Great work on producing these soundboards, subtr, and huge thanks for sharing them with us, Ray. The performances sound great! This project raises all sorts of interesting issues about interventions in the recording process.
There was a kerfuffle a while back over the use of autotune on Dylan's duet with Barbra Streisand. Some listeners objected to the removal of seeming imperfections in Dylan's voice, which sanitized out an essential element that we love about his sound. In this case, subtr has sanitized out the crowd chatter, which is the thing we grumble about most as a distraction from Dylan's Outlaw shows.
Since subtr allows us to hear Dylan's voice so much more clearly, I'm all in favor of this novel soundboard project. Bring it on--more please! But it is worth noting that, in both autotune and ALD, what we are hearing is essentially a performance that never happened as such. Dylan didn't hit those pitch-perfect notes while singing with Babs, and he didn't deliver those Outlaw shows in an empty room where the only sounds came from him and the band. Both recordings present alternate realities. They're wish-fulfillment fantasies: just different wishes, different fantasies.
Hi Graley, subtr here - I've done nothing at all to reduce the crowd noise on any of these recordings whatsoever, nor introduce anything that didn't happen in the shows as they were performed on stage. These are the sound as it came out of the sound desk, as far as I know, processed for clarity and because in general, what is tonally suitable for a massive outdoor venue is not tonally suitable for your ears in a regular room. That hasn't changed the performance though, just the balance of highs and lows and mid frequencies to be more appropriate for home listening. The songs are as faithful as possible to the music as it was played from the stage. The performance is just as it happened, if you were sat on the stage. I don't see any similarity to the use of autotune, which changes a performance, with what has been done to these recordings.
The *only* exceptions to this are as follows:
Jones Beach - I had to reconstruct three notes in Love Sick's opening 40 seconds, flying in those notes from other areas in the first minute, otherwise there would be jarring gaps; I had to repeat a guitar phrase in Soldier's Grave, where the area was covered by only one source, so no patching could take place.
Buffalo - two snare drum hits are flown in to cover a glitch on the snare in Under The Red Sky. They come from elsewhere in the song.
The raw versions that will be circulated in the future have the recordings without these alterations but the crowd noise is just as quiet.
That's it though. I get what you mean, they didn't play to no one. But these are exactly what was played. The band, if they were responding to the audience on the night, is captured performing those responses. There is no manipulation in that sense.
Thanks for this detailed explanation, Rob. You're a wizard! And you've done us a great service with these recordings, which sound phenomenal. Yeah, I'm thinking more like a professor than a sound engineer, raising philosophical questions more than technical ones. But make no mistake about it: I love the results and cheer on your efforts to produce more of these ADS recordings. Like Craig said in a separate comment, I'd love it if this kind of technology could be used more often to produce high-quality soundboards for Dylan shows. He sounds so great when we can tune out the distractions and focus unimpeded on Dylan and the band. Cheers, Rob!
I get where you're coming from, though in this instance, I think you have to separate out the performance from the event. For example, the 1966 soundboard tapes we have are still captures of the actual performance and on some, we can hardly hear the audience. As we know from a few of the shows, the audience was an integral part of the event, and that influenced the performance. The performance was still captured, we're just missing the other part of the event but what we have is truly what was performed - itself as part of and in response to part of the event. On these shows, I'd say it is the same (but without such crowd hostility, in general).
The auto-tune side of things.. that performance never happened and the event was a studio session, which we will never get the other side of (I say never, it would be fun to hear).
The former captures the performance accurately, but not the event accurately; the latter reproduces neither the performance accurately nor the event.
All that said... in terms of 'the event' - that is different for every individual, so possibly futile to attempt any definitive capturing of.
That's my philosophising on it for the day. Glad you like the music though, that is the main thing!
Brilliant reply ... just this reply alone gives me a LOT to chew on, as a longtime boot collector and attendee of live shows - as well as a lover of studio outtakes and such.
Wow, this is a treat. Thanks for highlighting and publicizing this work, as well as your interview with subtr! As a rank amateur in the bootleg world, this is absolute catnip to me. We're so blessed!
Somebody needs to start a Bootleggers Hall of Fame. The folks that put this together need to be honored, along the so many other Sugar Babies who "make pretty good stuff"
I have thought about that a lot. I'd also like to write a book someday focusing on interviews with legendary bootleggers. (Clinton Heylin did write a book about boots in general, but that's a bit different)
For instance, I'd love to interview spot, soomlos, hide, romeo, bach and many others, including the one I estimate to be the best at it currently, nightly moth - plus I'd love to know more about Bennyboy and others who then remaster and create artwork - like Arturo Bandini (@dylanbootlegs on IG) who created the artwork for these.
Like graffiti artists, some of them might be reluctant to be interviewed because they operate in shadows, but I'd love to know their stories.
You may know about this: "After All Is Said and Done: Taping the Grateful Dead 1965-1995" is a 2022 book about tapers and taping in the Dead community with lots of images and interviews. There is plenty to tell about other taping communities, such as the one around Dylan, which would surely interest many.
1) Why the F*CK don't they do these professionally and release them every damn night?????
2) Huge thanks to all involved for the effort!!!!!
