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Post Judeo-Christian lyrics and Johnny Cash duets, Columbia Records releases The Basement Tapes<\/i> in 1975, approximately eight years after Bob Dylan and the Band (then the Hawks) recorded them in the basement of his Woodstock refuge. <\/span><\/p>\n Not unlike when he went electric, Dylan changed the game, singing 107 stripped down, low fidelity ballads that sounded like a whisper under psychedelic rock\u2019s recent explosion. It\u2019s not even so much the songs themselves as what they created\u2014 a reemergence of Americana, room for bleakness during the summer of love, not to mention the sheer quantity of the recordings (which has a Jack Kerouac single-spaced, taped together <\/span>On the Road<\/span> manuscript type magnitude). Rolling Stone ranked The Basement Tapes<\/i> #292 on their list of 500 greatest albums<\/span> and it\u2019s widely regarded that, while lauded on their own merits, The Basement Tapes<\/i> is what put the Band on the map. <\/span><\/p>\n So taking all this in\u2014the circumstances for Dylan, the vastness of recordings, the return to folk for a guy who killed himself going electric, and the legacy it left for singer\/songwriters forever (think Wilco, the Waterboys, Billy Bragg)\u2014 and now imagine that there are more. That\u2019s right. Unrecorded, half-written, scribbled Dylan songs unknown to the world until 2014. <\/span><\/p>\n If you\u2019re a music guy, like T Bone Burnett, this is like finding the library of Alexandria didn\u2019t burn after all. And if you\u2019re smart, like T Bone Burnett, you figure out how to do something with these pieces of lyrical gold.<\/span><\/p>\n And that\u2019s how we got The New Basement Tapes.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n Week of August 4<\/p><\/div>\n Recording of The New Basement Tapes<\/i> started when songwriter and producer T Bone Burnett got Elvis Costello, Rhiannon Giddens, Jim James, Taylor Goldsmith, and Marcus Mumford all in a studio at Capitol Records, 47 years after Dylan penned the songs they would record. The only catch was, there was no music. Handwritten lyrics in Dylan\u2019s careless scrawl, sure, but no melody, no notes, no instruments, not even \u201cguitar solo here?\u201d scribbled in the margins. The group, then, was undertaking the not so trite task of putting music to the lyrics of one of the greatest songwriters of all time.<\/p>\n So they did.<\/span><\/p>\n Over two weeks the group wrote, recorded, experimented, rerecorded, called in Johnny Depp, and rererecorded over 30 songs, 20 of which made the album. With no lineup and a plethora of talent, the group switched parts and instruments, Mumford singing lead on one of the most popular songs, Kansas City<\/i>, Goldsmith leading the charge on rewriting the music for it, and Giddens bringing in gospel singers to help her find the right melody for Lost on the River<\/a>. <\/i><\/span><\/p>\n In Showtime\u2019s documentary of the recording sessions, Lost Songs: The Basement Tapes Continued<\/i>, Jim James of My Morning Jacket brings his distinctive voice and penchant for the funk and blues inspired, Goldsmith lobbies for his version of Kansas City<\/a><\/i>, (the version that ends up on the album) over Mumford\u2019s, and Burnett refuses to let anyone leave\u2014refuses to let any interpretation go unheard. Burnett describes those two weeks, saying: \u201cWhat transpired during those two weeks was amazing for all of us. There was a deep well of generosity and support in the studio at all times, which reflected the tremendous trust and generosity shown by Bob in sharing these lyrics with us in the first place.\u201d<\/span> What\u2019s left is a bold, musically adventurous, deeply curious, and exceedingly fun album of 20 songs that can almost make you forget who wrote them in the first place.<\/span><\/p>\n Week of September 1<\/p><\/div>\n What\u2019s often lost behind names like Elvis Costello and Marcus Mumford is the fact that The New Basement Tapes<\/i> is, ultimately, a fan album. I\u2019ll concede that it\u2019s hard to think of professional musicians as fans, no matter how languidly they praise other bands or distill their musical pedigree\u2014but this aspect of them is not to be lost. Before Goldsmith was twelve, I can bet he was learning Bob Dylan songs on the guitar. When Jim James goes to a Wilco concert, it\u2019s not as Jeff Tweedy\u2019s compatriot but as a member of an audience. It takes a concerted effort to remember musicians in their humanity\u2014that is, their capacity to still be a fan. To not make this effort would ignore the foundation of the album as a creative effort of fans, albeit very talented fans, to do justice to the work of another artist. Exempting the Costello and Giddens and Mumford from their role as fans would be a disservice to both them and Dylan. Because, when we\u2019re talking about Bob Dylan, sorta like Jesus, no one\u2019s an equal and everyone\u2019s a