disco talk

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33963, 2 October 1975, Page 4

disco talk

The Great White Hope is back, and this time he sounds better. When Bob Dylan met an obscure group of Canandian musicians in the basement of a house at Woodstock, New York, in 1967, he never intended the musical session to be put on a phonograph album. But a clandestine bunch of bootleggers got hold of the tape and distributed it around the United States in a white album labelled ■T.G.W.H.” (The Great White Hope). To avoid being prosecuted for the illegal record, there was no identification either on the record jacket or the record itself. Dylan was in seclusion after a motor-cycle accident and was just coming together with his back-up band, then called the Hawks, for a friendly session. Unfortunately, the bootlegged record’s sound quality was bad. It sounded as if it had been recorded through a door by some ineot peeping tom. Finally, after the back-up musicians became established on their own as perhaps the best American rock group — The Band — and Dylan seems to be out of hiding for good. The Basement Tapes have been released officially (C.B.S. 2SBP-474334). Music on this two-record set is the best vintage Dvlan heard for a long time, complete with one song no-one seemed to know he had ever written and six "new” songs from The Band, who had never recorded an album when th* raoes were made. Dylan has often been criticised for hastily tossing together musicians and taking them for a headlong fling through a recording session, then releasing an imnerfect result. That cannot be said for this set. The Band, even at an eariv stage, were disciplined musicians with instruments ranging from the electric lead guitar of Robbie Robertson to the or»»n of Garth Hudson. Whenever Dvlan and The Band have been together, especially on thei<- American tour in 1974. the music has been intricate and nearly flawless, giving the audience a hard choice between listening to the cascade of words or the music behind them.

When the original basement tines were made.

Dylan was between the electronic rock style of “Blonde on Blonde” and the stark morality tales — with only a guitar and mouth harp for background — of the “John Wesley Harding” album. In many ways, the tapes between are the real roots of what came before and what he did afterwards, and they are the obvious groundwork for The Band’s style of American back country music. The Band’s six songs, recorded in the basement a year before they had ever recorded an album, match the quality of their later “Music From Big Pink” recording. Probably the best are “Ain’t No More Cane,” a traditional chain gang song, and the love songs “Bessie Smith” and “Kate’s Been Gone.” Two Dylan songs which The Band recorded on its first album are also here — “Tears Of Rage” and “This Wheel’s On Fire,” with Dylan as lead singer. When rumours about the basement tapes were rife, there was never any mention of a long Dylan song called “Goin’ To Acapulco," and its words were not published in a recent book of Dvlan’s writing, both recorded and un-recorded. That song is the only real Dvlan surprise on the re-mastered album, and it is a good one. Other songs such as “Million Dollar Bash” and “Tiny Montgomery” have been heard before by bo'' ,, eg fans, but never this clearly. Dylan’s work with The Band has always been his most infectious. During the same basement tapes period, he performed with them during a Woody Guthrie memorial concert at Carnegie Hall. Then it was not until 1974 that a new studio album with The Band’s back-up, “Planet Waves,” was released just before the live tour. With The Band apparently in semi-retirement — they have not made an album of new material for several years and performed only one new song during the 1974 concerts — this album mav be the last chance for some time to hear them at their best. Dvlan should be around again much sooner. He has remained visible since his latest “Blood On The Tracks" album and has been performing new songs. one 10-minute ballad about the murdered Mafia chieftian Joev Gallo, at New York City folk clubs. At this stage in his onagain, off-again public life, and with previous releases of mediocre material on fill-in albums, he must have thought it was a good time to bring some of the qualitv music out in the open. —Stan Darling