Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sensational! A great retrospective!,, 4 Oct 2005
Oh man! This CD is just terrific!! I guess I need to write more though to turn out a decent review. Where to begin. "No Direction Home: The Soundtrack" is the 7th volume in Bob Dylan's archival Bootleg Series and is also the soundtrack for Martin Scorsese's excellent PBS documentary of the same title. The double CD is chronologically sequenced and features 28 recordings, 26 of them previously unreleased and rare, (most from between 1961 and 1966), including "When I Got Troubles," which is supposedly the first song Dylan ever taped. Many of the tracks are alternate takes of his classic songs, along with some surprise live versions, like "Chimes of Freedom" and "When The Ship Comes In." What a phenomenal body of work created in just six years! This is a superb retrospective of that time.Disc 1 covers Dylan's early period, 1959 to 1965, from his last year as a Minnesota high school student through his years as the brilliant young troubadour, master folk singer, people's poet and the voice of protest in America. In 1960, Dylan dropped out of college and moved to New York, where legendary folk singer Woody Guthrie was hospitalized with a rare disease of the nervous system. Dylan visited with his idol regularly in the hospital and performed his signature tune, "This Land Is Your Land," soon after arriving in Manhattan. The CD features the Guthrie anthem, recorded live as well as "Song To Woody." Other outstanding cuts on the first CD include: "Sally Gal," adapted from "Sally Don't You Grieve" by Woody Guthrie, ("Freewheelin' Bob Dylan"), "Masters of War" and "Blowin' in the Wind" - Dylan's own protest songs, and alternate takes of "Don't Think Twice" and "It's All Over Now Baby Blue." I haven't heard "Dink's Song" in years and that's here too as is an early version of the old folk favorite "Rambler, Gambler." A great CD!! Disc Two, however, is even more amazing - it ROCKS!! Here is Dylan's electric, raucous version of "Maggie's Farm," the one that tore-up the 1965 Newport Folk Festival....with hostility. He came onstage in a funky orange shirt and black leather, carrying an electric guitar, and proceeded to play music that was not folk. He performed "Like a Rolling Stone," this CD's final cut, (the Manchester 1966 version), right after "Farm," and when he began "It Takes a Train to Cry," the purists threw him out of the genre. Exit acoustic, enter electric! That's when Bob Dylan became an ex-folk singer and a modern day cultural icon, an artist who greatly influenced the music of his own and later generations...and he continues to do so. "Visions of Johanna" (with full band) is also featured here, as is the emotional "Ballad of the Thin Man," the almost psychedelic "Tombstone Blues," and alternate studio takes of "Leopard-Skin Pill-box Hat," and "Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again." You don't have to be a hardcore Dylan fan to appreciate this album. It is exceptional. Every track is special. And the CDs come with a 58-page liner booklet that includes rarely and formerly unpublished photos, essays and track-by-track analysis. A must have CD(s)!
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Ghost of Electricity, Howling in the Bones of Your Face, 28 Sep 2005
It says something about the state of the current rock scene that a series of outtakes and live tracks from the early sixties comprise the most important new release this year. It is, however, Bob Dylan we're talking about and here on these discs we get the genesis and formation of that "wild mercury sound" achieved in its fullest sense on "Blonde on Blonde". The first disc is acoustic, oddities and rarities, amongst them a plangent, ethereal reading of 'Blowin' in the Wind' that brings a whole new perspective to a song heard so often we have become immune to its charms.
It is when you crack open the case and get to the second disc that the fireworks begin. The version of 'Maggies Farm' that had the bearded folkies reaching for the axe to cut the cable and the 'Judas' Rolling Stone from Manchester are here as twin pillars of the electric citadel that Dylan was constructing, but the real stand out track is a studio version of 'Visions of Johanna' that riproars into your brain and takes root in its darkest place; so much more powerful than the released version, ominous, scarred and bleak. Listen to the wail of fury and angst with which Dylan completes the track - primeval, desperate and racked with pain: that moment alone justifies buying the album - truly one of the greatest vocal moments in the history of music!
The packaging is a delight, a great essay from Al Kooper explaining the skeletal version of 'Desolation Row' and outtakes too of some famous album covers, Freewheelin', Bringing It all Back Home and Blonde on Blonde, plus unpublished studio shots and that spooky cover shot near Aust & the Severn Bridge on what is now the M4.
Here we have a document that is testimony to the genius and sheer power of the man and his music, two dozen aural snapshots of the artist at the peak of his powers, strident, voracious and spine-chilling. The best 40 year old new album ever!
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Master of Space and Time, 24 Jan 2009
Surely Bob Dylan is a master of space and time, existing simultaneously on several chronological planes. There is his innovative Theme Time Radio show, his art exhibitions and autobiography, new albums, experimental films exploring themes of space and time, his never-ending tour of live performances, his advertising appearances and a steady stream of previously unreleased material from different stages of his career. Perhaps there really are seven Bob Dylans, as implied by Todd Haynes in his recent film discourse on Dylan through space and time, I'm Not There [2007].
Martin Scorsese's 2005 film No Direction Home takes a more documentary approach to the same themes, exploring the scintillating period between 1959 and 1966, and using a wealth of little seen and heard material as illustration. To complement the film, this 2CD set of nuggets from the vaults, No Direction Home: The Soundtrack, doubles as Volume 7 in the esteemed Bootleg Series.
Martin Scorsese appears to have been given unprecedented access to the Dylan archives and along with a variety of demos and live recordings has chosen a number of choice outtakes from The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, Another Side Of Bob Dylan, Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde.
These include an early version of Mr Tambourine Man with Ramblin' Jack Elliott, a drumless version of She Belongs To Me, a different arrangement of It Takes A Lot To Laugh when it was still known as The Phantom Engineer and take one of Desolation Row with just Al Kooper on guitar and Harvey Brooks on bass guitar. Many of these tracks were known about by Dylan collectors, circulated on tapes and bootlegs, but usually in poor quality copies, rather than the official, excellent first generation stereo masters used here.
For me, the sessions for Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde are the most fascinating of all Dylan's work in the sixties and finally being able to hear these outtakes properly added a magnificent new perspective to that classic period.
Fresh performances of the familiar earlier songs, such as Blowin' In The Wind and A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall, demonstrate his artistic development and maturity during those mercurial years.
The CD begins with a home tape recording fragment made in Hibbing when Dylan was just eighteen, and concludes with the legendary "Royal Albert Hall" performance of Like A Rolling Stone. This and Song To Woody (from the album Bob Dylan) are the only two tracks to have been previously released.
That these 40-50 year old recordings still speak to current generations with the level of popularity that they do is yet further evidence of Dylan's time out of mind mastery.
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~ Bob Dylan
~ Bob Dylan
See all 16 tracks on this disc
![No Direction Home: Bob Dylan [DVD] [2005]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51CBXR44X4L._SL75_SS50_.jpg)
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