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Whistle Stopper - The Basement Tapes
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List Price: $19.98
Our Price: $18.57
Your Save: $ 1.41 ( 7% )
Availability:
Manufacturer: Sony
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Audio CD
EAN: 0074643368223
Label: Sony
Manufacturer: Sony
Number Of Discs: 2
Publisher: Sony
Release Date: 1990-10-25
Studio: Sony
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Strictly For Aficionados
Comment: Parts of this review were used in a review of The "Genuine" Basement Tapes from this same period. I make most of the same objections here for this set as I did there, except if you need to choose between the two the quality of the production values here is greater than on the former. Although the more I listen to Volume 5 of the "genuine" with that "Joshua Gone Barbados" and hard to hear but mesmerizing cover by Dylan of " I Forgot To Remember to Forget" and a couple of others I am starting to waiver.
In a review of Bob Dylan's "The Freewheeling Bob Dylan" elsewhere in this space I noted:
"In reviewing Bob Dylan's 1965 classic album "Bringing All Back Home" (you know, the one where he went electric) I mentioned that it seemed hard to believe now that both as to the performer as well as to what was being attempted that anyone would take umbrage at a performer using an electric guitar to tell a folk story (or any story for that matter). I further pointed out that it is not necessary to go into all the details of what or what did not happen with Pete Seeger at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 to know that one should be glad, glad as hell, that Bob Dylan continued to listen to his own drummer and carry on a career based on electronic music."
And I am still glad of that fact. What I am less enamored of is the virtual cottage industry that has grown up around various, bootleg, basement, cellar, barn, attic or other odd locations versions of Dylan's work, electric or acoustic. This archival material is nice for folk, rock and cultural historians but I would argue that Mr. Bob Dylan's usually well-produced albums are after over forty years more than enough to listen to without having to get into the minutia of his career. And, somehow, left to feel that one has missed something without this other more esoteric material. That same sentiment applies to the virtuoso work of The Band in their heyday. And certainly to their joint work here. In short, this two disc set of practices, outtakes, cuts, etc. done with The Band while Dylan was "hiding" out in rural New York after his motorcycle accident are strictly for aficionados.
That said, for those who insist on getting their little hands on this material here is the "scoop". "Tears Of Rage" ; "You Ain't Going Nowhere"; "Yazoo Street Scandal" and "Goin' To Acapulco" are what you are getting this CD for. That does not seem like enough given what I mentioned above.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Basement Tapes
Comment: The Basement Tapes is Dylans 1975 release and is a collection of songs that were recorded during sessions that took place between 1967 and 1975. Here we get a well written essay by Greil Marcus. We also get a listing of the muisicians and what they played. However, we get no lyrics and the photographs are pretty shoddy which is a shame. 4/5.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Necessary
Comment: "The Basement Tapes" are a necessary piece of music if you desire to have a knowledge of both Dylan's and The Band's careers. Great music and indispensable.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Is not an essential recording
Comment: It is good but it is nowhere near as good as his breakthrough albums like Highway 61 Revisited, Bringing it all back home, Blonde on Blonde.
I've tried to like this but first of all I don't like The Band that much so that spoils it for me right away because they are very prominent in this album. I just can't get past that. It might be great for some people but not for me.
Customer Rating:
Summary: It Can Be Very Easily Done
Comment: Okay, a lot of this material has seen official release, and it's not likely to get re-packaged or augmented any time soon, so here's whatcha gotta do: download this from someplace legal (like here) so Bob will get his money (give him a string bean -- he's a hungry man!). Actually, just download these: Odds And Ends, Million Dollar Bash, Goin' To Acapulco, Lo And Behold!, Clothes Line Saga, Apple Suckling Tree, Please Mrs. Henry, Tears Of Rage, Too Much Of Nothing, Yea! Heavy And A Bottle Of Bread, Crash on The Levee, Tiny Montgomery, You Ain't Goin' Nowhere, Nothing Was Delivered, Open the Door Homer and This Wheel's On Fire.
Then get Quinn the Eskimo from Biograph. The Bootleg Series 1-3 has Santa Fe and I Shall Be Released. I'm Not There is on the soundtrack album of the same name. You now have twenty tracks with a running time of about 62 minutes. Burn it. The result gets five stars. This is the album that goes between Blonde On Blonde and John Wesley Harding on your Dylan shelf and in the artistic chronology. Yeah, it's rough (it's a home recording), but it's real. In lieu of a new package, cut out a picture of Bob and slide it into the jewel case. Tell him I said it was alright.
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Editorial Reviews:
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The Basement Tapes can be heard as a manifesto for the '90s' underlying Americana agenda or as the greatest album never intended for commercial release. Homegrown 1967 recordings taped in the Band's fabled Big Pink hermitage in Saugerties, New York, many of the 24 songs resonated across American and English rock and folk long before their belated 1975 release through studio interpretations by the Byrds, Fairport Convention, Manfred Mann, Peter, Paul & Mary, and numerous other acolytes, as well as through myriad unauthorized bootlegs. Good as the covers were, Dylan and the Band rolled their own with an extraordinary coherence that sounds only more authentic in these rough-hewn, intimate, always musical performances, which dovetail with Dylan's stark John Wesley Harding and the Band's stunning debut, Music from Big Pink as well as the presciently lo-fi The Band. At a time when most rock culture was entranced with its post-atomic origins, these songs sounded timeless, plunging into pre-industrial folk, turn of the (20th) century barrelhouse and blues, and crackling, vintage rock & roll excursions with offhand verve and a thrilling disregard for what was hip. Time has only reinforced their visionary power. --Sam Sutherland
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