New Dylan Bootleg vol due in March

[Kooperman]

In the new, February issue of ICE, our cover story is on Columbia/Legacy’s newest chapter in Bob Dylan’s ongoing Bootleg Series, this one called The Bootleg Series Volume 6: Bob Dylan Live 1964 - Concert at Philharmonic Hall. It’s due out March 23.

Series producer Steve Berkowitz talked with ICE in great detail about the release, a two-disc set which finds Dylan in great spirits and working his way through past classics ("The Times They Are A-Changin’," "A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall"), gems he had yet to release on record ("Mr. Tambourine Man," "It’s Alright, Ma [i’m Only Bleeding]") and some duets with Joan Baez ("With God on Our Side," "It Ain’t Me, Babe").

What follows is Berkowitz’s further observations about the master tapes that exist for the concert, and more, none of which appears in the magazine.

Regarding the October 31 (yes, Halloween night), 1964 concert, Berkowitz tells ICE, "It was recorded fairly well; it certainly had its peculiarities. It’s right at this cusp of the mono-stereo era, so the way that mic’ing was done for the intention of reproducing on record is a whole other philosophy that what was coming through 3-5 years later.

"It’s a three-track recording. There’s one track which was supposed to be for his vocal, one track and microphone for the guitar, and then there’s another microphone that we kind of think - and according to pictures that we’ve seen - seems to stay, most of the set, eight or 10 feet off to his side. I think that the intention was for that to pick up ambience [crowd noise, etc.], but it doesn’t pick up that much of the audience. We tried really hard to get the audience involved in [the final mastering].

"Then when Joan comes out, they use the third mic for her to sing in. And that completely messes up the ambient sound for the rest of the show, as we were putting it together. But we managed."

Berkowitz says that a "fantastic" 5.1 mix was made of the show as well, but that it was decided to keep the new release as just stereo. Either way, they felt it was important to capture as much "hall sound" as possible. "We wanted the audience in the room, for two-track or surround," Berkowitz says. "And so we got what we could out of that third microphone.

"Then the signal on the guitar mic was nowhere as strong as the vocal mic. Bob seemed to be moving around a lot, and smacking the guitar into the microphone… a lot. Part of it may have been that the mic wasn’t up very loud… they might have had a feedback problem during soundcheck or something."

And, he adds, "The tape ran out during ‘Silver Dagger’ [a Baez solo turn with Dylan on harmonica], and we had to splice it together, but fortunately, they had two machines running." That was always an important factor in concert recording… to have a second tape player rolling before the primary machine ran out of tape, so that every second of the performance is captured.

http://www.icemagazine.com/daily/203/index.asp