Bob Dylan: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 9: The Witmark Demos: 1962-1964

Bob Dylan
The Bootleg Series, Vol. 9: The Witmark Demos: 1962-1964
Rating: 4.7/5.0
Label: Columbia

It's practically a tradition that each new Bob Dylan Bootleg Series release will be accompanied by complaints from Dylan freaks (sorry, "aficionados"). Though Dylan Fandom's response to The Witmark Demos: 1962-1964 has been largely positive, some predictable grousing about how some classic performances still haven't seen the official light of day and how Columbia over-emphasizes the musician's 1960's work at the expense of his later stuff has surfaced. A quick perusal of Dylan message boards - proceed with extreme caution - also reveals gripes about the release's sound quality, packaging and track order.

Such dissension is difficult to understand, though, as archival releases don't get any better than The Witmark Demos. They have neither the luster nor the mythology of Dylan and the Hawks 1966 or Rolling Thunder 1975/1976, but these demos document a key piece of the 1960's Dylan puzzle, finding the musician moving past his Guthrie-aping days yet still before the "thin, wild, mercury music" of his mid-1960s electric trilogy. In the tradition of Dylan boots the title here is only partly accurate, as this set contains demos for both the Leeds and Witmark publishing houses, a technicality of course and one that doesn't detract in the slightest from the brilliance of the record's songs. These recordings are immediate as we hear Dylan occasionally flub lines and offer various comments about these songs; some of them are mere fragments, but the majority are fully formed and sometimes contain alternate lyrics to what would eventually be included on record.

Though the demos include plenty of the socio-political songs usually associated with early Dylan - "Blowin' In the Wind," "Ballad of Hollis Brown," "Masters of War," "Oxford Town," "John Brown, " among many others - they nevertheless suggest that the accepted image of the young Dylan as primarily a topical songwriter isn't entirely accurate. Of course Dylan initially embraced, and unarguably advanced, this depiction, framing himself as a folkie devotee of both Guthrie and mysteriously nicknamed socially-righteous bluesmen that most people hadn't heard of; still, the demos are indicative of an artist whose lyrical scope already extended far beyond sometimes too-simplistic topical ballads. For example, the demos include all varieties of love songs; there are subtly dismissive ones like "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" and "Boots of Spanish Leather;" nostalgic, mournful ones like "Bob Dylan's Dream;" and occasionally tender ones like "Girl From the North Country" and "Tomorrow Is a Long Time." Humor and tragedy exist in equal measure; the acerbic bite of "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues" and the pure silliness of "I Shall Be Free" contrast with the personal dramas of "Seven Curses" and "Ballad For a Friend" as well as the global ones of "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall," all in a manner that belies Dylan's young age at the time of these recordings.

Any serious Dylan fan will have heard some of these songs in various incarnations already, either via the debut 1991 Bootleg Series release or the plainly titled Witmark Years boot. Among such completists there may be a tendency to approach these demos from a too-academic perspective, whether it's in terms of Dylan's debt to archetypal American folk themes or his lyrical evolution; indeed, the poetic intricacies revealed in "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "Mama, You Been On My Mind" are still striking. Such approaches are valid but unnecessary, as this newest Bootleg Series is simply fun to listen to and a perfect snapshot of a young artist with a pile of amazing songs to his name. With any artist whose volume of quality unreleased output surpasses his officially sanctioned material, it's impossible to satisfy everyone as the vaults are purged, but The Witmark Demos: 1962-1964 is an essential Bob Dylan release and every bit as captivating as much of his best work.

Revisit: Bob Dylan - Oh Mercy (1989)

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Revisit is a series of reviews highlighting past releases that now deserve a second look.

Bob Dylan continues to ride a critical and commercial wave of adulation that shows no signs of receding. After a lean early 1990s with the underwhelming and inessential Good As I Been To You and World Gone Wrong and the earlier catastrophe that was Under the Red Sky, Dylan has since run off a string of albums that in many cases measure up nicely against his most revered older records. Starting with 1997's Time Out Of Mind and continuing through 2009's Together Through Life, all of Dylan's recent work has mostly met with widespread praise, breathless fawning and severe bouts of reviewer hyperbole. Though there were a few scattered voices of dissent that rightly pointed out some flaws with that 2009 effort, a new Dylan release is almost guaranteed to be accompanied by the well-worn clichés and plaudits of those in awe of his music. The man could probably belch on tape for 45 minutes and Uncut would hail it an instant classic.

If this story sounds familiar, it's because it's been repeated throughout Dylan's career: a string of either forgettable or downright awful albums is followed by a noticeably better release or two that leads to the predictable talk of a Dylan resurgence/comeback/reinvention. Yet often lost in this glut of critics tripping over themselves and each other to proclaim Dylan "back" is any consideration of how well or poorly these albums will age. Music criticism by necessity largely deals in the present, though this approach has its obvious shortcomings: critics who won't admit that time has soured their love and altered their opinions of certain albums are unadulterated liars.

Contemporary reviews of Oh Mercy were positive. Clinton Heylin considered some songs on par with Dylan's best work, the wonderfully acerbic Robert Christgau was mostly impressed, Anthony DeCurtis offered a lengthy and flattering review and other reviewers characterized it as Dylan's strongest release since Desire. The album landed on several of those myopic year-end best-of lists; in the type of knee-jerk reaction and lack of perspective Rolling Stone has become known for, the magazine ranked Oh Mercy as #44 on its list of the 100 best albums of the 1980s. Yes, you read that correctly; for more laughs, it's worth checking out the complete, dreary and wildly amusing list.

Though it's usually described as Dylan's best 1980s album, that's akin to saying the Big Mac is the best burger at McDonalds: there's simply not much good material with which to compare it. To state that the 1980s was a rough decade for Dylan is being diplomatic. Aside perhaps from Infidels and pieces of Oh Mercy, Dylan's output from the Reagan/Bush years reads like a laundry list of studio disasters characterized by dated production techniques and instantly forgettable tunes; we don't need to exhume the bodies here. This isn't to imply that Oh Mercy is a bad album; it's not. With the type of lyrical craftsmanship Dylan is still best known for, "Ring Them Bells," "Shooting Star" and "Man in the Long Black Coat" are stellar and sound as relevant today as they did when the record was first released. It's still a satisfying and worthwhile listen: Dylan's lyrics offer plenty of fodder for those insisting to over-analyze, misinterpret and dissect his words and thus rob them of their mystery and beauty, while Daniel Lanois' production in some ways foreshadowed the approach later used on Time Out of Mind.

