Bob Dylan - Bootleg Series, Volume 8 Info

Oh happy day! First I get to listen to soundboard of a recent Tom Waits show (see below), and now the details for the new Dylan: Bootleg Series release come out.

The collection is called "Tell Tale Signs" and features live and unreleased tracks from 1986-2006. The set drops on October 7 and my countdown clock is already ticking! The unreleased Time Out of Mind material has me drooling.

Also, make sure to check out this digital version of the Dylan singles book that comes with the Deluxe Edition. I just love the Internet sometimes!

Track Listing:

Disc One
1. Mississippi 6:04 (Unreleased, Time Out of Mind)
2. Most of the Time 3:46 (Alternate version, Oh Mercy)
3. Dignity 2:09 (Piano demo, Oh Mercy)
4. Someday Baby 5:56 (Alternate version, Modern Times)
5. Red River Shore 7:36 (Unreleased, Time Out of Mind)
6. Tell Ol' Bill 5:31 (Alternate version, North Country soundtrack)
7. Born in Time 4:10 (Unreleased, Oh Mercy)
8. Can't Wait 5:45 (Alternate version, Time Out of Mind)
9. Everything is Broken 3:27 (Alternate version, Oh Mercy)
10. Dreamin' of You 6:23 (Unreleased, Time Out Of Mind)
11. Huck's Tune 4:09 (From Lucky You soundtrack)
12. Marchin' to the City 6:36 (Unreleased, Time Out of Mind)
13. High Water (For Charley Patton) 6:40 (Live, August 23, 2003,Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada)

Disc Two
1. Mississippi 6:24 (Unreleased version #2, Time Out of Mind)
2. 32-20 Blues 4:22 (Unreleased, World Gone Wrong)
3. Series of Dreams 6:27 (Unreleased, Oh Mercy)
4. God Knows 3:12 (Unreleased, Oh Mercy)
5. Can't Escape from You 5:22 (Unreleased, December 2005)
6. Dignity 5:25 (Unreleased, Oh Mercy)
7. Ring Them Bells 4:59 (Live at The Supper Club, November 17, 1993,New York, NY
8. Cocaine Blues 5:30 (Live, August 24, 1997, Vienna, VA)
9. Ain't Talkin' 6:13 (Alternate version, Modern Times)
10. The Girl on the Greenbriar Shore 2:51 (Live, June 30, 1992,Dunkerque, France)
11. Lonesome Day Blues 7:37 (Live, February 1, 2002, Sunrise, FL)
12. Miss the Mississippi 3:20 (Unreleased, 1992)
13. The Lonesome River 3:04 (With Ralph Stanley, from the album Clinch Mountain Country)
14. 'Cross the Green Mountain 8:15 (From Gods and Generals Soundtrack)

Glitter and Doom Stream!

The ever awesome NPR.Org has just posted a live recording of Tom Waits's recent Glitter and Doom tour. Coupled with the fact that Waits rarely tours and the poor recordings of many recent bootlegs, this is fantastic news.

Recorded at The Fox Theater in Atlanta, GA, the show is almost 2 1/2 hours of Tom Waits goodness so open those computer recording programs and enjoy!

Set List
"Lucinda / Ain't Going Down to the Well"
"Down in the Hole"
"Falling Down"
"Chocolate Jesus"
"All the World Is Green"
"Cemetery Polka"
"Cause of It All"
"Till the Money Runs Out"
"Such a Scream"
"November"
"Hold On"
"Black Market Baby"
"9th and Hennepin"
"Lie to Me"
"Lucky Day"
"On the Nickel"
"Lost in the Harbor"
"Innocent When You Dream"
"Hoist That Rag"
"Make It Rain"
"Dirt in the Ground"
"Get Behind the Mule"
"Hang Down Your Head"
"Jesus Gonna Be Here"
"Singapore"
ENCORE
"Eyeball Kid"
"Anywhere I Lay My Head"

Click here to go to the show.

Happy Weekend!

After a particularly long and grueling week at work, I am thrilled for the weekend. Hopefully this clip of The Hold Steady's recent rocking on the David Letterman show will make your weekend even better. If you do not yet own their recent CD "Stay Positive", you are missing the album of the year. Enjoy!

My Plan for Iraq by Barack Obama

"As I’ve said many times, we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in."

Since the majority of this blog is filled with the trivialities of rock and roll, I thought I would post a little political content. Specifically, Barack Obama's New York Time editorial from July 14 regarding Iraq. I talk to many people that seem to like Barack Obama, but want to know where he stands on issues. While this editorial is very short on details as to HOW he is going to accomplish any of this, at least it provides his intended strategy.

I am posting this below without the permission of anyone....

