I’ll sign off the day with this with the proviso that the note reads THIS was posted next door to the Lou Reed 'Words and Music' track Heroin! . . . .this made me laugh out loud (there should be an acronym for that!?) The genius that IS Tripping Mantras!
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Just because . . . . .
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dylanlive@substack.com
Today, we finally get the long-rumored Bootleg Series surveying Bob Dylan’s earliest music. All the way back in 2018, a Rolling Stone headline read, “Bob Dylan Plotting Coffeehouse Years Collection for Future Bootleg Series.” It was tentatively titled The Villager then; turns out the actual name of Bootleg Series 18 is Through The Open Window, 1956–1963.
There’s a lot to dig into. Eight discs packed with studio outtakes, home recordings, concert performances, sideman gigs, and beyond. A lot of this stuff has never been officially released before. Some (though less than many hoped) has never circulated before at all, even via bootlegs. I’ve had this set for a few months and have written a detailed track-by-track guide to read while you listen. For the first six discs at least; the final two, containing the complete Carnegie Hall 1963 concert, I plan on writing something else about.
This is meant as a companion piece to the set itself, and to historian Sean Wilentz’s excellent liner notes, which take the form of a long historical essay telling the story of early Dylan. Wilentz does a wonderful job drawing out that narrative, and I tried not to duplicate his work. Mine is more digging into the individual tracks themselves—what they are, where they came from, what struck me listening to them, what some other good versions are.
I’ve also tried to ID which tracks have never circulated before in any capacity, the tracks where this is the first time any of us are hearing them. I’ve marked those with a * in the track title. (This was at times tricky to figure out, so if you spot an error, please let me know.)
Look, this piece is long as hell. Let’s not waste any more time on the introduction. Put on disc one, press play, and read along.
Read on here:
Flagging Down The Double Es - Through an Open Window Track By Track Dylan
Wishing a fantastic 86th Birthday to Grace Slick!
...this collection of live, kitchen and a BBC studio (in which the peels sessions were recorded, when I got it right) recordings from 6 dates, ranging from 85 to 89, I discovered some days ago and ordered it instantly, having been a huge fan of Robyn's music for almost 40 years now.
In 2010, a real estate listing popped up for 95 Ensenada Drive, Woodland Hills, California. The listing described the bijou house, tucked away near the West Mulholland Trailhead, as “a charming Girard cabin with a famous rock ‘n’ roll history”.
. . . not the biggest fan of Harper ( not the biggest fan of Page come to that!) but this speaks to Harper’s appeal and connections to Floyd and Led Zepp
Tracy Chapman & Natalie Merchant - Donmar Warehouse, London, Britain, 3-25-1988
I had been aware of this concert for a long time. I put the duet of Merchant and Chapman singing " Where the Soul Never Dies" on a stray tracks album a few years ago, in fact. But I never considered posting it because I thought the sound quality was a little lacking. However, with the improvements in audio editing technology in recent years, I thought I'd give it a try. I think it sounds very good.
Before I say more about the recording, let me share the interesting story behind how this concert came to be.
In 1987, Tracy Chapman was a struggling musician living in Boston, performing in small clubs and sometimes on street corners. But that year, she finally got her big break and got signed to a major record label, Elektra Records. Meanwhile, Natalie Merchant was becoming a star as the main singer and songwriter for the band 10,000 Maniacs. In the summer of 1987, they released their third album, "In My Tribe." It made the Top Forty in the U.S. album charts, putting them on the map as a nationwide popular act.
It so happened that 10,000 Maniacs was also signed to Elektra Records. One day, in late 1987, she discovered a demo tape of some of Chapman's songs while visiting the record company's New York City office. She was very impressed, so much so that she actually cried from being emotionally moved by the songs. In late 1987 and early 1988, Chapman recorded her debut album. It would be released in April 1988 under the title "Tracy Chapman."