Yet time has a way of taking the luster off a release, and Oh Mercy is no exception. Now 20 years since its release in 1989, the album hasn't aged particularly well. Lanois' swamp-murk production shoulders a large part of the blame; it fails nearly as often as it succeeds, with "Political World" and "Most of the Time" suffering from the producer's quirks and idiosyncrasies and sounding too manufactured for their own good. In addition, a metallic sheen detracts from a few other tracks, with Dylan's vocals sounding thin and tinny on "Everything Is Broken" and" "Disease of Conceit." There are simply too many production flaws to look past; though Oh Mercy never comes close to repeating the train wreck of 1980s production values called Empire Burlesque, the songs might have been better served if a layer or two of these studio embellishments had been stripped away. It's worth mentioning that sparse versions of these songs have circulated on bootleg for years - and, finally, on Sony's latest official Bootleg Series volume - and show a warmth and immediacy to these songs that the album largely lacks. Stripped of the clutter that hinders much of Oh Mercy, these largely acoustic versions offer a tantalizing glimpse into what Oh Mercy could have been.

It's difficult not to think that Bob Dylan's abysmal 1980s work lowered both fans' and critics' expectations to the point where anything that was even marginally decent would be hailed as a "return to form." It's a phenomenon that's been repeated throughout the years, most recently with R.E.M. and the massively overrated Accelerate. Of course, criticizing Dylan is a fool's task - like a hack writer taking pot shots at a Hemingway or Fitzgerald - and any career as lengthy as Dylan's will have its share of failed albums. Still, as the years pass and offer more opportunity to re-assess Dylan's catalog, it's impossible to shake the feeling that Oh Mercy, while the strongest thing the musician did in the 1980s, hasn't exactly withstood the test of time and instead sounds like an album whose sporadic successes and more-prevalent failures cannot be separated from its over-saturated production style.

Revisit: Woody Guthrie - Dust Bowl Ballads

Revisit is a series of reviews highlighting past releases that now deserve a second look. go to spectrumculture.com for more.

In these depressingly shitty economic times, where executives pay themselves and their cronies massive bonuses and then solicit the government for grotesque sums of money for their failing companies, where the lowly workaday peons that make up the bulk of America's population see their home values plummet and employment status grow ever more precarious, Woody Guthrie's Dust Bowl Ballads sounds as startlingly relevant as ever. Originally released in 1940 as the Great Depression had not yet ended - it would take a war to do that - Guthrie's concept album chronicles the hardships and injustices wrought by the Depression and the Dust Bowl. Guthrie's depictions of those most affected, those migrant workers who slowly shuffled west to a California spoken about in mystical tones and would be saddled with the derogatory "Okie," are sympathetic, humorous, sobering and, ultimately, defiant and optimistic. Its music is deceptively simple, featuring little more than Guthrie's voice set against strums of the machine that he claimed killed Fascists; for better or worse, the approach utilized here and throughout much of Guthrie's catalog still influences generations of earnest folksingers. Yet under this simplicity lies one of music's most coherent, focused and endearing concept albums.

Dust Bowl Ballads marked Guthrie's first commercial recording and, even when judged against his extensive recorded output, remains his finest effort. Recorded in just two separate sessions in 1940, it's since been released in various formats. RCA Victor Records, with the type of hatchet job insight that major labels still follow today, would eventually issue 11 of these songs, with "Dust Bowl Blues" and the key "Pretty Boy Floyd" excluded because of length. A mid 1960s LP version included these two omitted tracks and offered a new running order. The currently available CD version is likely the most complete view we'll get, containing yet again a different running order as well as an alternate version of "Talking Dust Bowl Blues."

Filled with allusions to John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, a novel that would effectively shape Guthrie's worldview for much of his life, the album mixes a loose chronological narrative with the singer's experiences as he traveled around the country chronicling the effects of the Depression. Guthrie mythologizes these Dust Bowl refugees as he rails against the profiteers of migrants' labor. Certainly the common depiction of Guthrie as an intensely serious, humorless, firebrand proletariat folkie who dealt only in absolutes is at least partly attributable to Dust Bowl Ballads; it's clear who the heroes and villains are throughout the album. The album contains doses of bleakness and despair, with a righteous accusatory finger pointed at the grossly wealthy and their authoritarian abuses of power that often defined Guthrie's oeuvre. The central image of "The Great Dust Storm (Dust Storm Disaster)" is that of a family huddled in a shack as the children cry, the migrants' naïvely optimistic view of California as a "garden of Eden" is shattered amid the disillusionment of "Do Re Mi," and the dead man walking in "Dust Pneumonia Blues" isn't long for this world. The narrators of "Dust Bowl Blues" and "I Ain't Got No Home In This World Anymore" have suffered countless indignities; in the latter song the narrator describes his rootless existence and matter-of-factly mentions how he's been harassed by the cops, had his house taken from him by a rich man, and lost his wife in the dust storm. In these simple songs Guthrie paints a dark portrait of both the Dust Bowl and its affect on those hardest hit by it, as well as strictly adheres to the social awareness usually associated with folk music.


Still Dust Bowl Ballads is equally optimistic, a fact that was too frequently lost on all those earnest folksingers of the 1950s and 1960s. Perhaps this is where Steinbeck's influence on Guthrie is most apparent; the folksinger mimicked Steinbeck's sympathetic and heartfelt depiction of the Joads' uniquely American character and set it to music. The album's despair is often tempered with both humor and defiance, with Guthrie's migrants displaying an internal strength and determination to not succumb to life's hardships. Sometimes this comfort comes from tales of near-mystical heroes; in "Pretty Boy Floyd," the bank robber is transformed from a petty criminal into a Robin Hood figure who gives his loot to the poor. Other times this optimism stems from a strong sense of self-identity and pride, especially in "Blowin' Down This Road" and "Dust Bowl Refugee," where Guthrie's subjects maintain dignity in the face of poverty, hunger and unemployment. Guthrie's characters are mentally strong, at times almost unbelievably so. The subject of "Dust Can't Kill Me," whose alternately had his baby and family die in the dust storm, landlord take his home and then destroy it over with a tractor, crops rot and furniture sold off at the local pawn shop, somehow boasts of his own invulnerability at sharing a similar fate. It's an uplifting snapshot of the will to live and the album's most singular moment of defiance (or, perhaps, hubris).

