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Album Details

• Artist: Bob Dylan
• Album: No Direction Home: The Soundtrack
• Label: Columbia
• Year of Release: 2005
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: patchen on 2005-10-12

This collection of outtakes, like the Martin Scorcese documentary, focuses on Dylan's career from the beginning right up until the 1966 motorcycle accident that forced him into seclusion. There are a lot of rarities from the early folk days, both live and home recordings, but the real meat is on the second disc, which is full of outtakes and live versions from the Bringing It all Back Home, highway 62 Revisited period. Included are newly remastered cuts from his famous electric set at Newport in 1965. Now you can hear from yourself if the folkies really did boo him; in any event, it is revelatory to hear just how nasty and raw his version of "Maggie's Farm" is at that show. Guitarist Mike Bloomfield rightly emerges once more as the hero not only of the first few electric shows, but as session man during the recording of those classic albums.
The first disc contains mostly live versions of Dylan during the folk years, and it is good to think again about how the other-worldy, epic poem wordplay of tunes like "It's All Over Now, baby Blue", "Mr. Tambourine Man", and "Masters of War." Whereas the folkies were reverent during "Blowin in the Wind", remember that around this time they gave full attention to the Kingston Trio; audiences on these unearthed tracks sound stunned, as if trying to wrap their heads around something totally alien. They were.
Still, it is the second disc that is the winner. "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" and "Desolation Row" in particular are given raging run-throughs. Those mid-sixties records captured Dylan at moment when he was re-defining what could be considered popular music, and was willing to pay the price for those pains taken to do so. Even at 64, he still doesn't give a fuck. He is not influencing too many people these days, he is just still playing things his way.

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