My Plan for Iraq
By Barack Obama
Published: July 14, 2008

CHICAGO — The call by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki for a timetable for the removal of American troops from Iraq presents an enormous opportunity. We should seize this moment to begin the phased redeployment of combat troops that I have long advocated, and that is needed for long-term success in Iraq and the security interests of the United States.

The differences on Iraq in this campaign are deep. Unlike Senator John McCain, I opposed the war in Iraq before it began, and would end it as president. I believed it was a grave mistake to allow ourselves to be distracted from the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban by invading a country that posed no imminent threat and had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. Since then, more than 4,000 Americans have died and we have spent nearly $1 trillion. Our military is overstretched. Nearly every threat we face — from Afghanistan to Al Qaeda to Iran — has grown.

In the 18 months since President Bush announced the surge, our troops have performed heroically in bringing down the level of violence. New tactics have protected the Iraqi population, and the Sunni tribes have rejected Al Qaeda — greatly weakening its effectiveness.

But the same factors that led me to oppose the surge still hold true. The strain on our military has grown, the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated and we’ve spent nearly $200 billion more in Iraq than we had budgeted. Iraq’s leaders have failed to invest tens of billions of dollars in oil revenues in rebuilding their own country, and they have not reached the political accommodation that was the stated purpose of the surge.

The good news is that Iraq’s leaders want to take responsibility for their country by negotiating a timetable for the removal of American troops. Meanwhile, Lt. Gen. James Dubik, the American officer in charge of training Iraq’s security forces, estimates that the Iraqi Army and police will be ready to assume responsibility for security in 2009.

Only by redeploying our troops can we press the Iraqis to reach comprehensive political accommodation and achieve a successful transition to Iraqis’ taking responsibility for the security and stability of their country. Instead of seizing the moment and encouraging Iraqis to step up, the Bush administration and Senator McCain are refusing to embrace this transition — despite their previous commitments to respect the will of Iraq’s sovereign government. They call any timetable for the removal of American troops “surrender,” even though we would be turning Iraq over to a sovereign Iraqi government.

But this is not a strategy for success — it is a strategy for staying that runs contrary to the will of the Iraqi people, the American people and the security interests of the United States. That is why, on my first day in office, I would give the military a new mission: ending this war.

As I’ve said many times, we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 — two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and, so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training Iraqi security forces. That would not be a precipitous withdrawal.

In carrying out this strategy, we would inevitably need to make tactical adjustments. As I have often said, I would consult with commanders on the ground and the Iraqi government to ensure that our troops were redeployed safely, and our interests protected. We would move them from secure areas first and volatile areas later. We would pursue a diplomatic offensive with every nation in the region on behalf of Iraq’s stability, and commit $2 billion to a new international effort to support Iraq’s refugees.

Ending the war is essential to meeting our broader strategic goals, starting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Taliban is resurgent and Al Qaeda has a safe haven. Iraq is not the central front in the war on terrorism, and it never has been. As Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently pointed out, we won’t have sufficient resources to finish the job in Afghanistan until we reduce our commitment to Iraq.

As president, I would pursue a new strategy, and begin by providing at least two additional combat brigades to support our effort in Afghanistan. We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more nonmilitary assistance to accomplish the mission there. I would not hold our military, our resources and our foreign policy hostage to a misguided desire to maintain permanent bases in Iraq.

In this campaign, there are honest differences over Iraq, and we should discuss them with the thoroughness they deserve. Unlike Senator McCain, I would make it absolutely clear that we seek no presence in Iraq similar to our permanent bases in South Korea, and would redeploy our troops out of Iraq and focus on the broader security challenges that we face. But for far too long, those responsible for the greatest strategic blunder in the recent history of American foreign policy have ignored useful debate in favor of making false charges about flip-flops and surrender.

It’s not going to work this time. It’s time to end this war.

Barack Obama, a United States senator from Illinois, is the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

Pearl Jam Honor The Who

So I'm flipping the channels last night and I land on VH1 Classic showing "Rock Honors 2008: The Who." As a sucker for music concerts and a huge Who fan, I couldn't resist. The Who sounded great but as much as I love them, it's really hard for me to watch them play days just because the absence of Keith Moon and John Entwistle is impossible not to notice.

The highlight of the show was Pearl Jam's jaw-droppingly good performances of two tracks from The Who's masterpiece; "Quadrophenia." I always knew Vedder was a big Who fan, but check out how perfect bassist Jeff Ament channels John Entwistle. The song "The Real Me" sounds like a Pearl Jam original. It is a truly fantastic performance and it solidifies Pearl Jam's place in the short list of all-time great rock and roll bands. Enjoy!!

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RUSH rock Colbert!

