Yeah, I've got mean and nasty friends who say Bob has sounded like a 70 year old for the last 30 years--but they couldn't be really listening to the music or the songs, which continue to inspire. I've been playing the Bootleg Series (Vol. 8) a lot lately--that would be Tell Tale Signs: Rare and Unreleased, 1989-2006 (Columbia).
Tell Tale Signs does help to ease my frustration with Clinton Heylin's fascinating book, "Bob Dylan: The Recording Sessions, 1960-1994" (St. Martin's Press, 1995). It's not that I don't enjoy Heylin's work, but taken at face value, his commentaries make one feel as if their Dylan collection is garbage. That's because Dylan's choices for what goes on albums, what is left off, and what takes are used seem to be part of the artist's weird thought process, and many a gem was lost. I'm thinking of great things like "Series of Dreams" (where the most straightforward and possibly finest version is on Tell Tale Signs) or "Blind Willie McTell," which were initially left off albums that could have used another knockout punch.
Heylin notes all sorts of dubious omissions and choices, and how Dylan re-wrote lyrics between studio takes--sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. Those are details I cannot keep up with at this stage of my life; the energy to pour over bootlegs, etc. is no longer there for me. I just have to have faith that collections like Biograph and others uncover the best alternate takes or unreleased tracks that I missed. Because I'm still hooked on Dylan's music--have been since, as a teenager, I ordered the Dylan catalog basically one LP at a time ($2.99) from Discount Records in (possibly Scarsdale) New York. Dylan's voice may have eroded over the decades, but he still finds ways to get a tune across as no one else can. How on earth can Dylan's throwaways still outstrip the best songs from the competition? It's always been that way.
The latest issue of "Rolling Stone" has what they call Dylan's 70 greatest songs, and it's a wonderful read, although there are so many of my favorites, like "Talkin' World War III Blues," "Tombstone Blues" or "Everything Is Broken" that didn't make the list of 70. Calling Bob Dylan's work "masterful" continues to be an understatement.