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
For latest News, see
here.
For Site Updates, see here.
Sadly Michael Jackson has died suddenly at the
young age of 50. His only collaboration with Bob was in 1985 on the
charity single and video We Are The World, by
the ensemble USA for Africa. For the original charity single and LP see
1985, for original video releases, see
VHS & DVD 1980s and for the 2005 DVD
releases, see VHS & DVD 2000s Part 3.
Sun City [Artists United Against Apartheid] - Karl-Lorimar Japan
1985 laserdisc release of charity video with Bob participating
on title track added to VHS & DVD 1980s
Google Search facility
There are now nearly 300 pages on this site - to
search for specific entries, try here!
Select "Search www.searchingforagem.com" to find
entries on this site.
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 with
Dylan rarities and pages for films 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.
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 has been under sustained attack from Spammers, with a peak of 13,300 messages being
received in one day. These messages are now being filtered out, and
the
new Spam filters mean that if you do not
put "Dylan" in the subject of a message it will 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.
All the
pages below contain lists of tracks that aren't on Bob's regular albums.
There should be no overlap between them, in that each rarity should be
listed on one page only.
"Mr. D's
Apocrypha"
(Columbia releases with tracks that aren't on Bob's regular albums)
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.
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. For his science fiction
book reviews for the British Science Fiction Association's review magazine
"Vector", go 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.
Alan Fraser - webmaster
Hans Seegers - Dylan discographer and collector supreme
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.
Picture Submissions: Because of the huge number of submissions
to this site I would be very grateful if you could submit scanned pictures
100% ready to be added to a page. Sadly, digital photos are usually
disappointing with unrealistic colours, unwanted reflections and badly
distorted geometrically, so I prefer not to use them. Taking digital
photos and sending them to me is usually a waste of your
time! That means all pictures should be aligned so they're exactly horizontal
and vertical, especially label pictures, and cropped to be exactly square
(or 2:1 if gatefold). I add pictures to the site at 320x320 (640x320 for
gatefold) but I like submissions to be 300 dpi so I can show details if
necessary. Pictures of sleeve/label details you submit should be either
1:1, 2:1 or 3:1, pictures with different
width/height ratios don't fit in with the page layout. Scan LP sleeves in four
sections on a flatbed scanner and "stitch"
them together in a program like Adobe PhotoShop or Paint Shop Pro to show
the whole sleeve. (It's easy!)
