Bob Dylan
12/11/65
Masonic Memorial Temple
San Francisco, CA

and

12/12/65
Civic Auditorium
San Jose, CA

Download FLAC: Amazon Drive

San Francisco 11 Dec 65

01 Backstage conversation
02 To Ramona
03 Gates Of Eden
04 It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue
05 Desolation Row
06 Love Minus Zero – No Limit
07 Visions Of Johanna
08 Mr Tambourine Man
09 Tombstone Blues
10 I Don’t Believe You
11 Baby, Let Me Follow You Down
12 Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues
13 Long Distance Operator
14 It Ain’t Me, Babe
15 Ballad Of A Thin Man
16 Positively 4th Street
17 Like A Rolling Stone

San Jose 12 Dec 65

01 Audience conversation
02 She Belongs To Me
03 To Ramona
04 Gates Of Eden
05 It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue
06 Desolation Row
07 Love Minus Zero – No Limit
08 Mr Tambourine Man
09 Interval conversation
10 Tombstone Blues
11 I Don’t Believe You
12 Baby, Let Me Follow You Down
13 Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues
14 Long Distance Operator
15 It Ain’t Me, Babe
16 Ballad Of A Thin Man
17 Positively 4th Street
18 Like A Rolling Stone

Linege:These files are from AG Masters

From RandPink:

Ok, here we go…buckle up.

I had a chance to listen to the two Dylan concert items in the Stanford Library Archive labeled as:
MO733 Box 119, reel 7, Bob Dylan, San Jose 1965, Dec 12th
MO733 Box 134, reel 5, San Francisco, undated

The following is taken from notes that I took while listening:

Box 119 contains the entire San Jose Civic Auditorium concert from December 12th, complete acoustic and electric sets
Setlist:
She Belongs to Me
To Ramona (Epic version)
Gates of Eden (easily the definitive live version of this song, singing/phrasing is unreal)
Baby Blue
Desolation Row
Love Minus Zero
Mr. Tambourine Man

Tombstone Blues
I Don’t Believe You
Baby Let me Follow You Down
Tom Thumbs Blues
Long Distance Operator
It Ain’t Me Babe
Ballad of a Thin Man
Positively 4th Street
Like a Rolling Stone

The Berkeley December 4th show does NOT exist. It has been mislabeled all these years, it is actually the San Jose set. The electric set from San Jose is the exact circulating recording that has been available over the years labeled as Berkeley Community Theater. I guess I’m making a habit of correcting Sony mislabeling stuff, kinda funny.

Box 134 contains the entire San Francisco Masonic Memorial Temple concert from December 11th, complete acoustic and electric sets (except for She Belongs to me which is missing)
Setlist:
To Ramona
Gates of Eden
Baby Blue
Desolation Row (in the conversation for definitive live version)
Love Minus Zero
Visions of Johanna (first recorded live performance and in the conversation for definitive live version, epic, introduced as “Alcatraz to the 9th Power Revisited”, has the nightingale’s code line, hard to make out but he appears to tell the audience that “I sang this song last week in concert” – which would likely mean he played Visions at Berkeley)
Mr. Tambourine Man (rivals Sheffield and RAH2 as definitive live version. Harp solos rival Sheffield, unbelievably)

Tombstone Blues (cuts in at first chorus)
I Don’t Believe You
Baby Let me Follow You Down
Tom Thumbs Blues (very slight cut in)
Long Distance Operator (“Murder you with her smile”)
It Ain’t Me Babe (singing is better here than in the San Jose show)
Ballad of a Thin Man (“You’re positive something is happening here now but you ain’t got the faintest idea what it is”, better version than San Jose)
Positively 4th Street (This is the definitive live version of this song. The singing is unreal, “screeeam iiiiiiiit!” “To see yooooooooouu!” wow, Bob is clearly having fun. Garth crushes it)
Like a Rolling Stone (Epic, last chorus epic)

~the San Francisco show immediately enters the “best concert of his career” conversation. It is an unbelievable listen. Dylan’s interaction with the audience is special here, the entire crowd is sitting on the edge of their seats.
Dylan says to Ginsberg during the intermission of the San Jose show that “what you are seeing now is a typical concert, last night was wild, I sort of felt who they were out there”. Bob was still very much beaming from the SF show 24 hours later.

The San Francisco show is of lesser sound quality on both acoustic and electric sets, but still very good. SF electric set Dylan’s vocals are higher in the mix than on the SJ tape. The San Jose electric set is a sound quality upgrade from what has been circulating.

Ok, well there it is.

Here is some more from my notes. I think I got the exact quotes pretty good, probably a word or two off here or there.

Ginsberg is backstage with Dylan prior to the start of the San Francisco Masonic concert and has the recorder going, fascinating stuff.

Ginsberg tells Dylan: “this recorder cost $500, it is an absolute beautiful precision machine, it can do anything”.
Dylan responds: “I don’t why the **** I don’t get one of those” – “hey why don’t you tape some of the concert in the second half”
Ginsberg: “it will actually do it and do a good job” “I’ll give you the tape if you want it”
Dylan “well, no – I’d just like to hear what we sound like”

Dylan seems to be talking about how he’s not impressed with Hollywood… “nothing is really happening there”

Dylan talking to Ginsberg: “I spent a lot of time with Marlon Brando, I talked to him for about 3 hours. it was very pleasurable to say the least. He thinks about the universe, like you. He’s just a very plain, simple, common, ordinary Nebraska cat, that is all it amounts too, (laughs)”

Dylan talking to Ginsberg: “I talked to Phil Spector about recording you and he is very interested.”

