Bob Dylan: Live, Finjan Club, Montreal, Canada, July 2, 1962

This CD comes in an ordinary jewel case. On the front cover it has "Live", "Finjan Club", "Montreal, Canada", "July 2, 1962", on the spine "Live, Finjan Club, Montreal, July, 1962" in capitals, on the back cover "Live / Finjan Club, Montreal, Quebec, Canada", "July 2, 1962", on the CD "Finjan Club, Montreal", "July 2, 1962". Further interesting printings on the CD are "(c) + (P) 1991", "Yellow Dog Records", "Luxembourg". Order and matrix numbers I have given above.

Dylan's appearance in the Finjan Club was recorded by Jack Nissenson, who used to make good quality recordings of performances of folk singers like Tom Paxton and Phil Ochs. Now, I don't know about the quality of other copies of his tape, but the sound quality of this CD is good, except that is has a changing amount of flutter. Fortunately, in most of the songs the amount is so low that I don't notice it.

Dylan performs here for a small group of people and knows that he is recorded, for he asks if he can hear some of it back. You can see by the track list above that he takes a lot of time in between songs. He uses several harmonicas, which are handed to him by someone else.

In "The Death Of Emmett Till" the flutter is just noticeable; it doesn't prevent enjoying Dylan's excellent performance of this topical song, which he recorded for "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan", but didn't make it to that album.

"Stealin'" has the highest amount of flutter. Here it is really annoying. For one short moment it is so high that Dylan's voice becomes that of some cartoon character. In the middle of this song Dylan gets tangled up in the words.

"Hiram Hubbard" is a song about an innocent person that gets lynched. Dylan sings it here with great conviction. I don't know if Dylan has performed it any other time, nor who else has performed it.

"Blowin' In The Wind" isn't sung as beautifully as on "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan", which version was recorded 7 days after this one, but he begins it with a nice harmonica intro, which is something the album version doesn't have.

Before "Rocks And Gravel" Dylan says he hasn't done it for a while and it takes him quite some time to get it going. Meanwhile he has some trouble with his position, for the audience laughs and Dylan says, "I can't get comfortable on these stools." After that he decides to play the song in a different key. The performance he finally delivers is much weaker than the one he would give later that year and would be recorded as part of the Gaslight Tapes. The sound is in the beginning quite dull, then suddenly gets clear and louder at the same time. In the dull part the flutter is again noticeable.

From the words Dylan sings in "Quit Your Lowdown Ways" it is obvious that this song is a version of "Milk Cow Blues", a song which Dylan had recorded a few months earlier in the studio. He uses words from various other blues songs. 7 days after this performance he would record "Quit Your Lowdown Ways" in the studio, having rewritten the lyric such that the origin of the song has become not so obvious any more. That version is on "The Bootleg Series".

Between "Quit Your Lowdown Ways" and "He Was A Friend Of Mine" there is a strange edit. A passage of 4 seconds in which Dylan says, "Well, okay" is played twice in a row.

"Two Trains Running" is a great blues performance. The CD calls it "Still A Fool", which is indeed an alternative title for this song.

"Rambling On My Mind" is another blues performance. It has a drop-out of 2 seconds. Dylan plays it light-hearted and doesn't finish it properly, breaking it off saying that he was gonna sing something that was really good, but that he has forgotten what it was.

"Muleskinner Blues" has an intro of 50 seconds. As soon as Dylan starts singing, he looses the thread, picks it up, but then stops and decides to try the song in a different key. He starts again, this time with a short intro. This time it goes well, until he starts yodeling, where he finds that he has to sing too high. So he again changes the key of the song and picks it up where he left off. But after a while he gives up, saying that he can't do it.

>From: Bob Stacy 
>Newsgroups: rec.music.dylan
>Subject: Re: REQ: Any Info on "Finjan Club" Boot?
>Date: Wed, 22 Apr 1998 19:08:32 -0400
>Message-ID: <353E7870.DEFB8AC8@usit.net>

>... and some comments from Townsend's "Strangers and Prophets":
>
>FINJAN CLUB, MONTREAL, QUEBEC, CANADA......... 2.Jul.62
>
>In the informal surroundings of the Finjan Club, Dylan treats what
>sounds like a very sparse crowd, to a truly magnificent, unhurried
>performance. The atmosphere of the club is relaxed and informal and
>Dylan's vocal delivery marks these renditions out as being amongst the
>very finest of his early performances, in spite of the largely polite,
>but ultimately disinterested audience.
>
>T-156 FINJAN CLUB carries the complete performance and except for breaks
>in the original source tape, is a continuous recording, capturing the
>considerable activity taking place between songs and providing a much
>more complete and rewarding picture of the event.

The keeper of the site "Songs For Johanna" rates this CD 3 out of 5 and writes:

"This is an average boot with a couple of mediocre performances. Dylan just doesn't seem focused playing these songs but it is an early recording, so I'll cut Bob some slack."Hiram Hubbard" is the best song here and "The Death Of Emmett Till" is just plain awful, as is "Stealin'", one of the worst performances I've heard from Bob."