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-- if not impossible-- 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.