fan\u2014fans with professional careers of their own, studio time, and the pull to call in Johnny Depp to play guitar on a track\u2014but fans, nonetheless. <\/span><\/p>\n Less stigmatized and perhaps more fruitful, The New Basement Tapes<\/i> is not altogether unlike popular fanfiction or fan art that is a product of fandoms ranging from books like Twilight to TV shows like Fox\u2019s Glee, except, of course, The New Basement Tapes<\/i> gets advantage of having Dylan\u2019s actual lyrics. Cover songs in general, while sometimes simply mimicking artists, are more often creative and resourceful interpretations that stand on their own merit\u2014making them works of a fan and works of art. The two are not mutually exclusive. Kurt Mosser gives the example of Jimi Hendrix\u2019s cover of Dylan\u2019s All Along The Watchtower <\/i><\/a>in his essay \u201cCover Songs\u201d: Ambiguity, Multivalence, Polysemy, saying: \u201cHendrix\u2026 takes an austere and minimalist recording of lyrics that are, even for Dylan, obscure and polysemous and changes it into a driving rock n\u2019 roll song featuring extended displays of Hendrix\u2019s guitar work.\u201d<\/span> Later, Mosser invokes a philosophy of linguistics, often referenced as \u201ccluster theory\u201d, to show that the very use of the words \u201ccover songs\u201d \u201cindicates that there is a relationship between the cover song and its base,\u201d through referential communication.<\/span> It is not only the art itself, but the way we\u2014consumers\u2014 approach and understand this art that recognizes an inherent connection to an original work of art, while still seeing the newly created, or \u201ccover\u201d, as merited in its own existence. Cover songs, like fan art and fanfiction, just more direct, link the artist with the consumer in a way that makes the consumer an artist, too\u2014if only because they consumed in the first place. Far from the only example, Hendrix\u2019s cover is still perhaps the best at getting at the heart of cover songs as both inextricably linked (and indebted to) the work of the original artist, while still being an independent work of art. <\/span><\/p>\n Now take All Along The Watchtower<\/i>, take away any preexisting musical version, increase the required innovation, and multiply it by 20. That\u2019s The New Basement Tapes<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n Week of August 18<\/p><\/div>\n On their own, The New Basement Tapes<\/i> are a remarkable feat of musical ingenuity and collaboration. But it\u2019s status as a quasi fan\/cover album resurrects a bias for original work and the dismissal for any art that\u2019s directly based off another\u2019s. Less critiqued because of the commonality of Dylan covers, the genre of fan art and cover art is largely swept under the category of art* where the asterisk says \u201cbut not really\u201d.\u00a0 <\/span>In his essay <\/span>Like a Version: Cover Songs and the Tribute Trend in Popular Music<\/span>, George Plasketes gives a number of examples of cover and tribute albums before sweepingly asserting that \u201cthe recent proliferation of cover and tribute recordings is culturally characteristic of the repetition mode of postmodern times\u2014retrieving , repeating, rewinding, and resurrecting virtually everything into an exhaustive cycle of retreads.\u201d<\/span> Ok, is that enough to make Mumford say \u201couch\u201d? Plasketes and the like-minded music reviewers he cites devolve cover music into the art of the lazy and unoriginal\u2014those not good enough to write for themselves, or too complacent to do so. Broadened to all fan and cover art and suddenly entire genres and works of art are discounted on the basis of their relationship to the art that came before it. If we can already conclude that consumers are interactive and creative in their relationship with art, as is proved with the very existence of professional cover-bands like the Grateful Dead\u2019s “Dark Star Orchestra<\/a>\u201d and the plethora of fanfiction posted on sites like tumblr and reddit, then Plasketes argument is that sure, fans make things, but it\u2019s not creative and it\u2019s sure as hell not good. Once mindless consumers are, in this argument, regarded as merely third grade artists redrawing exactly what\u2019s in front of them. <\/span><\/p>\n But this argument is too easy. Not only is it reductive of entire swaths of fan-made art, it rests on its laurels in equating \u201cunoriginal\u201d and \u201crepetitive\u201d with bad, despite giving no critique of the genre other than its straightforward description: art made in the image (or sound) of other art. <\/span><\/p>\n The New Basement Tapes <\/i>are perhaps the highest functioning form of this art and avoid criticism like Pasketes by its virtue of being so well done\u2014it is, however, very much the paradigm of what Plaskete criticizes. More than anything, it\u2019s important to see that The New Basement Tapes<\/i> is very much the rule for