Then, in late February 1988, Elektra Records had Chapman perform a special concert in Boston to help build anticipation for her upcoming album. Even though only 150 people could fit in the club, lots of journalists and music industry insiders were invited. Merchant heard about the concert. She was so interested in that demo tape she'd heard that she flew to the concert and met Chapman after the show. Merchant later said, "I felt a kinship because her record was made from the soul rather than to make money. There was similarity between us in the lyrical sentiment and musical quality." A few days later, Merchant sent Chapman a copy of her "In My Tribe," album, and the two began communicating.
This soon led to Merchant inviting Chapman to a concert in London the following month. Actually, it was two concerts, on March 24th and 25th, both at the Donmar Warehouse, which only held about 200 people. This was designed to introduce Chapman to a European audience, as she'd never performed outside the U.S. before. At this point, Merchant had never really done any solo concerts, only concerts with 10,000 Maniacs. But she pushed herself to perform solo in order to help Chapman promote her upcoming album in this way. And even though Merchant was a star and Chapman was an unknown, Merchant opened the concert to help give Chapman a bigger spotlight. The effort worked, because some British journalists attended one or both of the concerts and started to spread word about her music in Britain. Chapman then played a few more solo concerts in Britain, opening for John Martyn, before returning to the U.S.
When Chapman's debut album was released in April 1988, it was out of step with the musical trends of the time. So at first, it did reasonably well, but not great. The album sold 250,000 copies by June. That month, she got to take part in a concert honoring Nelson Mandela that was broadcast worldwide. That caused her sales to skyrocket. A couple of months later, her album reached Number One in the U.S. album chart. Eventually, it went on to sell over 20 million copies. It also helped open the door for many other acoustic-based singer-songwriter types.
So it turns out this concert (and the one at the same venue the day before) was important for both Merchant and Chapman. For Merchant, it was the start of her doing solo work, though it would still be a few years before she left 10,000 Maniacs. And for Chapman, it helped build her reputation at a key time, when her debut album was still a few weeks away from being released.
Merchant further helped Chapman by having her be the opening act for 10,000 Maniacs for a few months, back before the Nelson Mandela concert. Merchant later commented, "She certainly doesn't need any help from me in retrospect. I played with her in England and had her tour with us to get my crowd to see her rather than have her relegated to women's bins or folk bins in the stores. When she toured with us not many people had heard the album, but people sat completely enthralled and she got standing ovations most nights."
Now, let's get to this recording. I found recordings of the two sets separately, and put them together. But I'm sure they're from the same source. It's an audience bootleg, but a pretty good one. Because the crowd was small, there was almost no crowd noise during the songs. However, the big problem that stopped me from posting this in the past was hiss. So I tried something new. MVSEP has a conversion setting called "Denoise." I tried it, and it did a really great job of getting rid of the hiss, even during the songs, while keeping everything else. This works better than "noise reduction," which often harms the music.
So that fixed most of the problem. However, the sound of Merchant's set was a bit rougher. The songs sounded pretty good, but the banter was often hard to understand. So I ran the talking tracks through Adobe's "Enhance Speech" program, which specifically helps with the clarity of speech. That helped a lot. The one remaining problem after that was that the first minute or so of Chapman's "For My Lover" was missing. Luckily, that song has some repetition in it, and the verses that were lost were repeated later in the song. So I just copied parts of the song to fill in the missing portion. That's why that one song has "[Edit]" in its title.
On a final note, some of the songs performed in this concert still haven't been officially released. "After Talking to Myself" by Natalie Merchant has been performed in concert a few times, but it's not even known what the song title is. And Chapman played some songs that would show up on her second album "Crossroads," like "Born to Fight" and "This Time," plus, "If I" and "Be My Baby," which remain unreleased. And their duet of the traditional song "Where the Soul Never Dies" also remains unreleased by both of them.
This album is an hour and 38 minutes long. The Natalie Merchant set is 43 minutes long, and the Tracy Chapman one is 56 minutes long. (Also, just as a nitpicky thing, some versions of this bootleg I've seen list March 20th as the date, but I believe the more accurate date is there were two shows, on March 24th and 25th, and this is from the 25th.)