If Dust Bowl Ballads can be faulted for anything, it does, like much of Guthrie's catalog, offer few shades of gray in terms of heroes and villains. Its migrant masses are all heroic and its outlaws are simply misunderstood vigilante philanthropists, while cops and unscrupulous capitalists stand firmly with their feet on the necks of these masses. Seventy years after its first release, there's a poignancy to the album that still resonates with contemporary listeners. Given the album's minimal arrangements and Guthrie's often deadpan delivery, coupled with its stark cover of a dilapidated and abandoned shack and subject matter chronicling a dark chapter in this country's history, it's tempting to view the album as mournful and exceedingly dark. Yet the album breathes with determination and defiance, with Guthrie's characters rarely succumbing to their horrible lot in life. In times like these, Guthrie's wandering Okies and their troubles don't seem so remote or irrelevant.

Music Review: Charlie Louvin - Charlie Louvin Sings Murder Ballads and Disaster Songs

Charlie Louvin Sings Murder Ballads and Disaster Songs is the second release in 2008 from the grizzled music veteran. Earlier this year Louvin got godly on Steps to Heaven, a strong collection of gospel songs that also included a sometimes-overzealous set of background singers. Showing a definite Christian religious conviction without being heavy-handed or dogmatic, it focused heavily on mortality, albeit with an uplifting underlying theme of the afterlife. Louvin’s latest album veers dramatically in the opposite direction; Sings Murder is far more morbid, bleak, violent, and darkly humorous than Steps to Heaven. Mixing a number of traditional folkie/bluegrass songs (some of which previously appeared on the excellent People Take Warning! box set) with other old-timey tunes that nevertheless still sound relevant today, the album also serves as a nice reminder of just how fascinating, bizarre, and strangely beautiful these aging ballads are. It also recalls Louvin’s earliest work; 1956’s ironically-titled Tragic Songs of Life dealt heavily in equally dark topics.
The album’s production serves Louvin’s ragged voice very well; under the guidance of producer Mark Nevers, the songs are warm and balanced. Each instrument is given enough space, the album never sounds cluttered or over saturated, and Louvin’s voice is just right in the mix. The record blends musical elements that play to Louvin’s strengths, whether it’s the upbeat country roll of “Darling Corey,” (which also features Andrew Bird on fiddle), the rustic spiritual arrangement of “Wreck On the Highway,” the subdued guitar work on “Dark as a Dungeon, or the steel guitars that dot most of the songs.
The album includes several ballads that are standards of American music. “Wreck of the Old 97” and “Dark as a Dungeon” are probably the two songs that listeners who aren’t hardcore music history wackos will even recognize, probably because those songs have been performed by other artists. Louvin’s take on the venerable train tragedy song is far more restrained than Johnny Cash’s speed-fuelled live versions, though Louvin’s performance here similarly relies on a rhythm and instrumental approach that is highly evocative of a train. Louvin approaches Merle Travis’ “Dungeon” with a vocal weariness that brings out the song’s gloom and doom far better than the shrill versions Joan Baez has subjected our ears to over the years.
Other songs show that Louvin remains a skilled interpreter of American ballads. The traditional “The Little Grave in Georgia” is the album’s most moving and emotional song, with a remarkably depressing violin and guitar melody underpinning the woeful tale about dead Mary and her grave “all covered in ivy.” It also features Louvin’s most assured and confident singing.
Sings Murder also serves as a nice primer on the images, metaphors, and plainly strange motifs that define the American songbook. In these songs people die of broken hearts and it’s entirely believable; the tragic couple of “Katy Dear” are forbidden to marry by their parents, so of course they do the most logical thing and kill themselves (hell if I know why they don’t just defy their parents and get hitched anyway). A father can coldly turn his back on his daughter and her newborn child, only to become overcome with grief and sorrow when she (big surprise) freezes to death outside his doorstep (“Mary of the Wild Moor”). And in these songs fatal highway wrecks come with “whiskey and blood all together mixed with the glass,” great ships sink, trains crash, village bells toll in mourning, a brother is killed in a freak hunting accident, the cotton crop goes to shit, and the hair of the dead underage beautiful girl is always dark and curly. Sings Murder isn’t for everyone; it won’t light up the charts and its best songs won’t be used in a promo for CSI Miami. But for music fans interested in the bizarre and beautiful nature of traditional songs, this is a welcome and worthwhile album.

Satire: Area Music Fan Suffering from Hearing Loss

Longtime concertgoer Howard Deefman dejectedly admitted today that he’s distraught after learning from his physician that he’s starting to suffer from irreversible hearing loss. Deefman, a 65-year old Venice Beach street vendor and self-admitted “dinosaur rock aficionado,” estimates that he’s seen thousands of concerts over the last nearly 50 years, both in his hometown of Los Angeles and throughout the United States.Deefman readily admits the specific details of these show have become seriously scrambled in his addled brain. “I can vaguely remember sitting through marathon Led Zeppelin drum solos, Who concerts where the volume was so loud I couldn’t complete a covert drug transaction in the bathroom, and even a recent Springsteen concert that I thoroughly enjoyed from row 278.” Yet the street vendor is still in shock over his impending auditory demise. “The memory loss I can deal with; losing the memory of those Rick Wakeman ice concerts seems like a fair tradeoff. But I gotta be able to hear at these shows.”

Perhaps what’s most surprising is the alleged cause of Deefman’s hearing loss. Dr. Heinrich Vears, Deefman’s long-time doctor who he describes as a “good croaker who knows the score and how to write a solid prescription,” attributes his patient’s deterioration to a very unique cause. “Based on a series of extensive and cutting-edge tests, billed of course at a discounted rate since Mr. Deefman’s insurance lapsed sometime around the heyday of Prog Rock, I’ve concluded that his hearing loss is attributable to a lifetime of concerts in which he found himself sitting directly in front of a decibel-shattering person who would constantly shout at the band, drunkenly requesting songs that the band would never play anyway, and loudly harass those around him by calling everyone ‘bro’ or ‘dude,’ directly into Mr. Deefman’s ears.”Deefman readily agrees that the doctor’s theory rings true. Deep within the recesses of the remaining brain cells that are doing more than retaining bong resin, the lifetime music fan can still recall countless cases where his concert experience was ruined by a loud neighbor. “Dylan gospel tour 1980, some meathead spent the whole night screaming for ‘Tiny Montgomery’ and booing directly into my ear every time Dylan played a religious song. In 1997 I spent a whole month following Tom Petty around, and each night girls screamed hysterically every time he played ‘American Girl.’ At this year’s Tom Waits show in Phoenix, a fan in a bowler hat directly behind me conducted a screaming soliloquy about having Mr. Waits’ children before he was escorted out.”