fan and cover art, and not the exception\u2014not in terms of quality (not everyone can sing, not everyone has access to Capitol Records, this is a given) but in the creativity and ingenuity it inspires in the consumer. That art is able to, at the very least, inspire its consumers to create their own work, regardless of quality, is a testament to the critical engagement of the consumer. The New Basement Tapes <\/i>wouldn\u2019t exist without Bob Dylan or his lyrics, and in this way it\u2019s exactly like <\/span>50 Shades of Grey<\/span> and <\/span>Twilight<\/span>, Kirk\/Spock slash fiction and Startrek<\/i>. Each \u201ccover\u201d owes something to its \u201coriginal\u201d\u2014 but complacent, simple-minded replications of their respective originals they are not. Regardless of the social stigma attached or lacking to each of these forms of fan\/cover art, and with little emphasis put on their varying qualities (i.e. good\/bad), they all arise from the same circumstances of a consumer interacting with its culture, a fan reading and listening critically, and then deciding that they, too, can create something. <\/span><\/p>\n So they do.<\/span><\/p>\n Burnett and the group he assembled manage to record one of the most musically complex and wide ranging albums of the 2000s. Whether or not you like the album (Rolling Stone loves it, Pitchfork is ambivalent), The New Basement Tapes<\/i> occupies a space as one of the most creative and experimental cover albums of Dylan\u2019s work. Rather than a carbon copy of Dylan\u2019s simplicity and growling voice, The New Basement Tapes<\/i> incorporates instruments unknown to Dylan\u2019s work and lets the music breathe. In Matt Melis\u2019 review of the album<\/a>, which appears on the music-news website consequenceofsound.net, he concludes the article by surmising that the listener \u201c[gets] the sense that Dylan\u2019s greatest gift to the band may not have been his lyrics. The real gift may have been giving Burnett and these five musicians an excuse to go and chase down their own Basement Tapes.\u201d<\/span> To generalize this claim is to get at the very heart of fan\/cover art, or any art directly influenced by a single force, which is that while the content of the original art is imperative, it\u2019s the opportunity for creativity, collaboration, and ingenuity that it creates, and which the consumer seizes, that makes it so important. <\/span><\/p>\n We may call Bob Dylan a musical god but we certainly don\u2019t treat him like it. Music, in this way, is not prescriptive. Jim James doesn\u2019t listen to Dylan like the prophet Muhammed and worship at his feet but rather brings goddamn psychedelic Kentucky blues-rock to songs written while Dylan was reading way too much Bible and stripping down his recordings. Giddens, a black woman from the band Carolina Chocolate Drops, brings a soul that white people have been trying to replicate since Alan Lomax went recording local folk songs all over the American south. Taylor Goldsmith comes in as the young, unknown guy from a mid-level band that\u2019s best known for its first album, and fights to the death with Marcus Mumford (of slightly more fame\u2026) to get his (better) version of a song recorded. The New Basement Tapes<\/i> is not a tribute album, it\u2019s not an homage to Dylan\u2014by the time it\u2019s recorded, it\u2019s not even a Dylan Manifesto. The New Basement Tapes<\/i> is full fledged musical ingenuity that springs from the handwritten lyrics of a guy they all admire; a guy they\u2019ve all called a genius, once or twice. <\/span><\/p>\n Where Dylan would have liltingly sung, Costello belts. Where Dylan would go acoustic, James shreds and Giddens wails. Where Dylan might mope, Marcus goes passionately rueful, as if to say \u201cI\u2019m not finished yet.\u201d These songs, while a gift from Dylan, exist in their own merit. They take liberties with Dylan\u2019s lyrics, are made of a style all their own, and are the product of a critical, creative process of engaging with a music legend\u2019s work. To ignore the impact of Bob Dylan in creating this record would be empirically wrong– he is undeniably the source of inspiration and the well from which these songs were recorded. But to dismiss The New Basement Tapes<\/i> as a recreation or a carbon copy with no merit or originality of its own would be deaf to the music on the album. More than anything, The New Basement Tapes <\/i>embodies the relationship between consumer and artist; fan and artist; artist and artist. In it, the very real link between consuming and creating becomes tangible, resulting in a creative product of its own merit, made possible only by the existence of fan and artist and the active, engaging relationship between the two.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"Week](\"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl-117-fall16\/files\/2016\/11\/basement-tapes-1-300x200.jpg\")
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