The Basement Tapes

Oh the blizzard outside is frightful, but the basement is so delightful. No better soundtrack for it, here's The Basement Tapes. 

This is the original 1975 version, not the "complete" 2011 anthology. I won't dive into the complex history of critical scepticism, except to say there are two fundamentally different ways you can approach this double album. At the time, people generally had the notion that this was a retrospective release, a chronicle of Bob Dylan and The Band in the basement of Big Pink post motorcycle crash, pre Americana becoming an official genre. In that sense, it is kind of weird that there are two separate albums going on. 

In contrast, i think we should look at it as the culmination of the conjoined evolution of Bob Dylan and the Band from 1967 to 1975. That may be a fiddly distinction, but i think it makes a big difference. It's not really a SOAD Steal This Album kind of release of previously bootlegged material, nor is it an intentional concept album in its conception, it's the result of two creative forces crossing paths and producing a wide array of material together. 

As for the two intertwined albums, yes there really is a Bob Dylan album and a The Band album all mixed together, and that's actually the exciting part. This is the origin story of The Band, and the major subplot is that Bob Dylan is half of that story. How does that not make your brain tingle with electrified delight? 

What's the difference? Well, the idea of listening to the 160 something songs they recorded as a factual historical document tastes like paper mache, expecting this to be a Bob Dylan album smells like lavender scented dog turds, and The Band isn't just the backup band anymore. It's not Bob Dylan and the Hawks, it's this newly created, multi-layered conceptual entity called "The Band" in all its layered meanings, and this is specifically Bob Dylan's time in and around it. You may or may not hear it, but the later studio recorded material sans Dylan included here isn't supposed to be heard like a 3rd The Band album, and the Dylan songs are likewise not here because these guys just happened to be the available musicians at the time. The two entities meet at this crossroad, exchange pleasantries and jam for a while, then continue on their own paths transformed by that exchange. 

Maybe it's the anti-chronological aspect that confuses people. Is it the end of a Dylan era, a prequel to The Band, or is it a new anti-mainstream direction for Dylan elided with a summation of The Band? The real magic is that it's both at the same time and that creates an exciting intellectual friction; the opposite of cognitive dissonance, a new harmonic entity greater than the sum of its parts. 

Maybe a typographical distinction will help. It's not Bob Dylan & the Band, it's Bob Dylan AND The Band. You get familiar things in a new context, new things in a familiar context, the absence of things that don't really contribute to the gumbo, and the inclusion of things that couldn't properly exist outside of it. It's objectively delicious, but maybe not an everyday kind of dish. Save it for a special occasion, like when you're snowed in and have absolutely no inclination or need to venture out. Delightful.