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<h4>The Witmark Demos: 1962-1964</h4>Like any fledgling songwriter, Bob Dylan signed with a publishing company at the outset of his career. Publishers are standard practice for songwriters &mdash; it's where the money comes in, as songs are published, performed, and covered &mdash; but in the early '60s there was an expectation that publishers would help place songs in the hands of appropriate singers, a practice Dylan effectively ended by popularizing writers singing their own songs, but in 1962, this self-sufficiency was a rarity. Even his 1962 debut contained only three Dylan originals, which in his case reflected his traditional folk roots, but Dylan needed a publisher for those three songs so John Hammond, who signed the singer/songwriter to Columbia, pointed him toward Leeds Music. Dylan cut a demo session for Leeds between the recording and release of Bob Dylan and when that album wound up stiffing, Leeds let him buy out his contract in the summer of 1962, which then led to him signing with M. Witmark &amp; Sons publishing company. Between 1962 and 1964, a period that roughly spanned "Blowin' in the Wind" to "Mr. Tambourine Man," Dylan cut several demo sessions for Witmark, usually with the intent of the publisher pitching songs to other singers. Many of his early classics were first essayed here &mdash; "A Hard-Rain's Gonna Fall," "Masters of War," "Don't Think Twice It's Alright," "Boots of Spanish Leather," "Girl from the North Country," "The Times They Are A-Changin'" &mdash; and he also cut songs he never revisited. Some wound up with other artists &mdash; "Seven Curses," "Tomorrow Is a Long Time," "Mama, You Been on My Mind" &mdash; some were lost to time, leaking out on bootlegs until they officially surfaced on 2010's The Bootleg Series, Vol. 9: The Witmark Demos: 1962-1964.Many of these recordings have been heavily bootlegged, some excerpted on previous Bootleg Series, but they've never been presented as completely and in as great fidelity as they are on this two-disc set. Great fidelity seems almost unnecessary for such simple recordings, although the cleanliness enhances the intimacy, so familiar songs are lent freshness when surrounded by the thumping of a microphone or closing of a door. This disarming intimacy &mdash; verging on eavesdropping &mdash; is as attractive as the 15 songs that never appeared on an official Dylan album. Some of these songs are throwaways &mdash; "Bound to Lose, Bound to Win" lacks finished verses, with Bob promising that he'll write them down later &mdash; but there's considerable charm in hearing Dylan tossing off a song, plus some of these half-forgotten discards, like "Guess I'm Doing Fine" and "All Over You," are still quite strong. Nevertheless, the real appeal of this volume of the Bootleg Series is to listen as Dylan develops as a songwriter and artist. The songs spilled forth at an astonishing rate, and the great majority were not only superb, they were different from what came before, with his Woody Guthrie homage quickly replaced by a quick-witted protest singer who then started to delve into the personal in revolutionary ways. At its core, these demos are the sound of Dylan becoming Bob Dylan, and it's an evolution that's spellbinding.&mdash;Stephen Thomas Erlewine<hr/>In his 2004 memoir, Chronicles, Volume One, Bob Dylan writes of encountering Mike Seeger in the early 1960s in Greenwich Village, and being left spellbound by the effortless mastery the folk legend exhibited in his interpretations of a dizzying array of traditional American song forms. "He played these songs as good as it was possible to play them," Dylan writes, adding that, "What I had to work at, Mike already had in his genes, in his genetic makeup... The thought occurred to me that maybe I'd have to write my own folk songs."The 47 songs collected on The Bootleg Series, Vol. 9: The Witmark Demos: 1962-1964 allow us to witness how Dylan went about doing just that. Representing the fruits of his first two publishing contracts (with Leeds Music and with M. Witmark &amp; Sons), the set reveals a much subtler and more fascinating journey than the popular shorthand myth of Dylan's shifting cleanly from folk apprentice to political firebrand to poetic rock'n'roller. For starters, a great many of the songs to which Dylan first affixed his name as writer were simply his own original lyrics atop traditional folk melodies. Not all of these words excoriated social injustice either&mdash; far from it. Even from the beginning, there were love songs and outlaw songs, moodily poetic songs and broad jokes. Still, The Witmark Demos does demonstrate an evolution in songwriting genius, and one that took place in a frighteningly short period of a time by a young man who'd yet to turn 24 when the last of these recordings were made. On this set, you can hear Dylan moving past the bedrock melodies of folk and crafting indelible ones of his own ("Don't Think Twice, It's All Right"). You can hear him perfecting the protest song ("Blowin' in the Wind", "Masters of War"). And you can hear him falling in love with the music of words and beginning to invent a new vocabulary for pop music (a scratchy, nascent piano-only take of "Mr. Tambourine Man").Only 15 of the set's 47 songs are unheard in any incarnation on a previous Dylan release (more on them later). The other 32 are split fairly evenly between germinal takes on songs from early-60s Dylan albums and alternate rough cuts of tunes that appear in equally embryonic states on the first Bootleg Series issue, 1991's Volumes 1-3. You might think auxiliary efforts would be of interest only to Dylan obsessives&mdash; and in some cases these readings scarcely differ from others in his catalogue. Still, there are revelations: The oft-covered "Tomorrow Is a Long Time" has appeared previously only in live form on Dylan's second greatest hits compilation, and the version here is far richer, the guitar playing lovely and sublime. The classic protest song "Oxford Town" may be less immaculate here, but it's more bracing and insistent. The readings of "Mama, You've Been on My Mind" and "I'll Keep It with Mine" are especially pained and plaintive, while the bitingly satirical "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues" and "Rambling, Gambling Willie" are looser and more ebullient here than anywhere else they've appeared before.As for the 15 "new" songs, a few are mere fragments and a few others are fairly boilerplate, but again there are real treasures. "Farewell" haunts with its melody while "The Death of Emmett Till" haunts with its words, yet both are outshone by the bitterly ironic tour de force "Long Ago, Far Away", where Dylan enumerates social injustices ostensibly relegated to the distant past that were in fact still occuring in his own time, witheringly spitting the refrain, "Those things don't happen no more nowadays." "I'd Hate to Be You on That Dreadful Day" and "All Over You" further display comic sides, and then there's "Long Time Gone", which shows us an initial flowering of the unflappably cool mythical icon Dylan would fully become in the mid-60s. The song's refrain offers a perfect summation of how this set reveals the historical depth of Dylan's musical education as well as the lengths to which he would eclipse it. "I'm a long time a-comin'," Dylan sings, "and I'll be a long time gone."