Month: December 2016

bob dylan: ‘the real royal albert hall 1966 concert’

one of the most copied bootlegs in music history is the legendary royal albert hall concert from dylan’s legendary 1966 spring tour of australia and europe. there was only one small problem – the show that was so widely disseminated is actually a show a few days earlier at the manchester free trade hall – the show that is documented in dylan’s bootleg series volume 4.

as part of his ever evolving project of releasing his vast archives, he recently put out a 36 disk set of the entire tour, but also added this release of probably the most famous concert of all of them – the tour finale at royal albert hall from may 1966.

one of the more compelling features of this tour was bob’s decision to hire a bunch of relative unknowns to accompany him on the second set of each night, the ‘electric’ portion. known then as ‘the hawks’, they eventually become known to the world as ‘the band’. most of the world was not ready for the electric dylan, and he was summarily booed in every show on that tour. for the most part the musicians handled it well, but it did wear on them (in fact, levon helm quit right before they left for australia). if you have ever seen d.a. pennebaker’s documentary of this tour – ‘don’t look back’ – you will also be aware that bob’s health was steadily deteriorating throughout. robbie robertson and his manager albert grossman found him in his hotel room after the final show nearly unconscious and delirious from exhaustion. two months later he would be critically injured on his motorcycle, forcing the cancellation of the next leg of the tour. in fact he would not tour again till 1974. essentially this was the demarcation point for the next direction he would take in his career, holing up in woodstock with the band and creating ‘the basement tapes’ and the songs that would show up on ‘john wesley harding’.

this release is two discs of unreleased material (except for ‘visions of johanna’ which appears on ‘biograph’). the first is the acoustic set, and the second is the electric set with the hawks. considering the technical issues they were having with equipment, the cumulative effects of a world wide tour, the animosity of the crowd, and the fact that many of britain’s musical royalty were in attendance (including the beatles), the performance here is just stunning. having released three of the most important albums in rock history in the previous 18 months (‘bringing it all back home’, highway 61 revisited’. and ‘blonde on blonde’), this is a fitting capstone to one of the most productive bursts of creativity in modern musical history.

gillian welch, ‘boots no. 1, the official revival bootleg’

for the first time, gillian welch and dave rawlings have reached back into their archives and released older material. the first one is focused on their initial collaboration, ‘revival’. that album essentially put them on the map, at least as far as the burgeoning americana movement was concerned. they had a met a few years before at the berklee college of music in boston, where they discovered they had a mutual adoration for early bluegrass and country music, specifically the carter family and the stanley brothers. after leaving berklee, they headed west to nashville where they did odd jobs and worked the night club circuit, trying to establish a name for themselves. opening for the likes of emmylou harris, townes van zandt, and lucinda williams, they soon caught the eye of a publisher, who liked their simple and sparse songwriting style. gillian was soon signed to write songs for other artists, and then soon thereafter landed a record contract. she was whisked away to los angeles with about thirty songs in her pocket. produced by t bone burnett, the arrangements were a little different than what she envisioned. dave rawlings at that time was considered just the boyfriend who came to play guitar on some of the tracks. dave and t bone clashed a bit, but they backed off, conceding this was their first foray into the record business. and in the end, what they came up with is one of the groundbreaking albums of the americana era. indeed, it would be t bone burnett who would use much of the knowledge he had learned from these recording sessions to develop the soundtrack for ‘o brother where art thou’, on which gillian was prominently featured.

what struck me when i first heard them was how ancient their duets were, steeped in appalachia and naturally evoking the high lonesome sound first popularized by bill monroe and his gang. they were truly students of the genre, and it just sounded so genuine. and they really haven’t strayed from that for twenty years. since they recorded this album, dave has of course become more of a force on the records, and his guitar work is in high demand on like minded artists’ works. interestingly, the guitar that he is most associated with – the epiphone archtop – was first played on ‘revival’. he had found it in an old guitar shop, and had it cleaned up with new strings. he allegedly only played one chord on it before putting it in a guitar case and shipping it to the california studios. his usual guitar wasn’t cutting through the t bone mix, and so he switched, never looking back.

the bootleg release has some great alternate takes, but more importantly there are about 6-7 outtakes that never made the cut. some really good material that would be first class songs on any album from this period. this pair is well known for taking their sweet time in releasing new material. and so for now, consider this retrospection of their classic debut.

http://www.rollingstone.com/country/features/how-gillian-welch-made-an-americana-touchstone-in-revival-w449557

http://www.salon.com/2016/11/25/gillian-welch-returns-to-revival-we-felt-like-martians/

‘bear: the life and times of augustus owsley stanley III’

q: what do you get a deadhead for christmas?

a: this book.

‘there’s nothing wrong with bear that a few billion less brain cells wouldn’t cure’

-jerry garcia

there is no separating the history of the grateful dead and the life story of this man. you can try by arguing that they moved in separate parallel psychedelic universes, and that might be true, but it could also be argued that they might be entirely irrelevant to musical history without each other.

to paraphrase the introduction from the book’s cover, bear was one of the most iconic figures in the cultural revolution that changed both america and the world during the 1960’s (both good and bad).

an early pioneer in the production and distribution of lsd (when it was still legal), his product helped drive ken kesey and his merry prankster’s acid tests. by most accounts, a vast majority of the crowd and musicians at the monterey pop festival were served his latest batch (‘monterey purple’). the shipment he sent to john lennon shortly after the festival was instrumental in the production of the beatles’ ‘magical mystery tour’ album and film.

convinced that the grateful dead were destined to become one of the world’s greatest rock bands, owsley provided the money that kept them going in their early years. as their long time soundman, he also faithfully recorded many of their early live performances. he also designed the massive pioneering sound system known simply as the ‘wall of sound’.

of the approximately 2300 shows the dead are known to have performed in their thirty years, it is estimated that close to 2000 of them have some remnant of them recorded in some form. there is good reason to believe bear was largely responsible for initiating this phenomenon. at first it was for his own enjoyment, but then the band also starting listening to see how they sounded to the audience. on top of that, bear would also record the various bands from the era that played in the shows with them on a given night. his ‘sonic journals’, as he called them, still exist. all on analog tapes, they are reaching the end of their shelf life and there is a push by the surviving family to get them digitallized before they degrade any further.

from a child born to a kentucky blueblood political dynasty, to his death on a road outside his ranch in the outback of australia, this is the story of a very unique and intelligent individual. i have heard many stories about bear in the various books and articles i have read about the dead over the years, but this spins a lot more tales (and dispels a few myths). a must read for any one interested in the evolution of the counter culture of the sixties.