Dylan's mastery remastered in loving clarity
By Edna Gundersen, USA TODAY
story.news.yahoo.com
For anyone who has underestimated or overlooked Bob Dylan (news)'s immeasurable contribution to music, Columbia/Legacy is bringing it all back home in a spectacular series of remastered classics.
And for anyone who already owns these 15 titles in original vinyl and subsequent CD translations, the overhauled third configuration is well worth the wait, expense and redundancy.
The label has issued a wide cross section of Dylan's catalog, from The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963) to Love & Theft (2001), in hybrid Super Audio CD, a format compatible with newfangled SACD machines as well as standard CD players. The career-spanning releases are available individually or combined in a $250 box set, a bargain considering the concentration of musical creativity and history squeezed into a discreet cardboard cube. (Related item: Hear a montage of remastered Dylan tunes)
In visual and tactile terms, Dylan's republished back pages are positively first-rate. Photos, artwork and liner notes, unburdened by cumbersome updates and windy analyses, are faithfully transferred from the original LPs, replicated in classy gatefold digipaks.
The chief attraction, naturally, is the sonic boom. Dylan's nasal warble, surreal wordplay and organic arrangements spring to life with thrilling clarity.
Because Dylan was among the first wave of artists whose output underwent digital mutation, some of the initial CD conversions, from dubious tapes, were less than optimal, some even criminally botched.
The new discs, extracted from original master tapes and lovingly restored without resorting to high-tech gimmicks and embellishments, are the result of a lengthy and ambitious project to rinse the artificial impurities from his music. Dylan never paid much attention to studio machinery, focusing instead on capturing the purest, most spontaneous performance an empty, sterile, windowless room would allow. And his wisest collaborators knew better than to gild the lily with superfluous effects.
The Legacy trove's unlikely coupling of technophobe and techno-vogue has yielded an astonishing aural lift. The enhanced fidelity maximizes digital precision without sacrificing analog warmth. The clumsy compression is gone, giving new vigor to Dylan's snarls and croons and a breezier climate for his acoustic guitar and accompanying instruments.
This kind of meticulous care would be wasted on musical figures with less substance or durability. It's an absolute godsend for an artist of Dylan's stature, influence and, most important, talent.
Still a road warrior, Dylan regards his foremost role as one of performer, and he considers every song a work in progress as it's honed and reborn night after night on stages around the world. The studio is a live gig, not a laboratory for endless tinkering, in his view.
Describing his maiden recording session with Columbia's John Hammond, Dylan said in 1962: "There was a violent, angry emotion running through me then. I just played the guitar and harmonica and sang those songs and that was it. Mr. Hammond asked me if I wanted to sing any of them over again, and I said no. I can't see myself singing the same song twice in a row. That's terrible."
Accurately re-creating Dylan's studio labor is key to preserving an essential component of his legacy. On paper, Dylan's lyrics are poetic, bitter, clever, hallucinatory, wounded, political and fierce. Hearing them unfiltered from the intimate confines of the studio intensifies the power of Dylan's language and lays bare the emotions that elevate his songs from skillfully crafted vignettes to soul-stirring glimpses of the human heart.
Completists and initiates alike will marvel at the richness and depth of Dylan's revisited past. A new vibrancy emerges in everything from Freewheelin'ssearing Masters of War to the luxurious splendor of Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands, the 11-minute peak from Blonde on Blonde. Legacy's refinements restore a sense of excitement and discovery to pivotal moments: hints of the coming folk-rock revolution on Bringing It All Back Home, the intoxicating inventiveness on Highway 61 Revisited, the devastating poignancy of Blood on the Tracks, the evangelical left turn on Slow Train Coming, the country stroll in Nashville Skyline, the swaggering return to form on Love & Theft.
The reissues grant the listener an upgrade from the nosebleed tiers of Madison Square Garden to a stage-side bar stool at Gerde's Folk City, bringing a fresh urgency and honesty to signatures and obscurities strewn across four decades. The complexities of Dylan's simple delivery, the range of his imagination, the sturdiness of his melodies all take on palpable weight.
The cultural significance of Dylan, arguably the most important musical figure to emerge in the pop/rock era, has never been adequately measured by chart positions (he never had a No. 1 single) or sales figures (Another Side of Bob Dylan didn't reach gold status until 25 years after its release). The proof is down in the grooves. Dylan has painted his musical masterpiece in tantalizing allegories, elegant love songs, absurdist yarns and social invective. Legacy has provided the proper frame. |
