Lefty

http://johannasvisions.com/bob-dylan-time-out-of-mind/

I’d venture to say this was Bob’s last great one.

http://blog.peterstonebrown.com/why-garland-jeffreys/#comment-741

People argue about Bob Dylan’s best period. Some think it’s the canonical early-electric stretch from “Bringing It All Back Home,” from 1965, to “Blonde on Blonde,” which was released a year later, while others point to “Blood on the Tracks” (1975). There’s even a pocket of support for his most recent recordings. But there’s consensus about his worst period: “Self Portrait,” the double album from 1970 that appeared after the twin pillars of “John Wesley Harding” (my personal choice for best album, if only because of “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine”) and the convincing country move “Nashville Skyline.” Complete with a tossed-off Dylan painting for cover art, “Self Portrait” bewildered and angered the faithful. The opening line of Greil Marcus’s Rolling Stone review has become as famous as the record itself: “What is this shit?”

In retrospect, it is clear that outrage was part of a project—a poorly executed one, perhaps, but a project nonetheless. Dylan wanted to undo his own sixties myth, and he retreated after his (possibly trumped-up) motorcycle accident, in 1966. “John Wesley Harding” and “Nashville Skyline” were moves toward simplicity, and “Self Portrait” was what happened after the stripping down: a tentative rebuilding. The album included a number of covers, the first Dylan record to do so since his début, almost a decade before, and the original songs, plainspoken, with a Western feel, were the opposite of his urban-amphetamine epics. The material was sung, for the most part, with the deeper, more rounded vocals of “Nashville Skyline,” which were surprising at the time and are almost shocking now, given the bridge-troll croak that Dylan’s voice has become.

More than forty years after it nonplussed nearly everyone, “Self Portrait” has returned to us, of a fashion, as “Another Self Portrait,” the tenth volume of the ongoing vault-clearing venture known as the Bootleg Series. “Another Self Portrait,” complete with another Dylan painting as cover art and new, more measured liner notes from Marcus, is available in a deluxe four-disk edition that includes the full 1969 Isle of Wight concert and a remastered version of the original “Self Portrait” album. But it’s the two-disk set, with outtakes and rarities, that’s the place to start.

There’s no denying the substandard quality of some of the material. Is there any real reason to hear Dylan bleating his way through the folk standard “Spanish Is the Loving Tongue”? “Alberta” is simple to the point of self-annihilation, and the sketchy “Minstrel Boy” is chronologically out of place, a leftover from “The Basement Tapes,” from 1967. Because “Another Self Portrait” is a reissue, there’s also plenty of sonic surgery. For the most part, it involves stripping songs down to the bare trio performances of Dylan, David Bromberg, and Al Kooper. That leaves the stronger songs from the original record mostly intact. The murder ballad “In Search of Little Sadie” and the moonshining instructional “Copper Kettle” are here, both of them as worthy as they were the first time around. The latter is especially impressive, as Dylan picks his way through verses and then surges into the beautiful chorus: “We’ll just lay there by the juniper / While the moon is bright / Watch them jugs a-fillin’ / In the pale moonlight.”

Other songs hold up well, too. “All the Tired Horses” is still pretty great, as hypnotic koans go. “Days of ’49” is a colorful historical crime saga with a catchy melody and an unforgettable rogue’s gallery (“New York Jake, the butcher’s boy”). And there’s undeniable charm in the rollicking, country-flavored remakes of Dylan’s astringent early solo material (take “Only a Hobo,” which was recorded for “The Times They Are A-Changin’ ” but was not released until the first Bootleg Series set, in 1991). Strangely, “If Not for You” goes in the other direction—Dylan’s piano and wobbly vocals are done no favors by an unknown violinist.

When the “Another Self Portrait” mines folk sources, it both expands the original vision and extends its reach. Dylan’s version of the traditional English folk ballad “Pretty Saro” is excellent. Tom Paxson’s “Annie’s Going to Sing Her Song” is revealed as a melodic cousin of “Well, Did You Evah?” “This Evening So Soon” is a version of Bob Gibson’s “Tell Old Bill,” whose title Dylan later borrowed for a new song on the soundtrack of “North Country,” and whose lyrics are both sprightly and sad: “They brought Bill home in a hurry-up wagon / His arms and legs and feet were draggin’.” While the original “Self Portrait” could seem chaotic and pandering—the versions of “The Boxer” and “Blue Moon,” may have proceeded from genuine enthusiasm, but they played like bad jokes—“Another Self Portrait” reframes the argument. It’s an illustration of Dylan’s vast command of the folk song, a laboratory for transforming some of his most familiar hits, and a testament to his powers as an interpretive singer.

“Self Portrait” sits at the center of this new release, but there are two other albums at its edges. The pair of songs from “Nashville Skyline”—“I Threw It All Away” and “Country Pie”—aren’t significantly different from the released versions. And, toward the end, the boxed set phases into material from “New Morning,” which is significantly easier to defend. “Went to See the Gypsy,” which may be about a visit to Jimi Hendrix or Elvis Presley or no one, remains wonderfully mysterious. The previously unreleased, oft-bootlegged “Working on a Guru” is a fun if inessential collaboration between Dylan and George Harrison, with support from Charlie Daniels and Russ Kunkel. Only “Sign on the Window,” already disingenuously artless (“Build me a cabin in Utah, / Marry me a wife, catch rainbow trout, / Have a bunch of kids who call me “Pa,” / That must be what it’s all about”), is rendered almost unlistenable by orchestral overdubs.

“Time Passes Slowly” is, for me, the hidden classic, one of the most compact and satisfying Dylan compositions of the period. On “New Morning,” it has a block-chord arrangement that lifts it into a kind of rural gospel. Here there are two surprising takes: an acoustic guitar-based version with la-la-la backing vocals and a full-band rendition that sounds, for the first twenty seconds, like The Beatles’ “Dig a Pony.” The second “Time Passes Slowly” almost ends “Another Self Portrait.” The only song after it, ironically, is a piano demo of “When I Paint My Masterpiece.” Neither the original “Self Portrait” nor this supplementary reconstitution are anything close to a masterpiece, of course, but both are worth hanging in the museum.

– – Ben Greenman [The New Yorker]

From TheExaminer.com, 07/15/2013…

Not only did Colin Linden replace Charlie Sexton in Bob Dylan’s band tonight at the Molson Canadian Amphitheatre in Toronto, Ontario, according to Boblinks, but Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy and My Morning Jacket’s Jim James joined in on a couple of songs, including Dylan’s version of the Rev. Gary Davis song, “Twelve Gates To The City.”

Linden was born in Toronto, and has played with Bruce Cockburn, Lucinda Williams, T-Bone Burnett, Colin James, Leon Redbone, Rita Chiarelli, Chris Thomas King and The Band. He was reportedly seen hanging out at the last couple of Dylan shows.