Bob Dylan has surfaced with yet another installment – Volume 16!! – of The Bootleg Series, his spectacular alternate-universe of unreleased material, which, collectively, reflects a body of work that on its own would stand as one of the most important oeuvres in the history of rock. This entry, dubbed “Springtime in New York,” covers 1980 to 1985—that is, tapes from rehearsals for his 1980-81 tour, and unreleased tracks, alternate takes, and a smattering of rarities from the albums Shot of Love (1981), Infidels (1983), and Empire Burlesque (1985). It is with eager anticipation that one approaches any installment of The Bootleg Series, as his Bob-ness routinely recorded and then left unreleased gems from his studio sessions. Most famously and/or infamously, for example, the best song to emerge from the Infidels sessions, “Blind Willie McTell,” was ultimately left off the album and only surfaced officially a decade later, in the first installment of The Bootleg Series.
Springtime in New York – five full CDs and a couple of rich booklets featuring notes by Damien Love – is an excellent set. It is not mind-blowing, revelatory and essential in the vein of Volumes 11 (The Basement Tapes Complete) and 13 (Trouble No More)—but few things are. No human should be without those. Some humans can be without this. Springtime is a must-have for any Dylan aficionado, and it will certainly well serve others, though probably not those who don’t already lean a little bit Bobby.
Some (not comprehensive) commentary, disc by disc:
Disc one: The tour rehearsals. The set gets off to a bit of a sluggish start, with the first half of this CD not bad or anything, but with nothing that moves you to the edge of your seat. An early version of “Need a Woman,” is fine but less than the strong studio take that was left off Shot of Love (and resurfaced on an earlier Bootleg series). Happily, things pick up at track 7, with Junior Parker’s blues romp “Mystery Train.” In fact on this first disc it is the covers that shine; they include excellent renditions of then-contemporary hits “Sweet Caroline” (Neil Diamond, and yes you read that correctly), and, most beautifully, “We Just Disagree” (Dave Mason), as well as a rousing rendition of Little Willie John’s “Fever” from 1956. Also included here is the first-I’ve-heard-him perform his “Let’s Keep it Between Us,”—and I must say, and this is rare for me, I think prefer Bonnie Raitt’s well-known cover to Dylan’s original in this instance.
Disc two: Outtakes from the Shot of Love sessions. A mixed bag of mostly “just fine.” There is an alternate take of the (again, one-time held back) gem “Angelina” which will interest Bob-followers, and some solid covers, including of the Everly Brothers lovely “Let it Be Me” (though George’s version featured in the Scorsese doc is better). And there are a couple of curiosities-that-didn’t-make-the-cut of note for completests. But hold onto your hat for the blues original “Fur Slippers,” which most of us in Bob-land had never heard of, and were amazed to learn that B. B. King covered it in 1999!
Discs three and four: The heart of the matter, for most audiences, outtakes from Infidels—a very fine album (then hailed as a huge comeback) that is best known in Dylan-circles as the one that Bob suddenly pulled some of its superlative songs from at the last minute. There’s a lot to digest here; disc three starts with a smart, alternate version of “Jokerman” (I might like it better than the official release), and a very fine Blind Willie McTell in a novel arrangement (I think I prefer the one we know). Also of interest here are several songs-in-development, including three versions of “Foot of Pride” (left off the album, released later in the Bootleg Series, look for Lou Reed’s version), which started out as a song called “Too Late.” Continuing on with these sessions to disc four is a wild ride. It has a slew of alternative versions of familiar songs—all of which are very fine, and include an early cut of “Clean Cut Kid,” a song that would surface on Empire (and is better here), and a terrific cover, long circulating on the gray market, of Willie Nelson’s “Angels Flying too Close to the Ground.”
But I was extremely excited to hear “Julius and Ethel”—which had eluded me, even during my dedicated scour-hipster-joints-for-battered-bootlegs phase of life. A Dylan song about a watershed, wrenching moment in American history that had it all: spies, nukes, betrayals, execution (and squirm inducing anti-Semitism from all quarters—here’s Al Pacino as the odious Roy Cohn in Angels in America on the matter)—surely this song was the great white whale, the ultimate buried treasure. Or . . . not. Rather, it is a bizarre rockabilly thumper with lines like “People look at this couple with contempt and doubt/But they loved each other right until the time they checked out.” I mean, well . . . um, okay, if you say so. Official records report that Dylan has performed this zero times in concert. A wise choice. However, note that disc four also has a blistering cover of Jimmy Reed’s “Baby What You Want Me to Do,” which, alone, is more than worth the rather steep price I paid for this entire set. With Mark Knopfler and Mick Taylor on guitars, legendary rhythm duo Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare handling bass and drums, and Dylan and Clydie King Raising The Freaking Roof, what more could you possibly want? I mean, really, what the fuck more do you people want?
Disc five: From the Empire Burlesque sessions. Solid, somewhere between discs two and three of this set: good alternative takes of familiar numbers, some welcome obscurities (“Enough is Enough,” a decent blues number Dylan wrote and performed nine times in 1984, and “Straight As in Love,” another elusive entry in the canon, recorded here, never performed live, pretty good), and another song-in-evolution (still more incarnations of “When the Night Comes Falling From the Sky,” which is an exceptionally well written song, but one that Bob could never settle on an arrangement he liked). Finally, the essential track here is “New Danville Girl,” an epic song co-written with Sam Shepard, which would re-emerge as “Brownsville Girl,” the best track on the subsequent, otherwise largely forgettable album Knocked out Loaded (1986). The only problem with this diamond in the rough is that when you sing along with it in your head, you keep saying “Brownsville Girl” at the chorus, and that gets confusing. But it’s an essential document.
