The super-solid Volume Four from Hollow Horn's 2006-2007 Peforming Artist Series. The 2CD set features two prominent 1963 performances in a more complete and consistent presentation of quality. Fantastic!...and a must-have release.
Disc One contains Dylan's New York Town Hall performance from April 12th, 1963 and Disc Two features his Carnegie Hall show later in the year on October 26th. Both shows were professionally recorded for a potential live album by CBS Records and eventually scrapped. Fortunately for us all the compiled but shelved copy of the album was leaked and released on bootleg CD in 1997 on the Wild Wolf Label with what appeared to be official CBS album art and titled Bob Dylan In Concert. The project meshed tracks from both performances and is a fantastic document in it's own right (track it down if you can!). Here we have an effort by Hollow Horn that brings to collectors for the first time I believe, the longest and most complete versions of the two shows that has been assembled yet...compiled from various sources, including the vinyl source.
The Town Hall tape has been booted widely starting with the 1970 vinyl issues from Winklhofer Records and TMOQ universally titled, "While The Establishment Burns"...through to the heralded CD version of the tape on Yellow Dog called "Banjo Tape & NYC Town Hall" that paired it with the Gerde's Folk City '63 tape (featured on the next volume in this Hollow Horn series, Does Anybody Have An "E" Harmonica?). The audio quality is nearly entirely excellent and as mentioned above, with noticable variance as we change from source-to-source. Interestingly, the tracks culled from the Bob Dylan In Concert LP itself seem to be sourced directly from a copy of the vinyl piece and seemingly not from the Wild Wolf CD. And this goes for tracks on both CD's here. The Wild Wolf source is very warm, as you would imagine with the analog source. The Hollow Horn version is also warm but incredibly much crisper and with much less surface noise. You have to listen pretty closely to even tell it's taken from vinyl. A couple of notes here is that a few of the highlights from this show have been released officially. "Tomorrow Is A Long Time" was included on both Columbia's Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Volume II and Australian Import LP Set Masterpieces. "John Brown", "Who Killed Davey Moore?" and "Last Thoughts On Woody Guthrie" were all included on the initial Booleg Series Vol. 1-3 CD set from Columbia. Actually, the latter tune sounds like it may have been sourced from that set here on the Hollow Horn release as it's so immaculate.
The Carnegie Hall tape is even superior to the excellent Town Hall tape and rates a solid "10" (with extra stars attached!). The tape is seeing it's first full presentation on bootleg here on Disc 2 of the Find Out Why set from what I can ascertain. And it's simply brilliant and wonderful and you can insert any other favorite words of praise right here. There are many highlights here and really, the only critique in the actual performance for me is that "Who Killed Davey Moore?" seems incredibly rushed and raced through. Being one of Dylan's many lyric heavy songs it doesn't deliver well in this high-paced manner and this run-through seems familiar to many performances we have heard or experienced during his Never-Ending Tour years from 1987 through to the present.
Folks, this one is essential for all Dylan collectors whether you are casual or a fanatic. Seek this out.
The packaging is typically stellar, utilizing the oversized DVD-Audio format but in a deluxe quad foldout digipack with wonderful sepia-tone imagery with a splash of color. Limited to 500 sets worldwide.
