skeith

Well, I have loved this band since the 60s. I think that Cream, with its emphasis on improvisation, was one of the bands that made listening to jazz later on not such a big stretch. I picked up the DVD yesterday from the 2005 Royal Albert Hall concerts. I was a little worried about how good it would be, but frankly after viewing Disc 1, I am very happy with the concert. Is it a little less frenetic than the Royal Albert Hall concert of 1968? Is it as Lon says "been there and done that"? probably, but the guys are playing and singing so well, I just really enjoyed this. So far it is only Clapton taking big solos, nothing major from Bruce or Baker on Disc 1. and Jack Bruce, justly acknowledged as a bass player and song writer, is, in my opinion, one of the most underrated singers in rock and he still sounds good.

All the best Brad!!!

I agree Brad, Ratliff has done a few of these and they are great.

I just used the office paper cutter to slice Baraka's page right out of the booklet. It feels cleaner now. ← Evonce, what a great idea! By the way, what are these studio tracks people are talking about? I haven't listened to the whole cd yet, but isn't the whole thing from the live concert?

mIke there was no bleeping on Channel 13 in NYC. I thought you were in the hood?

Robert J I notice that the name of the film your friends made is "Complete Unknown" Isn't it obvious that Scorsese's "No Direction Home" is an obvious ripoff of that title??? I smell lawsuit. Marty, how could you stoop so low???

Can't this thread be moved to New Releases? isn't that where it really belongs? I don't know how to do it.

have to agree with you there Alexander!

Is anyone able to get the booklet back into the jewel box after you take it out. Man that's one fat booklet - did we need all those comments?

One other thing I just remembered. That event where Dylan got the Tom Paine award and Scorsese gives us Dylan insulting the audience, particularly the old people and the hair challenged folks. The most important thing to come out of Dylan's appearance for that award was that Dylan made a comment at the ceremony, coming just a month after the Kennedy assassination, that he could see where Oswald was coming from. Several other Dylan documentaries have included this. Marty airbrushed it!

That's the comparison I was making while watching as well. The Beatles, as far as I interpret it, were just as caustic and insulting as Dylan in their press conferences. They just covered their insults with humor, and the press didn't get it. Dylan seemed genuinely amazed at the bullshit that the press would ask and too stunned (or tired, as this film led us to believe) to play along. ← I tend to disagree Moose, and like Mike, I think the Beatles could be irreverent, but they did not personally attack individual members of the press the way Dylan does in No Direction and Don't Look Back. The nastiest Beatle comment I remember to the press was when Lennon and McCartney were being interviewed about the opening of Apple and a reporter asks why do this and Lennon says something like "so that people who want to make music or a film don't have to crawl on their knees in someone's office, probably yours" but that pales in comparison to Dylan's shtick. I think of the reporter who yelled out to the Beatles just after their arrival in NYC "when are you going to get a haircut" They all laugh and George just says "I had one yesterday". Can you imagine Dylan's reaction? Lennon was more than a bit contrite in an interview he gave after the we are more popular than Jesus comment. Again, imagine Dylan? So while I love his music he does come across as a bit of an asshole. The other thing is that Dylan basically refused to answer almost any serious question and the Beatles in a number of interviews entertained serious questions from the press, even the uninformed press. Now I am not saying the Beatles are better than Dylan or that Dylan isn't important as a musician or a songwriter or whatever you think he is, I just said what I said and now it's all this.

I also wanted to say that during the closing credits, there is a some written language that appears on the screen that said something like: After 1966 Bob Dylan continued to write songs and perform. this cracked me up. Who did Marty think was watching this film, the Rotary Club?

I tend to agree that those were Dylan's greatest years, but even so the Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 material got comparatively little attention. And to not even discuss Blonde on Blonde is borderline criminal. That album came out in 1966 if I remember correctly.

This thread should probably be in New Releases, since this material is previously unissued, right?

I agree about the drums and frankly on first listen, but only a a Discman portable cd player, I wouldn't say the sound is really nice. Much better obviously than the Naima 5 Spot recording.

Not sure why Scorsese should get so much credit for merely assembling a lot of great footage shot by Lerner and Pennebaker. I had no idea that this film was stopping in 1966 and as the program was grinding into its 3 hour last night I found myself thinking isn't Marty going to get to Blonde on Blonde and more electric Dylan - he only has a half hour left? In the interview afterwards he says the documentary was intended to stop in 66, I guess because there is little or no footage after that, but the viewer watching up until that moment has no idea. I had a couple of other major beefs: 1) I think that Dylan's move to more, for a lack of a better word, "stream of consciousness" type lyrics as opposed to "topical" or protest songs was as radical as going electric and he did it before going electric. The reason for this change was not really explored. I guess cause Dylan still hates interviewers, even if they are Marty, and hates discussing his music. 2)There is discussion of how Dylan influenced rock and roll- he says the rock groups started doing his songs- but little discussion of how rock and roll influenced him. I think he has said before that the Beatles caused him to go electric. To leave this out of the documentary seems a major flaw. As a film I much prefer Don't Look Back to No Direction Home.

In my opinion, it was not as good as I expected, maybe because my favorite Dylan years are to come tonight. Not sure what Scorsese was doing last night with interspersing the clips from the live British performance (electric) with the folk era Dylan. Not sure what he want us to do with it or What he feels is the significance of that. Finally, while Bob is amazingly lucid and coherent compared to other recent interviews I have seen such as that disastrous 60 Minutes one, he still seems rather guarded. some great clips, interviews and of course great music, but bottom line is that I didn't learn much I didn't already know about Dylan last night and for some reason wasn't as riveted as I expected to be.

any thoughts by others on the "In Tokyo" cd?

I don't have the "At the VV" cd you mentioned medjuck, but I am pleased with the placement of intstruments on the box.

Guy, Frankly and this is a surprise coming from me, I have always found the tokyo disc a bit of a disapointment, but I haven't listened to it in a decade so maybe I would change my mind.

Glad you enjoyed them LWayne, I did too. Hey Guy you mean that Monk himself is soloing on Paul Motian Trio albums by way, what live PMT albums exist other than "Sound of Love" (that's the Vanguard one) and "Live in Tokyo" - I am not aware of any others

Interesting Medjuck, I find that the noise level of the crowds differs significantly on the different sets. Generally it does not bother me except for "Porgy" which is maybe the worst. Interesting how much crowd discussion compared to today at the VV, where during most sets there is NO discussion at all. One more thing, I actually find the crowd noise to be less prevalent in this box, than on other versions of the same recordings.

thanks couw for posting this

And who the hell was that woman who is laughing so much during "I Loves You Porgy"? She certainly was a casual fan - noise is one thing, but that tune is so beautiful and sad, particularly if you know the words to the song. Perhaps like the dancing woman at Newport, this one deserves a footnote in jazz history - but with my foot on her neck

Ron, I haven't done the comparison you are looking for, but the box and each cd within the box says 20bit K2, but I am not sure the sound is identical to the single cd issues. I guess this is not much help.