Deefman gloomily concluded: “I used to think the worst thing about these concert screamers was that they’d startle me so much that I’d spill my Pabst all over some college preppie. But now I guess my hearing loss wasn’t actually caused by that particularly shrill Joan Baez show from 1963.”Though Deefman isn’t thrilled that he needs to begin wearing a hearing aid, he’s equally concerned that other music fans will suffer the same fate. “The younger generation’s ears are going to hell, without a doubt,” he asserted. “The stuff that passes for music nowadays is a far cry from the dulcet melodies of my 1960s prime. The noise kids listen to today proves to me that their ears are already crapping out. It’s certainly not music to my ears.”

Book Review: Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards - Memoirs of a Rock 'N' Roll Survivor by Al Kooper

Originally published in that most holy of musical years, 1977, updated and republished in the late 1990s, and now again revised in 2008 with an additional chapter, Al Kooper’s Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards: Memoirs of a Rock ‘N’ Roll Survivor remains one of the most honest, hilarious, and in many ways poignant entries in the bloated wasteland of the music autobiography genre.

Kooper is occasionally described as the “Forrest Gump of Music.” Besides making for lazy journalism, it’s not a particularly accurate or flattering depiction. Gump was an out and out moron who coincidentally happened to experience many of the key events of modern America; anything that happened to him was by pure accident and he never really understood the significance of those events. Kooper is quite different. Very intelligent and ambitious despite the laid-back persona he sometimes paints of himself in this biography, through determination and the occasional hustle he managed to maintain one of the most remarkable careers in music.

Of course one of the big draws in Kooper’s book is his interaction with Bob Dylan, particularly the hipster mid-1960s version. Recounting how being asked to play with Dylan was like “getting backstage passes to the fourth day of creation,” Kooper describes how he essentially tricked his way into playing organ on “Like a Rolling Stone.” A novice (at best) keyboardist at the time, his rudimentary organ playing is one of the song’s most recognizable features. The incident was a key moment in launching Kooper’s extremely varied career, which has included playing on Blonde on Blonde, founding the first incarnation of The Blues Project and Blood, Sweat & Tears, working as an A&R man, and producing that bastion of redneck music, Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Kooper also points out many of the inaccuracies that have seeped into musical lore; of note is his assertion of why the “Brill Building Sound” is a misnomer. However, some of Kooper’s claims are still open to debate. He maintains that people booed at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival because the set was so short (clocking in at around 15 minutes), not because of any folkie revolt against Dylan going electric. Yet bootlegs of the Newport performance don’t support this assertion; the booing occurs throughout the songs, from the start of Dylan’s performance. At that point no one in the crowd knew how long or short Dylan and the band would play. But, hell, as Kooper points out, he was there.

Backstage Passes is perhaps primarily considered a book of humorous musical anecdotes, which Kooper describes with great comedic effect. Certainly there are plenty of those, with stories ranging from the usual hotel hijinks and horizontal tangos favored by musicians on the road to stories of a cohort defecating on a poor music lackey’s desk. A veritable who’s who of music history ducks in and out of many of these stories: from Miles Davis allegedly threatening Kooper for simply (and unknowingly) talking to Davis’ wife to his interactions with pre-faces-like-a-catcher’s-mitt Rolling Stones, Kooper brings a definite comedian’s touch as he remembers them.

Yet what’s most striking upon rereading Backstage Passes are the poignant and emotional moments that Kooper describes with no pretenses or excuses. Though not exactly as explicit as Junkie, the passages in which Kooper addresses his early 1970s addiction to painkillers are among the most moving of the entire memoir. Likewise, a real sense of loss can be felt as Kooper offers a sincere tribute to his deceased friend, blues guitarist Mike Bloomfield. Finding himself recording with George Harrison at the time of John Lennon’s death, Kooper conveys the shock everyone, especially Harrison, felt, without coming across like a sleazy tabloid goon.

Kooper’s book also succeeds because he rarely comes across like a pampered rock star, even if he does tend to sometimes use the book to settle old scores or to grouse about financial issues fairly often at times. He never gets overly philosophical or pedantic (like Bruce Thomas in The Big Wheel). He never portrays himself as some sort of misunderstood, suffering existentialist (like Bruce Thomas in The Big Wheel). And though some stories probably have the benefit of hindsight and the artistic license of exaggeration, Kooper doesn’t make those stories so outlandish as to be unbelievable (like Bruce Thomas in… you get the point).

Although the chapter that covers 1998-2007 might not be enough to warrant another purchase of the book for those who own a previous edition, Backstage Passes is still one of the best music memoirs written. Kooper’s lived a pretty remarkable life; between releasing his own various albums, touring with musical giants, and producing some other ones, there’s plenty of good material to write out. That he put it all to paper is still a treat for any music fan.

Satire: Local High School Student Discovers New Athens, GA Band

Port Huron High sophomore Aimee Berryman reported to her friends today that she’s discovered a great new band from Athens, GA.

Berryman says she came across a band named “R.E.M.” when checking the iTunes store on Tuesday. “I rely entirely on iTunes to keep up to date with the hottest, most cutting-edge, and most subversive music around. If it wasn’t for the folks at iTunes who truly know what ‘underground’ and ‘anti-establishment’ mean, I’d be completely clueless about music history.”

According to Berryman, she purchased the band’s sophomore album Accelerate based on several disparate factors, including a quick listen to excerpts from the album, several breathless reviews posted on the popular music download site, and the fact that “the geeky-looking blonde-haired guy wearing the glasses looks like Ms. Villa, my Spanish teacher.”

Berryman readily admits that she has a long way to go in understanding this mysterious new band. “From what I can tell, they released one album a couple years ago that was poorly received. But what do you expect? How many bands’ first full length album is a classic that they then spend the next 25 years unfairly trying to live up to?”

The high school sophomore also confirms that Accelerate has been in heavy rotation on her iPod, alongside the likes of Beyonce, Fergie, and “some old-ass fossilized geezer named Dylan who my parents babble incessantly about. Whatever.”

Berryman also especially likes the brevity of the album; with 11 songs that clock in at about 35 minutes, it’s one of the shortest albums in her burgeoning iPod collection. Explains Berryman: “The length fits my attention span. Anything over that four-minute mark, and it’s time to check out. No thanks.”

