Unreleased Studio Recordings, 1980 - 1981; 2019 Revision
CS production
1. Mystery Train - Outtake, 1981
2. Heart Of Mine - Outtake, 1981
3. Caribbean Wind - Outtake, 1980
4. Wind Blowing On The Water - Outtake, 1981
5. Shot Of Love - Outtake, 1981
6. Watered-Down Love - Rough Mix, 1981
7. Hallelujah - Outtake, 1981
8. Let It Be Me - Outtake, 1981
9. Is It Worth It? - Outtake, 1981
10. Let's Keep It Between Us - Outtake, 1980
11. Magic - Outtake, 1981
12. Trouble - Outtake, 1981
13. Ah Ah Ah Ah (High Away) - Outtake, 1981
14. In The Summertime - Rough Mix, 1981
15. Borrowed Time - Outtake, 1981
Welcome to a lovely and oft-overlooked corner of Bob Dylan's recording career - the sessions that led to 1981's Shot of Love. Shot of Love is a remarkably good record, whatever else you've heard, and was Dylan's last to sound like a bunch of people playing in the same room until Love & Theft in 2001. There was no sleek shine to this production, and consequently it breathed with the passion found in much of the man's best work. Unfortunately, many of the finest recordings from these sessions were not released on that album. In particular, "Yonder Comes Sin" and "Caribbean Wind" are absolutely essential, and "Heart of Mine" was recorded in a much better rendition than the one that appears on the official release.
Outside of these classics, more minor gems were recorded. No collection of Dylan outtakes would be complete without these covers of "Mystery Train" and "Let It Be Me." The fragmentary songs, including "Hallelujah" (not the Leonard Cohen song) and "Borrowed Time" make one wonder what could have been; "Is It Worth It" and "Ah Ah Ah Ah (High Away)" point to the reggae-influenced road ahead to Infidels, and contribute to the overall Caribbean sound of this era.
The other studio cuts are intriguing as well. "Let's Keep It Between Us" is a fairly recently unearthed prototype for a song that would become transcendent on the road in Fall, 1980; you can find a live recording of the song on Rise Again: Live, Fall 1980. “Caribbean Wind” is one of Bob Dylan’s greatest compositions, and this studio performance remains the only one not officially released (among the ones that have circulated). Until 2017, only the overproduced rendition on Biograph was available to paying customers; this was happily rectified with Trouble No More, where a soft piano rehearsal and the mind-blowing live performance from 1980 were finally officially released. This version of the song is somewhere between the rehearsal and live version, as it features the “rattlesnake” lyrics of the rehearsal that appears on Trouble No More but includes a more propulsive rhythm section.
The rough mixes of "Watered-Down Love" and "In The Summertime" are both interesting. "Watered-Down Love" retains an extra verse not present on the official release but conspicuous in live performances from 1981. It's likely that, like the longer version of "Dead Man, Dead Man" that appears on 2017's Trouble No More, this extra verse was cut for time constraints on the 1981 Shot of Love LP. "In The Summertime," on the other hand, stands out for the inclusion of a mournful harmonica that extends the song by a full minute beyond its officially released version.
Unfortunately, I recently discovered that the original 2018 edition of this compilation included an officially released (if obscure) live performance of “Dead Man, Dead Man” that is often misrepresented as a rough mix. Credit to Expecting Rain commenter FolkieEmo for clueing me in to this error. The offending track has been replaced with a recently circulating alternate take of Shot of Love composition “Trouble.” The outtake isn’t anything amazing, but it an interesting look at a song in transition from a series of standard blues lines to the comparatively more distinctive version on the album.
I hope you enjoy this newest compilation, and include it in your collections alongside the inimitable Shot of Love and extraordinary Trouble No More. It was a blast to put together.
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