So why is Bob Dylan & The Band’s The Basement Tapes on this best 1,000 albums ever thing?
The Basement Tapes is sprawling, surprising, loose, and funny.
There’s a long story about how The Basement Tapes came to be, but in very short it’s a collaboration between Dylan and The Band that was mostly recorded in the late ‘60s in between other Dylan albums (and one stretch related to Dylan recuperating from a motorcycle accident) and finally released as a collection in 1975.
One of my favorite Bob Dylan songs of all time is a deep cut called “Please, Mrs. Henry.” It’s boozy and funny and clever and catchy in addition to just being a really good song. I’m reminded of Beck as this is one of dozens of songs that make you believe that Dylan could have just plied in this kind of musical territory and succeeded quite swimmingly.
“Please, Mrs. Henry” is akin to a song like Beck’s “Burnt Orange Peel” that’s a deep, brilliantly weird cut that makes you fall in love with the artist’s entire body of work just a little bit more, and at the same time allows you to trust them to take you into musical territories and dimensions that you may not have spent much time in before.
Now, don’t crowd me, lady or I’ll fill up your shoe
I’m a sweet bourbon daddy and tonight I am blue
I’m a thousand years old and I’m a generous bomb
I’m T-boned and punctured, I’ve been known to be calm
At 24 songs and over 75 minutes of music (that was edited down from over 100 total tracks, as legend has it), there’s so much material here to unearth and develop your own relationship with. For example, I love how loose and improvisational in feel both “Yea! Heavy and a Bottle of Bread” and “Lo and Behold!” are.
And then songs like “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” have the feel of a more “traditional” late 1960s Bob Dylan song, but one in this case that I’d wager is in his upper tier of material all told.
Pop culture stuff that’s somehow related to Bob Dylan & The Band’s The Basement Tapes
While The Band’s influence obviously worked extremely well on The Basement Tapes in stretching Dylan into a more Americana and roots rock direction, I’ve never fully connected with The Band outside of their collaborations with Dylan.
The more I think about why, it weirdly puts me in the same frame of mind with relation to what I think about the Dave Matthews Band: I respect their stuff, but it just doesn’t hit my musical sweet spot.
That being said, when Dave and crew collaborated with Jurassic 5, the result, “Work It Out,” is just fantastic.
Even more pop culture stuff that’s somehow related to Bob Dylan & The Band’s The Basement Tapes
I was a huge fan of Making the Band back in the day, a reality show that was designed in theory to find and patch together a group of people who would become “America’s next great band” or some such.
The first season focused on creating a “boy band,” until Puff Daddy took over hosting and band making duties, and moved into the hip hop realm, which made for the best season by far.
The hip hop crew that eventually emerged was dubbed “Da Band” (which was often heralded with “D-A-B-A-N-D!”). I did and still do think that it’s a terrible name for a rap collective, but still… fun show!
Here’s the legendary Chappelle’s Show parody of Making the Band.
Some stats & info about Bob Dylan & The Band – The Basement Tapes
- What kind of musical stylings does this album represent? Rock Music, Country Rock, Folk Rock, Singer Songwriter
- Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ranking – #335
- All Music’s rating – 5 out of 5 stars
- When was The Basement Tapes released? 1975
- My ranking, the one you’re reading right now – #298 out of 1,000
Bob Dylan & The Band’s The Basement Tapes on Spotify
A lyrical snippet from Bob Dylan & The Band’s The Basement Tapes that’s evocative of the album in some way, maybe
I’m a good ol’ boy, but I’ve been sniffin’ too many eggs, talkin’ to too many people, drinkin’ too many kegs.
What does the “best 1,000 albums ever” mean and why are you doing this?
Yeah, I know it’s audacious, a little crazy (okay, maybe a lot cray cray), bordering on criminal nerdery.
But here’s what it’s NOT: a definitive list of the Greatest Albums of All-Time. This is 100% my own personal super biased, incredibly subjective review of what my top 1,000 albums are, ranked in painstaking order over the course of doing research for nearly a year, Rob from High Fidelity style. Find out more about why I embarked on a best 1,000 albums ever project.