The student believes that R.E.M. could be the precursor to a new musical style. “What the music world needs is a musical genre that specializes in songs less than three minutes in length that features aggressive guitars, nihilistic grandiose statements that decades later seem naïve and simplistic, and only three chords. Maybe there could even be a British version that in a little more than a year from its inception chokes to death on its own excesses and countless derivative copycat bands. Yeah, that’d be cool.”

Nevertheless, Berryman isn’t optimistic about the band’s chances of mainstream success. She feels that “a three-piece all-male band that doesn’t have either the backing of a major label or a carefully crafted and honed image as a true democratic band is at a disadvantage in today’s segmented and derivative radio airwaves. Plus, the lead singer is way too Moby bald to get on magazine covers.”

Berryman admits most of her friends are not on board with her new musical discovery. “Sometimes I’m able to turn my friends on to new music, like the time I discovered an unknown band named The Stooges. We all agreed that The Weirdness had to be just about the best thing they’d ever do.” But her friends remain unconvinced with the Athens band. Friend Quinlin Griffin thinks the band “will never have an unexpected hit song that features a mandolin, a somewhat controversial video that includes quasi-homo-erotic religious imagery, and obtuse lyrics based around Southern colloquialisms.”

Yet Berryman, who considers herself a budding music historian, remains undeterred and plans to dive deeper into the band’s small back catalog. In addition to downloading debut album Around The Sun, she plans to see the new band in concert. She’s quite convinced the band will remain largely unknown. “They’re having to tour with two other bands just to fill the space. You tell me: what chance does that type of band have of hitting the big time?”

Local Woman Listens To Grandson's iPod

When Kirksville High student and self-proclaimed “Northeast Missouri music czar” Larry Walforten forgot his iPod on his senior class trip to Thousand Hills State Park last week, he was more than a little peeved.

“All my friends had Fall Out Boy, Rick Astley, Cameo, and all the other musical visionaries of the 20th century to make this trip bearable. For five nights I had to listen to the sounds of a gently running river stream, the howls of the coyotes, and the calming, steady calls of the owls. Who wants to listen to that crap on a camping trip?”

Yet nothing prepared him for the shock he experienced when he returned home from the trip. His grandmother and legal guardian, 89-year old Eunice Walforten, had discovered Larry’s iPod. While Larry was suffering from both a lack of music and a massive sumac rash he caught on the second day, the woman was busy dissecting every song in her grandson’s collection.

“I discovered the device when I was cleaning Larry’s room on Monday morning. Larry’s a good kid, but he’s a total pig, just like his deadbeat long-gone father," the grandmother stated. “At first I thought it was a garage opener, and then a device for smoking marijuana,” Eunice readily acknowledges in between sips of Sanka.

Although she admits to not following music trends since “Richard ‘Rabbit’ Brown serenaded people on the Pontchartrain,” this hasn’t stopped Eunice from becoming very opinionated regarding Larry’s musical preferences. “I don’t think this young Dylan guy will amount to much,” Eunice says dismissively. “What’s a four-legged forest cloud anyway? In my day, someone who talked like that would rightly be committed.” Yet Eunice does say this “Dylan whippersnapper” has potential: “I absolutely loved Empire Burlesque, and I haven’t heard anything better than `Under The Red Sky' in a long time.”

She likewise dislikes the artists found in Larry’s seldom listened to “Music Cred” playlist. “This Waits fella barks, yelps, and howls like a deranged madman. Unconventional and challenging sounds have no place in my music world.” Eunice also fails to see the charm in Neil Young, the last artist in this playlist. “I’m not too keen on that voice, but I do predict Mr. Young will become a shrewd businessman whose concert tickets will one day cost hundreds of dollars.”

The grandmother also says she’s found herself constantly returning to the music of Black-Eyed Peas and on-stage urinator Fergie time and time again. “Now this gal’s got some real talent and a lot of important things to say, just like FDR in one of his Fireside Chats,” Eunice says enthusiastically. Fergie’s originality and cutting-edge tunes also impress her. “I doubt any musician has ever come up with a better generic, non-offensive, mediocre, and crassly commercial sound.” Yet Eunice doesn’t like Fergie’s chances of reaching the big time. “The American record-buying public’s well-documented disdain for such fluff rife with product placement might end her career though; this type of music never sells millions of albums.”

Larry reports that his grandmother’s constant opinions about his music have left a strain on their relationship. “My grandmother listens to the same music as me,” he laments in complete resignation. “Think it’s cool that an old woman knows all the lyrics to Jay-Z’s ‘99 Problems’ or that she no longer thinks Timbaland is a country in Eastern Europe? Well, it’s not.”

Larry also believes that his grandmother’s discovery of his music collection has cheapened the music for him. “Take Public Enemy for instance. That group understood me; they knew what it was like to grow up as an oppressed, suffering, and moderately affluent white kid in rural Northeast Missouri. Now she plays It Takes A Nation Of Millions for her friends during their games of Mah Jongg.”

Larry isn’t giving up hope though. “I plan to start exploring something called ‘indie rock,’ whatever the hell that means. From what I’ve heard, no one listens to that stuff. It’ll be years before she catches up to that music.”

An Indie Music Junkie's Year-End Best Of List

What would December be without crass commercialism, rampant orgy-like spending, and random year-end lists?

It Was the Best of Concerts, It Was the Worst of Concerts

Elvis Costello and Bob Dylan, October 22, 2007 - In October the two music icons appeared at the Fox Theatre in St. Louis. Costello, armed with an array of guitars, delivered a memorable solo performance full of the spite, anger, humor, and occasional tenderness that mark his best songs. There was crowd participation, furious guitar playing, and a perfect “The Scarlet Tide” to close the set. Then Dylan ambled out, played a couple songs on guitar, and retreated behind his keyboard for a set that sounded like the end days. The mix was horrible, and Dylan could barely wheeze three words at a time as he growled his way through the murk.


Reunion Album That Reconfirmed It All

Beyond - Dinosaur Jr. - Sure, J Mascis looks like the guy you always see in Best Buy monopolizing Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock while children wait impatiently for their crack at it, but Beyond was a tremendous reunion album. With its mix of guitar squall and buried melodies, it stands right alongside You’re Living All Over Me as a classic Dinosaur Jr. album.



Reunion Album That Ruined It All

The Weirdness - The Stooges - Forget that “Lust for Life” is now the theme song for a cruise ship commercial (with the lines about liquor and drugs carefully removed). This underwhelming album by the Stooges killed whatever mystique they had left. Even Steve Albini as “recorder” couldn’t save it.



