Bob Dylan Live at the Gaslight 1962

Bob Dylan: Live at the Gaslight (1962) THIS IS IN APPLE AIF FORMAT--SIMILAR TO A WAV PC FILE IT IS UNCOMPRESSED SO LARGER THAN MP3 BUT WITH FULL QUALITY. (If you can't play it go online and find a codec for it, they're all over the place).

Bob Dylan: Live at the Gaslight lived for years as a bootleg before being formally released in 2005 (Columbia). It contains 4 original Dylan songs and 6 traditional (2 more originals than Dylan's self titled debut album!). The quality of the songs is quite high, though the last track, West Texas, ends rather abruptly. Once in a while you can hear some audience shuffling etc, but it's very subdued. Apparently The Gaslight Cafe had air vents that carried noise into the apartments above it, so the audience was careful to be as quiet as possible; when they did applaud they would snap their fingers softly -- too bad these recordings don't capture that! But these were serious folk music aficionados, and they were obviously quiet out of respect to the artist.
The recordings here precede Dylan's recording contract and release of his first album, so are, in a way, rather priceless. It's amazing that Dylan and Columbia Records even bothered to officially release them -- but as I said above, they have two more original songs than his first legitimate first album, and they show a very young Dylan (an almost 21 year old who only recently had quit college to move to New York to follow his dream of playing his own version of traditional folk and showcase his budding talents as a songwriter) playing his guitar expertly and singing in a clear young voice to the type of audience and in an environment he had probably longed for.

The Gaslight Cafe was a coffee house that featured other folk as well as blues artists from 1958 until it finally closed its doors in 1971. As a venue that did not serve alcohol The Gaslight offered a calmer environment than a bar and a space for a more attentive, smaller crowd to appreciate the music they loved. This album is a little piece of the history of not just Bob Dylan but of the history and birthplace of the folk movement in the very early 1960's, and which in seceding years became an element of the peace movement, the hippie era, and mainstream blues and rock as well.

Song List:
A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall
--by Bob Dylan
Rocks and Gravel
-by Bob Dylan
Don't Think Twice,
-by Bob Dylan
The Cuckoo - Traditional
Moonshiner - Traditional
Handsome Molly-Traditional
Cocaine - Traditional
John Brown
-by Bob Dylan
Barbara Allen - Traditional
West Texas - Traditional