The 1966 Live Recordings

Lots of other reviews here on Amazon, making good points. What do you get? 36 CDs, a slim booklet, and a well-made cardboard box with lid. CD card covers have tracklist and recording details on back, and individual (all different) live concert photos from the tour on the front. What's on the CDs? 18 concert recordings from soundboard reel tapes (in mono) or professional CBS concert recordings (in stereo, the last few concerts of the tour). Most are complete, or just missing a bit where tape had to be turned-over / changed. The last 5 discs are audience recordings of shows CBS didn't record. Why is this interesting? Firstly, it's for Bob Dylan freaks like me, who know that these Dylan concerts are among the greatest musical evenings there have ever been for rock music fans. The live recordings in Europe are excellent quality, a fine representation of the music. The concerts are generally the same songs (over and over again!), BUT in the case of the electric sets, different songs come off better or less well on different nights (especially the thunderous intros). The band listened to the tapes after the concerts, and no doubt looked for ways to make the next concert better. Even the acoustic sets show Dylan in different moods, sometimes just singing the songs nicely in tune, professionally for the people, but sometimes in touch with what the songs are about and conveying the meaning with real feeling. Even the audience tapes have a story to tell - history tells us that the electric sets were over-loud and people couldn't understand the vocals. Now you can hear for yourself, what it sounded like for those attending. I'm a Dylan-in-'66 nut - I bought the £400 studio set (and CBS then kindly gifted purchasers with all the 1965 live material too). We know that we're getting these things because the copyright is running out, but it's finally getting us as much as we can listen to, of probably the greatest rock tour that there ever was. Everything there is, is not too much! There is no other example of such great coverage for a great tour. Value for money is hardly an issue, faced with the chance to get this material - however, 36 CDs for £100-odd -you do the math.. The audience recordings may have you straining to follow the electric sets, and the Australian soundboards are not like the European recordings, but there's plenty to enjoy in great recording quality. So, a wonderful present for Dylan buffs, in barebones packaging, which keeps the price manageable. Leaflet is dull but refers readers on to the Clinton Heylin book about the tour, which is well worth acquiring. Incidentally, the re-issue of the No Direction Home DVD has live footage of a few whole songs from the tour, as extras. When I loved the bootleg of the Manchester concert in the early seventies, I never dreamed that we would (eventually!) get to hear all-there-is of this wonderful material - glad I lived long enough to see this day.

The boxset here is a true treasure trove for real Bobophiles. I am proud to say that I was at the second of the Royal Albert Hall gigs (27 May '66), so getting hold of a copy was a no brainer for me. Only having received it late yesterday I've not played anywhere near the majority but I started with the night that I was there, and can say that I trembled at finally hearing it in its entirety (I had some of it from acetate recordings etc). Probably only one for real hard-core Dylan fans but I'm always going to be one of them. I'll add a bit of info in response to other reviews. One reviewer says this isn't a new issue as it was offered as a free download if you bought the limited 18 disc version of the 65-66 (Cutting Edge) sessions boxset last year. This isn't true...what was given free THEN was the complete 1965 live recordings (this boxset covers 1966). Another mentions that there is a duplication of many songs over the 36 discs here, while not featuring songs such as All Along The Watchtower. As a trove featuring only what he played in '66 - and the gigs were almost all the same set list - this is what you should expect. Also... many of the songs that were listed as missing (Blowing in the wind apart!) hadn't even been written by '66. Hope this helps clarify. A fabulous archive boxset of every known 1966 live recording, but probably not for someone wanting a Bob hits collection..!! In short...it's bl**dy marvellous and I'm in Bob heaven.

