AThe Basement Tapes Complete:The Bootleg Series, Volume 11 (2014)
Track Listing
Forget it. Too much to type.
It is a curious ambition in the modern era: to assemble and release 139 recordings from a set of private sessions nearly half a century after their original creation. Yet The Bootleg Series Vol. 11: The Basement Tapes Complete does precisely that—offering a comprehensive catalogue of Bob Dylan’s legendary 1967 sessions with The Band (then known simply as his backing group). This collection is as much an archival monument as it is a musical release, and it is not, in any traditional sense, designed for the casual listener.
These recordings—long mythologized, frequently bootlegged, and finally distilled into an official 1975 release—occupy a significant chapter in Dylan’s catalogue. The original Basement Tapes double album, curated and coherent, captured the spontaneous creativity of the sessions while still providing a listener-friendly experience. It was lauded, justifiably, for its warmth and its unpretentious, rootsy charm. The songs seemed to tumble out effortlessly, as though conjured from the walls of the Woodstock house where they were laid down.
The Complete set, however, abandons curation in favor of near-total inclusivity. The result is an exhaustive compendium, brimming not only with alternate takes but also false starts, fragmented performances, interstitial chatter, and the ambient texture of unfiltered studio space. What the 1975 release alluded to with finesse, this collection delivers with brute force.
To approach this set as a traditional album would be folly. It is instead a document—rich in historical context but challenging in its length and inconsistency. There are brilliant moments here, undeniably: songs that glimmer with the playful ingenuity and back-porch intimacy that define Dylan at his most relaxed. But these are scattered across a sea of repetition, redundancy, and rough-hewn fragments.
The value of this release, then, lies not in musical novelty, but in archival completeness. It is aimed squarely at the completist, the scholar, the devotee for whom every cough, every muttered aside, and every discarded take offers insight. For these listeners, The Basement Tapes Complete is nothing short of essential. But for the casual fan or even the reasonably committed admirer, the original 1975 album—measured, edited, and thoughtfully assembled—remains the definitive statement.
One is reminded of the nature of bootlegs in the pre-digital age, when scarcity itself lent them mystique. In the 1970s, to possess even a snippet of unreleased material was to uncover a hidden truth. In 2015, when every outtake is available at the click of a button, the thrill is dulled by abundance.
Still, it is difficult not to admire the audacity of this release. That it exists at all is a testament to the enduring fascination with Dylan’s most fertile and enigmatic period. Whether one sees it as overindulgence or a gift depends entirely on how deeply one wishes to dig into this particular "basement".
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