Audio/Visual club members unite!! The masters of Prog-Rock; RUSH have seen a strange bit of pop-culture exposure of late. I have been a fan of RUSH since I was about 12 years old. Their amazing musicianship and intricate songs practicly were the soundtrack to my early teenage years. As much as they are praised by fans and musicians alike, rock critics have typically ignored them or panned them over the years. RUSH are not yet in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame even though they are the 4'Th highest selling rock artist in history. Oh yeah, and The Dave Clark Five ARE in the Hall of Fame so take that for what it's worth.

So recently I just read a fantastic 4 page article about them in the current Rolling Stone and last night they were actually on the always awesome Colbert Report. This marked RUSH's first television appearence in over 30 years!!

For the 2 people who dig RUSH and read this blog, check out the entire episode here. It is full of inside Rush references AND they rock Tom Sawyer!!!

He Met The Walrus

This is a great find. It goes like this:
"In 1969, the 14-year-old Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape recorder, snuck into John Lennon’s hotel room for a chat.”

The majority of the conversation is Lennon discussing the ongoing war in Vietnam. What is striking to me about this is how little things have changed and how perceptive John Lennon really was. Enjoy this 5 minute treasure.

Summer Listening

I love summer and I certainly love listening to great music in the summertime. The right tunes just sound better with a warm sun shining down on you. So you ask; what are you listening to these days Dave? Here are some new and old albums I'm grooving on lately.

1. The Hold Steady-Stay Positive
As I wrote in an earlier post, this is not only the album of the summer, but the best album of 2008 (On July 14, the masses will finally get to buy the thing). Nothing else this year will come close to the pure joy and heartbreak covered on this disc. Craig Finn is the best lyricist working today and the band finally gives him the music to match the words.

2. Black Kids-Partie Traumatic
I heard the song "I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance" while flipping through my satellite radio the other day. I immediately had to know who this band was. Picture the happy songs from The Cure mixed with the exuberance of The Go Team and you'll get the idea. If I was a teenager in 2008, this would be blasting out my speakers every second of the day. Listen to the entire joyful noise here.

3. Steve Earle-Washington Street Serenade
This criminally underrated disc from 2007 has yet to leave my rotation. Not a bad track in the bunch and Earle has never sounded better. The track "Steve's Hammer (Song for Pete) is an true instant classic.

4. Mudcrutch
The band reunion no one was waiting for. Tom Petty brings his early 70's buddies back together to make a modern Country-Rock classic. It's so easy to take Petty for granted, but he has never sounded more focused and vital then on this disc. A perfect summer listen.

5. Nigeria 70
I found out about this killer collection of afro-funk goodness from the Fuel/Friends blog (Thanks Heather). If these 16 tracks don't put a smile on your face and a skip in your step, I can't help you.

6. Fleet Foxes
These Seattle, WA longhairs have created the perfect mix of breezy songcraft and earthy lyrics about hills and mountains. Their music reminds me of what The Band might have sounded like if they came out in the year 2008. This disc took me a while to get into, but once it hit me I simply fell in love with it. It's the perfect soundtrack to a early morning summer walk in the woods. Listen to the entire thing here.

7. Aimee Mann-@#%&* Smilers!
The amazing Aimee Mann is back with another disc of fantastic smart-pop tracks. I believe she could turn the entries from the phone book into a melodic pop classic. As usual with Aimee; the music sounds sugary sweat, while the lyric bite like moonshine. This one ranks up with Aimme's best and the album title just can't be beat!

8. Bob Dylan and The Band-The Complete Basement Tapes
I am so in awe of this collection I don't even know where to start. In 1967 Bob Dylan goes out of the public eye, moves to the hinterlands of Saugerties, New York, and creates 4 discs worth of Americana classics with The Band in their Big Pink basement. Oh yeah, and none of it was created for the public to actually hear. Songs fade in and out, the audio quality is poor, the playing drunkenly sloppy, and I wouldn't want it any other way. If you want the Cliff's Notes version, get the doctored up-officially released 2-disc version from 1975. But if you really want the meat and potatoes, you need to seek out the 4 disc bootleg called "A Tree With Roots" (hint, Bit-Torrent search). You can read the tracklist here. No summer roadtrip is complete without this collection!

A Day in the Life with Neil Young

After a wonderful vacation week in the beautiful Northwoods of Wisconsin, one of the first things I see when I get back online is some awesome Neil Young craziness. Specifically, a totally bizarre cover of The Beatles' "A Day in the Life" from Neil's recent tour. I'm not saying if it's good or not, but it must be heard. My favorite part is the confused looks on the faces of the Rock in Rio fans!

Dig the weirdness below along with some other Neil Rock in Rio clips. Thank Goodness Neil Young is still out there doing his thing. Keep on Rocking in the Free World!!