BOB DYLAN : MORE BLOOD, MORE TRACKS - THE BOOTLEG SERIES VOL. 14 (DELUXE EDITION)

 

Disc One (51:30)

  1. If You See Her, Say Hello (Take 1)
  2. If You See Her, Say Hello (Take 2)
  3. You're A Big Girl Now (Take 1)
  4. You're A Big Girl Now (Take 2)
  5. Simple Twist Of Fate (Take 1)
  6. Simple Twist Of Fate (Take 2)
  7. You're A Big Girl Now (Take 3)
  8. Up To Me (Rehearsal)
  9. Up To Me (Take 1)
  10. Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts (Take 1)
  11. Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts (Take 2)

Disc Two (69:51)

  1. Simple Twist Of Fate (Take 1a)
  2. Simple Twist Of Fate (Take 2a)
  3. Simple Twist Of Fate (Take 3a)
  4. Call Letter Blues (Take 1)
  5. Meet Me In The Morning (Take 1)
  6. Call Letter Blues (Take 2)
  7. Idiot Wind (Take 1)
  8. Idiot Wind (Take 1, Remake)
  9. Idiot Wind (Take 3 with Insert)
  10. Idiot Wind (Take 5)
  11. Idiot Wind (Take 6)
  12. You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go (Rehearsal and Take 1)
  13. You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go (Take 2)
  14. You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go (Take 3)
  15. You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go (take 4)
  16. You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go (take 5)
  17. You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go (Take 6)
  18. You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go (Take 6, Remake)
  19. You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go (Take 7)
  20. You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go (Take 8)

Disc Three (65:33)

  1. Tangled Up In Blue (Take 1)
  2. You're A Big Girl Now (Take 1, Remake)
  3. You're A Big Girl Now (Take 2, Remake)
  4. Tangled Up In Blue (Reheasal)
  5. Tangled Up In Blue (Take 2, Remake)
  6. Spanish Is The Loving Tongue (Take 1)
  7. Call Letter Blues (Reheasal)
  8. You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go (Take 1, Remake)
  9. Shelter From The Storm (Take 1)
  10. Buckets Of Rain (Take 1)
  11. Tangled Up In Blue (Take 3, Remake)
  12. Buckets Of Rain (Take 2)
  13. Shelter From The Storm (Take 2)
  14. Shelter From The Storm (Take 3)
  15. Shelter From The Storm (Take 4)

Disc Four (65:52)

  1. You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go (Take 1, Remake 2)
  2. You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go (Take 2, Remake 2)
  3. Buckets Of Rain (Take 1, Remake)
  4. Buckets Of Rain (Take 2, Remake)
  5. Buckets Of Rain (Take 3, Remake)
  6. Buckets Of Rain (Take 4, Remake)
  7. Up To Me (Take 1, Remake)
  8. Up To Me (take 2, Remake)
  9. Buckets Of Rain (Take 1, Remake 2)
  10. Buckets Of Rain (Take 2, Remake 2)
  11. Buckets Of Rain (Take 3, Remake 2)
  12. Buckets Of Rain (Take 4, Remake 2)
  13. If You See Her, Say Hello (Take 1, Remake)
  14. Up To Me (Take 1, Remake 2)
  15. Up To Me (Take 2, Remake 2)
  16. Up To Me (Take 3, Remake 2)
  17. Buckets Of Rain (Rehearsal)
  18. Meet Me In The Morning (Take 1, Remake)
  19. Meet Me In The Morning (Take 2, Remake)
  20. Buckets Of Rain (Take 5, Remake 2)

Disc Five (61:13)

  1. Tangled Up In Blue (Rehearsal and Take 1, Remake 2)
  2. Tangled Up In Blue (Take 2, Remake 2)
  3. Tangled Up In Blue (Take 3, Remake 2)
  4. Simple Twist Of Fate (Take 2, Remake)
  5. Simple Twist Of Fate (Take 3, Remake)
  6. Up To Me (Rehearsal and Take 1, Remake 3)
  7. Up To Me (Take 2, Remake 3)
  8. Idiot Wind (Rehearsal and Takes 1-3, Remake)
  9. Idiot Wind (Take 4, Remake)
  10. Idiot Wind (Take 5, Remake)
  11. You're A Big Girl Now (Take 1, Remake 2)
  12. Meet Me In The Morning (Take 1, Remake 2)
  13. Meet Me In The Morning (Takes 2-3, Remake 2)

Disc Six (45:59)