3) We all knew the crowds and venues at these Outlaw shows were a mess, but listen to these and it's clear that we weren't even really there. Those shows sounded *nothing* like this. I want my gas money back.
Springsteen has set the bar high by making so many shows of recent years available as WAV-quality soundboards ... it seems so "easy" to do. And the Allman Brothers took it a step further - in a way that makes me smile even to think about it. Late in their career, when you walked in the venue, you could pay $25 at a tent for a SBD of the show that was about to happen. Often, as you left the venue, they'd already have it burnt and hand it to you!!!! The one time I did it, they mailed it to me. I treasure that "boot" and am glad the band got the cash!
"What kinda pie, cherry pie" Under the Red Sky from Jones Beach. These are the kinds of little things lost even in the room. Amazing recordings. Thanks to all involved.
Fantastic, Ray. Thanks to all for a monster effort. Hope that the Bangor set, which is the one I caught, surfaces next. Quick tech question: What software do you use to make the audio clips? Is that resident in Substack or something else?
Dear Ray, Totally stellar performances, better than hearing them at the shows! Thank you very much for all your work and generosity. Writing to you as a former Deadhead, now retired all the way in Turkey, for the last five years. Kudos to the gentle souls who recorded and worked on those recordings. Double thanks for the flac files too. Peace
Great stuff. Thank you to the tapers Psymphony Del Sid, Zentralbürokratie, fishcane, Moosejah, BlindCommission, and gonzo ~ and thank you to subtr and their assistant!.. That sounds like a lot of work. I know just lining up audio with video when the speed is slightly different and a few drop outs here and there.. how that can be quite a task-- this sounds like something else though! And thanks to Ray for sharing these here.
Thanks to all involved in recording and editing these soundboards so we can enjoy them it’s very much appreciated. I know it’s a labor of love and I’m so glad we get to reap the benefits of your hard work and big thanks to Ray for your insights and sharing them with us. The under the breath excerpts you highlighted are a delight as well. I was at the Mansfield show and really love the echo treatment on Bobs vocals it was effectively used to enhance the performance of certain songs and phrases.
I know the sound mix on stage may not be the same as what is coming from the board mixes BUT what we hear in these bootlegs is probably much closer to what Bob hears.
Great work on producing these soundboards, subtr, and huge thanks for sharing them with us, Ray. The performances sound great! This project raises all sorts of interesting issues about interventions in the recording process.
There was a kerfuffle a while back over the use of autotune on Dylan's duet with Barbra Streisand. Some listeners objected to the removal of seeming imperfections in Dylan's voice, which sanitized out an essential element that we love about his sound. In this case, subtr has sanitized out the crowd chatter, which is the thing we grumble about most as a distraction from Dylan's Outlaw shows.
Since subtr allows us to hear Dylan's voice so much more clearly, I'm all in favor of this novel soundboard project. Bring it on--more please! But it is worth noting that, in both autotune and ALD, what we are hearing is essentially a performance that never happened as such. Dylan didn't hit those pitch-perfect notes while singing with Babs, and he didn't deliver those Outlaw shows in an empty room where the only sounds came from him and the band. Both recordings present alternate realities. They're wish-fulfillment fantasies: just different wishes, different fantasies.
Hi Graley, subtr here - I've done nothing at all to reduce the crowd noise on any of these recordings whatsoever, nor introduce anything that didn't happen in the shows as they were performed on stage. These are the sound as it came out of the sound desk, as far as I know, processed for clarity and because in general, what is tonally suitable for a massive outdoor venue is not tonally suitable for your ears in a regular room. That hasn't changed the performance though, just the balance of highs and lows and mid frequencies to be more appropriate for home listening. The songs are as faithful as possible to the music as it was played from the stage. The performance is just as it happened, if you were sat on the stage. I don't see any similarity to the use of autotune, which changes a performance, with what has been done to these recordings.
The *only* exceptions to this are as follows:
Jones Beach - I had to reconstruct three notes in Love Sick's opening 40 seconds, flying in those notes from other areas in the first minute, otherwise there would be jarring gaps; I had to repeat a guitar phrase in Soldier's Grave, where the area was covered by only one source, so no patching could take place.
Buffalo - two snare drum hits are flown in to cover a glitch on the snare in Under The Red Sky. They come from elsewhere in the song.
The raw versions that will be circulated in the future have the recordings without these alterations but the crowd noise is just as quiet.
That's it though. I get what you mean, they didn't play to no one. But these are exactly what was played. The band, if they were responding to the audience on the night, is captured performing those responses. There is no manipulation in that sense.
Thanks for this detailed explanation, Rob. You're a wizard! And you've done us a great service with these recordings, which sound phenomenal. Yeah, I'm thinking more like a professor than a sound engineer, raising philosophical questions more than technical ones. But make no mistake about it: I love the results and cheer on your efforts to produce more of these ADS recordings. Like Craig said in a separate comment, I'd love it if this kind of technology could be used more often to produce high-quality soundboards for Dylan shows. He sounds so great when we can tune out the distractions and focus unimpeded on Dylan and the band. Cheers, Rob!
