Bob Dylan & The Band: The Basement Tapes Complete - The Bootleg Series Vol. 11

This is one of my least favourite of Bob Dylan's Bootleg Series, despite its Holy Grail reputation among Dylanologists, no doubt. as you may know from my review of the Basement Tapes, I am not a huge fan of Big Pink's collection of lo-fi country covers, goofing around and in-jokes. Listening to this bloated, 139-song collection of even more stuff laid down in that basement as the dog lay on the floor it makes me wonder what people actually get from it. Compared to so much of the treasure that the Bootleg Series has unearthed, it sounds bloody awful. If that makes me a heretic - so be it.

There are six discs in this huge set. Play any of them, or indeed play any of the tracks at random, digitally, and you will find lo-fi, muffled, often tinny mono recordings, together with false starts, abrupt endings and chatter. Compare this to, say the Fragments set from the Time Out Of Mind sessions and the difference is light and day, for me, anyway. Dylan's vocals are often whiny and distant and, apart from the seemingly omnipresent organ, instrumentation is scarce. For stuff performed by Dylan and members of what would soon be The Band it sounds like something any amateur group would have produced. Some say that therein lies the magic. I say bollocks to that. I find nearly all of it unlistenable and unstimulating.

I wonder just what it was that has led to so many music commentators devoting so much time and praise, not forgetting academic analysis to this rambling collection from way back in 1967? Furthermore, that begs the question as to why Dylan and his bearded mates decided not to go to India, mess around with tape loops, Eastern instrumentation and blissed-out psychedelia and to dabble in old American folk songs and stripped down acoustic sounds instead? All quite incomprehensible all the time but it undoubtedly pointed towards the folk rock/country rock boom of the late sixties and early seventies. There were no proto-prog rock studio-crafted masterpieces here, no weirdness, no Cream-style freakouts. It was also so basic that it was definitely revolutionary. What is odd, though, is that The Basement Tapes have become so revered, yet Dylan albums such as Nashville Skyline, Self Portrait and New Morning far less so. Indeed, they have been criticised a lot, yet they are grown from the same seeds. I prefer all three of them to this - by far. 

It did seem, though, that by the time many groups/artists had caught up with Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde And Blonde material, he was already moving on. This was where he went. From the sublime to the decidedly less sublime. This was Dylan "dropping out, man", big time. This was how to do it. 

Apparently, all this music wasn't recorded for people to hear - it was laying the foundations for the John Wesley Harding to New Morning years of late 1967 to 1970. If, then, this was a kind of private piece of experimentation/fun then why deify it as a work of genius? God knows. Maybe He does. Because I sure don't. It's dreadful. This is Dylan's Smiley Smile, isn't it? Critically-revered yet intrinsically garbage. I don't care what anyone thinks about such a statement. I have reviewed it in the name of its place in Dylan's history. That's it.

It makes it a genuine relief to stick on the actual Basement Tapes after this! It makes them sound bloody great, especially in their latest remastered form. I'm listening to them now and loving them, would you believe. At least something positive has come out of the exercise!