The devout would be forgiven for feeling the Cult of Dylan has lost some exclusivity in recent years. The release of two very hip, very high profile films (plus another, only slightly Masked and Anonymous mess) have been only one face of an accessible coolness also marked by the first volume of Dylan’s Chronicles and his remastered catalogue overflowing the racks or virtual racks of your favorite record shop. To that end, however, this new merchandise goes some way toward bridging the distance between Bobcats who may have been at the Free Trade Hall and current undergrads who still find social currency in debating the Electric Question. To be fair, the films and last two volumes of ‘official bootlegs’ have only helped propogate the false centrality of that early schism, turning attention away from the welcome focus of this week’s Bootleg Series, Volume 8: Tell Tale Signs—the glory of what the late Edward Said might call Dylan’s ‘late style’.
Thus, for any fans living in a cave since that renaissance began with 1989’s Oh Mercy, this set serves the retrospective purpose quite well. More than that, though, it succeeds at dramatizing our hero’s profound resurrection as well as any film. First of all, we have a couple of stand-out covers (Robert Johnson’s ‘32-20 Blues’ and Jimmie Rodgers’ ‘Miss the Mississippi’) from that transitional period in the late eighties when Dylan was having another of his come-to-Jesus moments, tapping his traditionalist roots in the World Gone Wrong sessions.
The story continues then with live cuts and alternate versions drawing out nuances of his revived songcraft that (with all due respect to Daniel Lanois) were lost in some cases in the ethereal production of Oh Mercy. The best two songs from that album, ‘Ring Them Bells’ and ‘Most of the Time’, are assured their place in posterity by a quite spiritual live take of the former and a solo acoustic take of the latter which hearkens hauntingly back to the mythos of his 60’s albums, complete with harmonica.
From 1997’s Time Out of Mind come a couple of shockingly unreleased masterpieces in ‘Dreamin’ of You’ and ‘Red River Shore’, a 7 1/2 minute epic already sending chills down the collective spine of online fan forums. The double-highlight from the Grammy-winning Love and Theft (2001) is two priceless versions of ‘Mississippi’, originally recorded for Time Out of Mind. Both are more low-key heartbreaking than the album version, one of them solo but for Lanois’ sparse noodling.
Although, chronologically speaking, this tale told by Tell Tale Signs draws to a poignant close with the inclusion of a couple of alt-takes from 2006’s Modern Times and some contributions to the soundtracks of recent films not about Dylan, the fact that these songs aren’t ordered chronologically only emphasizes the forcefulness of this period as a whole, allowing this essential chapter to find its own way into followers from all corners.
Once again, since its inception in 1991 with the boxed release of Volumes 1-3, Dylan’s ‘official bootleg’ series has gone well past trendsetting, with a consistency among outtakes and alt-takes that makes anyone else’s use of the word ‘vault’ seem quaint.
– Bootleg Vol. 8: Tell Tale Signs is out 7 October in a two-disc (reviewed here) or three-disc version, for anyone needing to prove their faith to Sony by shelling out 100 quid for ‘deluxe’-ness.