Best Artist to Have a Song Featured in a Car Commercial

It was an interesting year for Band of Horses. After a spat with fans in San Diego over videotaping of the band’s July 6 performance, the Sub Poppers took some heat for licensing songs to Wal-Mart for use in an online campaign. In recent weeks, the band’s song “Funeral” has been in heavy rotation for a Ford television commercial, marking the strangest use of a song for commercial purposes since Volkswagen used Nick Drake’s “Pink Moon” in 2000.



Best Artist to Not Have a Song Featured in a Car Commercial

That Tom Waits is a bad mofo. In January, Waits won a decision against Adam Opel AG, an offshoot of General Motors, for using a Waits soundalike to sell cars…in Scandinavia. It was the second time in less than two years that Waits won such a lawsuit. Rumors that BMW wants to use Waits’ “Misery is the River of the World” for their 2008 marketing campaign are not yet confirmed.



Favorite Concert

When The National played the Duck Room in St. Louis on June 11, Boxer was freshly released and beginning to garner plaudits that ranged from reserved praise to over-the-top awe. What could have been a sparsely attended show was instead a packed house with an eager, energetic crowd. Relying on the new material but also playing songs from Alligator and Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers, the band delivered an intense, cathartic performance, surpassing the increasing hype. Now, if someone has a recording of it, I’m not hard to reach.



Reissues Are More Than Just Cash Grabs

Bronze – Calenture, The Triffids - The underappreciated 1980s Australian band finally got their due with a nice reissue of their 1987 album Calenture, the follow up to the essential Born Sandy Devotional. The original album, demos, and outtakes were spread out over two discs, plus the album’s packaging was snazzy and liner notes were actually informative.

Silver – Stand in the Fire, Warren Zevon - Long out of print on disc, Warren Zevon’s Stand in the Fire received the digital treatment this year. A recording of a wild, frenzied 1981 performance, the album showed Zevon at his manic best. Four cuts excluded from the original album were included to top it off. Play it loud.

Gold – Daydream Nation, Sonic Youth - Sonic Youth’s much-worshiped Daydream Nation was given a fat dose of bonus tracks this year. The original album is, of course, great, but the real treat here was the second disc, which was jammed full of Sonic Youth goodness, including a live version of each album track, as well as covers of songs by The Beatles, Neil Young, and Captain Beefheart. A nice essay and cool period photos made this reissue an essential purchase.



You Fool, Reissues Just Rob You of Money

Pointless reissues or compilations were certainly not in short supply in 2007. While many major labels could be taken to task for uninspired reissues/compilations, Columbia’s bland, boring, and utterly useless Dylan release represented everything wrong with such releases. With zero unreleased recordings (unless you paid on iTunes), this abomination rehashed most of the same damn songs as Dylan’s many other compilations. With an artist whose vault must be packed with unreleased goodies, lazy stuff like this shouldn’t even exist.



Favorite Albums

Bronze – Neon Bible, Arcade Fire - Even if many music fans and critics blew their loads over 2004’s Funeral, the Arcade Fire’s self-produced sophomore album gave everyone a chance to get fired up again. Even though the images of apocalypse and bombs could grow a little heavy-handed at times, Win Butler’s voice, ranging from howls to everything in between, and the band’s damn loud playing made this album more than just another rant about the sorry state of our world.

Silver – Armchair Apocrypha, Andrew Bird - With the guitar pushed to the forefront, Armchair Apocrypha marked a stylistic shift for Andrew Bird. The songs were highly textured and far more layered than his previous albums; violin loops, drums, whistling, guitars and glockenspiels were thrown together to create a symphonic sound that amazingly didn’t result in garbled mush. The songs could sometimes be decidedly heavy; absurd superstitions, old age, the futility of war and the fall of empires, childhood confusion, and a general helplessness against a vast, impersonal world all unfolded in Bird’s lyrics. There aren’t many albums that sound like this one, and that’s a good thing.

Gold – Boxer, The National - Never has an album whose characters suffer under a veil of fuck-it-all resignation sounded so good. The songs on Boxer invoked themes of broken relationships, people aging quickly beyond their years, and passing, superficial comforts like drugs and booze; even the implied threats of “Start a War” sounded powerless and empty. Evocative lyrics, Matt Berninger’s weary baritone, and the band’s sometimes minimalist, sometimes layered instrumentation combined beautifully to create one of the best albums of the decade.

Waving the Rebel (er, White) Flag: Making Peace With Lynyrd Skynyrd Fans

Hardcore music fans, me included, take insults against their favorite artists personally. To prepare my wife for the recent Elvis Costello show in St. Louis (with Bob Dylan providing a disturbing letdown via garbled mumblings and frog-voiced croaking), I dropped a number of Costello songs on her a few weeks before the show. I was convinced she’d be overwhelmed and completely dig the music. I was as wrong as a “kiss your sister” contest in Arcadia, Louisiana. Every Elvis may indeed have his army, but she clearly wasn’t one of the soldiers. “If you say these are his best songs,” she said with something I detected as a bit of a mocking sneer, “I can’t imagine what the bad ones sound like. All of these sound like carnival songs.”

I was crushed and insulted. Her dissenting opinion registered like a cruel, hard knee to the crotch. I had deliberately steered her away from the crap of Costello (“She,” “God Give Me Strength,” and anything that featured Costello’s occasional excessive vibrato and sissy wimpyness), in favor of classic Costello (no, that doesn’t include North). How she couldn’t like My Aim Is True, This Year’s Model, Armed Forces, and Get Happy!! was beyond me, and borderline grounds for divorce. I argued with her and tried to convince her she was missing The Point. But why did I care if she didn’t share my opinion? Although I couldn’t change her mind, it at least made me understand why some people take criticisms of their favorite performers to heart.

Within these HTML-enhanced pages of Blogcritics, I’ve dished out my share of shallow, petty, innocuous, childish, and fairly obvious insults about musicians, particularly those who have been around since the Hawley-Smoot Tariff was enacted.

These shots have generally been along the following lines: 1 – said musician is old; 2 – said musician is really, really old; 3 – said musician is really, really old and resembles a rotting corpse on stage; and 4 – said musician is really, really, really old, resembles a rotting corpse on stage, and is making a king’s ransom via exorbitant ticket prices.

When I started writing this blog, I expected most of the wounded, snotty, or violent email replies to be provided courtesy of the Dylanphiles of the world, who from previous experience tended to be extremely boorish and to interpret any critique of Heir Bobness as a declaration of war. Well, actually, I didn’t expect any replies at all; blogs are a lot like assholes these days. Everyone’s got one. And most of them stink.

