Is Dylan’s box set ‘the craziest ever’?
Print Edition
Every note Bob Dylan recorded in a 14-month burst of creativity comes in an 18-CD “ultra-deluxe” box set — “Bob Dylan: The Cutting Edge 1965-1966: The Bootleg Series Vol. 12” — out in November and yours for just US$599.99.
“Is Bob Dylan’s latest album the craziest box set ever?” the BBC asked on its arts website.
There are cheaper 2-CD and 6-CD sets for devotees. But owners of the full version will get 20 versions of “Like A Rolling Stone,” and 359 takes of other songs, including studio rejects and rehearsals.
The set starts with the first sketches of Dylan’s classic “Bringing It All Back Home” album on January 13, 1965, speeds through “Highway 61 Revisited,” and ends in a Denver hotel room, with a song from the double LP “Blonde on Blonde” on March 12, 1966.
Gold dust for obsessives, but the cost is testing some of his most ardent admirers.
“It’s just too rich for my blood. The seven plus hours and 110 tracks on the 6-CD set will suffice,” said Derek Barker, editor of British-based Dylan journal ISIS. “I’m not alone in this. Some fans that up to this point have bought everything Dylan have recoiled at the price ... Do I really want 20 takes of ‘One of Us Must Know’?”
Many of the tracks are already available in pirated versions. But the pirates may not be able to replicate the added extras — nine singles, a 180-page hardback book, a strip of film cells from an original print of the tour film “Don’t Look Back” and ... “a leopard-skin printed spindle.”
That last one a reference to “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat,” Dylan’s ode to a ridiculous, over-priced accessory.
But many Dylanologists are salivating at the prospect of following every step of his studio experiments.
“There are versions of ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ you can waltz to, or rock to in a rocking chair,” wrote music magazine No Depression.
Other tracks include Dylan coughing, laughing with bandmates and complaining about the sound. “If these discs include Dylan ordering coffee,” wrote one commenter on No Depression’s website, “all the better.”
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