  1. You're A Big Girl Now (Takes 3-6, Remake 2)
  2. Tangled Up In Blue (Rehearsal and Takes 1-2, Remake 3)
  3. Tangled Up In Blue (Take 3, Remake 3)
  4. Idiot Wind
  5. You're A Big Girl Now
  6. Tangled Up In Blue
  7. Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts
  8. If You See Her, Say Hello

Label : Columbia

Release Date : November 2, 2018

Review (AllMusic) : For fans of Bob Dylan's wide-ranging Bootleg series, More Blood, More Tracks (Vol. 14) is an entryway into one of the most mysterious, tangled stories in his recording career. These six discs contain the complete recordings sessions for 1975's Blood on the Tracks, 87 tracks in all, the vast majority unreleased. This box assists in offering a view of the process behind one of the songwriter's most enigmatic albums. On September 16 of 1974, Dylan entered Columbia's Studio with engineer Phil Ramone, with songs at once seething with anger, brokenness, and vulnerability. Written and recorded during his eventual divorce from first wife Sara, Dylan shrouds these songs in alliteration and metaphor, stretching time itself as past and present, commingling in numerous locations; they separate and return in new configurations. His protagonists speak in first and third person, often in the same verse. Once encountered, however, they're impossible to shake. Presented here are the complete sessions of the four days in New York, chronologically recorded, and, for the first time at the proper speed (Dylan had Ramone bump the master tape speed to make the tunes faster for radio play), and without the substantial reverb on the original tapes. These tunes were cut in a fit of white-heat inspiration, first by Dylan solo, and then with a band of folk-associated sidemen in Eric Weissberg & Deliverance. By the time you reach discs three through five, all the accompaniment, save for Dylan's guitar, harmonica, Tony Brown's bass, and occasional pedal steel and organ, are stripped away, resulting in what was then thought to be the completed album. Scheduled for late December release with a promotional campaign drafted, printed cover, and test pressings distributed, Dylan wasn't satisfied. Ultimately, he kept only one band track, "Meet Me in the Morning." He spent Christmas in Minnesota with his producer brother David Zimmerman, who was also less than enthused with the tracks. Dylan called his label and insisted on holding the album back. On December 27, he and a band of hastily assembled local players re-recorded five songs to complete Blood on the Tracks (captured on disc six). Since nearly half-a-million copies of the cover were already printed, the Minnesota musicians remained uncredited until now. This is exhaustive but fascinating material that sounds fantastic due to a painstaking remixing job -- nothing here sounds like a rough demo. Check the nine takes of "Idiot Wind," some offer different words, all roil with anger and bitterness. "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go" is gradually revealed as one of Dylan's finest love songs in a dozen more takes. "You're a Big Girl Now," in 15 takes, is peeled away from its sarcasm to reveal a man saddled with regret. Multiple versions of "Tangled Up in Blue," "Lily Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts," and "Simple Twist of Fate" offer proof that there were many versions of the songs before they assumed their final incarnations. Dylan's constant rewriting and creative flow are captured warts and all in false starts, stuttering alternate takes, studio conversation, and flowing inspiration in complete versions. There are hours of fascination awaiting listeners, and the music poses as many new questions as it does answers surrounding the album's mythos. As for the autobiographical nature of the content, it remains, thankfully, unclear. The enclosed photo book is as essential as the liner essays in the deluxe package. By any measure, More Blood, More Tracks is a monumentally important document in the history of popular music and a gem in Dylan's catalog.

