoop outside Probe sent off some C90s and waited and several months later the cassettes came back with the immortal Dead bootlegs on them. These became objects of wonder for many weeks.

And then there was this. One of the great lost albums reconstructed by Jerry Donahue.