4xLP BOX SET

For many artists, popular music is a game of re-invention, as they periodically fashion new voices and public identities for themselves in the interest of challenging their audiences. Bob Dylan was doing this long before it was commonplace, and it's no secret that "Bob Dylan" was the product of a grand act of willful shape-shifting, as young Robert Zimmerman left Hibbing, Minnesota, for New York City, where he gave himself a more literary moniker and invented a backstory as a colorful drifter and former carney who resembled the second coming of Woody Guthrie. Dylan was able to get away with this bit of public theater because he was very good at it, and had the talent and ambition to make his fictions seem plausible. It didn't take long for him to blossom after he arrived in New York City, and over the course of two and a half years, he went from a scruffy oddball to the most celebrated songwriter from the suddenly exploding Greenwich Village folk scene. It would take a book to tell the full story Dylan's evolution and emergence in the early '60s (and several books have tried), but Through the Open Window: The Bootleg Series Vol. 18, 1956-1963 is a stunningly thorough eight-disc collection of recordings that allow listeners to hear his maturation as it happened. Beginning with an acetate of teenage Bobby Zimmerman playing "Let the Good Times Roll" with friends in a St. Paul music shop in 1956 and closing with Dylan's triumphant Carnegie Hall concert in October 1963, Through the Open Window brings together artifacts from most of the major events of his life in music. There are primal home recordings of Dylan playing for his friends, early New York gigs at the Gaslight Cafe and Gerde's Folk City, his first major concert at the Carnegie Chapter Hall in November 1961, outtakes from his first three albums, his session work as a harmonica player (including one track with Harry Belafonte), radio appearances, an intimate 1962 show at a Montreal coffeehouse, his participation in several political events (including the 1963 March on Washington), and highlights from fabled sets at the Newport Folk Festival and New York's Town Hall. It's a tremendous amount to wade through, but practically all of it tells us something about who Dylan was and what he would become, and his metamorphosis from a nervy kid who worshiped Woody Guthrie to a purposefully earthy but accomplished troubadour whose songwriting is growing by leaps and bounds and who can hold a packed Carnegie Hall audience in his hand is inarguably fascinating. Through the Open Window: The Bootleg Series Vol. 18, 1956-1963 is an epic-scale document on how Bob Dylan became Bob Dylan, both as a persona and an artist, and the abundant audience recordings of his early gigs that appear here are a vital reminder that bringing a recording device to a concert is never a bad idea.

A1        Let The Good Times Roll
A2        I Got A New Girl
A3        Jesus Christ
A4        K.C. Moan
A5        Remember Me
A6        Railroading On The Great Divide
A7        Man Of Constant Sorrow
A8        He Was A Friend Of Mine
A9        Ramblin' Round
B1        Story: East Orange, New Jersey
B2        Po' Lazarus
B3        Dink's Song
B4        I Was Young When I Left Home
B5        Cocaine
C1        Talkin' New York
C2        Corrina, Corrina
C3        (I Heard That) Lonesome Whistle
C4        Rocks And Gravel
C5        Let Me Die In My Footsteps
C6        Tomorrow Is A Long Time
D1        Don't Think Twice, It's All Right
D2        The Cuckoo
D3        The Ballad Of The Gliding Swan
D4        John Brown
D5        Dusty Old Fairgrounds
E1        House Of The Rising Sun
E2        Seven Curses
E3        Masters Of War
E4        Girl From The North Country
E5        Liverpool Gal
F1        Boots Of Spanish Leather
F2        Moonshiner
F3        The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll
F4        The Times They Are A-Changin'
G1        Who Killed Davey Moore?
G2        Lay Down Your Weary Tune
G3        Blowin' In The Wind
G4        North Country Blues
H1        A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall
H2        Talkin' World War III Blues
H3        Only A Pawn In Their Game
H4        When The Ship Comes In