Invisible Republic Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes

Out of a house called Big Pink came music that remains as seductive and baffling today as it was over thirty years ago. âe~Marcusâe(tm)s contention is that there can be found in American folk a community as deep, as electric, as perverse and as conflicted as all America, and that the songs Dylan recorded out of the public eye, in a basement in Woodstock with the group who would later become The Band, are where that community as a whole gets to speak . . . Books this good should be burntâe(tm) Mark Sinker, Wire âe~We owe God a death, and Greil Marcus owed all Godâe(tm)s children a lifework on Bob Dylan. And here it is, one heaven of a book . . . what Marcus brings to these songs is a variety of good things: fierce fervour, social convictions, a loving discrimination, never a touch of envy and an extraordinary ability to evoke in words the very feel (throaty, threatening, thorough, thick with thought) of a manâe(tm)s voice, of this manâe(tm)s voiceâe(tm) Christopher Ricks, Guardian âe~You will want to read its most provoking parts over and over and chances are, twenty years from now, it will stand as one of the classics of American criticismâe(tm) Mikal Gilmore, Observer âe~A rare ability to describe the genesis of a song and make it sound better than any song you have ever heardâe(tm) Tim Adams, Times Literary Supplement