There's Bob Dylan's (Hired) Guns Across The River, Tryin' To Pound You...

The Billy The Kid Sessions outtakes have been around for the better part of forever, but they always were a frustrating listen: Reflecting the shambolic nature of the sessions itself, there's tons of false starts, both musically and vocally, as well as talking to the engineers in the sound booth, people laughing and caughing through the music, and lots and lots of dead space. I compiled a version of these many years ago, notably before I discovered Audacity, and it remained a frustrating listen, despite the many fun, even slightly revelatory moments coming from the sessions, as it was hard to - you know - concentrate on the music in the middle of all the detritus. So, finally I got down to do something about it: The music of Dylan's Billy The Kid Sessions, and only the music. No bullshit. No talking until strictly necessary. No time wasted. Music, all I hear is music..

As said above, the sessions from whence this music came were aything but sharp or concentrated. Dylan - already in a wtriting drought forthe better part of two years - had ambled down to Mexico to also play in Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garret & Billy The Kid, in a performance that didn't make him out to be a future star of the silver  screen. His mostly silent role as henchman Alias is mostly (in)famous for Dylan's big scene being the one in which his character reads labels of canned food. Somebody get that man an Academy Award! Asap! Tasked with producing a soundtrack, there was a whole lot of aimless jamming, a few unsuccesful stabs at songs such as "Goodbye Holly", "Sweet Amarillo" (later sung on Dylan's Rolling Thunder tour in a more finished form by Cindy Bullens) or "Rock Me Mama" (outfitted with new lyrics and finished by Old Crow Medicine Show in 2003). 

The soundtrack that finally emerged from these sessions was decidedly a minor work that showed Dylan's somewhat mitigated concentration, as well as his continued inability to come up with tunes. He only completed two real songs - the classic "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" and "Billy", a ballad about the title character present in three different versions, arguably to take up space on the album. The rest were instrumental score pieces, even though, well, if you hire Dylan, you don't really hire him for a score. Here's the leading lyricist of his generation, stayiong relatively speechless, not to mention that his compositions are missing the dynamic of a trained score composer. So Dylan's Pat Garret & Billy The Kid wasn't a particularly satisfying listen, but the whole thing was treated as a minor side project anyway, with Dylan rebounding with Planet Waves six months later. 

All of these factors make the music on the Billy The Kid Sessions both fascinating and frustrating. You wonder what would have happened to the aforementioned song fragments and abandoned songs had Dylan concentrated on finishing them. There are a ton of moments - some admittedly fleeting - in this bootleg, where the music perks up and risks to become more interesting than what ended up on the album,  but just as often suddenly ends, as the music sputters out or some other incident stops the take. This stop-and-go pattern was undoubtedly one of the biggest frustration with listening to this set, and so the idea to streamline the music was born. Historical the bootleg might be, where you hear Dylan mucking around in the studio, but it was simply an awful way to listen to the music. 

Now that only the music was left, I was still left with a dilemma of sorts: Does all of this stuff deserve to be heard? How much wordless (and, let's be fair here, sometimes tune-less) vocalizing from the Bobster is too much? Is the often repetitive nature of the tunes endearing or annoying? I am genuinely of two minds about what's better: a slightly repetitive 55 minute version that gathers pretty much all of the worthwhile music from the sessions, or a more streamlined, 'could have come out on vinyl' 46 minute edition. So, I'll do something Solomon-ian that's a first for this here blog: I'll leave you the choice.

If you are a semi-casual listener (because let's face it, if you are here and intersted in outtakes from an obscure Bob Dylan soundtrack, you might not  be a casual listener) the vinyl version of this should suffice nicely, if you want to dig even deeper inton the scraps, you can go for the CD edition. The biggest differences in the set list are the loss of several "Billy" variations, including "Funky Billy" - the third version of "Billy" on this album, where they try out the song with a markedly funkier guitar riff, that was both interesting as well as slightly incongruous -  and a number of reprises in the shortened vinyl edition. 

No matter which edition you choose (choose your own adventure here at OBG's!), there's some fine music to be found in the midst of the murk, and I am happy to present you these moments in what I think is easily the best way to listen to this music. So take it away with Billy The Kid Sessions, and a still searching Dylan wandering the wilderness, down some interesting dusty backroads...