The official release of
The Basement Tapes -- which were first heard on a 1968 bootleg called
The Great White Wonder -- plays with history somewhat, as
Robbie Robertson overemphasizes
the Band's status in the sessions, making them out to be equally active to
Dylan, adding in demos not cut at the sessions and overdubbing their recordings to flesh them out. As many bootlegs (most notably the complete five-disc series) reveal, this isn't entirely true and
the Band were nowhere near as active as
Dylan, but that ultimately is a bit like nitpicking, since the music here (including
the Band's) is astonishingly good. The party line on
The Basement Tapes is that it is Americana, as
Dylan and
the Band pick up the weirdness inherent in old folk, country, and blues tunes, but it transcends mere historical arcana through its lively, humorous, full-bodied performances.
Dylan never sounded as loose, nor was he ever as funny as he is here, and this positively revels in its weird, wild character. For all the apparent antecedents -- and the allusions are sly and obvious in equal measure -- this is truly
Dylan's show, as he majestically evokes old myths and creates new ones, resulting in a crazy quilt of blues, humor, folk, tall tales, inside jokes, and rock. The
Band pretty much pick up where
Dylan left off, even singing a couple of his tunes, but they play it a little straight, on both their rockers and ballads. Not a bad thing at all, since this actually winds up providing context for the wild, mercurial brilliance of
Dylan's work -- and, taken together, the results (especially in this judiciously compiled form with its expert song selection, even if there's a bit too much
Band) rank among the greatest American music ever made. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine
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