To my surprise, most of these comments emailed under cover of night haven’t come from Dylanphiles. Perhaps that’s because the Dylanphiles don’t feel like they owe anyone a rebuttal at this point; they’ve chosen their horse and they’re betting on it until the, er, wheels fall off.

No, some of the most hilarious, angry, and downright snarky volleys have come from a surprising source: Lynyrd Skynyrd fans, with typical code names like suthernman, skynyrd-rulz-bitch, and bama-luves-the-guvner.

Now I will readily admit I thought all remaining Skynyrd fans were either incarcerated or in that great big trailer park in the sky. But, judging from the reactionary emails I’ve received in response to this posting, apparently I was wrong. Although this article was meant to be pure exaggeration and not taken seriously (not to mention the fact that it was a silly article and that I actually like some of Skynyrd’s honky music), something must have been lost in the translation.

So, motivated by own wounded feelings at my wife’s harsh dismissal of classic Costello and as a peace offering to those mullet-sporting, Wrangler-wearing, Southern Comfort-swilling Freebirds out there, I offer the following concessions:I don’t have any problem (excuse me, I ain’t got no) problem with Skynyrd as a band, even if I am a “Yankee blueblood bastard.”

Just to clarify: my ass and my face don’t serve the same purpose.
You’ve convinced me that “That Smell” is a landmark song. Please no more emails about how “even a jackass with a PC and sympathetic editors” can’t argue against the “bad assed awesomeness” of this song.
There was nothing redneck, gun-totin,’ or Suthern’-luvin’ about Skynyrd. We’ll just let album titles like Gimme Back My Bullets and Nuthin’ Fancy slide. I’ll even ignore song titles like “Don’t Ask Me No Questions” and “Down South Jukin’.”
If it makes you feel better to think that Skynyrd’s use of the Confederate flag was purely meant as a display of Southern pride, and in no way showed blind ignorance or unimaginable stupidity, I’ll play along.
The bravest man I’ve ever met was this guy who brazenly wore a shirt that read, in bold giant black letters across the chest, “Your Favorite Band Sucks.” Of course, this was at a Built To Spill concert with the typical indie crowd, which is to say anyone who took offense to the shirt would direct their anger inward, in the form of classic EMO shoe-gazing.

However, as I exited the venue I noticed a shady fellow in a torn Skynyrd t-shirt eyeing the guy like Robert E. Lee spying the Union army at Second Bull Run. And something told me he had a Free Bird-sized chip on his shoulder about that guy’s t-shirt.

Elvis Costello and Bob Dylan - October 22, 2007, St. Louis, MO

As demonstrated by Elvis Costello at the Fox Theatre in St. Louis on Monday night, follow these simple steps to upstage the headlining musical legend:


Enunciate into the microphone in a language that approximates English. Bonus points if your voice can be heard and your words can be easily understood both when singing near the microphone and when singing unamplified for dramatic effect.
Deliver the songs with passion and energy; squeeze an ungodly amount of music and noise out of only a variety of sound-distorted guitars.
Mix in a few excellent new songs to compliment the older material.
Acknowledge at least once that you are aware of the city, state, planet, or epoch you are currently performing in. This can be something as simple as a “how are ya?” to a story about advice your father gave you.

All kidding aside, it is the equivalent of a musical sin to criticize Bob Dylan nowadays; the man’s a musical genius whose concert tours (1966 Europe, 1975-1976 Rolling Thunder, and too many others to count) and recorded output (Blonde On Blonde, Blood On The Tracks, and, uh, Shot Of Love) speak for themselves and crush most other artists’ masterpieces like a grape. His last three studio albums are outstanding. He’s been on a critical and creative high for the last ten years. Long after all these peon hack bloggers like myself have sprung off this mortal coil, people will still be listening to, writing about, and over-analyzing Dylan’s lyrics and life.

Some of my favorite concert memories are of Dylan shows. In 1999 my then-girlfriend (and now-wife, also along for the bumpy ride for this latest Dylan show) and I saw Dylan with Paul Simon at Riverport Amphitheatre; their spooky duet of “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” is something I’ll never forget, pending senility. In 2004, my brother and I spent three nights waiting outside in the cold March rain for early admission to see Dylan at the Pageant, and the highlights from those shows are too many to name (I’ll take “Senor” and “Man In The Long Black Coat” as my favorites).

But none of this changes the fact that Costello stole the show on Monday night. In an intense, far-too-short solo performance that saw Costello switch guitars nearly every song and pound and hack away at the instrument with fury, the singer covered the usual live standards like “Radio Sweetheart,” “Veronica,” and “(What’s So Funny About) Peace, Love, and Understanding,” none of which sounded stale or color-by-numbers. A reworked “Alison” brought out the sinister, stalker undertones of the song, and “Bedlam” was given a savage treatment that surpassed the version from The Delivery Man.

New songs “Sulfur To Sugar Cane” and “Down Among The Wine And Spirits” were solid as well, and have a definite topical bent to them (maybe the next Costello album will be titled Another Side of Elvis Costello). Costello concluded with “The Scarlet Tide,” Costello’s and T-Bone Burnette’s song from the Civil War epic Cold Mountain. Updated with two lines that reference the current mess in Iraq, the ballad hushed the audience (except for one jackass in the balcony section who shouted uncontrollably for about a minute about chicken feathers or something). Costello ended the song unamplified, his voice easily heard throughout the theatre. The effect was chilling.

If the night ended there, I would have gone home happy. As the house lights went up and the crew began re-assembling the stage for Dylan and his band, the usual pre-Dylan performance things began to happen: Dylanphiles materialized from thin air, sporting their recently-purchased $40 t-shirts. Bootlegs were traded in the bathroom. The horde began to move toward the front of the stage, despite the entire show being reserved seating. I’ve come to accept the fact that for many of Dylan’s more “dedicated” fans, assigned seat numbering is a mere suggestion. When the music starts, you can expect the reserved area to quickly be swallowed up; getting someone’s dancing ass thrust into your face is practically a rite of passage for Dylan concerts.

When Dylan and his band opened with “Leopard-Skin Pillbox Hat,” the rapturous applause was deafening and expected; Dylan’s fans are by and large an energetic, boisterous, and perhaps loyal-to-a-fault bunch. Awkward pelvic thrusts and shoulder gyrations could be seen throughout the theatre, many of the dances resembling a two-hour long epileptic fit.

