This Bank Of Sand

A 3 LP RSD limited edition collection of Bob Dylan non-album singles, B-sides, rarities, tracks from compilations, soundtracks and suchlike? sign me up.

Side Tracks doesn’t give off loved vibes, either by its’ creator or the music producing arm of the military-industrial complex that flogs his wares. It stems from a 975 CD collection of his entire discography released in 2013, seemingly as a means to slop up the bits and pieces filed under ‘elsewhere’. Apparently, most of this stuff was on the 1985 5LP box set Biograph; I wouldn’t know*.

As an avid buyer of affordable Dylan bits and bats and box sets, I’m no stranger to a few of the cuts here, but I welcome them as old friends. Where Side Tracks scores for me is in the post 27 July 1966 period.

The received wisdom in my household of Dylan nuts was that nothing was ever the same after his motorcycle accident; kinda like Elvis and the army. Basically Dylan stepped off the Untouchable Genius Conveyor Belt Of Geniusness** after Blonde On Blonde, stumbled back onto it accidentally during Blood On the Tracks in ’74 and then pissed off to sing songs about God, cowboys and shit, with lyrics as bad as ‘wiggle wiggle like a gypsy queen’^. This was the orthodoxy in the 1537 household that I imbibed with my milk.

Side Tracks challenges that view, which I like, even if it never quite upends it for me.

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In any other artist’s repertoire ‘Positively 4th Street’ would be the crowning glory, one of my favourite ever put downs in song. That it is merely one of his very best and dwarfed by some^^ just imparts a dizzying sense of scale to it all. It is teamed here with the strident clang of ‘Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?’ to brilliant affect.

Earlier we get the blues of ‘Mixed-Up Confusion’ which is always welcome, the leary ‘Baby, I’m In The Mood For You’ and the original ‘Percy’s Song’, which is a treat for us conventional Fairportians. I like the bustling lustling of ‘I Wanna Be Your Lover’, Dylan at (almost) his amphetamine best.

Then we’re through the Triumph Tiger 100 shaped looking glass and enduring the bollocks of ‘Quinn The Eskimo’, yuk. Suddenly in steps Leon Russell and we are sat on a bank of sand in 1971 ‘Watching The River Flow’. It’s just absolute perfection, Dylan grooving and having a good time not saying anything epochal, telling us to fuck off and leave him alone in the nicest possible way. I love it.

To segue from that to the equally worthy ‘When I Paint My Masterpiece’, a wordy blues-touched story hat deserves to be better known. We can skip a few from there, all nice, all bluesy, all very Band sounding, until we get to the acoustic version of ‘George Jackson’ another amazing cut (much better than the band version on the single).

A tribute to the Black Panther leader released 3 months after he was shot in San Quentin, ‘George Jackson’ is a real return to political potency that he only touched once more again on ‘Hurricane’ 5 years later. It is stark and affecting, hell, he swears.

He wouldn’t take shit from no one
He wouldn’t bow down or kneel
Authorities, they hated him
Because he was just too real

A demo of the beautiful ‘Forever Young’ and the Blood On the Tracks outtake/work in progress ‘Up To Me’ keep up the standard, ditto a take on ‘You’re A Big Girl Now’. There is some lesser stuff to follow, with the exception of two tracks.

First up a wild, ferocious 1975 live take of ‘Isis’ is a shocker, Dylan coming on like a dangerous drunk at an academic party; I own Pistols cuts that are tamer than this one. It is brilliant, the violin cuts and soars excellently too. I wasn’t expecting that.

Lastly and rather excellently is ‘Things Have Changed’ from the soundtrack to The Wonder Boys, a film I really enjoyed. Dylan manages to be slinky, weary, cynical and hopeful all in one song; hell one verse even, the first verse is a corker. The music is an upbeat, Spanish/Louisiana^* shuffle with an iron-clad beat and I love the voice Dylan uses here. Its enough to almost reset all my preconceived bias.

A worried man with a worried mind
No one in front of me and nothing behind
There’s a woman on my lap and she’s drinking champagne
Got white skin, blood in my eyes
I’m looking up into the sapphire-tinted skies
I’m well dressed, waiting on the last train

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Side Tracks is a repository for some primo Dylannoni, some average cuts and a small amount of bollocks; I’ll take that the good far outweighs the not-so here. If you are ever in the market for some, umm, side tracks then I would recommend Side Tracks to you.

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So my copy is #7473 which my magic coincidence could be the name of my next record-based blog. The LPs are cut really well, the sleevenotes are decidedly perfunctory but the credits for every track is comprehensive. I’m really not keen on 3LP sets that house one album in a slip open at both ends in the middle, it usually tears so I keep the middle LP out of it; it doesn’t keep me up at night, often.

1228 Down.

*and my exhaustive research is too exhausted to go and look it up; luckily it says that in the liner notes.

**the UCGBOG as is it known in top-notch academic circles like what I done inhabited.

^when EVERYONE knows that only Ronnie James Dio is allowed to sing about sexy gypsies!!

^^it is the unsophisticated kissing cousin of ‘Like A Rolling Stone’.

^*still not sure which.