By the way, note that on the same day I'm posting this, I've added three songs to the Chapman "Acoustic Demos" album I made. All three of them are still unreleased songs recorded way back in 1986, in great sound quality, so you really should give those a listen. Here's the link:
https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/10/tracy-chapman-acoustic-demos-1986-1988.html
01 talk (Natalie Merchant)
02 A Campfire Song (Natalie Merchant)
03 talk (Natalie Merchant)
04 Gun Shy (Natalie Merchant)
05 talk (Natalie Merchant)
06 Everyone a Puzzle Lover (Natalie Merchant)
07 talk (Natalie Merchant)
08 Don't Talk (Natalie Merchant)
09 talk (Natalie Merchant)
10 The Painted Desert (Natalie Merchant)
11 talk (Natalie Merchant)
12 Lilydale (Natalie Merchant)
13 What's the Matter Here (Natalie Merchant)
14 Maddox Table (Natalie Merchant)
15 talk (Natalie Merchant)
16 Verdi Cries (Natalie Merchant)
17 talk (Natalie Merchant)
18 Like the Weather (Natalie Merchant)
19 After Talking to Myself (Natalie Merchant)
20 talk (Tracy Chapman)
21 Why (Tracy Chapman)
22 If I (Tracy Chapman)
23 Across the Lines (Tracy Chapman)
24 This Time (Tracy Chapman)
25 Behind the Wall (Tracy Chapman)
26 Baby Can I Hold You (Tracy Chapman)
27 talk (Tracy Chapman)
28 Fast Car (Tracy Chapman)
29 talk (Tracy Chapman)
30 If Not Now (Tracy Chapman)
31 For My Lover [Edit] (Tracy Chapman)
32 Born to Fight (Tracy Chapman)
33 talk (Tracy Chapman)
34 Mountains O' Things (Tracy Chapman)
35 talk (Tracy Chapman)
36 Talkin' 'bout a Revolution (Tracy Chapman)
37 talk (Tracy Chapman)
38 Be My Baby (Tracy Chapman)
39 Where the Soul Never Dies (Tracy Chapman & Natalie Merchant)
Cross Bones Style - Cat Power
“Oh how time flies, with crystal clear eyes.”
Little Feat & Friends - The Midnight Special, NBC Studios, Burbank, CA, 6-10-1977
If you've been paying attention at all to this blog in the last week or so (as I write this in late October 2025), you'll notice I've been posting a lot of albums based on Midnight Special episodes lately. So far, only the shows from 1973 to 1975 have been posted in high quality on YouTube, with a chronological rollout slowly continuing. But occasional shows from later years were already bootlegged. There aren't many cases of that, and most of them are incomplete and/or have lesser sound quality. But I found this one in full with excellent quality, so I've decided to post it already. No doubt it's survived as a bootleg when most other episodes didn't because of the special collaborations.
The musical acts mentioned above were not the only ones on the show. In addition, Neil Young appeared for one song, and Weather Report performed three songs. I didn't include the Young song, because it wasn't really from the episode, but it was a video of him performing "Like a Hurricane" at some unknown concert. Had he actually been there, I would have included it, and I'll bet he would have interacted with some of the others too. (Most likely Emmylou Harris, since she sang backing vocals on some of his songs right around this time.) As for Weather Report, I didn't include them because they didn't fit in musically with the others, and there was no collaboration between them and the others. This is another case where I feel less is more, by having musical cohesion to the album.
I took the music from a bootleg. But I patched in more applause at the ends of some songs to help smooth the transitions between songs. And there were edits to two songs. I edited Wolfman Jack's introduction to get rid of the mentions of Neil Young and Weather Report. "Rock and Roll Doctor" by Little Feat was more difficult. This was another case of the show ending in the middle of song. So I found a soundboard bootleg of a Little Feat from Kansas City in 1977, and used that version of "Rock and Roll Doctor" to finish off the last three minute or so.
