Bob Dylan - Rolling Thunder Rarities, Part 1 (1975)

If you've followed by blog for a long time, you may have noticed that I've posted a ton of Bob Dylan albums from the start of his music career in the early 1960s until about 1975, and then there are only a couple of albums after that. That's not because I don't think he did good stuff after 1975; he has a lot of great music. The problem was there was a bunch of music I wanted to post from the later half of the 1970s, but I wasn't entirely sure how to do it. Part of the issue is that he did a lot of rare songs in concert, but there are almost no concert recordings from his 1978 tour with soundboard-level sound quality. But I've finally figured out what I want to do. So this is the first of several Dylan albums I plan to post relatively quickly (knock on wood).

One issue I struggled with is that there were lots of interesting songs Dylan did for his Rolling Thunder tours in 1975 and 1976, and they deserved more attention than the extensive official albums dealing with this, but they didn't exactly fit on the usual "stray tracks" albums I made. So I decided to make two albums just of Rolling Thunder rarities, one for the 1975 leg of the tour and the other for the 1976 leg. Needless to say, this is the first part. For both albums, I draw from the rehearsals for the tour as well as recordings of the concerts.

For this album, the vast majority of the songs come from the official album "The Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings." The only exceptions are tracks 1, 9, and 17. 

The first track, "Abandoned Love," actually predates the Rolling Thunder tour by a little bit. It was the first and only time Dylan performed this song in concert, and it's an amazing version, especially since most of the lyrics are different than the studio version that was eventually released on the "Biograph" box set. Ramblin' Jack Elliott was playing a small club in New York City and Dylan joined him on stage, singing backing vocals on a couple of songs. But he also played this original song, which he probably wrote just days earlier. It's baffling to me that this live version has never been officially released. But I managed to improve the sound quality, mostly by using audio editing programs to wipe out the crowd noise that popped up from time to time during the song.

Speaking of alternate lyrics, Dylan made drastic changes to a bunch of his songs in the mid-1970s. There are three more examples here: "Tonight I'll Be Staying Here with You," "If You See Her, Say Hello," and "Knockin' on Heaven's Door." In the case of "If You See Her, Say Hello," he made big changes even though the song had only been released earlier that same year.

Nine of the songs here are from rehearsals for the tour, and the other eight are concert recordings. Aside from the alternate lyrics versions I mentioned, the other songs are cover versions.

This album is 51 minutes long.

Note that while I was putting this together, I realized that three songs fit better on the stray tracks album I made for this time period, which I've called "Abandoned Love." For instance, the song "Gwenevere" came from the same tour rehearsals as many of the songs here, but it's actually a little-known Dylan original, so I figured it belonged there instead. You can find the link to that album here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/05/bob-dylan-abandoned-love-various-songs.html

The link to this album is further down below.

01 Abandoned Love [Live Alternate Lyrics Version] [Edit] (Bob Dylan)
02 Tonight I'll Be Staying Here with You [1975 Lyrics Version] (Bob Dylan)
03 People Get Ready [Edit] (Bob Dylan)
04 Rake and Ramblin' Boy (Bob Dylan)
05 This Land Is Your Land (Bob Dylan)
06 If You See Her, Say Hello [1975 Lyrics Version] (Bob Dylan)
07 Easy and Slow (Bob Dylan)
08 Knockin' on Heaven's Door [1975 Lyrics Version] (Bob Dylan & Roger McGuinn)
09 The Ballad of Ira Hayes (Bob Dylan)
10 Wild Mountain Thyme (Bob Dylan & Joan Baez)
11 Dark as a Dungeon (Bob Dylan & Joan Baez)
12 The Water Is Wide (Bob Dylan & Joan Baez)
13 Your Cheatin' Heart (Bob Dylan)
14 The Tracks of My Tears (Bob Dylan)
15 Jesse James (Bob Dylan)
16 Never Let Me Go (Bob Dylan & Joan Baez)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16116305/BOBDYL1975_RllingThndrRritisPrt1_atse.zip.html

The cover art comes from a Rolling Thunder tour concert poster. I made a lot of changes in Photoshop. For instance, I kept the same font style, but changed the wording.