I get where you're coming from, though in this instance, I think you have to separate out the performance from the event. For example, the 1966 soundboard tapes we have are still captures of the actual performance and on some, we can hardly hear the audience. As we know from a few of the shows, the audience was an integral part of the event, and that influenced the performance. The performance was still captured, we're just missing the other part of the event but what we have is truly what was performed - itself as part of and in response to part of the event. On these shows, I'd say it is the same (but without such crowd hostility, in general).
The auto-tune side of things.. that performance never happened and the event was a studio session, which we will never get the other side of (I say never, it would be fun to hear).
The former captures the performance accurately, but not the event accurately; the latter reproduces neither the performance accurately nor the event.
All that said... in terms of 'the event' - that is different for every individual, so possibly futile to attempt any definitive capturing of.
That's my philosophising on it for the day. Glad you like the music though, that is the main thing!
Brilliant reply ... just this reply alone gives me a LOT to chew on, as a longtime boot collector and attendee of live shows - as well as a lover of studio outtakes and such.
Wow, this is a treat. Thanks for highlighting and publicizing this work, as well as your interview with subtr! As a rank amateur in the bootleg world, this is absolute catnip to me. We're so blessed!
Somebody needs to start a Bootleggers Hall of Fame. The folks that put this together need to be honored, along the so many other Sugar Babies who "make pretty good stuff"
I have thought about that a lot. I'd also like to write a book someday focusing on interviews with legendary bootleggers. (Clinton Heylin did write a book about boots in general, but that's a bit different)
For instance, I'd love to interview spot, soomlos, hide, romeo, bach and many others, including the one I estimate to be the best at it currently, nightly moth - plus I'd love to know more about Bennyboy and others who then remaster and create artwork - like Arturo Bandini (@dylanbootlegs on IG) who created the artwork for these.
Like graffiti artists, some of them might be reluctant to be interviewed because they operate in shadows, but I'd love to know their stories.
You may know about this: "After All Is Said and Done: Taping the Grateful Dead 1965-1995" is a 2022 book about tapers and taping in the Dead community with lots of images and interviews. There is plenty to tell about other taping communities, such as the one around Dylan, which would surely interest many.
https://anthology.net/book/after-all-is-said-and-done/
That would be incredible - I've listened to the hard work of these folks, but have such a limited understanding of what goes into it.
1) Why the F*CK don't they do these professionally and release them every damn night?????
2) Huge thanks to all involved for the effort!!!!!
3) We all knew the crowds and venues at these Outlaw shows were a mess, but listen to these and it's clear that we weren't even really there. Those shows sounded *nothing* like this. I want my gas money back.
Springsteen has set the bar high by making so many shows of recent years available as WAV-quality soundboards ... it seems so "easy" to do. And the Allman Brothers took it a step further - in a way that makes me smile even to think about it. Late in their career, when you walked in the venue, you could pay $25 at a tent for a SBD of the show that was about to happen. Often, as you left the venue, they'd already have it burnt and hand it to you!!!! The one time I did it, they mailed it to me. I treasure that "boot" and am glad the band got the cash!
Honestly, I'd pay A LOT for nightly soundboards of Dylan shows - maybe I'm lucky he doesn't make them available, haha.
"What kinda pie, cherry pie" Under the Red Sky from Jones Beach. These are the kinds of little things lost even in the room. Amazing recordings. Thanks to all involved.
Excellent work by all who were involved!
A huge thank you to all involved. I can’t remotely understand the technical aspects but I’m so happy to have these.
wow wOw WOW! Thanks a lot. And many thanks to the tapers and engineers. They sound fantastic!
This is fantastic. My husband and I were at Jones Beach so this is so nice to listen to it and remember. Thank you for sharing.
Fantastic, Ray. Thanks to all for a monster effort. Hope that the Bangor set, which is the one I caught, surfaces next. Quick tech question: What software do you use to make the audio clips? Is that resident in Substack or something else?
Dear Ray, Totally stellar performances, better than hearing them at the shows! Thank you very much for all your work and generosity. Writing to you as a former Deadhead, now retired all the way in Turkey, for the last five years. Kudos to the gentle souls who recorded and worked on those recordings. Double thanks for the flac files too. Peace
Great stuff. Thank you to the tapers Psymphony Del Sid, Zentralbürokratie, fishcane, Moosejah, BlindCommission, and gonzo ~ and thank you to subtr and their assistant!.. That sounds like a lot of work. I know just lining up audio with video when the speed is slightly different and a few drop outs here and there.. how that can be quite a task-- this sounds like something else though! And thanks to Ray for sharing these here.
Thanks to all involved in recording and editing these soundboards so we can enjoy them it’s very much appreciated. I know it’s a labor of love and I’m so glad we get to reap the benefits of your hard work and big thanks to Ray for your insights and sharing them with us. The under the breath excerpts you highlighted are a delight as well. I was at the Mansfield show and really love the echo treatment on Bobs vocals it was effectively used to enhance the performance of certain songs and phrases.
Whoah. These are amazing.
Wow. These highlights are special.
I know the sound mix on stage may not be the same as what is coming from the board mixes BUT what we hear in these bootlegs is probably much closer to what Bob hears.