Album Review - Howard Fishman - The Basement Tapes: Live at Joe's Pub
In mid-1967, after cra****ng his motorcycle, Bob Dylan was forced to lay
low for awhile in order to recover from his injuries. In the process, he
discovered a new method for approaching his music. As far as the public
was concerned, the jump that Dylan made between Blonde on Blonde's
surreal landscapes and John Wesley Harding’s stark, country-blues
refrains was unfathomable. The key to understanding it, however, lay
within the material that he wrote and performed with The Band in the
cellar of a home in Saugerties, New York that became known simply as
"Big Pink." Despite the reclusiveness of the proceedings, the songs
rapidly seeped into the fabric of America's popular culture. They were
covered by The Byrds and Manfred Mann, and they provided the impetus for
The Band's debut Music from Big Pink. As for the recordings themselves,
although they never were meant for release, they bolstered the legendary
status of the informal sessions by turning up, first, as a bootleg and
then -- eight years after the fact, in a skewed historical context -- as
an official release that was dubbed The Basement Tapes.
Nearly 40 years after Dylan's transformation, Howard Fishman, himself
one of New York City's more eccentrically eclectic folk artists, has
seen fit to revisit the storied material. It all began with a series of
concerts that were held in May 2006, and it's from these shows that
Fishman's latest outing The Basement Tapes: Live at Joe's Pub was
compiled. Much like the set that served as its inspiration, the album
wasn't intended to be released. Yet, here it is, in all its strangely
fascinating, ragged glory.
This is an excerpt. To read the complete review, please visit:
http://www.musicbox-online.com/reviews-2007/howardfishman-basementtapes.html
|
