Artist	Song
Bob Dylan [Hard to Find #4 bootleg]	Don't Start Me Talkin' [live, Sonny Boy Williamson II cover] (2:23)
Bob Dylan [Shot Of Love]	The Groom's Still Waiting At The Altar (4:03)
SinTad O'Connor	Lord Franklin [Sean-N=s Nua] (5:01)
Bob Dylan [The Freewheelin']	Bob Dylan's Dream (5:04)
Jean Ritchie	Fair Nottamun Town [None But One] (2:54)
Bob Dylan [Real Live]	Masters Of War [live] (6:49)
Woody Guthrie	1913 Massacre [Hard Travelin': The Asch Recordings, Vol. 3] (3:37)
Bob Dylan [Bob Dylan]	Song To Woody (2:43)
Martin Carthy	Lord Randall [Shearwater] (4:33)
Bob Dylan [Live 1975, disc 1]	A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall [live] (5:19)
Howlin' Wolf	Sittin' On Top Of The World [His Best: Chess 50th Anniversary Collection] (2:34)
Bob Dylan [Blonde On Blonde]	Pledging My Time (3:50)
Simon & Garfunkel	Scarborough Fair / Canticle [Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme] (3:11)
Bob Dylan [The 30th Anniversary Concert Collection, disc 2]	Girl From The North Country [live] (4:35)
Brian Byrne	The Parting Glass [The Essential Irish Folk Collection, disc 1] (3:18)
Bob Dylan [Hard to Find #4 bootleg]	Restless Farewell [live] (6:25)
The Beatles	Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) [Rubber Soul] (2:06)
Bob Dylan [Live 1966, disc 1]	Fourth Time Around [live] (4:34) --->
Van Morrison	I Forgot That Love Existed [live; A Night In San Francisco, disc 1] (6:20)

Comment:

As should be clear simply from my list of mixes, Bob Dylan is my favorite musical artist of all time. I'd argue that he doesn't even get the credit he deserves -- see "Standing on the Water in the Wasteland of Your Mind" and "Bob Dylan's Latter-Day Blue" for that particular argument, because this mix is about something else entirely. Every even-numbered track here is, purportedly, a Bob Dylan original. Listening to it after the previous track, however, should make it clear that it's nothing of the kind.Around the time of the release of the "Love and Theft" album, that same story came up again: how early in his career, His Airy Bobness would "write" his own songs by adapting pre-existing (usually) folk songs -- sometimes simply the tunes, but often the lyrics as well -- into his own, still surely unique, sensibility. Here, then, are all of Dylan's magnificent thefts compiled onto one CD.... And, as 1966's "Fourth Time Around" and "Pledging My Time" and 1981's "The Groom's Still Waiting At The Altar" show, they were limited neither to folk songs, nor to Dylan's early days. In general, in most of these pairs I heard Bob's version of the song before the original; and each time I heard pair's opposite member I certainly felt a shocking sense of discovery. "Bob Dylan's Dream" repeats key lines from its tune-mate "Lord Franklin" in exactly equivalent places in the song, as does "Girl From The North Country" with "Scarborough Fair"; "Fourth Time Around" not only approximates the tune of "Norwegian Wood" but, although in these days of songwriting copyrights no lyrics could be directly copied, it's still a clear recapitulation of the Beatles' theme of a failed one-night stand.I guess it's ironic that the only version of Sonny Boy Williamson II's "Don't Start Me Talkin'" that I have is Bob's own cover. It's really pretty shocking how closely this song and "The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar" follow exactly the same pattern; I have little doubt that "Groom", however great it is, was written for Bob to have his own version of the Williamson song, the same way that "Restless Farewell" is little more than a modern translation, albeit brilliant, of "The Parting Glass". As the title "Love and Theft" slyly points out, there have always been a couple ways for the man to admire a song: one is to simply cover it -- the approach I've documented in my mix "Theft & Love, Part 1: Love" -- and theft is the other. Sometimes the options aren't mutually exclusive: Bob copped Howlin' Wolf's blues "Sittin' On Top Of The World" for his "Pledging My Time", but he also covered it with an open hand on 1992's Good As I Been To You. Likewise, "Don't Start Me Talkin'" could have easily fit on Part 1.The final track is a means to make amends. Of course, although I've been quick to point out Bob Dylan's own lapses of creativity woven into the writing of his own historical songs, it's no secret that folk songs have stolen from each other since time immemorial, and it's highly likely that Dylan was simply thinking of himself as part of this tradition; Fairport Convention have an excellent song, "I'm Already There", that's just as inspired by "Lord Franklin" as Dylan's "Dream". I was thinking of ending with Bob's performance of the traditional "The Water Is Wide", from Live 1975, coupled with its ancestor, the world-engulfing Irish folk song "Carrickfergus"; but to make the point tighter, I decided to instead include Van Morrison's "I Forgot That Love Existed", which in its live version incorporates a verse of Dylan's own "All Along The Watchtower", uncredited in the album liner notes -- even as other individual lines incorporated from Morrison's own songs are mentioned. A sly dig at Bob's then over-30-years practice of petite acoustic larceny? A sign of what happens when Theft takes over and the musicians do indeed forget that Love exists??More likely, just the cycle of Theft going one more circus round....

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