Bob Dylan – More Blood, More Tracks

By Steve Matteo

Bob Dylan has spent a great deal of his career hiding behind various personas or simply just hiding, rarely giving interviews and avoiding much of the star-maker machinery behind the popular song. Yet, for decades now, Dylan has been more visible than at any time in his career. His primary work has been his ubiquitous concert touring, referred to as “the never-ending tour” since the late ‘80s. Another very visible activity was his time as DJ, hosting “Theme Time Radio” on Sirius XM, which ran from 2006 through 2009. In addition, since 1991 he has been issuing his Bootleg Series. There have been 13 separate releases, encompassing 14 volumes so far, and the latest may be one of the most anticipated. It covers his Blood on the Tracks release, and is titled More Blood, More Tracks, Vol 14 (Columbia/Legacy).

While the album is considered one of his best, it went through various incarnations before being officially released in 1975. Of the six CDs included in the deluxe edition, three tracks were released on the first official bootleg set, two were from Biograph, ten were on the official Blood on the Tracks release and one track was from the Jerry Maguire soundtrack. Also included is the first take of “Spanish is the Loving Tongue,” which Dylan covered on his 1973 self-titled album.

Blood on the Tracks was a major comeback for Dylan. After a stint with Asylum Records (Planet Waves, Before the Flood), Dylan returned to Columbia.

Dylan had recorded the album in New York, at A&R Studios, but just prior to the release date, he returned to Sound 80 Studio in Minneapolis, and re-recorded the songs. The final album included five tracks from each session.

The September 1974 New York recordings were engineered by Phil Ramone, and the myriad New York tracks here feature Dylan alone on Disc One, and the group Deliverance headed by Eric Weisberg on Disc Two. As the sessions unfold through these discs in chronological order, only bassist Tony Brown remains at the end of Disc Two. As the New York sessions progress on Disc Three, keyboardist Paul Griffin plays on many tracks and steel guitarist Buddy Cage contributes to one track. Cage also contributed to a couple of tracks on Disc Two with the Deliverance band. On Disc Four and Five it is just Dylan and Brown. Disc Six opens with the final three tracks recorded in New York.

After Dylan spent the holidays in Minnesota with his family, he had a change of heart about the sound of the album and quickly assembled a rag-tag group of musicians (Bill Berg, Billy Peterson, Peter Ostroushko, Chris Weber, Greg Inhofer, Kevin Odegard), at Sound 80 Studios in Minneapolis on December 27 with engineer Paul Martinson. While the musicians were not exactly household names at the time of the recordings, their inspired playing worked well and meshed nicely, with Brown the only holdover from the New York sessions. Berg and Peterson were hardly novices and had played key roles on recent albums from Cat Stevens and Leo Kottke.

Dylan was at a major turning point in his life, as his marriage to his wife Sara was disintegrating. He had just come off the road with The Band and he was taking art classes that had a profound effect on his songwriting process. Dylan has also acknowledged that Russian writer Anton Chekhov’s plays and short stories had a deep influence on his songwriting, which on the album featured lyrics of ever-shifting time (past, present and future) and, while seemingly autobiographical, were actually more narrative in tone.

Initial ideas for the album and recordings included the consideration of various electric music artists or electric band backing, which eventually gave way to fairly stripped-down, sparse acoustic backing by only a handful of musicians. The resultant album is an intimate, honest, thematic masterpiece that is one of the defining albums of the singer-songwriter period. The simple instrumentation provides just enough musical coloring to be more than just a folkie acoustic outing and it is Dylan’s most vocally emotive recording of his career. The album proves what Dylan is capable of when he takes his time and is deliberate in the recording studio. Often he wants to work quickly and get a fresh feel, resulting in few takes for the final recording.

The 70 recordings included here expansively chronicle a tale of two recording sessions that ultimately led to the official Blood on the Tracks release. One of the major changes in the two sessions is that the initial New York sessions tapes were sped up to sound punchier and radio friendly, but are presented here at their normal speed.

Songwriters and particularly musicians who are singer-songwriters can use this set as a master class. Dylan fans will delight in experiencing the process that led to what many consider one of Dylan’s best albums and perhaps the only recording that can rival his ‘60s three-album watershed period of Bringing it All Back Home (1965), Highway 61 Revisited (1965) and Blonde on Blonde (1966).

Along with the six CDs, the box houses a beautiful hardcover book that contains a treasure trove of memorabilia, including candid, intimate photographs, press clippings and photos of Dylan’s original lyrics, as well as many pages from a notebook he kept.

Brownsville – Air Special

By Doug Sheppard

BROWNSVILLE – Air Special (Rock Candy) CD

Brownsville Station hit the big leagues with the success of “Smokin’ in the Boy’s Room” (#3) and “Kings of the Party” (#31) in 1974, but by 1976, they were in a lull. With their recent Motor City Connection album failing to chart and a parting of ways with their label, Big Tree, the trio format (adopted after their second album) had seemingly run its course. They needed a lift and got in the form of a new label (Private Stock) and especially the addition of second guitarist Bruce Nazarian, a monster player who’d been on countless Detroit soul records.

