THE BOOTLEG SERIES
The Bootleg Series has covered 11 Volumes to date. The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 is a compilation box set by Bob Dylan that was released in 1991 and is the first installment in the Dylan bootleg series, comprising material spanning the first three decades of his career, from 1961 to 1989. Unlike subsequent volumes, which to date have all been double-disc packages in their primary non-limited edition format, each volume in this set is a single compact disc, and the three volumes are not available separately. (More from Wikipedia)
Bob Dylan hates bootleg albums, but he has consented to the official release of a series of albums called The Bootleg Series. (Earlier releases that also included songs that were previously available only as bootlegs are the 1975 album The Basement Tapes, which included numerous recordings from the Great White Wonder album; and the 1985 five-LP or three-CD retrospective Biograph). To date, nine volumes have been released in the Bootleg Series, the most recent (The Bootleg Series Vol. 9: The Witmark Demos: 1962–1964) in 2010.
(August 2012)
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I will have more to say about Bob Dylan bootleg albums in a future post(s), but I will mention in passing that Dylan has released a staggering amount of his older music in a variety of formats, including but not exclusively in The Bootleg Series. When Dylan agreed to start doing this, he secured an agreement from the record company that was non-negotiable: The recording quality has to be good no matter what. The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961-1991 was released in 1991 and includes a live version of “Who Killed Davey Moore”. I had to play it several times to be sure but finally concluded that it is the same live performance included on John Birch Society Blues, even though the difference in the sound of the two recordings is dramatic. Even so, I am happy to have both of them; I was never dissatisfied with the quality of “Who Killed Davey Moore” as it appears on John Birch Society Blues. A new volume in this series, The Bootleg Series Vol. 13: Trouble No More 1979–1981 about Dylan’s Christian albums, was released in November 2017.
(September 2017)
