Was Queen Jane Approximately a joke?

I'm sitting here giving my Highway 61 Revisited (newly obtained DCC copy) a good listen. I've listened to songs from this album before but never listened through the whole thing. I've heard enough to know the SACD is a little peaky around the 3kHz area and the low end is a bit shy compared to the DCC.

I get to the track Queen Jane Approximately and I hear an insanely out of tune guitar. It gets worse and worse as the song goes on and by the end of the five minutes I think it's actually gotten louder in the mix! Maybe I've just been worn out.

Was this intentional? Why didn't they stop the take? Did they not have a way to fix this? Did they not want to fix it? Did they not hear it? So many questions...

 

I just got to Tom Thumb's Blues. I'm beginning to see a trend here. It's really out of tune too. I guess this was just Dylan's sound.

 

You heard "Pill Box Hat" too?

Blonde On Blonde is brilliance in sloppy playing on a few songs.

 

Have a few beers and maybe a number and listen again.

Mark Kelley

 

That's a nice way to put it. I guess I've never been exposed to that before. Too many Yes records in my past. I see so many people agonizing over every nuance of every note this mindset seems so foreign to me. It's good I'm finally hearing it.

 

The first few times I heard Tom Thumb's Blues I almost couldn't make it through the first line. It was (and still sometimes is) like listening to someone scratch their fingernails on a chalkboard. For some reason I actually like the opening chord of Queen Jane, though.

 

You also have to tune in to what he was exposed to. A lot of American folk and folk-blues, many of those guys, R.L. Burnside, Charley Patton, Son House, Skip James, Tommy Johnson - The records they made (extremely old) weren't engineered like today, the guitars barely had correct tunage...

Listening to too much Yes makes you analytical Poor bugger.

 

But it really adds up billable hours.

 

I believe Dylan is one of those people that tries to capture the inspiration and excitement of a song by choosing "bad" early takes instead of over-thought, less magical, higher-numbered takes.

I have read that he wouldn't give his musicians a clue (as he does in concert) about songs before recording.

 

"The more you think, the more you stink."

 

This CD is a remix. I wonder if the compression on the original LP muted the out of tune-ness a bit. I hadn't noticed it before, even though it's quite obvious on the CD.

 

The DCC?

 

It's also noted (esp. for Jamie) Dylan liked dirt.

Tom Wilson, who helped produce Highway 61 was listening to the first mix of "Like A Rolling Stone". Said, "Gee I don't like the keyboard player, sounds terrible", which was Al Kooper, who admitted he didn't play keyboards very well. Tom tried to bury him in the mix at first.

Dylan said, "I don't care! Turn him up!"

So then Al Kooper suddenly became the organ player people tried to copy. Al once said that he and Bob were walking around NYC and music playing out of record shops and radios all suddenly sounded like mediocre organ copies of what he copped on "Like A Rolling Stone"....

 

No, not the DCC.

 

I do not think Highway 61 was ever remixed. Blonde on Blonde was remixed more than once.

 

I couldn't have said it better!

 

Right. Original Mono, Stereo, and an alternate version with "From a Buick 6" replaced by a different take.

 

Maybe they recorded with the Harry Partch Signature model of the Stratocaster.

 

Right, that makes sense. But Steve didn't use the masters, IIRC, he used the work tapes. So the LP would have sounded quite different. Here is what I found on the Bridge Magazine website:

 

Buick 6 differences aside, there is only one master tape for the stereo album, and Steve used it for the DCC. All previous versions (vinyl and CD) used a copy of the master, eq'd for vinyl cutting.

 

Technically, the copy you refer to IS the master. It's just like Die Beatles. The master is the one used to make the Parlophone stereo LP not the one used to make the dub for Die Beatles. The tape used to make the dub for Die Beatles is the work tape. Steve went back to the mix-down tapes to master the DCC version of Highway 61. He bypassed the master, because he knew the master had all this compression and EQ on it.

 

According to Michael Krogsgaard's analysis of the Columbia recording info Dylan did seven takes on "Queen Jane..." and the last one was used.

I believe some of Dylan's tuning problems can be attributed to his use of a capo on many songs. He also was known to use alternate tunings on many songs which, in those days before electronic tuners, would aggravate the problem.