MILLION DOLLAR BASH > BOB DYLAN, THE BAND, AND THE BASEMENT TAPES by Sid Griffin

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Greil Marcus’s Invisible Republic book and other critical tomes have long since established the notion that Mr. Dylan and the outfit soon to be known as The Band were engaged in some sort of musical, time-warping process when they holed up near Woodstock, New York in 1967, and recorded the rooted-yet-new sounding “Basement Tapes.” Label: Jawbone Press
[RATING: 3]

Greil Marcus’s Invisible Republic book and other critical tomes have long since established the notion that Mr. Dylan and the outfit soon to be known as The Band were engaged in some sort of musical, time-warping process when they holed up near Woodstock, New York in 1967, and recorded the rooted-yet-new sounding “Basement Tapes.” But nobody has really offered, before this well-researched and detailed telling, a convincing picture of how exactly that process worked. Using interviews with participants (including Robbie Robertson) , and early adopters of the material (from The Byrds’ and Manfred Mann, among others), and knowledgeable description of such specific matters as the musical and audio equipment lurking behind the rootsy tones created, writer-performer Sid Griffin comes up with a surprisingly fresh, revealing telling of the “basement noise” story. A strong point is the lack of Dylan-fixation; Griffin is as concerned with the tale of how the practiced r&b bar band, The Hawks, turned into Americana progenitors working with Bob as how he became more firmly entangled up in group music creation working with them. The near-forensic, detailed examination of the Dylan motorcycle accident of the time may strike some as excessive, but Griffin, of Long Ryders and Coal Porter’s fame and Gram Parsons reporting previously, shows a working musician’s sensibility is just what’s been needed to bring clarity to this much-mythologized musical encounter.


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