February Album of the Month: Bob Dylan's Self Potrait, Another Self Potrait and The Complete Basement Tapes

It's been a while since I've done one of these so I figured I'd make up for lost time by doing 2 double albums and a 6 disc boxed set!

I had a friend from high school who had a four track cassette recorder.   Every six months or so he would have a new 'album' that was a collection of his most recent recordings.  He actually got pretty good at it and many of the recordings were almost professional in their quality (pretty damn miraculous if you consider the technology--- this wasn't Pro-Tools).  In any case, the recordings were often documents of what he was into at the time:  he dated a girl who played flute, so there would be some songs with flutes on them; he dug up his dad's old Hank Williams records, so there would be a country songs; he'd be really into classic rock one week so there would be an attempt at a Zeppelin/Aerosmith type song. Some of them were recorded with other friends and musicians, various band incarnations, some were all him. Now, he was pretty talented so these were all distinctly him but it was clear that he was wearing many of his influences on his sleeve on many of the recordings.

And that's what I feel we get with these three Dylan projects: the sound of a guy messing around.  A very talented guy.... but messing around nonetheless.  Sometimes he'd mess around with some friends, sometimes he'd mess around on his own. He'd play around with different styles and sounds, play old favorites, popular songs of the time, and originals. Sometimes he'd do his 'Country Crooner' voice, sometimes his old 'Nasaly' one (on his version of  "The Boxer" he duets using each of them). Sometimes the results would be brilliant, sometimes they would be ... interesting. But, they would always be Dylan. These recordings, most of which were never intended for commercial release (even the original Self-Portrait is ambiguous on this), are the sound of an artists trying to find a new voice (after already establishing a good 2 or 3 for himself in the previous decade).

Key Tracks: Basement Tapes: "Folsom Prison Blues", "I'm Not There", "Going to Alcapoco", "It Ain't Me, Babe", "Odds and Ends", "One Kind Favor", "Lo and Behold", Self-Portrait: "Like a Rolling Stone" (Live), "The Boxer" Another Self-Portrait: "Highway 61 Revisited" (Live), "Days of '49", "If Not For You", "Working on a Guru", "New Morning (with horns)"