The Basement Tapes Poll

People call this record mysterious or magic; if so it's in the three-card-monte sense, working by diversion, misdirection, trying to confound understanding, to get the audience to enjoy being fooled. So much of this record is a tease, inside jokes and deliberate nonsense, bluffing and never showing its hand. I've bought books about this record and never read them, worried it would feel too much like watching dissection of a live subject; even if it survives, it'd be forever scarred, imprinted with someone else's take. Despite which here's mine:

A1. Always wanted to do a doublespeed punk cover. A2. Normal breakup song but paired with a let's work it out chorus. In the "beautiful beautiful" punch line, this guy reveals he can't stand to have things that aren't broken. A3. Pretty drowsy for a song about heaven, or a swinging party, which is as close as this record gets. A4 & A5. The party gets out of hand. Beyond care for morality, sex as cataclysm as rollicking good time, so bring on the flood, just go and pump on the well. A6. As told by the last one to know.

B1. Lays a few tricks on you -- hooks you by mentioning some unexplained shame, appears to have a narrative thread involving moose, but nothing is revealed. Still I'm prepared to accept as proven that Pittsburgh = Chicken Town, QED. B2. Feels too well composed to fit in with the Dylan songs, where the prevailing moods are off-the-cuff or overwrought. B3. Simple story of being caught acting like you're not just some kid, treated as an epic Saga. B4. This song choogles. B5. About getting so drunk you piss yourself. And yet somehow Mrs. Henry resists his amorous advances. B6. Dylan's most heartrending song and singing. Never seen anyone so enraged they cried -- grief yes, but rage? (Yes I know it's poetry.)

C1. I first heard this in Peter Paul & Mary's perversely cheerful version, but this song wants to be sluggish, drained. C2. Feels like the opposite of You Ain't Going Nowhere -- not just drifting along but in a mighty hurry. Like Lo and Behold, a Biblical title sends the singer all over the map, though in this case even with specific destinations named it feels like he's going nowhere (fast). C3. Loose and swaggering, ultimately reverential. When I was introduced to this record I was told "there's nothing like it" but including a cover song means it can't be wholly sui generis -- this ain't no old weird America they just dreamed up one day. C4. Taunting or teasing about friends washed away, either way adding insult to injury. C5. Everything feels buried in the mix by everything else: echoed vocals, drum thuds, plinked piano, carnival organ stabs, muted distorted guitar fills. C6. The only side that doesn't end with a devastation. Upbeat number with optimistic lyrics so naturally the backup vocals sound like the moans of glum zombies.

D1. Another song about people failing to get away with handing out BS lines to each other (or in this case, to themselves). D2. Our son's named Henry, and my parents sometimes serenaded him with Please Mrs. Henry, but never with Don't Ya Tell Henry -- is this song that unmemorable? Or did they just never make it to the second record? D3. A song this final should end a record, but they're not done shuffling the deck. D4. Can't break down why this song works so well, it doesn't particularly DO anything, it just IS. Chorus stays true to side 4's commitment to finality. Great draggy backup vocals. D5. Penultimate track is as good a place as any for a throwaway. Your basic blues number, good guitar but otherwise nothing special, though it cleanses the palate and clears the stage for D6. When the record DOES show it's emotions, as here, it knocks you out without even seeming to try.

Voting for Nothing Was Delivered.

^^^ great screen name

― WmC,

Thanks!

The Band's "Basement Tapes" tunes were recorded significantly later and added to the mix by one J.R. Robertson

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

ok liner notes say Helm is vocalist on yazoo street scandal. damned if the way he sings "stranded out in the night" doesn't throw me... but by the time he gets to "i just ordered a flood for forty days and forty nights" it all makes sense

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I don't have any quibbles with the voting, other than that the total number of votes is a fucking scandal. Hell, I voted twice.

"Clothes Line Saga" is really funny. Man, this LP was so over my head when I first heard it as a teenager.

Best tracks that didn't make the cut:

Silent Weekend
I'm Not There
Sign on the Cross

C5. Ruben Remus 0

we're going to have to get some n00b to repoll this on accident because this result is just WRONG. incredible song.

otm. A hypnotist, a fancy talker, Ruben Remus ain't no doctor.

and then, to add insult to injury, this is apparently the only live video of the song available on the entire internet:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMc7z3V9wqE

i mean, he does a decent job and everything but

i haven't seen or heard the Last Waltz before, so i was hoping there'd be a version of it on there, perhaps complete with neil young's cocaine booger in the background. but nope, it's not part of that setlist, or any other apparently.

i guess people don't rep for "ruben remus" because they're listening to the basement tapes to hear bob dylan, but Manuel just nails the vocal. he sounds so sweet and of his time in an endearing way. and the band (as in "the band") is totally on fire. it would be nice to hear an uninterrupted recording of that session from whatever night that was, because they sound like they couldn't possibly sound bad even if they tried.

This went up a month before I started posting, so late vote for "Tiny Montgomery." Other favourites: "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere," "Please Mrs. Henry," and the winner.

(Not what you wanted, but "Ruben Remus" is on Grooveshark: http://grooveshark.com/#!/s/Ruben+Remus/3YSRTU?src=5.)

i guess people don't rep for "ruben remus" because they're listening to the basement tapes to hear bob dylan,

Love that one, but most (all?) of the Band-minus-Dylan stuff was either outtakes from Big Pink or new stuff they were working on at the time.

Weirdly (or not), a bunch of those are bonus tracks on the 2000 Big Pink CD reissue, but the liner notes don't mention that they were also on The Basement Tapes.

What ABOUT The Basement Tapes?.

Well done

Wondering if The Basement Tapes is the last of Bob doing surreal, nonsense words as a punk gesture. "Million Dollar Bash" is pretty punk.

"Goin' to Acapulco" is horrible, lol. Our poll winner.

"Clothes Line Saga" = Jandek

Better rhyming, though