| Identifier | 8692283 |
| Created At | Tue May 23 2023 23:54:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) |
| Reference Number | 988 |
| Note | Bob Dylan
Outside the Empire – Studio Outtakes July 1984-April 1985 Speed Corrected Version Wanted Man WMMM60 http://www.punkhart.com/dylan/sessions-7.html http://www.punkhart.com/dylan/sessions-8.html http://www.bobsboots.com/CDs/cd-o22.html http://www.angelfire.com/wa/monicasdude/406.htm http://www.collectorsmusicreviews.com/dylan-bob/bob-dylan-the-naked-empire-godfather-records-gr-218/ (for session dates - see below) Lineage: Legendary Tape/Great Source/ Myths, Stories and Legends: Silver: Vaio Bluray: Easy CD-DA Extractor using direct single pass to Flac: HC (freedom) Comprehensive 300 DPI artowrk included - apologies back scan shows light patterns from gloss material The following is a summary of what happened when I started looking at the different releases of the Empire Burlesque sessions – I was following a thread in eriksnow’s upload of The Naked Empire (Empire Burlesque sessions 1984-85) [1CD], http://www.hungercity.org/details.php?id=2296 (thank you ErikSnow!). I began constructing Excel sheets of timings and differences between releases assuming that I would find few if any differences. eriksnow some two years ago asked for any comments on different releases and particularly with Outside the Empire – better late than never!!!!!!!! In fact it turned into a potentially huge task. There are just so many differences between these releases that I decided not to continue – it would have gone on forever! So I’ll just summarise and pick a few examples. On a single plus note (!) Naked Empire removes a glitch from Tight Connection at 1:14- 1:15. Beyond this however it edits the beginnings/ends short of key tracks including, however slightly, on NDG (click), Who loves you More (cough and laughter), TCTMH (cut), CCK (beginning cut badly, end cut), something’s burning (sharp fade), Night falling (sharp cut); Drifting (front clipped), Go Away (beginning cut) in fact it plays in different ways with all the tracks. Another of the legion examples, Outside hacks a tiny little piano piece from I’ll Remember You at the beginning – but for me this is actually a must have piece of the outtake, differentiating it from the album version – I cannot believe they did this. Why cut it? Sometimes Naked is inconsistent on how it balances the levels. For example, on Emotionally Yours it brings out a chronic whining noise that really doesn’t help anyone. In fact it Naked adds hiss to most tracks, without any concomitant increase in detail. Again, why? Personally and IMHO I do not like the tracks being cut, however marginally – we can all use Soundforge much better to balance the levels how we like them – and that’s the point it’s subjective, imposing changes like are surely not the way to go. IMHO Godfather should have left it alone. Again, on New Danville Girl (NDG) Naked does the reverse, increasing levels, but reducing hiss – actually the Naked disk is a little all over the place. On NDG it actually loses brightness – this quality of recording cannot afford to lose this. I do not have the original of Clean Cuts here to read back further – so I am taking at face value that that the only thing WM did to Clean Cuts was to sort the speed issue out in producing Outside the Empire. For the sake of argument, let’s take WM as the reliable source and ask does Outside the Empire help? In summary, different speed, poor edit, unnecessary production. For me, it’s a mess. Please give me the source, unedited. Couple of other thoughts... Tempest Storm again played with the sound on the Outside release according to BB but I do not have the Tempest release to compare it. It is possible that the muddle has been caused by Godfather using Tempest rather than Outside as its source – This could be the problem in which case Godfather is probably a little less culpable. But for me also what we have here is a bigger problem. Clean Cuts, which started all this and must take the blame was a multiple source disk; it jumbled up the sessions, as have all of the following disks, between times, dates and locations of the source material. The sense of all them is questionable. We should have been given complete sessions and proper attribution. Instead we have a muddle and no real way of knowing when the core tracks were recorded. Whoever produced Clean Cuts knows the truth. Gsparaco’s review (as listed above) and in the Naked upload puts dates and studios together – but it’s anyone’s guess whether this it’s accurate or not. This said, these are all important releases. The truth is, whatever the final mix, this is just mission critical stuff. Take NDG. Comparing NDG from these outtakes with NDG from Scorpio’s GBS1 (http://www.hungercity.org/details.php?id=8117) – thank you blindwilly for the up) is really interesting. Originally I thought that the GBS version was simply better – but when you look at it, NDG was overdubbed so many times (Ref: Michael Krogsgaard, http://www.punkhart.com/dylan/sessions-7.html / http://www.punkhart.com/dylan/sessions-8.html Yes it is better, of course in the sense that it’s as perfect as a studio album track – but that’s the point - it’s different. You would not want to be without the Outside the Empire NDG, whatever its relative imperfections. So ... IMHO the conjecture is that the GBS version is actually one of these later overdubs – might be even as late as May ’86 (the last NDG before the lyrics switch) as it’s pretty close to the eventual BG release including the fade rather than drum out ending. It’s listed on Bob’s Boots and GBS 1 as 12/84 – but these are surely different sources. The quality, track backing and edit is so different from the Empire bootleg series, even allowing for the two variants crafted at the original sessions, surely Scorpio have completely different session tapes. There may be a clue on GBS 2 because Scorpio claim the recording of Something Burning