To remove some confusion I have
stopped using separate R-numbers for mono and stereo versions of the same
rarity - the mono
version now has the same R-number as the stereo version with an
"M" suffix, e.g. the mono version of "R-0001" is
"R-0001M".
Thanks to Duff McDonald for the link to his
article "Inside Dylan's Brain" on the US "Vanity Fair"
magazine web-site .
All-Star Hootenanny [Various]
- CBS Australia stereo vinyl LP with Bob playing harmonica for Carolyn Hester on
Swing And Turn Jubilee
plus Blowin' In The
Wind from The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan by Bob
added to 1964
Rocktagon
[Various] - unique eight-sided 1979 CBS Australia promo compilation LP with Gotta Serve Somebody from Slow Train Coming added to
Promotional
Albums (Various Artists) 1970s
Hands Across America [Voices Of America (Various
Artists)]/We Are The World [USA For Africa (Various
Artists)] - EMI America Japanese 7" promo single with Bob participating in
charity song on B-side added to
1986
Sony Music Walker - Sony
Japan promo 3CD compilation album with 1:33 edit of Like A
Rolling Stone from Highway 61 Revisited added to 1997
Llegará La Tormenta [A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall] [Amaral/Bob Dylan] -
Spanish 2 CD-ROM promo set advertising the Expo Zaragoza 2008 with new
performance of A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall added to 2008
Google Search facility
There are now over 250 pages on this site - to
search for specific entries, try here!
Select "Search www.searchingforagem.com" to find
entries on this site.
For latest News, see here.
For Site Updates, see here.
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!
Please note that 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, I can't easily use pictures on my pages with different
width/height ratios as they spoil the look of the pages. 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!)
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 Promotional Releases" has pages for
"Promotional Albums", "Radio Station Albums" and "Promotional Singles".
"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
This site's mailbox receives around a thousand virus-infected and
Spam
messages every day. Please make sure the subject of your message includes the
word "Dylan" or is obviously Dylan-related- this will ensure
it's not put in the trash by my Spam filter!
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.
The other major "Flying
Pig" Bob Dylan enterprises!
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)
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" 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.
