Bootleg Series 6: Concert at Philharmonic Hall

Bob Dylan | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 30, 2004)
• Number of Discs: 2
• Label: Sony
• ASIN: B0000DG069
• Also Available in: Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (66 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #34,352 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

The brooding Bob Dylan of the 1966 live collection in the Dylan bootleg series gave way to an even more hooded character on the second live bootleg album from 1974. Which makes the jump back to a younger Dylan in this set all the more jarring. Here is Dylan as an eager-to-please 23 year old with nothing between him and his worshippers but a guitar, a harmonica, and, for four songs, his lover, Joan Baez. In marked contrast to the acerbic electric Dylan of the mid-'60s and the tight-lipped living legend of the mid-'70s, here is Dylan as entertainer. Joking and bantering with the crowd, Dylan deals up some favorites ("The Times They Are A-Changin'," "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right"), but is already shedding his earnest folkie persona; imagine another artist a mere two years into his career declining to perform a hit on the scale of "Blowin' in the Wind." But Dylan was moving fast. Having completed the last all-acoustic collection of his early years three months before the Philharmonic concert, he would record the half-electric/half-acoustic Bringing It All Back Home three months later. Three of the four acoustic songs from that album are presented here, as are a handful of then-unreleased songs, including "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues," "If You Gotta Go, Go Now" (which was soon given a rock arrangement), and a protest-period remnant, "Who Killed Davey Moore?" Had Concert at the Philharmonic Hall appeared the year it was recorded, it would been seen as a respite for folk fans to catch their collective breath before Dylan reappeared in his rock & roll Rimbaud guise. Heard for the first time decades later, it's simply a testament of his gifts as a showman and songwriter. --Steven Stolder

Product Description

3-LP deluxe box set features Dylan's Halloween gig in New York. Each LP is packaged in unique jackets, and also included is a 60 pg. 12x12 perfect bound booklet plus a custom 12x8 letter-pressed vintage tour poster. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

84 of 86 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A key snapshot of Dylan before he went electric, June 3, 2004

By 

Mike London "MAC" (Oxford, UK) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Bootleg Series 6: Concert at Philharmonic Hall (Audio CD)

THE BOOTLEG SERIES VOL. 6, a bootleg that has been around for decades, is a Halloween show from the Philharmonic Hall in New York City. One of the most important shows in Dylan's early career, this show gave quite an overview at the time from Dylan's ever-growing song book, including new, bizaare songs that would show up within a few months on Dylan's fifth LP, BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME. While much has been made of the later electric performance of the 1960s, it is here that you can see how good Dylan really was with just a guitar, a harmonica, and the signing girlfriend. Covering such a broad overview, Dylan shows all the budding facets of his art up to this time, from the protest songs (including ones that never made the studio records), the more introspective material, and the radical new direction Dylan was pursuing with the three songs from the unreleased (and unrecorded, for that mater) fifth album, BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME. He proves him a very masterful solo performer. If you like Joan Baez, you greatly enjoy the four songs she performs. If you don't like Baez, this won't win you over.

This 1964 concert, the first all acoustic performance (barring MTV UNPLUGGED, which also has a band) to enter Bob Dylan's discography, captures Dylan at a peak period as he was making a transitional move into rock and roll. Historically significant, funny, and overall Dylan, this installment of the Bootleg Series show a new side of early Dylan, and as VoodooLord7 points out, quite a contrast from the 1966 Manchester concert. What is so startling about this concert is how Dylan comes across as giddy, young, and, overall, a Minnesota boy just honoured to be playing at such a distinguished venue. When introducing the then unreleased "It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Bleeding," he prefaces the song with the comment that it is very funny. On "I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Met)," he forgets the first verse, asking the audience if they knew it. The rest of the album shows Dylan in this 'aw, shucks' mode, but he gives the audience a wide variety of songs to chew on, showing them that even though he's giddy and young, he's a songwriter the likes of which they've never seen.