This album is 48 minutes long.
01 talk [Edit] (Wolfman Jack)
02 Queen of the Silver Dollar (Emmylou Harris with Little Feat)
03 Dixie Chicken (Little Feat with Emmylou Harris, Bonnie Raitt & Jesse Winchester)
04 talk (Little Feat)
05 Runaway (Bonnie Raitt)
06 talk (Emmylou Harris)
07 Rhumba Man (Jesse Winchester)
08 Old Folks Boogie (Little Feat)
09 talk (Little Feat & Jesse Winchester)
10 I Can't Stand Up Alone (Jesse Winchester with Emmylou Harris & Bonnie Raitt)
11 talk (Jesse Winchester)
12 Home (Bonnie Raitt)
13 talk (Little Feat)
14 Nothing but a Breeze (Jesse Winchester with Emmylou Harris)
15 Rocket in My Pocket (Little Feat)
16 My Songbird (Emmylou Harris)
17 Sugar Mama (Bonnie Raitt)
18 talk (Little Feat)
19 Rock and Roll Doctor [Edit] (Little Feat)
this ought to be right up my strasse and it is but 13 discs!? THIRTEEN!?
That’s gonna take me a while to listen and review so have at it guitar nuts, musos etc and let me know what you reckon! From Michael Chapman, B.J.Cole, to Jack Rose and John Fahey! and that’;s just a few I HAVE heard of!!! Enjoy!
Imaginational Anthem Vol. 01-13 is one of the most ambitious and reverent anthologies assembled around the American Primitive guitar tradition. Released across two decades by Tompkins Square Records, the series began in 2005 as a quiet homage to fingerstyle innovators like John Fahey, Robbie Basho, and Leo Kottke, but quickly evolved into a sprawling, multi-generational archive that bridges archival rediscovery with contemporary experimentation. Each volume carries its own curatorial logic, but taken as a whole, the 13-CD set offers a panoramic view of steel-string acoustic guitar as a storytelling medium. The early volumes (01-04) lean heavily into rediscovered private press recordings, rare 1960s -1970s solo works, and unearthed demos from forgotten players. These discs are rich with rarities, including tracks by Harry Taussig, Sandy Bull, and Max Ochs, often sourced from long-out-of-print LPs or unreleased acetates. Tompkins Square’s commitment to provenance is evident throughout, liner notes are meticulous, and mastering is sympathetic to the original analog warmth. Mid-series volumes (05-09) shift toward contemporary interpretations, featuring artists like Daniel Bachman, Chuck Johnson, and William Tyler, who channel the Fahey ethos while expanding its harmonic vocabulary. These discs document a living tradition, where drone, raga, and ambient textures meet Appalachian roots and modal folk. Volume 07, is notable for its geographic diversity, with contributors from the US, UK, Lisbon, Malta, and South America. It leans into ambient, experimental, and post-folk textures, offering a modern lens on solo acoustic guitar. The later volumes (10–13) return to archival excavation, with Volume 10 spotlighting early 20th-century 78rpm recordings, and Volume 13 offering a global perspective, including rare tracks from Japanese and European acoustic innovators. This final installment reframes the genre as a worldwide phenomenon, not just an American artifact. Throughout the series, Tompkins Square maintains a consistent aesthetic: understated packaging, poetic liner notes, and a deep respect for the artists’ intent. The label’s founder, Josh Rosenthal, deserves credit for shaping the series into a kind of sonic museum, one that balances discovery with continuity. For archival purposes, this set is a goldmine, it spans eras, styles, and geographies with minimal overlap, and its sequencing across volumes reflects both historical lineage and curatorial vision. Whether used for genre mapping, provenance tracing, or sonic inspiration, Imaginational Anthem stands as a definitive document of acoustic guitar’s expressive potential. (Butterboy)
