Fragments - Time Out Of Mind Sessions (1996-1997): The Bootleg Series Vol. 17

Product Information

Whereas the mood of Dylan’s classic 1975 break-up opus Blood on the Tracks verges on the bitter(sweet), Time Out of Mind is infused with a dejected fatalism: in multiple songs, the protagonist is on the move but getting nowhere, the album’s sense of things grinding to a permanent halt accentuated by the near-fatal illness Dylan suffered in the run-up to the album’s original 1997’s release. At the 1998 Grammy Awards, Time Out Of Mind won in the categories of “Album of the Year” and “Best Contemporary Folk Album. Since then, he has racked up almost thirty studio and live albums under his own name or in collaboration with others. No one can be sure of his intentions, but the fresh mix does invite you to listen anew to this storied work. Then came Good As I Been to You and World Gone Wrong in 1992 and 1993, respectively, two solo acoustic albums of folk and blues covers that to detractors underlined the possibility that Dylan’s best years were behind him.

Dylan - Fragments (The Bootleg Series Vol. 17) - Discogs Bob Dylan - Fragments (The Bootleg Series Vol. 17) - Discogs

In early 1996, Dylan (whose last album of originals had been 1990’s ‘Under the Red Sky’) began writing a group of new songs and, in August-October that year, went into Teatro studio in Oxnard with Daniel Lanois (who’d produced 1989’s ‘Oh Mercy’) to record demos for a potential album. The final versions are a Hollywood story, in comparison to the impossibility of shielding himself from real life that Dylan is actually experiencing.Everyone from Lanois to Dylan to the phalanx of hired guitarists behaved like people gripped by a shared trance. It also shows how Dylan developed and crafted the songs into what we have been listening to for the past 26 years, moving from the intimate and gospel-infused arrangements of the earlier sessions towards the much fuller band arrangements in Miami.

Bob Dylan / Fragments: Time Out Of Mind Sessions 1996-1997

The original Time Out of Mind sessions were produced by Daniel Lanois…in association with Jack Frost Productions. But fortunately, in the snowy winter of 1996, Dylan finally found a spark of inspiration, perhaps fuelled by his desire to plunder the archives of his peers from which he originally gained so much stimulation at the start of his career, and all that was about to change. Hot Press takes an exclusive, detailed first listen to the extraordinary Fragments, Bob Dylan’s new release in the “official bootleg” series – which casts fresh light on the very process of songwriting. If the original album remains mythic and enigmatic, this Time Out of Mind puts you in close proximity to the players.

The song is mesmerizingly dark, but hearing Dylan bite down with panther’s teeth on “I’m getting old,” it’s easy to conclude that he was feeling nothing but the opposite. What resulted over several sessions between 1996 and 1997 is captured here in all its fly-on-the-wall glory. Dylan’s Mexicali-blues-ridden voice, with his Guthrie intonation and his clear joy in spinning out the story that sounds like it came from well before Modern times, and in the words themselves and the tune, is such a pleasure to hear. Marchin’ To The City’ is a quickstep march into who knows what, but it’s better than the circumstances of lost love in which the singer finds himself—lost love as the second notable theme of Time Out of Mind, after ageing and mortality.