from Cherokee sessions in November that does not exists in Krogsgaard – but they have not cut the hiss or messed around with these – so why would they for NDG in GBS1? I don’t think they did. Scorpio never went back to any of these sessions in ’84 (or ’86 for the matter) in any of the GBS Series – if they had we would probably have a good clue as to where this came from. I’m sticking my neck out that the GBS track could have been the one prepared for the originally planned 4 CD version of the Bootleg series Volume 1 – but that really is conjecture on my part (It’s just so perfect it would surely have been good enough); the rationale for the attribution error would be that they would not have wanted to draw attention to this - it would have raised a lot of questions with Sony!!!!!. Another piece of conjecture is that the Empire bootlegs use Bob’s tape (we know everyone went mad for NDG and Bob proceeded to wind everyone up by hiding it!!!!!) as its source and Scorpio use the master laid down in the afternoon. Personally I still conjecture that this track is from a much, much later session. This is Brownsville Girl without the gospel overdubs, echo and change of lyrics. Myths and dreams .....myths and dreams!!!!!!! The other possibility is simply that Scorpio has access to A+ versions of all these sessions in a way that Sick cat, WM and Godfather never had – if so, it was from these that GBS NDG was drawn. If you out there Scorpio and this is the case you know what we need!!!!! Another note - according to CD Pinkerton reading back from his timings analysis of Clean Cuts, they are both still running fast - he would have NDG running to 12:47. This would be far too slow. However, this would put the eddiethecat release in the right ballpark as it is slower – see following. This alternative set - Empire Burlesque Originals & Outtakes (Transfer From 2nd Generation Cassettes) - http://www.hungercity.org/details.php?id=2325 - .thank you eddiethecat is important because it highlights a different tree for the source material (given the extra tracks) and different timings. The problem, however, in comparing it comes from the use of Dolby (from the lineage it looks like this has been twice) and what sounds like level clipping. This means it is really hard to compare like for like – again IMHO, and personally/subjectively, I would prefer to get the source materials, even if imperfect, and then play with them myself. This is a really important recording because it shows up another tree (that may even take us to the source of these Boots) but as a recording it’s just too muffled. For me taking away the hiss has taken with it a lot of the heart and soul. The good things is, unlike Naked, the tracks are not edited – these have not been damaged. For interest, if you have not dug out the re-mastered Brownsville Girl from the Dylan Dylan official compilation release (mine comes in a red box) release you are in for a treat as there is a whole layer of sound that did not exist before! Recommended! New Danville Girl – Outside the Empire complete ending 12:07 New Danville Girl – Naked Empire 12:05 complete ending slight edit. New Danville Girl – GBS1 11:21 (hard fade) Brownsville Girl – Knocked Out Loaded (original release) 10:59 (slow fade) Brownsville Girl – Dylan / Dylan 11:03 (slow fade) In summary, if you don’t have any of these releases this is absolutely must have. This is really important stuff. If you have Naked, and this period’s less important to you than others, then leave it. Without Excel tables you probably won’t realise the differences. I suppose it depends how interested you are in getting nearer to where these came from. I have ranted a bit because I’m annoyed that the Godfather release cuts/edits/plays with things unnecessarily/badly – I really do not get why. NDG is really important to me so I care about this a lot. I just wish we had the individual session releases intact – someone must have them to have made these releases. Presumably we have this muddle simply because they were hell bent on getting a single disk release. Ahhhhhhhhhhh! Again, to summarise, if you want accuracy, this is the one (unless WM did more to Clean Cuts than repair the timing). If you want the single best release of NDG though it’s on GBS1 – albeit with a fade out ending, which is annoying. All the other releases accept Clean Cuts have better artwork – but again, I’d trade integrity and sound for pretty pictures, however, nice, any day of the week. |
| Trades Allowed |
Performance
| Bob Dylan 1985-??-?? Outside the Empire – Studio Outtakes, Compilation, Compilation | |
|---|---|
| Set 1 | New Danville Girl (Claimed to be one of the takes recorded 6 December 1984)* Tight Connection To My Heart **** Clean Cut Kid *** (Claimed to be recorded on 26 July 1984) I'll Remember You * (Claimed to be recorded on 5 February 1985) Seeing The Real You At Last * (Claimed to be recorded on 28 January 1985) Something's Burning Baby * (Claimed to be recorded on 14 December 1984 Trust Yourself * (Claimed to be recorded on 5 February 1985) Emotionally Yours * (Claimed to be recorded on 14 February) When The Night Comes Falling From The Sky **** Never Gonna Be The Same Again **** Waiting To Get Beat **** Straight A's In Love *** The Very Thought Of You *** Driftin' Too Far From Shore *** (Claimed to be recorded on 26 July 1984) Who Loves You More *** Go 'Way Little Boy ** |
| Set 2 | |
| Set 3 | |
| Comment | * Cherokee Studio Guitar: Ira Ingber Bass: Carl Sealove Keyboards: Vince Melamed Drums: Don Heffington Backing Vocals: Madelyn Quebec ** Power Station Studios, NYC Guitar: Ronnie Wood Bass: Marvin Ettioni Organ: Benmont Tench Drums: Don Heffington *** Delta Sound Labs Guitar: Ronnie Wood Bass: John Davis Piano/Synth: Bob Dylan Drums: Anton Fig Backing Vocals: Carolyn Dennis **** Shakedown Sound Studios Guitar: Al Kooper Guitar: Mick Taylor Guitar: Ted Pearlman Guitar: Stuart Kimball Keyboards: Bob Dylan Drums: Sly Dunbar Bass: Robbie Shakespeare |