Compare this document to the cynical, aloof Dylan just a few months later. This was before the 1965 Newport show where Dylan brought out the electric band totally broke with the folk scene in general. (Who'd like to see a Bootleg installment of the Newport show???) The general atmosphere totally changed after the Newport show; afterwards Dylan was cynical, confrontational, cutting edge, and 'hip.' He's not angry. He doesn't have anything to prove. Dylan just wants to give a good show, and he wants to have a good time. After this, he played rock and roll, the likes of which had never been heard before, and forever changed popular music as we know it. The music went in directions, especially lyrically, that totally broke with all songwriting and pop traditions. VOL 6 captures Dylan just before this, and that's what makes it so endearing and so historically important. Nowhere on VOL 6 is there an equivalent to that legendary accusation "Judas!" on VOL 4. Dylan's not at war with the folk community who wanted to make him their own personal musical saviour. Instead, he was following his muse and this audience went with it.

What makes BOOTLEG SERIES VOL. 6 so special is it gives us the opportunity to listen to Dylan before he made the permanent transition to rock. We can listen to Dylan play with the audience while giving a first rate performance. Those who were in-tune with Dylan this night, though, would surely know Dylan was moving far and away from the folk movement. Dylan showed an unparalleled depth of writing on ANOTHER SIDE, deep, introspective, and far and away from the protest songwriting that had dominated his second and third album. What really must have blown their minds were the new songs ("Mr. Tambourine Man," "It's Alright Ma," and "Gates of Eden) that Dylan had only previously played a very few times. Filled with wildly surrealistic, symbolist imagery, the words floated into your head and showed Dylan was opening up all sorts of new avenues for music, with a much bigger agenda that just being a protest singer, a la Phil Ochs. Dylan proved himself going deeper and deeper into a surrealistic, unprecedented, and never equaled period of songwriting that would become some of the most important songs in all of rock and roll. For those fortunate enough to be there, this would be one show you couldn't afford to miss. This was history in the making.

In the end, an essential addition to Dylan's canon, and for those interested in following the progression of the twentieth century's most important song writer, a must-have purchase. For those who love his all acoustic sound of the early 1960s, this will rival the studio albums themselves. With stunning production, a crisp, clean sound, and such an important snapshot of Dylan's early career, BOOTLEG SERIES VOL 6 will stay in your CD player for the foreseeable future. Highly recommended for the Dylan afficionado.

58 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars As eminently listenable as it is historically important, April 13, 2004

By 

Bill R. Moore (New York, USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bootleg Series 6: Concert at Philharmonic Hall (Audio CD)

Much has been made through the years about Bob Dylan's early electric concerts -- more than simply legendary, they can almost be called mythical. Consequently, his earlier acoustic concerts are very often downplayed and under celebrated. On this, the first all-acoustic live album to enter Dylan's massive official canon, it is overwhelmingly clear just how vibrant and simply great these performances were; their immense historical importance is also on awe-inspiring display. This '64 show at New York's Philharmonic Hall was Dylan's big show of the year -- a Halloween show in which Columbia Records was putting its new star on display. It turned out to be one of the most important shows in Dylan's career -- and maybe even one of the best.

Another thing that stands out is how different these performances were from all subsequent Dylan performances. Dylan seems positively jovial throughout the show -- giggling, making jokes, introducing songs, playing with and teasing his audience. This is a stark contrast to the cynical, aloof Dylan that was on display in Don't Look Back, only a handful of months after this concert was recorded. It will also be a genuine shock to anyone familiar only with Dylan's current concerts, in which he talks to the audience only in order to introduce his band -- if, indeed, he does so at all. There are several reasons for this. Unbeknownst to the audience, Dylan's most recent acoustic album -- the then-three-months-old Another Side of Bob Dylan -- was to be his last. Dylan was only a few months away at this point from recording his first mostly-electric album, Bringing It All Back Home; soon after, he would both bring the electricity to his live shows and abandon the protest movement to focus on personal narratives and surreal esoterica. He thereby received almost constant vicious criticism from the folk crowd, producing in him a cynicism that would lead to his writing of Positively Fourth Street and spill over both into his live performances and his public persona. What we have on display here is a mostly untainted Dylan -- cheerful, exuberant, and even seemingly happy. Throughout the album, he clearly holds the adoring audience in the palm of his hand: they hang on to every word -- words which, by the way, they clearly know better than even he does -- and he plays them to the hilt. The album also offers a fascinating glimpse into a bygone era: a time of unparalleled and long-lost intimacy between performer and audience. The atmosphere gives off a mental picture of Dylan on a small stage singing songs requested by his friends -- despite the fact that this was a showcase concert at a major venue.

