It’s this capturing of work in progress that dazzles as you listen in to these fly-on-a-studio-wall versions of songs as they began to shape and solidify themselves and assume the forms that have since become canonical. There’s a spectral, deeply moving take of the Scottish ballad “The Water Is Wide”, which is the one “new” song in the Time Out of Mind canon represented here (also a set stalwart of the Rolling Thunder years) a soulful, piano-led “Dreamin’ of You” a lean, exploratory account of “Red River Shore” and a “Til I Fell in Love With You” that’s loose, bluesy, and full of alternative lyrics, with some of its lines later migrating to other songs during the January Criteria sessions. The stand-outs are to be found among those Teatro sessions. Even the oft-reviled “ Make You Feel My Love” gets an alt-take which ends in a round of studio applause, while the mighty “Highlands” has its own out-take, too, bouncing merrily along with Dylan’s very funny, sometimes poignant shaggy dog story leading the way. This is the meat and drink of the set, and features multiple run-throughs of songs that have since become classics – “Trying’ To Get to Heaven”, “Not Dark Yet”, “Cold Irons Bound”, “Standing in the Doorway”, “Mississippi”. The majority are from Criteria in Miami, where 14 musicians squeezed into the studio. The two discs of studio out-takes include a small but precious handful from the original Teatro sessions, which featured just Dylan, Lanois, bassist Tony Garnier and percussionist Tony Mangurian. The set – both the 10-album, 5-CD complete set and two-disc cut-down – opens with a remix of the original album, made with the intention of lifting the veil of post-production textures conjured by producer Daniel Lanois and to deliver back the "sound of the room" that the many musicians present would have heard while playing these songs. Some 25 years later, the Bootleg Series has now reached Volume 17, and its latest iteration, Fragments (shored against his ruins?), devotes five discs to the Time Out of Mind sessions and subsequent live highlights. It’s the capturing of work in progress that dazzles as you listen in to these fly-on-a-studio-wall versions The album was, as we know, a huge Grammy Award-winning success, opening up the riches of Dylan’s later career that few saw coming before it came. A return to form, a creative resurrection. I recall hearing one of its songs while sat with a coffee and brandy in a cafe in Seville that September. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, came Time Out of Mind. With the first Bootleg Series emerging from his archives in 1991, laden as it was with hidden jewels from his past, indications were that the man’s writing days could well be over. After attending one of 1991’s woeful run of shows at Hammersmith Odeon during a bitter February cold snap, I’d more or less put Dylan on mute, even missing the first of his two acoustic releases, Good as I Been to You, while belatedly lapping up the second, World Gone Wrong. While set lists shifted like tidal sands from night to night, the performances ranged from the ragged and wildly unfamiliar to the singular and revelatory.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |