Should dedicated listeners be all that surprised by the low quality of these YouTube playlist releases? Not at all. But some are not frequent listeners of Bob Dylan. Even those who may not be technologically literate enough to disseminate a real release and a repackaging. Folk-Singer Humdinger Vol. 2 is the latter, and a shoddy compilation at that. Early years moments, which are pulled from all the usual places. The “original recordings”, whatever that means. With Through the Open Window now featuring a bulk of these performances, as well as new depths to Dylan’s live shows and earliest years, there’s another reason for Folk-Singer Humdinger Vol. 2 to be brushed aside. Revisiting it just to confirm that is of little use, but it serves as a reminder of how many of these releases are brought about for the purpose of milking Dylan’s discography. It’s a grift at this point, and these generated compilations lack the heart of official releases and bootlegs from the last several decades.
But it doesn’t stop the official channel from featuring more than a few of Dylan’s earliest recordings. The overlap between compilation efforts here is inevitable. What may strike many listeners as strange is the Dylan team’s dedication to these early years. They surely have more than this at their disposal, copyright-free or not, and yet are satisfied by merely reprinting the same few songs. Dylan is one of the few artists where repackaging every song, regardless of release or quality, is of interest to keen listeners. Why, then, does the Dylan team responsible for his YouTube channel consistently pick out songs from his earliest years? There are only so many times this version of Let Me Die in My Footsteps can be relied on. Tape quality and performance style are all of a usual quality, the confidence of a young Dylan is a tertiary objective for this.
All Folk-Singer Humdinger Vol. 2 looks to do is trick people into thinking this is a new release. It does, at least, look the part. A forty-two-song deep dive into the early years of Dylan’s career, with an album cover that looks on par with what bootleggers have offered for decades. At least the YouTube channel is catching up to that quality, but only just. Nice it may be to revisit these songs, but having them feature everywhere is a pain. It means finding the source, that original version, in the context of a first recording, is impossible. Part of the problem is that there’s a genuine desire to connect with these Dylan deep cuts, and finding an easily accessible version is tricky. These compilations offer that. But it does seem like some further oversight needs to be brought in to improve how much repetition there is. You can find these, some with their titles correctly spelt, unlike He Was a Freind of Mine here, on other compilations.
Another, bigger part of the problem is the lack of heart that goes into these playlists. That’s not entirely the fault of the Dylan YouTube team. Generated from other sources, not with artificial intelligence, but because the source where they scrape the listings has a new version added. It’s the same problem Spotify has, where songs are occasionally listed under the wrong artist. The difference is Spotify has the desire to rectify these problems. The Dylan YouTube channel, it seems, does not. Folk-Singer Humdinger Vol. 2 is a shoddy package of truly interesting songs. That same line can be applied to the bulk of these YouTube playlists. It’s proof once more that the best compilations come from bootleggers, who are freed by the copyright laws and recording permissions which is simply an immovable obstacle for the official channel.