Nazarian proved to be the perfect complement for fellow axe men Cub Koda and Michael Lutz (with whom Nazarian alternated on bass), invigorating the resulting Brownsville Station album with tons of slide guitar wizardry, blues boogie riffs befitting Koda’s formidable record collection and the loose vibe inherent on all Brownsville recordings. Famed producer Eddie Kramer knew how to get it all on tape, and the track lineup was their best yet, featuring a killer remake of “Lady (Put the Light on Me)” (a glam rock obscurity by Big John’s Rock ’n’ Roll Circus) and especially “Martian Boogie.”

Recorded live in one take, “Martian Boogie” was B-movie sci-fi, urban blues and riff rock fused into one rocket that the band was sure would take them back to the moon—if not the home planet of the song’s protagonist. Indeed, it spent seven weeks on the national chart and grabbed the top spot in a number of markets. But just as that rocket entered the top 60 at #59, it smashed headlong into an asteroid, exploded into 1,000 pieces, fell off the charts and left its creators stunned. Not long after, Private Stock folded. As Koda recalled in the liners to Rhino’s 1993 Brownsville compilation, “it took all the fight out of the band, just like air escaping from a punctured tire.”

Morale may have been down, but the chemistry was intact when they recorded their next album for Epic Records, 1978’s Air Special. Another hotshot producer, Tom Werman (of Cheap Trick and Ted Nugent fame, among others) was at the helm—giving the resulting album a big arena rock feel, with the drums of Henry “H-Bomb” Weck in particular booming in the mix (thankfully not ’80s-style). Much to their chagrin, the band were also forced to record Hello’s recent hit, “Love Stealer” (ironically, penned by Phil Wainman, also the coauthor of “Lady” from the previous album) as a gambit to get on AOR radio.

It failed, as did Air Special, but it wasn’t for lack of quality. “Taste of Your Love,” “Tears of a Fool” and “Never Say Die” are biting hard rockers—the latter taking on an ironic, almost eerie quality thanks to the state of the band, not to mention subtle synths. And befitting a band with so much contempt for the disco and AOR dominating the charts, Brownsville covers “Who Do You Love” Diddley-style, “Down the Road Apiece” and even a Benny Goodman instrumental, “Airmail Special”—rocked up like a ’70s Johnny & the Hurricanes. The swamp blues of “Cooda Crawlin’” follows the same thread, and if Air Special doesn’t quite have another “Martian Boogie” like its predecessor, it’s a solid, commendable effort. Predictably, however, it wasn’t what the record-buying public wanted to hear, and a 1979 breakup was inevitable. (Doug Sheppard)

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JOHNNY FARFISA – The Sky is Falling: The Best of Johnny Farfisa (Munster) LP

Hot on the heels of Matteo Bocci’s fine piece on Johnny Farfisa in UT#44 comes this stellar compilation of the musical exploits of one Andy Cahan a.k.a. Johnny Farfisa. Having previously been represented only by a Moxie EP from 1980, this collection rights many musical wrongs by making most of this material available to the public for the first time.

The first grouping of tracks by his outfit the Individuals is represented by not one but four fine versions of “She’s Gone Away,” all of which kick mightily. Set amidst a frantic pace, stop-start Farfisa breaks and screams that could only come from the most monstrous of burgeoning sex drives, this track is a primitive ride through all that is right and honest in the world.

The monstrous “The Sky is Falling” bears all the unmistakable earmarks of the East Coast sound and a strong nod the Rascals with its soulful delivery and knuckle-dusting backbeat. Apart from the fact that it rocks righteously, it has no problem with throwing in some unexpected breakdowns which I find irresistible.

The haunting “Monkey on My Back” is a gloomy cautionary tale that seems odd coming from kids of this age but it’s enthralling nonetheless as we follow the protagonist down the dark alleyways of addiction.

The pimply fun continues on into Andy’s next outfit from ‘68, the wonderfully named Euphorian Railway. There is a revamped version of “The Sky is Falling” which somehow manages to top the Individuals take by leaps and bounds, adding some much needed backups and an extremely busy bass line that propels this track somewhere else. “She Showed Me” and “I Thought I Knew You” echo the Youngbloods earlier material with the loose but propulsive groove, dual vocals and the underlying moody folkiness; the latter showcasing a staggering lead break. “On My Way to the Sun” sounds like a glorious mix of the Rascals and the Vagrants with a suitably trippy mid-section, while the astonishingly great “Nothing and No One” is a beautiful, faintly psychedelic number that just drips with emotion and contains a wonderfully bizarre tempo change.

Add to the mix a full color booklet/insert and liner notes by Mike Stax and you have one enticing proposition. (Eric Reidelberger)

Order here.