It’s difficult to give this anything but 5 stars because it undoubtedly does well what it sets out to do - assemble all known recordings of Dylan’s 1966 tour. I can’t fault the execution and I was under no illusion in terms of what to expect. It was the sub £50 price point for the 36 CDs that made me take the plunge. Even for completists it maybe a step too far though. Dylan didn’t vary the setlist much across the tour so most gigs are pretty much identical - you largely get the same tracks performed in a very similar way, just in varying sound quality depending on the source. The CDs where there is some interesting variation to the setlist - the inclusion of Positively 4th Street and Love Minus Zero/No Limit, for example - is on some of the poorer quality CDs. The sound quality on the ‘audience recordings’ (CDs 32 -36) is truly dreadful - most people probably won’t play these more than once. Being brutally frank, leaving aside the historical significance of the 1966 tour in Dylan’s development, it is questionable what this collection offers beyond what you can get on the two individual 1966 concert releases - ‘The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Live 1966 (The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert)’ and ‘The Real Albert Hall 1966 Concert’. Hardcore completists though will enjoy listening for variations in Dylan’s vocal delivery across the 36 discs, the occasional bits of interaction with the audience between songs (CD31 is great for this) and those nights where the band is ‘on fire’ and really leans into the songs during the electric set.

Trouble starts when Bob Dylan and the Hawks flourish their dazzling and mysterious music in front of audiences eager to see the real Burl Ives – with hilarious results. Some of the high-wire fun that follows is badly recorded or cut off in mid-flow, but it still features the spooky moment at almost every concert where the whole house bursts into laughter as the singer admits he can’t find his knees, several numbers dedicated to the Taj Mahal, and that now notorious episode when the future leader of the British Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn (well, it certainly sounds like him) yells out: “Judas!” Hearing all that will cost you serious time and money. Is it worth it? Yes and no. The Manchester and Albert Hall sets are available separately at a far lower price, and probably represent the fiercest nights of the tour. Other discs contain murky material that only the devout will play more than once. But limiting yourself to those two stand-alone CDs will also rob you of some very necessary jewels – notably, “Just Like a Woman” and “Mr Tambourine Man” from Scotland and Paris, where Dylan’s harmonica work threatens to soar into orbit and completely leave the planet. Other parts aren’t so sublime. “Many Mornings” and “Tom Thumb” are really the same trudging tune, and Dylan is audibly bored to death with “Desolation Row.” It’s like a good joke that he’s already told far too often. Elsewhere the Hawks back him to perfection, but Robbie Robertson sounds under mortifying pressure. Early concerts reveal how hard it was to slot his brash, roadhouse style into Dylan’s nimble assault, and it’s not until the last run of shows that he finally comes to grips with the proper sound of these songs, prising their spines apart and playing through the gaps. Come the Albert Hall, he’s peerless. Even so, the suave, minimalist sideman from “King Harvest” or “Dirge” is barely in evidence, and if nothing else this set reveals the extraordinary repurposing of his skill that Robertson achieved at Big Pink. He’s also voiced his disquiet over the audience hostility Dylan attracted. It’s difficult to gauge the depth of that from this. Some gigs are rowdy, others rude, Paris utterly hushed, but you can’t help thinking Robertson may have stretched his tales just a tad in the telling. After all, with Ronnie Hawkins, he’d played at Southern backwoods shindigs where the crowds resembled tooled-up extras from “Deliverance,” so a few Stalinist folkies barking from the cheap seats can hardly have counted as much of a threat. Dylan, meanwhile, sounds unconcerned by the whole rigmarole, blithely patient in the face of fools. He’s contended in recent years that “Judas” had been a vile insult on any number of levels (though one would guess its anti-Semitism was unintended), but you wouldn’t have known it at the time. Here Dylan parades in maximum Dada pomp, the hippest of the hip, charged with a seamless, glacial, Class-A disdain. His poise rarely falters, even when one friendly voice assures him, “We’re with you, Bob.” Incredibly, he sped on at this frightening pace for another two months before that fabled bike crash - or whatever it was - brought the craziness collected in this box to a halt. Dylan was lucky to clamber out alive. Half a century on, his views on this razor-thin man and the capering uproar he incited night after night remain obscure. In old age Dylan may well dismiss it all as youthful folly, laugh at his own accelerated masquerade, mourn those playing here who are now long gone – or perhaps, like many of us, scarcely credit the beauty and naked sense of risk that these recordings still display.