Review (Pitchfork) : Jokes about the title aside, this payload of alternate takes presents a complex portrait of a complicated time for the singer-songwriter as he made a masterpiece. The lore has always been that there are two versions of Blood on the Tracks. There's the one that got released in January 1975-the comeback album that reinvigorated Bob Dylan's career after a stint in the shadows, the classic that begins with the low hurdy-gurdy of "Tangled Up in Blue" and saunters onward like a sad walk through autumn woods. And then there's the version that Dylan scrapped-the widely bootlegged, mostly acoustic collection he recorded in four days in New York City but second-guessed weeks before its scheduled release. He rewrote and re-recorded half the songs with a full band at home in Minnesota, in two days just after Christmas 1974. A combination became the definitive Blood on the Tracks. Anytime during the last 40 years, Sony could have simply released the record's early version, long known to fans as the "New York Sessions," and sold it as a simple, digestible lost classic. But that is not how Dylan's Bootleg Series, now in its 14th volume, operates: Instead, we've got the charmingly titled More Blood, More Tracks which, across six discs and 87 recordings, documents every note of those New York sessions and the complete full-band renditions from Minnesota. For more casual fans, there's a one-CD or double-LP set that features the best alternate take of each song, stripped of overdubs or production effects. And so, a third version of Blood on the Tracks emerges-one that illustrates the vulnerability of the scrapped release, the one-take intimacy of Dylan's earliest work, and the grandness of the album proper. Despite its nearly instant reception as a classic, Blood on the Tracks is not a world that Dylan inhabited for long. By the end of 1975, he was already a different person (in full costume) leading the crowd-pleasing Rolling Thunder Revue and working up the epic gypsy-folk ballads of 1976's Desire. We can now wallow in the moment a little longer. This is not the first time the Dylan camp has offered a box set as an audio documentary. In 2015, The Cutting Edge covered every studio take from 14 months of sessions in the mid-1960s that led to three consecutive breakthroughs: Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde. Put on any disc from that set, and you'll hear Dylan at a moment of inspiration, fueled by relentless creativity (and endless amphetamines) as he searched for his-and, by extension, rock music's-future. A decade later, nearing his mid-30s, he worked with a different energy. More Blood, More Tracks is slow, largely solo, and set in its ways like a sullen dude reading Chekhov in the corner of the bar. There's occasional piano, pedal steel, drums, and bass, but it's mostly Dylan alone with his guitar and harmonica. Nearly any other presence seems to unsettle him. In one of the box's most revealing moments, Mick Jagger visits the studio on the final day of the New York sessions. Clearly spent and unsatisfied, Dylan noodles away at the bluesy "Meet Me in the Morning." Jagger suggests some slide guitar might liven things up. "No, I don't want to play slide," Dylan seethes before giving it a clumsy go to prove his point. When Jagger sheepishly concedes that the song is fine, Dylan gives a bratty little laugh-he wins again. Unlike The Cutting Edge, Dylan does not rely on accompanists to push these tracks forward. A swooning, full-band "Simple Twist of Fate" is quickly discarded for the sparse, solo one. "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go" is also a wonder of reduction, as Dylan slowly realizes it can only exist without a drum part. As he repeats its flowery narrative across half-a-dozen takes, it occurs to him that his words are the percussion: "Purple clover, Queen Anne lace/Crimson hair across your face." The swinging country beat from Richard Crooks can't help but clash against the consonants. For most of the box set, the creation of Blood on the Tracks seems like a process of refinement. Dylan's lyrics-precise, constant, breathless-also settle early in the process, minus some pronoun and tense switches. His voice transforms the most, as he navigates these songs like dramatic monologues on the page. While fans and critics were quick to draw a connection between Dylan's new material and his private life, including his impending divorce, Dylan has long maintained that these songs are not autobiographical. As presented here, they do not feel memoiristic-at least not in the traditional sense. Instead, they paint a larger portrait of Dylan's creative vision. "You've got yesterday, today, and tomorrow all in the same room," he famously said about his process during this era. More Blood, More Tracks brings that concept to life in surprisingly vivid ways. This was no desperate bloodletting; every drop was placed just so. The single-disc edition of the album, featuring all acoustic solo takes, sounds excellent but embryonic: just the present, before the past and future showed up to fuck everything up. No matter where in the process you encounter these songs, it's hard to go wrong. The very long outlier "Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts" is either your cup of tea or not; whether a band is trying to recreate its whirling circus atmosphere or Dylan is going it alone doesn't make much difference. "Idiot Wind" sounds best in its original acoustic form, with all its open spaces and trepidation left in, before Dylan weaponized them against his blasphemers. "If You See Her, Say Hello," on the other hand, comes alive when his Minnesota bandmates (who, in the liner notes, finally receive credit for their performances) flesh out its baroque, love-drunk daydream of a melody. As for the outtakes, the only extra song that stood a chance for inclusion on the finished album is a weak spot here. When Dylan attempts "Up to Me," he struggles with the rhythm of his verses, which are mostly jokes, self-pity, and self-mythology. Similarly, "Call Letter Blues"-likely scrapped in favor of the more abstract "Meet Me in the Morning"-is the only song that brings children into the picture, a call for empathy during a breakup. It rings hollow. Maybe Dylan felt it was too on-the-nose, blood better left between the lines. Much of More Blood, More Tracks elicits an eerie feeling, a dramatic feedback loop of Dylan's shifting self-image. It's not uncommon for the Bootleg Series to leave breadcrumb trails for fans, yet hearing Dylan obsess over these songs about obsession creates an uncanny Synecdoche, New York effect. Spend enough time inside the six-hour set, and you'll hear Dylan sing over and over again, in a number of warring voices, "I'm goin' out of my mind." You'll hear him curse himself as a "creature void of form." You'll hear him try-and eventually fail-to assert, "Somebody's got to tell the tale/I guess it must be up to me." At a certain point, you can't help but believe him.