Once Again On The Never-Ending Bob Dylan Bootleg Series-Volume 12-The Good Years

CD Review

From The Pen Of Zack James 

Bob Dylan: Bootleg Series: Volume Twelve, 2015  

 

If have spilled much cyber-ink touting the fact that in my youth I was a 1960s folk minute aficionado (and still like the genre although I would say fan rather than aficionado now). I have gone over (some say, some of my friends say, if you want to know, gone on and on) how the fresh breeze of the early 1960s that affected my generation in many varied ways pushed folk music, really the search for American musical roots, to the fore in the face of the onslaught and then temporary demise of classic rock and roll which had many of us searching for something that “spoke” to us. I discovered folk by accident one night when I was turning the dial of my transistor radio and heard a sound that was interesting if foreign to my ear. That had been the voice of the late Dave Von Ronk, folksinger, folk historian and big influence on the early days of the folk minute around Greenwich Village. From then I on continued to listen weekly to the show which had been on Sunday nights for a couple of hours, attend coffeehouses, a source of cheap dates by the way if the girl you were interested in was interested in folk music, went to concerts, and went to the Mecca of the folk day, the summer Newport Folk Festivals. For a few years, maybe longer that was my number one genre (squeeze in remember between classic rock, Elvis and the guys) and the blues, Son House country blues and Howlin’ Wolf electric blues). 

All of which leads, leads of necessity to Bob Dylan, to the early Bob Dylan when that whiny twangy voice of his was totally submerged as a distraction once you heard his lyrics, and the intensity that he brought to that part of his musical career. Those were the “protest song” day when he aspired, or maybe we thought his aspired to be the voice of his generation, our generation which was concerned about civil rights, nuclear disarmament, the fight against the military and the search for some social justice which we felt was sorely lacking. That part of Dylan’s career eventually faded, faded a lot, and he got more personal, more symbolic (if only to himself), more reflective in his lyrics. It is that work, good work believe me which some critics have called his “golden age,” that has been placed as Volume 12 of his never-ending bootleg series. (I started out using that “never-ending” kiddingly after Volume 5 but apparently I was a prophet ahead of my time.). This is the time of the Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited and masterpieces like Like A Rolling Stone, something of a national youth anthem at the time. And so no question that this is a good period to grab his CD albums from. But here is where you get into the aficionado aspect of Dylan-mania. Do you need a six CD set of outtakes, variations, mistakes and other happenings to keep you in thrall even if these days the quality of the sound is better with the modern technology and Columbia Records has done a good job of using that in this material. If you do grab this one with both fists. Me, as it turned out I am really just a fan, okay.