Tiny Tapes

"The Basement Tapes" is singer-songwriter Bob Dylan's sixteenth studio album. The album's tracks were recorded at house's in and around Woodstock, New York between the years 1967 and 1968.

Cassette tapes. Remember those? Those things with the dual spools and loads of wide brown plastic recording string that’d occasionally unravel and hang out of the shell, requiring a pencil and firm wrist to spin back into place? Yeah, well, once upon a time, old-school sound systems contained cassette decks for the express purpose of recording shows, and these “cassette” things were a standard part of every tour. Motörhead were certainly no exception, recording show after show. They contain gold, pure aural gold, and had for many years sat hundreds of feet underground in a small cave Lemmy owned, guarded by small, hairy centurions in Roman armor with small spears and bad attitudes. Only the magic password would release them, and thankfully, Lem had scribbled it down and left it inside an old sketch book for us (no, were won’t tell you the password, although it did have the words ’nie nie nie’ in it). There were loads of the dirty, dusty, greasy little buggers gathered, with the likes of Lyon, Liverpool, Hamburg and Chippenham (!!) scrawled in biro on the tiny labels alongside a date…and thus we are delighted to announce that this unique collection of live gems will now be heard by the world, via carefully digitized transfers, in the series titled The Löst Tapes.

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 Basement Tapes makes me feel warm and comfortable, like putting on a warm flannel blanket on a chilly night. The songs are relaxed and low-key, with an unpretentious style that invites the listener into this timeless collection of real Americana tunes. Many of the songs feel like they could have been written in the 1800's, they have such a timeless quality. As far as the actual music, most of the songs are generally what you could call folk-rock, in that eclectic style The Band did so well. The singing is relaxed and pleasant, with none of the vicious snarl that Dylan had used when he moved from acoustic folk to electric. I think a lot of the charm of this album is because the musicians believed they were only recording rough demos that were never meant for public release. Hence, there was no pressure to be perfect. But what perfection they achieved in their relaxed, low-fi setting. If you like The Band, you will like this album. If you like Dylan, you will like this album. Even if you don't like The Band or Dylan, you may still like this album, which stands as a unique musical accomplishment.

The Basement Tapes can be heard as a manifesto for the '90s' underlying Americana agenda or as the greatest album never intended for commercial release. Homegrown 1967 recordings taped in the Band's fabled Big Pink hermitage in Saugerties, New York, many of the 24 songs resonated across American and English rock and folk long before their belated 1975 release through studio interpretations by the Byrds, Fairport Convention, Manfred Mann, Peter, Paul & Mary, and numerous other acolytes, as well as through myriad unauthorized bootlegs. Good as the covers were, Dylan and the Band rolled their own with an extraordinary coherence that sounds only more authentic in these rough-hewn, intimate, always musical performances, which dovetail with Dylan's stark John Wesley Harding and the Band's stunning debut, Music from Big Pink as well as the presciently lo-fi The Band. At a time when most rock culture was entranced with its post-atomic origins, these songs sounded timeless, plunging into pre-industrial folk, turn of the (20th) century barrelhouse and blues, and crackling, vintage rock & roll excursions with offhand verve and a thrilling disregard for what was hip. Time has only reinforced their visionary power.