Send "Spinto Band " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Ew |
 Only one set of archival releases can compare to Bob Dylan's ''Bootleg Series'' in the annals of popular music, and that would be the Beatles' Anthology collections, which similarly gave the world a window onto a great recording act's studio outtakes. But with the Fab Four, you always get the feeling that there was only one possible perfect version of each song; the fascination lies in hearing how certain numbers become classics due to some final, transcendent tweak. Listening to Dylan's discards, though, there's little sense of honing or averted near misses; his cuttingroom-floor takes are usually completely viable alternatives to the official renditions. The deluxe three-disc edition of Tell Tale Signs: Bootleg Series No. 8 includes no fewer than three different arrangements of ''Mississippi'' recorded in 1997 — a dusty porch blues, an Americana-ish stroll, even a reggae-tinged version — and the main thing they have in common is that they're all better than the fourth version Dylan finally put on an album four years later. To declare any of these renditions definitive is almost to admit that you don't really get Dylan, a magnificently impenitent improviser in the studio as well as on stage (where, of course, he reinvents ''Like a Rolling Stone'' on a nightly basis)....full text |
| Uncut |
| ay, 2008. The door of the hotel room opens and I'm introduced to someone who looks not unlike Billy Bob Thornton: tall, elegant, sharply turned out in a black suit. This is Bob Dylan's manager, Jeff Rosen, here to play SonyBMG's London chiefs tracks from the latest in the Bootleg Series he initiated in 1991. Rosen first of all plays me a revelatory early version of "Most Of The Time", stripped of the swampy atmospherics producer Daniel Lanois surrounded it with on Oh Mercy, and performed as it might have been for Blood On The Tracks, just Bob on guitar and harmonica. I'm flabbergasted, listen to about nine more tracks in wonder, and can't wait for the thing to be released. Six months later, here, finally, it is: Tell Tale Signs: The Bootleg Series Volume 8 – 39 rare and previously unreleased Dylan tracks, available as a 27-track double CD with a 60-page booklet, and a Limited Edition Deluxe Collectors' Edition, with the content from the 2CD set complemented by a further 12 tracks, a 150-page hardcover book of vintage single sleeves and a seven-inch single. There's also a four-LP vinyl set....full text |
| Rollingstone |
| Bob Dylan is well-known for his abandoned treasures — all those unreleased recordings from the past 40-plus years that have made his ongoing Bootleg Series such a mind-blowing trove. Dylan likely had little trouble leaving those moments behind, treasures or not; he's always been wary of letting his past prejudice his here and now. This newest collection of rare recordings, though, is something apart: The alternate studio takes, undisclosed songs, movie tracks and live performances that make up the three discs of Tell Tale Signs (also available as a two-disc package) depict Dylan's development from 1989 to 2006 — which is to say they're closer to Dylan's here and now than any earlier volumes. Also, Tell Tale Signs is less an anthology than an album in its own right. It seems designed to tell a story that sharpens and expands the vista of mortal and cultural disintegration that has been the chief theme of Dylan's 1997's Time Out of Mind, 2001's Love and Theft and 2006's Modern Times — perhaps the most daring music he's ever made. Tell Tale Signs makes plain that Dylan knows the caprices of the world he lives in, now more than ever. Just as important, this collection bears witness to Dylan's reclamation of voice and perspective. He had been a singular visionary who upended rock & roll by recasting it as a force that could question society's values and politics, but he relinquished that calling as the society grew more dangerous. By the end of the Eighties, he had undergone so many transformations, made so many half-here and half-there albums, that he seemed to be casting about for a purpose. What did he want to say about the times around him? Did he have a vision anymore or just a career? The singer drew a new bead on these concerns with 1989's Oh Mercy, produced by Daniel Lanois. Dylan has said he was never fully satisfied with the album, but given that Tell Tale Signs features 10 tracks from Oh Mercy's sessions, it's clear its tunes mattered to him. It's also clear that Dylan sometimes had better production instincts than Lanois. The latter's interpretation of "Most of the Time" — the broken meditation of a lovesick man — played like immaculate architecture; everything about it, including vocals and emotions, was put in a measured place, meant to sustain atmosphere more than expression. By contrast, Dylan's acoustic-guitar and harmonica rendering of the song has the drive and dynamics of the heart; it's a living soliloquy that cuts to the quick. Similarly, his reading of "Ring Them Bells" features just his voice and piano, and its longing is palpable. On Oh Mercy, the song felt like a blessing, full of compassion and beauty; here, it works as a tortured prayer, already turning from hope, and it makes one wonder why Dylan ever allowed Lanois' mannered ambience to subsume the song. Yet as promising as Oh Mercy's songs seemed at the time, they were also still trying to reason with the world, to offer the possibility of deliverance. They couldn't begin to hint at the gravity of what was to come....full text |
Spinto Band lyrics
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