The recording picks up The Hawks starting the sound check (in the background of the Ginsberg/Dylan talking), the sound is muddy of course, as it is behind walls – they seem to playing some sort of blues standard, Robbie is hitting high notes.

someone informs Dylan that “Boonie” has shown up. I assume they are referring to Bonnie Beecher?? Dylan says to Albert Grossman: “Bonnie can stand on stage. Don’t bring her back here though, I don’t want to see her, tell her you couldn’t find me- is that so hard?”. Grossman does not sound happy that he has to deal with this. HAHAHA.

Dylan: “I’ve never seen one of these machines before” referring to the tape recorder
Ginsberg: “do you want to hear the playback?”
Dylan: “yes”

• Ginsberg then flips the switch and an awesome sounding concert plays for about 15 seconds…don’t know what band this was unfortunately. lyrics were “leaving it way outside”…sorry couldn’t ID the song.

Ginsberg to Dylan: “you going to do anything different tonight?”
Dylan: “no, same show. can’t take a chance man- got a new drummer”

The Hawks are now sound checking “It Ain’t me Babe” the they run through pretty much the whole song.
Ginsberg listing to the sound check says to Dylan: “they sound good, I like the arrangement, sounds a little bit like Positively 4th street”

Dylan to Ginsberg: “you got all the tickets, right?” “you did give them to people who wanted them didn’t you?”
Ginsberg: “yes, 6 to the Hells Angels and some to some young cats”

Ginsberg tells Dylan he bought a “really good expensive Fender guitar”.
Dylan: “oh you did get one – that’s good”

Ginsberg invites Dylan to a party. Dylan declines.

Dylan: “I can go for a long time if I dig what is happening, I just never get tired.”

Dylan: “we go to San Jose tomorrow”

Hawks now sound checking “Tom Thumbs Blues and Ballad of a Thin Man”

Dylan: “they didn’t open the doors yet did they?”

Dylan to Ginsberg: “I felt kind of close last time I was here, to the concerts, because of you, and it was very groovy, that seldom happens” “when I played here last weekend (referring to Berkeley) it was the first time in a very long time, since England actually, that when I began playing – I felt actually embarrassed, at being, uh, uh, uh…it got a hold of me somewhere, it’s not like that all the time, well obviously it can’t be.” “We played Texas man, that’s where we first started out, it was groovy down there too – it really was. different down there.”
Ginsberg: “I think the best places to play is where is the most resistance.” “what turns me on most is that they are so resistant that you actually have to get inside them”
Dylan: “Yeah, I don’t know man, I don’t know what the **** it is that I do, you know. I really don’t. I have no idea. I certainly didn’t start out to do anything like this, I didn’t know it was going to end up like this” “I got to accept it, and accept it on it’s own terms, and it’s terms are very…not many people are really aware what these terms do to you…because the songs aren’t ** songs…there’s nothing that I sing that I don’t, uh / TAPE STOP /- The backstage tap ends here – and the San Francisco acoustic set begins with Dylan tuning his guitar and then into To Ramona. Ginsberg maybe/likely got to his seat late and missed the first song.

END

From Searching for a Gem:

“Allen Ginsberg donated almost all of his archive to Stanford University’s Special Collections.
MO 733, Ginsberg Papers Subseries 11.b. Reel-to-reel tapes; 7 in.
Box 119, Reel 7. “Bob Dylan, San JosÈ, CA, Civic Auditorium, 12 December 1965”
Box 134, Reel 5. “San Francisco, CA, Dylan undated” [AG had identified this tape as Berkeley 4 December 1965 after it was catalogued as ‘San Francisco, Dylan undated.’]
Box 120, Reel 1: “[Untitled] 1965 Dec 12”
I have not had the opportunity to listen to Box 120 Reel 1, and I would like to know who has reidentified these tapes, and on what documentary basis. No doubt, these are the Stanford archived tape reels. This means the Berkeley 4 December 1965 (Box 134 Reel 5) released by Jeff Rosen is actually 11 December 1965 San Francisco. What happened to 4 December 1965 Berkeley? I was there, and saw Reb Allen taping the electric segment, the acoustic ‘Freeze Out’ premiered that night, but he wasn’t able to tape it.”

So, it seems Allen Ginsberg himself suggested that the undated San Francisco tape was Berkeley. The reason we believe that the San Francisco tape is San Francisco is that AG asks Bob where he is playing next during their backstage conversation and the answer is “San Jose”, and the tour dates support that assertion.
It seems clear that the San Jose tape is definitely San Jose. The information contained in the fan interviews AG conducted prior to and after the show confirm that they are outside the Civic Auditorium. Also Bob confirms to AG during their interval conversation here that his next show is at Long Beach which again fits the tour schedule (although for some reason the Long Beach show on 17 December is not included at bobdylan.com.)
However, it does seem that there is another tape, Box 120, Reel 1: “[Untitled] 1965 Dec 12”, that perhaps hasn’t been digitised yet, or perhaps is not being offered as a listening experience to visitors to the Library. As Stephan reports that he saw AG taping the electric set at Berkeley (but not the acoustic set at which “Visions of Johanna” was premiered), I think one should assume that this mystery reel is actually the Berkeley electric set.