This is basically a great way for serious Dylan collectors to replace those tapes they've traded over the years! Here in one box is all the collected tapes of the 1966 tour. Some are the official releases which have appeared over the past 15 years or so in the Official Bootleg series. The quality of the recordings varies (just like a bootleg) and of course the setlist is identical on each CD. But it's a comprehensive record for obsessives.

I was in the audience for the Birmingham concert and the recording here is just as I remember it, including Dylan's comment "there's dirt on the stage". I had no idea that it was recorded at all so I am delighted with this as it brought back so many memories. The first half of the concert was spellbinding (like many other venues on this tour) and I remember vividly how extraordinarily loud the second half was. Some of the audience were shouting "get rid of the band" and some actually walked out of the theatre. I didn't understand this, as Dylan had "gone electric" on some of his albums already at that point. This concert was a tremendous experience and in some ways it changed my life, because the music scene was turned upside down by what could be defined as Dylan's "mercurial alchemy." Dylan was looking for a mercurial sound on the "Blonde on Blonde" album and he surely managed that in spades. This was the birth of folk rock if anything was. For true Dylan fans I think this box set is an indispensable record of Dylan in 1966 so I would not think twice about investing about £100 on it - it is worth every penny.

I am loving this set! To have this controversial period in Dylan's career covered so comprehenvely certainly readdresses many of the half truths and misconceptions that have run, unchecked, for so many years. I won't go into them, as there have been epics written about them. Some right here on Amazon. Listening to the discs, I can hear that rock and roll sound technology, set up in venues meant for orchestral concerts, had, unfortunately, not advanced as quickly as Mr Dylan's artistic desires. Let's remember this was the year The Beatles quit touring because they couldn't deal with the sound they were hearing (or not), especially in competition with thousands of screaming kids. Amplification was not yet sophisticated enough to serve the current and ongoing purpose, and given that Dylan's fans had actually come to listen, and after several mesmerising solo acoustic songs from the man, where they could hear every single word that they'd come to savor, I can imagine that the audiences might have been unpleasantly hit with a cacophony of squeals, echos and bounce back in some of these venues, obscuring the lyricist they so adored. Not forgetting the fact that Dylan insisted they play these songs loudly, with not much finesse or dynamic and his vocals could match that shambolic intensity, this could have been quite an aural assault for those coming to hear a 'folksinger'. Though they were great players there was no real subtlety after 'the band' came on because there wasn't the technological opportunity for it. I think Dylan knew this as well and felt he had to resort to shocking and bludgeoning the people rather than attempting to connect with them, as he'd already done beautifully in the opening acoustic numbers. There is no reason to further discuss if this was a error in judgement. It just was. In summary, I believe technology was probably just as responsible for this troubled period as Dylan's desire to move forward. The Beatles couldn't and stopped. Here we have Dylan meeting it head on. I will say that he sounds a bit druggy in his speech during the electric set. He was sharp in his delivery during set one. I suspect the drugs were taken afterwards in order to be able to endure the hostility he was met with night after night in set two. No matter. It's all brilliant now and much of it is in this box.

I collected this from my daughter's on Christmas morning (Lindsay and Dan, my music mad son) bought me this. I put Tambourine Man from Sheffield on in the car. I summoned Lindsay and Mica, my granddaughter, to listen to intro. Driving home it was magical; like being 19 again and realising why I got into Dylan and I realised there was a big smile on my face. Magical! It seemed to evoke the quest that was the '60s. Dylan was making music he just had to make!! On the tour he had the Blonde on Blonde acetates and the Tarantula galleys: a young man drunk on the language that he used in the eye of a storm. What a shock it is listening to the younger Dylan again: he was a completely different animal back then. I remember trawling London record shops in the early 70's for Dylan bootlegs to no avail then someone directed me to a tiny shop off Carnaby Street and I finally got my mits on the "Albert Hall" boot (and others!) He's supercool, pushing the hecklers' buttons yet feeding off it at the same time, but he bites at times: in the London Like a Rolling Stone he's hurling the lyrics at the audience.

