There's no chat facility on this site, but the
Searching For A Gem Facebook page on the left allows you to discuss Dylan
Official Rarities and International Releases.
17 May 2013: Today is the 47th anniversary of the infamous "Judas!"
concert by Bob Dylan and The Hawks at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, for many
years available on bootleg albums as "The Royal Albert Hall" concert, apparently
because the master tapes were mistakenly labelled. In the mid-1990s this concert
appeared as a bootleg 2CD set called
Guitars Kissing & The Contemporary Fix (a chapter heading from "Tarantula"), supposedly
copied from a DAT master tape smuggled out by a Columbia employee enraged
because Bob rejected the album for release on the grounds it was "too clean".
Some still prefer this version to the official The Bootleg Series Vol. 4 - Live 1966: The "Royal Albert
Hall" Concert release on right, belatedly released on 12 Oct 1998.
23 Apr 2013: Happy St. George's Day! Thanks to Hans Seegers, Wiebke
Dittmer and Manuel Garcia Jara for news of several Dylan 7" Columbia US singles
being offered for sale on eBay with "special limited edition picture sleeves".
Sadly, although the singles themselves look genuine, the sleeves are very very
fake! There are several other fake sleeves for sale on eBay from the same
seller, not illustrated.
There are now over 300 pages on this site - to
search for specific entries, try here!
Bob Dylan's Official Rarities
Pages
Official Rarities and Obscurities
Traveling Wilburys
Online Performances (bobdylan.com)
Online Performances (Other)
Interviews with Bob
VHS & DVD
International Mono Releases
International Stereo Releases
Released Rarities
Honourable Mentions
Honourable Mentions Video
Questionable Releases
Questionable Releases Video
Index of International Releases by Country (work in progress)
"International Stereo Releases" is
organised by album and split into "Regular Albums" (again with one page per album),
"Compilations" and "Stereo Singles (All Formats)". The
new "Index of International Releases by Country" will summarise both
mono and stereo album and single releases by individual country.
Lists compiled from "Searching
For A Gem"
All the
pages below contain lists of tracks that aren't on Bob's regular albums.
There is no overlap between them, in that each rarity is
listed on one page only.
"Mr. D's Apocrypha"
(Columbia releases with tracks that aren't on Bob's regular albums)
Contacting Bob Dylan: This is
a fan site with no connection to Bob - that means you
can't contact him through me! I used to have a postal address
that I thought was correct, but I have since informed by someone who
wrote to that address that their mail was returned. I have never had an
email address. I can only suggest you contact Bob's publisher Simon &
Schuster or use the contact address at bobdylan.com.
I also have no means of helping anyone who wants to meet Bob Dylan or
obtain his autograph!
Access the yearly pages from here by going to the
Official Rarities Yearly Lists. Traveling Wilburys now have their own pages.
"VHS
& DVD" is now split into multiple pages, including pages for films and
TV series with
Dylan rarities and pages for films and TV series with Dylan album tracks.
"International Mono Releases" now has a page per
official album plus pages for compilation albums, mono 7"
singles and mono 7" EPs.
"International Stereo Releases" is
split into "Regular Albums" (again with one page per album),
"Compilations" and "Stereo Singles (All Formats)". "Honourable
Mentions" are items which don't qualify for these lists, but may be of interest
to Dylan collectors.
"Questionable Releases" and "Questionable Releases Video" are items sent in by
contributors of dubious provenance.
All the songs listed in the Official
Rarities section are
cross-referenced by song title in these alphabetical pages. A-EF-JK-OP-ST-Z
Viruses and Spam
The
Searching For A Gem
site is always under sustained attack from Spammers, with
13,300 messages once
received in one day. These messages are filtered out, and
the Spam filters mean that if you do not
put "Dylan" in the subject of a message it will be deleted and not reach the
Searching For A Gem mailbox.
If you have sent a message and not received a reply, please send it again with
"Dylan" in the subject.
I obviously have to make this site's email address openly available
so it's open to abuse by third parties.
Some correspondents use ISPs whose Anti-Spam policies
wrongly reject replies from me as Spam. If I can't send a
message to you, I'll post a reply on the
Updates page. Therefore, if you're expecting a reply from me and
haven't received one, please look there.
Mission
Privacy
Acknowledgements
For this site's mission and inclusion/exclusion policies, see
here.
The list of people who've contributed to the site is now long
enough to merit its own
Thanks page!
Red Herrings
Traders
Links
For records that have been wrongly associated with Bob but definitely have
no connection with him, see
here.
Sorry, for legal and other reasons it is not possible for this
site to offer valuations of your Dylan rarities, for details of online Dylan
traders, see
here.
For other Bob Dylan related sites that may be of interest to Searching For A Gem
visitors, see
here.
Searching For A Gem is compiled by:
Alan Fraser Macclesfield, Cheshire, England
For more information on England's Macclesfield, see .
There is also a Macclesfield in North Carolina, USA, and two in Australia: one in South
Australia (near Adelaide) and one in Victoria (near Melbourne)! All three towns
were founded by Cheshire expatriates.
Hans Seegers, Holland - Dylan discographer and collector supreme Email: dignity.dylan@upcmail.nl
EDLIS "Gemologist"!
Alan has contributed to the UK magazines "Record
Collector", "Q", "Mojo" and "Uncut" as well
as to the "Village Voice", Dylan fanzines "Isis" and
"The Bridge" and several books on Bob Dylan, and has also appeared on
BBC Radio talking about this site. Alan is the EDLIS "Gemologist", for the EDLIS
Parties and Gatherings Facebook page, go to
.
For Alan's science fiction
book reviews for the British Science Fiction Association's review magazine
"Vector", go here .
Arie de Reus, Holland
Stuart Moore, Australia
Gerd Rundel, Germany
Manuel Garcia Jara, Spain
Wil Gielen, Holland
Harold Lepidus, Massachusetts, USA
Franck Faugere, France
Les Kokay, New Zealand
All major contributors will be pictured here in appreciation of
their hard work on the site's behalf.
The font used for the titles of each page is
appropriately called "Jokerman", if you can't see it, download it here:
The original version of "Bob Dylan's
Official Rarities" was hosted on Guilio Molfese's "Breadcrumb Sins" site
and also appeared in "The Bob Dylan Companion", edited
by Carl Benson, Schirmer Books, New York, 1998.
Larry Eden in his trademark Rolling Thunder hat, photo by "jackobob"
This site is respectfully dedicated to the memory of Larry "Lambchop"
Eden, who followed Bob all over the world for many years, and sadly died in
2007. He's one of the few fans Bob has ever acknowledged from the stage, saying
"This is Lambchop. He's been to more of my shows than I have!". Let's hear it
for the Chopper!
