It's hell time man... (part 1)

First blogging in a long while - today about one of my favourites, Bob Dylan.
I wanted to talk about some of his lesser known compositions, that can be found on various out of print soundtracks, obscure and long-deleted 45's and compilations! Part one today, part two some other day!

The title of today's blog comes from the chorus of a soundtrack song, the title song of the movie Band of the hand. Dylan wrote and recorded the song in 1986, while on tour with Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers and vocal backing group The Queens of rhythm, who all participated on the recording. Furthermore, Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac happened to in the neighbourhood and also contributed backing vocals. Much more rocking than much of what had come from Dylan the previous 3-4 years, the song sounds perhaps a bit more like Tom Petty than Bob Dylan. But it helped get Dylan back into playing rock music, which he would follow up on in 1987 by initiating a tour with the Grateful Dead. The lyrics were inspired by the movie, and spoke of confrontation with gang mentality and mobsters.
The song was released on the soundtrack album, which also contained the score by Michael Rubini, and was also released on a single backed by a piece of soundtrack music. It has never been officially released on CD, but is available on a few of Dylan's bootlegs. As the tour continued, the song found it's way into the set list at a few of the concerts. But following the 86 tour, it was apparently never played live again.

Continuing on in 1987, Dylan recorded 3 songs for a movie he also starred in, called Hearts of fire. The movie was apparently intended to start Dylan off on a career as an actor but it was so horrible that noone really considered such a thing again until decades later.
But the soundtrack had some great moments, not least 3 previously unreleased Dylan songs.
The two originals Night after night and Had a dream about you baby were fine mid-80s Dylans ongs, but the real barn-burner of the soundtrack was his cover version of John Hiatt's song The Usual. A great rocking track, which he also performed in the movie, it belongs with Band of the hand as two of the strongest Dylan performances of the 80s and can be seen on youtube by typing in Bob Dylan + The usual. The clips are taken from the movie, of which this song was definetly the best part. The rest of the soundtrack wasn't bad either but as it's been out of print since it was released pretty much, and usually runs up in price on ebay to at least 50 dollars, I'd advice Dylan fans to seek out his contributions elsewhere. Had a dream about you baby was re-recorded for the Down in the groove album, whereas the other two songs were never officially re-released. All can be found on the bootleg Hard to find vol. 1 tho.

And while we're on that particularly bootleg, it includes two rare tracks that have only been released as singles and on a hard to find compilation. One is Rita May which is a nice 70's sounding song with violin and a catchy chorus. The other is the song George Jackson that Dylan recorded two versions of, released as the a and b-sides of a single. A with a band, and b acoustic. The song was about the Black Panther member Jackson, who was imprisoned and then shot dead while in prison. It followed the tradition of Dylan recording songs in tribute of what he felt were wrongly convicted or mistreated prisoners. The band version, and Rita May, can both be found on the 3 CD compilation Masterpieces.

All these songs are considered rarities as they haven't found widespread release on CD and some not even on vinyl, but they're well worth checking out for Dylan fans.
To be continued...