Dylanography

Last year, about 100 lucky Bob Dylan fans in Europe came across a pretty amazing find on record store shelves: a four-CD set titled The 50th Anniversary Collection. The set contains 86 Dylan songs recorded in 1962, including numerous takes of "Mixed Up Confusion," "Sally Gal," "That's All Right, Mama" and "Baby, Please Don't Go." Contrary to appearances, this was no bootleg. It's an official release from Sony and copies are already selling on eBay for upwards of $1,000. "This isn't a scheme to make money," a Sony Music source tells Rolling Stone. "The copyright law in Europe was recently extended from 50 to 70 years for everything recorded in 1963 and beyond. With everything before that, there's a new 'Use It or Lose It' provision. It basically said, 'If you haven't used the recordings in the first 50 years, you aren't going to get any more.'"
Roughly 100 copies of the collection were given to random record stores in France, Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Fans who logged onto Bob Dylan's official website from France or Germany in the final days of 2012 were also allowed to download the collection for 100 Euros.
Recordings by Miles Davis, Frank Sinatra, Chuck Berry and other stars of the 1950s and early 1960s hit the European public domain in recent years. Pressure mounted on lawmakers to change the law as it began to threaten the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and other superstars of the era.

Joe, are you holding?