What can be said about the performance, heavily-bootlegged for decades, that hasn't already been said? Dylan's voice is in impeccable form: on display is a long-past epoch in which every word he sang was clear. His diction and phrasing here are perfect, revealing even words that were obscured or unclear on his studio albums. He also displays his perpetually-underrated agility on the acoustic guitar, an instrument with which he is quite adept and for playing which he never gets any credit. But, of course there are the words, unparalled words. The song selection is great, covering a spattering of songs from Dylan's first five albums -- one of which had not yet even been recorded, much less released! -- and several songs that never saw the light of day on a studio album. Dylan once said that he likes to see a person on stage "with just a guitar and a point of view; that is exactly what he himself has here, plus, of course, his trusty harmonica -- and that voice, that unmistakable voice. Indeed, he covers an incredible amount of ground for a solo performer. He plays many of the songs that constituted his signature work at the time, a good number of protest songs, and tracks from his most recent album. None of these, however, could possibly have prepared his audience for his most recent compositions -- Gates of Eden, It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding), Mr. Tambourine Man -- which had only been performed a handful of times at that point and which few, if any, in the audience could have heard before. These songs, with their surreal, phantasmagoric collages of strikingly visual and highly poetic images, seemed new and cutting-edge precisely because they were; their like had never been seen in popular music before -- and, indeed, have never been seen since.

And then Dylan called Joan Baez onstage. Although this pairing clearly charmed the 1964 crowd, all that can be said about it now is this: if you like Joan Baez, then this will be your favorite part of the album; if you don't (and many Dylan fans do not), then her lack of subtlety will ruin for you Dylan's immaculate and finely-crafted songs. Their choice of songs -- and Dylan's choice of encore -- can be seen as either playful or ironic on Dylan's part. The one exception to this is With God On Our Side, one of the most powerful songs of that or any other time; Baez's loud and powerful vocal adds an extra layer to this song that will either make one smile or make one cringe.

The sound quality on this album is immaculate: even possessors of a bootleg edition must crack down and purchase it. The packaging is also deluxe, although its one weakness is the essay by the usually incisive Sean Wilentz -- a grab-bag of cliches and questionable and/or silly statements, e.g., "even cooler, was Dylan smoking pot?" and references to "Dylan's nasal harshness" and Baez's "silken coloratura" -- which is not up to the standard set by previous Dylan liner notes. The bottom line is that this is an essential purchase for any Bob Dylan fan; for those who value his early period especially, this just might be the Holy Grail.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars less is so much more!, March 30, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Bootleg Series 6: Concert at Philharmonic Hall (Audio CD)

It's not that I didn't like the last Bootleg from 1975, it's just that this show from '64 showcases Dylan at the peak of his acoustic genius. This is before he went electric and started messing with the music and lyrics of his songs when he played them live. His voice is top form throughout the 19 song set, which features 4 amazing duets with Joan Baez. Aside from those 4 songs, the rest of the set is just Bob with his guitar and harmonica. The newly remastered sound is a wonder to behold. It truly feels like Dylan is standing right in front of you while the disc plays. The setlist features a bunch of my personal favorites, but to me the highlight is "It's allright ma". When the line where he sings "Even the president of the united states sometimes must have to stand naked" comes, it gave me chills, only because this show was recorded less than a year after Kennedy was killed, and the U.S. was on the verge of a full scale was in Vietnam. Bob is also unusually chatty with the crowd, who after every song in the set gave out thunderous cheers, especially after Dylan and Baez end her appearance with a great "It aint me babe". My advice to any fans is simply go out and buy this double disc right now.