&mdash; Joshua Love, Pitchfork<hr/><h4>In Concert At Brandeis University</h4>Originally released on Amazon as a bonus disc for early purchasers of 2010's The Bootleg Series, Vol. 9 and The Original Mono Recordings, Bob Dylan in Concert: Brandeis University 1963 saw a wide release in the spring of 2011. Unlike the archival concerts that have popped up in The Bootleg Series, Brandeis University 1963 isn't a major statement. At seven songs, it's brief and there's no mythology behind the show; a recording wasn't even known to exist until a tape was found within the collection of music critic Ralph J. Gleason in 2009. It may be minor, but as a live recording of Dylan between the release of his debut and The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, it is certainly noteworthy, a glimpse of Dylan working folk festival bills unencumbered by fame or legend. He chooses topical songs for his two sets, bypassing "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" and "Blowin' in the Wind" in favor of "Masters of War," "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues," "The Ballad of Hollis Brown," "Talkin' World War III Blues," and "Talkin' Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues," material that accentuates the show's roots in May of 1963. Dylan is in good form, open and sometimes skirting on the edge of being lively, never quite revealing that it was slightly risky to entertain a festival audience with a collection of originals previously unheard by the crowd. If the show doesn't quite manage to be memorable, it is certainly engaging, a worthwhile 38 minutes even if it doesn't quite have much more than a historic hook to warrant repeated plays.&mdash; Stephen Thomas Erlewine<hr/>This short live album was originally released in 2010 as a bonus disc to The Bootleg Series, Vol. 9: The Witmark Demos: 1962-1964, which collected rough recordings that Bob Dylan made as part of his first two publishing deals. They were impromptu sessions in a glorified broom closet, but produced the first known recordings of some of his signature tunes, including "Don't Think Twice It's Alright" and "Blowin' in the Wind". At nearly 50 tracks, the hefty set provides a good context for In Concert: Brandeis University 1963, which was recorded during the same period. By showing his songs in their earliest, roughest, unfinished forms, Witmark allows us some insight into Dylan's creative process, while Brandeis offers a glimpse at his performative process. Together, the two sets trace a careful trajectory from song kernel to setlist, from private development to public presentation, which makes them an intriguing and useful primary source that reveals new facets of this thoroughly studied artist.The Brandeis show was recorded in May 1963, which is auspicious: Just two weeks later, Dylan would release his second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, which would make him folk's first rock star, rocketing him out of college gymnasiums and into concert halls. At this point, he was still in his very early twenties and had released only one previous record, a self-titled LP that was a notoriously poor seller. At the Brandeis Folk Festival, he was billed under Pete Seeger and Jean Ritchie, among several other, more established acts.As scholar Michael Gray writes in the new liner notes (which weren't included in the bonus version), this was a fairly typical Dylan show for the time. It's likely he gave many similar performances in 1962 and early 1963, and all that distinguishes this one from any other is that it survives. Only recently discovered in the archives of the late critic Ralph J. Gleason, co-founder of Rolling Stone, the tapes provide a valuable snapshot of pre-fame Dylan, who gives a rambling performance that balances gravity with levity. "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues" and "Talkin' World War III Blues" scoff at anti-communist scaremongering and war-profiteering justifications, and Dylan's barbed satire provokes some laughs from his audience. He addresses the same subjects on the dead-serious "Masters of War" and "Bob Dylan's Dream", on which his earnest strumming and mournful harmonica evoke a sense of solitude, as if sanity in the face of such madness has isolated him from humanity.The setlist is, however, lackluster, showcasing what would become deep-album cuts to the neglect of his better material. By the time he winds up his lengthy intro to "Talkin' Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues", his talking blues delivery has grown tiresome even. Of course, Dylan was likely tailoring his setlist to his audience and perhaps to the festival itself. Regardless, at seven songs (six-and-a-half if you discount the excerpt of "Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance"), Brandeis is necessarily slight. It needs context. In that regard, it might have been interesting to hear this set as one of the many live performances from that same folk festival, if only for the opportunity to contrast Dylan with his contemporaries and to determine his place within the folk scene. Otherwise, it's difficult&mdash; if not impossible&mdash; to determine from these recordings what exactly distinguished this ambitious young artist from everyone else with a guitar and harmonica. Ultimately, Brandeis was more valuable and revealing as a bonus disc than as a standalone album.&mdash; Stephen M. Deusner, Pitchfork

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