Last night, I listened to an alternate version of my favourite Dylan album 'Blood on the Tracks' over a glass of whisky after buying episode fourteen of the long-running official Bootleg Series 'More Blood, More Tracks' from Amazon on a whim that day.
I've been loosely aware a different version of the album existed for almost as long as I've known the original, yet for whatever reason, I hadn't heard the outtakes, either before or after they were officially released last year. Retrospectively, this seems strange when I love the album so much, and when it remained in the shortlist of CDs almost exclusively clogging up my hi-fi as a student. It was the soundtrack to many a stoned evening true-to-type.
What makes the material so special is its intimacy, which is unusual of an oblique artist like Dylan. While I'm a fan of much of his work across the span of his career, this is the album I return to most frequently, with 'Time Out of Mind' running a close second; it's bittersweet and honest in a way seldom seen in his oeuvre.
(Yes, I just said, "Oeuvre".)
What struck me most from the outtakes is they sound even more personal than the final album, perhaps primarily because they're almost exclusively solo renditions except for a little bass. They're recorded live in the studio without overdubs, in all their primitive and primal glory, which helps the quality of the songwriting shine through.
It's not like Dylan's lyrical ability isn't highly regarded (he won a Nobel prize, for God's sake) but in a way, it's underrated when you consider how squarely he hits his imagery on the head. A particular line that stood out for me last night was, "a creature void of form" in 'Shelter From the Storm'; who puts phrases like that in their songs today? Not Katy Perry, that's for sure.
What made last night's listening so special was it served to underline how fantastic the material is: whichever version of 'Blood on the Tracks' Dylan had decided to release in 1974 wouldn't have diminished its excellence. It shits all over the Christmas album he put out in 2009 any day.
I've been loosely aware a different version of the album existed for almost as long as I've known the original, yet for whatever reason, I hadn't heard the outtakes, either before or after they were officially released last year. Retrospectively, this seems strange when I love the album so much, and when it remained in the shortlist of CDs almost exclusively clogging up my hi-fi as a student. It was the soundtrack to many a stoned evening true-to-type.
What makes the material so special is its intimacy, which is unusual of an oblique artist like Dylan. While I'm a fan of much of his work across the span of his career, this is the album I return to most frequently, with 'Time Out of Mind' running a close second; it's bittersweet and honest in a way seldom seen in his oeuvre.
(Yes, I just said, "Oeuvre".)
What struck me most from the outtakes is they sound even more personal than the final album, perhaps primarily because they're almost exclusively solo renditions except for a little bass. They're recorded live in the studio without overdubs, in all their primitive and primal glory, which helps the quality of the songwriting shine through.
It's not like Dylan's lyrical ability isn't highly regarded (he won a Nobel prize, for God's sake) but in a way, it's underrated when you consider how squarely he hits his imagery on the head. A particular line that stood out for me last night was, "a creature void of form" in 'Shelter From the Storm'; who puts phrases like that in their songs today? Not Katy Perry, that's for sure.
What made last night's listening so special was it served to underline how fantastic the material is: whichever version of 'Blood on the Tracks' Dylan had decided to release in 1974 wouldn't have diminished its excellence. It shits all over the Christmas album he put out in 2009 any day.