生々しい記録をこれだけ聴ける事は、うれしい限り

No hay que decir que es una caja para los muy fans de Dylan, una vez dicho esto hay que añadir que se trata de una gira mitica yo diria indispensable para entender que necesaria para entender el desarrollo de la musica popular de nuestros dias., es casi un diario de abordo de toda una epoca. Tanto Martin Scorcese como sobre todo D.A Pennebaker hicieron dos excelentes documentales sobre la misma, sobre todo el segundo. Estos cociertos documentan ala perfeccion la transicion del Dylan folk al Dylan electrico y la evolucion que concierto a concierto se va produciendo, como el publico y el mismo se van acostumbrando a esa evolucion. De hecho el programa en todos ellos es casi identico y siempre tienen una primera parte acustica de Dylan solo y luego Dylan con los Hawks, que terminarian siendo tras esta gira The Band. Aqui los musicos son Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel ,Garth Hudson y Mickey Jones, salvo este ultimo, luego vino el famoso encierro de Woostock y las no menos miticas "cintas desde el sotano". Todo es pura historia, pura leyenda. el sonido depende de cada concierto y las fuentes tambien, desde la grabacion casera a la mesa de mezcla, en cualquier caso conservan el sabor de lo autentico, la verdad que le ha llevado a ser premio Nobel, a ser una piedra principal de la musica de nuestros dias. Curiosamente CBS solo grabo dos de los conciertos para editarlos, el de Manchester que finalmente fue editado como si se hubiera el "famoso" concierto del Albert Hall de Londres, aqui tiene el del Royal Albert Hall autentico editado por vez primera. Es sin duda un privilegio asistir tras tantos años a estos conciertos en donde se puede vivir el embiente de aquelos eventos. Sydney, Melburne, Copenhagen, Dubkin, Belfast,Bristol, Cardiff, Birminham, Liverpool, Leicester, Sheffield, Manchester,Glasgow, Edinburg, Newcastle, Paris, Londres, White Pains NY, Piittburg,, Hampstead, Melburne y Stockholm. Faltas muy pocos lugares de la gira pero al parecer no ha sido posible obtener documentos sonoros de los mismos de cualquier forma el trabajo de arqueologia de esta edicion es mas que evidente. Es una caja que es casi para especialistas en Dylan pero interesantisima y bastante bien de precio a tenor de que se trata de 36 CD nada mas y nada menos. Una aventura prodigioda de un nuevo Odiseo en busca de otro mundo.

On saluera l'effort complétiste de Columbia qui sort ici l'intégralité des enregistrements connus de la tournée la plus célèbre du rock. Ils sont allés jusqu'à mettre quelques disques issus des enregistrements pirates de l'époque (inécoutables, soyons honnêtes) en fin de coffret. Que l'on se rassure les deux bons tiers du coffret sont d'une qualité tout à fait satisfaisante. A noter qu'il s'agit de la même setlist (à quelques variations près) qui se répète, donc même si Dylan varie les interprétations tout en nuance de soir en soir, le non-initié pourra se sentir assomé là où le fan se délectera. Mais c'est la nature du produit qui veut ça. Un coffret économique et complet, présenté avec soin, à réserver aux mordus donc. Les autres se contenteront du Bootleg Series Vol 4 ou du Real Royal Albert Hall, deux concerts présentés ici et disponibles indépendamment qui sont sans doute objectivement les meilleurs.

This set of concert tapes from Dylan's famous 1966 tour, recorded in various ways - soundboard mainly - are excellent. They are excellent because the sound quality is good; they are excellent because the 1966 tour was one of Dylan's best, highlighted by focusing almost entirely on new material he had not systematically exploited in a concert setting (in this respect they are similar to his 1979-80 gospel tour recordings); and excellent because they allow the listener to follow the tour sequentially, discovering how the Hawks and their mercurial singer/band leader learned to jell, gradually honing their chops, morphing into a remarkable musical engine.

Ich bin erst bei der Zehnten CD. Habe noch 26 weitere zu hören. Die Tonqualität ist der Zeit entsprechend in Mono, aber bisher sehr gut für meine Vorstellung. Klare Empfehlung für Fans. Auch empfehlenswert für Jüngere Fans um den damaligen Zeitgeist nachzuspüren.