Bob Dylan – Live in Minneapolis Review

This is the clearest example of wrongdoing in compilation history. A generated playlist with an image of Bob Dylan from a different tour, a different time, to peddle the Bonnie Beecher apartment tapes. Live in Minneapolis is at least in the right city. This is the problem with the Dylan YouTube channel right here. Other compilations may highlight it too, but this is where the lack of quality control becomes a problem. It is hard enough to find an official release of Bonnie Beecher’s apartment tapes if you’re not looking in the right place. Fine enough, there is now a release of public access on the channel. But it’s relabelled as a live album, presumably to coax people into thinking there is new material from the road. It would explain the image used of Dylan, who is far older there than he was when Live in Minneapolis Vol. 2 was recorded. “Live” does a lot of heavy lifting. Like saying a busker outside the Royal Albert Hall is playing at the Royal Albert Hall.  

But detail is of no interest to the minefield of compilation tapes and generated collections on the Dylan YouTube channel. Someone needs to head deep into the heart of the channel with a blowtorch and a bucket. Clear out the dreck. There are no doubt repeats of the Beecher tapes, let alone the early years performances, which are drawn out and copied over to a variety of differently named but ultimately identical releases. Great versions of Baby Let Me Follow You Down and Long John are available here, the former very different to the debut album feature. But why are they labelled this way? What is there to hide in removing Beecher’s name from a collection of songs recorded in her apartment? It’ll be better known to fans with Beecher attached to the project, rather than as a live show, which implies an audience larger than the few souls in a living room.  

Black Cross and See That My Grave is Kept Clean are released in solid quality. But the second we accept these songs in this form, we lose ground against what will, over the next few years, be a necessary fight. It is all too easy to lose the origins of a song or album. With the sheer variety of compilations, the lack of different songs between them, we are dangerously close to having to work that little bit harder to find out the origins of each song. We are best served when we search for a song and are given not just a performance, but the origins and history. These detail-free uploads of Ramblin’ Around and Gunner’s Blues are the first signs of a very bleak future. Thankfully, bootleggers are working hard to keep the historical footnotes in place.  

Once more then. If a bootleg release can offer more history than a so-called official release, then what are we meant to do? Until artists start taking the same care with their backlog as bootleggers do, then we are well within our rights to dismiss these compilations. Generated or not from those who own the rights to the songs, they are muddying history with identical versions of material which has been correctly labelled elsewhere. Applying a new cover and name is the same as putting a rug over a stain. It does not remove the origins but does a hell of a job in hiding them. That is the case for Live in Minneapolis Vol. 2, which is just the Beecher apartment tapes in good quality, but dumped and buried on the Dylan YouTube channel. History like this deserves far better.