A bit of previously unreleased tape has just surfaced, seemingly from an archive of Allen Ginsberg recordings, that features Ginsberg and Bob Dylan talking backstage on December 11, 1965 in San Francisco, and then Dylan performing an entire concert with a band. It comes via Dylan fan and YouTuberist Keith Gubitz, who simultaneously has uploaded a second, similar recording from December 12, 1965 in San Jose — the latter includes some chatter at the beginning between Ginsberg and a passing fan who asks, "Is Joan Baez here tonight?"

The SF recording above is cued up to a performance of the rarity "Long Distance Operator," previously released only on the album The Basement Tapes from 1975. But if you want to hear Ginsberg and Dylan shooting the breeze, it's at the beginning of the recording.

The recordings come from a year when Dylan was touring the US at the top of his game. As Rolling Stone describes this period, from 1965-1966, it was "when Dylan was at the level of Shakespeare in 1599, Mozart in 1787, Keats in 1819, the Beatles in 1963, Monet in 1916. Which is to say, an all-timer level even for the all-timers." That was on the occasion of the release of The Cutting Edge: 1965-1966: The Bootleg Series Vol. 12, a box set that came out last year.

1965 was also the year that Dylan was followed around by documentary filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker for the film Don't Look Back, released two years later.

I'm taking Gubitz's word that this stuff previously hasn't been released, despite the hundreds of new bootleg recordings that were part of that box set last year — which included recordings of "Positively 4th Street"/"Like a Rolling Stone" from a show in Berkeley a week prior to these recordings, on December 4, 1965, in which Rolling Stone says "you detect more blues than [in] later performances" of these songs in Dylan's voice.

Below, the San Jose recording.