But something else was immediately apparent: both the sound mix and Dylan’s singing were far below par (and yes, I’m aware that Dylan has never had a “traditional beautiful voice”). The mix was essentially a giant a wall of sound; it was far closer to sounding like My Bloody Valentine than Bob Dylan. When Dylan’s voice could be heard over the murk, the words were largely unintelligible; even a few die-hard lifers seated near me readily admitted that they couldn’t make out the words. Dylan’s voice itself was not in good shape either, alternating between a wheeze and a timid bark.

Blame the lousy mix if you want; perhaps Dylan was trying to sing above the sludge, but it’s undeniable that he was inaudible for most of the performance. When the words could be distinguished, his odd cadence of “three words/pause/three words/pause/repeat” didn’t always work. For every song where this vocal styling succeeded (“It Ain’t Me, Babe” was a high point), another song would suffer from the phrasing. “Visions Of Johanna” and “Summer Days” were victims of this approach, as both songs plodded under the odd phrasing, limping toward the finish line.

I don’t think Dylan mailed the performance in, even if he rarely faced the audience and only briefly acknowledged the audience’s presence. By now, those familiar with Dylan’s live show accept the fact that Dylan will follow his muse live, and the concertgoer can form an opinion from that. The musician should be credited for trying to find new ways to present his material, some of which debuted during the Bronze Age. The obvious risk is that sometimes this succeeds beautifully, and other times it fails miserably. Unfortunately, Dylan’s performance in St. Louis fell into this latter category.

Music Review: Bob Dylan - Dylan (Three-CD Compilation)

I’ll be completely honest here: there is absolutely no reason for another Bob Dylan “best of” compilation. Except, of course, for the obvious financial reasons: such packages cost next to nothing for Columbia to produce, there is a considerable segment of Dylan “completists” who will buy every release of Dylan material no matter how many times it has already been repackaged and recycled, and maybe, just maybe, a few new listeners will discover Dylan for the first time. Of course, this last group primarily consists of approximately four people in the United States and a remote band of primitive hunters living in the Andes Mountains who have never heard of Bob Dylan, but no matter. Nearly 120 years after his debut album, Dylan remains one of Columbia’s major cash cows.

The latest Dylan compilation is creatively titled Dylan (and no, it’s not a reissue of that infamous self-sabotaging album released decades ago). The obvious knee-jerk reaction to any such collection is to dismiss it as an easy cash grab, a cynical way for the music label to feast on the musician’s core fan base and their compulsion to either “support the artist” or to own the musician’s complete catalog. In an era where album sales continue to decline and music packages as artifacts are becoming, at best, part of a small niche market, such releases often come across as thoughtless, hasty, and low-cost ways for the record labels to combat these factors, at the expense of the artist’s loyal/dedicated/psychotic/deranged fans. Unfortunately, Dylan fits this bill.

To be fair, this compilation does have some qualities that might justify it as a purchase for those who get all hot and bothered by album packaging, those who are either unfamiliar with Dylan’s work, or those who only own the “classic” Dylan albums, like Blonde On Blonde, Blood On the Tracks, and, um, Empire Burlesque. For example, the deluxe “limited edition” version (in this case, “limited” means “limited to the number of copies Columbia can sell”) has attractive packaging, including a red cloth-covered box, CDs designed like vinyl albums, a nice booklet with decent liner notes and photos, and several postcards. However, it should also be noted that many of the photos seem vaguely familiar to those included in other Dylan compilations and books. And while this packaging is quite good, it is sometimes eerily reminiscent of Scorpio’s glorious Genuine Live 1966 box set. Nothing more than a coincidence I’m sure; Columbia would never “borrow” ideas from scumbag bootleggers. Right?

To Columbia’s credit, the prices set for this release are fairly reasonable; the deluxe version can be had for under $40 (for those without connections, advance copies for review on blog sites require a fair amount of begging, pleading, and soul-selling at a to-remain-nameless retail outlet). In addition, Columbia is also offering a single-disc version at a substantially lower cost. For those who only want to date occasionally for amusement, I suppose.

This is where praise for this compilation ends; the shortcomings and faults are significant and ultimately make this release an overall disappointment and a non-essential release. The first and most obvious drawback is that the majority of these songs have already been made available on previous Dylan greatest hits packages. Sure, many of Dylan’s best songs are represented here (but for chrissakes, why does the god-awful “Silvio” constantly show up on these Dylan compilations, and where is “Visions of Johanna?”), but many of these have been represented on Dylan compilations since Biograph. We can all bow and genuflect and put these songs on the cultural and historical pedestal where they belong, but at the end of the day, “Like a Rolling Stone” sounds the same no matter how many times it’s reissued and repackaged.

The second problem with this release is that some of the song choices are odd at best. Certainly, it is difficult to include all of Dylan’s best songs over three discs. The man has been recording music since William Howard Taft was president, so some omissions are probably unavoidable. Nevertheless, it’s hard to understand why some of the more slight/throwaway songs were included, including the previously-mentioned and loathed “Silvio,” “All I Really Want To Do,” “On a Night Like This,” and my personal least favorite Dylan song included in this compilation, “Everything Is Broken” (which in my vision of Hell is endlessly played on repeat). The remaining songs are all solid choices, though Columbia missed an opportunity to include some of Dylan’s overlooked or more challenging tunes (“Desolation Row” is just one example).

The final and biggest flaw with this release is that all three discs contain nothing but previously-released material. This is why Dylan fans who have been held by their ankles and had their pants pockets turned inside out by Columbia time and time again can rightly piss and moan about Dylan. In addition, the argument that this release is best for new Dylan fans also seems specious at best; most of the songs included can easily be found on other still-in-print compilations, at a similar or lower price.

With the massive amount of quality unreleased Dylan material that currently only circulates among the dedicated hoard of Dylan collectors and traders, it is difficult to make a rational argument that justifies another Dylan compilation such as this one. Although Columbia has in recent years improved in documenting and releasing archival Dylan material through its Bootleg Series release, there remains a staggering discrepancy between such releases and the color-by-numbers Dylan compilations that are still in print. Hardcore Dylan fans are by and large a collective hungry beast; they devour Dylan material like vultures to a rotting carcass. There have been enough Dylan compilations; now is as good a time as any for Columbia to focus on Dylan material that isn’t already officially available.

Both hardcore Dylanphiles and casual Dylan fans will likely already have these songs in their music collections. Fancy packaging and pretty pictures aside, it’s hard to recommend Dylan for purchase, despite the reasonable price tag. With so much unreleased Dylan material still locked in the vaults or only available via non-official routes, another easy compilation of previously-released material comes across as nothing more than a quick cash grab.