Don’t Pay $140 for Bob Dylan – Springtime In New York: The Bootleg Series, Vol.16 

By Stephen Pate – Slash $110 off Dylan’s Springtime In New York Bootleg. Get all 57 Dylan songs from iTunes for $29, a better deal.

Yes, you don’t have to wait for Amazon to ship your disks in a fancy box with a booklet nobody reads.  You get an instant download and listen. You don’t even need to rip the CDs to your phone.

Springtime in New York is the latest installment from the bottomless pit of Dylan outtakes, live performances, and songs never officially released. It covers the period of the albums Shot of Love, Infidels, and Empire of Burlesque.

Where were they hiding this video of Dylan with Mark Knopfler for decades?

Some say this was Dylan’s least productive period. Chacun à son goût.  I collect Dylan from every period. There were several great songs and good albums from that period. It was also a period of experimentation and change for Dylan as he came off his intense conversion to born-again Christianity.

You won’t get the box set booklet with the iTunes download, but that’s not worth $110 ($151 in Canada). Years ago, I used to buy the box set of each bootleg religiously. One day it dawned on me all I did was rip them to my iTunes library and listen on headphones or portable speakers. The books never got read. I sold most of them on Discogs.

What you get for $29 is the complete set of 57 songs, Apple Digital Mastered for iTunes and downloaded on all your Apple devices and Windows computer. It works for me.

Is Springtime In New York worth buying?

Like all Bob Dylan bootlegs, it’s a mixed bag. Some of the songs are outtakes, songs we’ve never heard before, and live performances.

I was pretty pumped when I said it had the Dave Letterman live performances.  To my chagrin, it was “Licensed to Kill” with the punk band The Plugz. My favorite from that show is  “Jokerman,” but you can download that from YouTube. The energy of Dylan and The Plugz is classic.

You can watch the Dave Letterman Show rehearsal and the performance here.

Along with the good stuff, there are some real clunkers, too, like Dylan trashing Neil Diamond’s Caroline in a vicious nasal snarl.  We know Dylan has a ballad voice from New Morning. Why he doesn’t use it when the song calls for it, God only knows.

It’s great to hear new/old material from Bob Dylan, especially since his voice is almost totally gone.

Is Bob Dylan – Springtime In New York: The Bootleg Series, Vol.16 (1980-1985) – iTunes

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