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38 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Some new info, but very poorly written, November 6, 2007
The other reviewers do not address the writing style of the book, which is its greatest flaw. There are so many terrible sentences in here, where Mr. Griffin offers what he must feel is genuine insight into the Basement Tapes, whose mysterous atmosphere is like "a Tarot card face down on a fortuneteller's table" (the last sentence of the book). These kind of cheesy descriptions abound in the book and are a true obstacle to any consideration of its merit. I mean, the article that appeared in MOJO on the BT a few years ago was better written than this. I know that Zappa said "rock criticism is written by those who can't write for those who can't read," but this hits a new low for me in music writing.
Of course, when Griffin gets down to describing the actual songs, the book improves. But even here the colloquial tone of the book seems forced, as if he is trying to be funny or something. If the tape runs out before the end of a song, he writes "Damn" (sometimes more than once). He often writes "Discuss" at the end of a song description, which I guess is some kind of directive to the reader. So, the biggest problem I have with this book is the casual tone of the writing, which doesn't work (and that's why writers shoudn't try it because it's so hard to pull off.)
Of course, this book does contain some new information. Griffin conducted new interviews with many important people associated with the Basement Tapes, Robbie Robertson being the most significant subject. But again, the endnotes reveal that most of these interviews took place in late 2006 or early 2007, which shows that the book was clearly thrown together. It's a shame Griffin didn't spend more time polishing his writing, which is often repetitive and could have used extensive editing.
And the interviews are not that insightful, and Robertson repeats many things he's said elsewhere. But Griffin does try to organize the recordings by date and location and examines the official release in some detail. So the book does offer a lot of useful information - it's just too bad it wasn't presented better.
Griffin also tends to make the same points over and over, referring to the drug or alcohol use by Bob and The Band that is evident on certain tracks, which I don't think is important at all and is surely debatable. The assertion that Bob or Albert Grossman sternly told Manuel and Danko to be more serious in their playing is ludicrous and insulting.
Griffin constantly uses a fanzine-style of writing: song lyrics are used for all chapter titles, and relationship between title and content is often tenuous at best. And in the tradition of many hacks who write on Dylan, he constantly incorporates phrases from songs into his prose. Another annoying habit by Dylan writers that Griffin uses is his constant assertions that this is Dylan's best period, Dylan is the best, etc. This may be true, but there is no need to say it over and over again. The audience for this book does not need an apologia for the Basement Tapes - they already think they're excellent, I'm sure.
Also, the background chapters on the Basement Tapes, especially the one on Dylan's motorcycle accident, are a waste of time and recycle old information. This chapter shouldn't have been included, as the audience for this book is already familiar with the backstory, and Griffin comes to no conclusions regarding the accident. Does anyone really care where and when it happened? Isn't it enough that Dylan used the accident - whether real or not - to take a much-needed break from touring and the rock and roll lifestyle and concentrate on his family?
So, in the end, I don't understand how anyone could prefer Griffin's book to Greil Marcus's "Invisible Republic" (aka "The Old Weird America") because, as overwrought as Marcus's writing and ideas can often be, at least he shows that he has thought a lot about the Basement Tapes and their relationship to American music and culture as whole. Griffin's book on the other hand offers no real insights into the Basement Tapes and just repeats the same cliches about how great the process was, etc. Griffin's guide might provide a handy guide to the songs but it will not satiate one's appetite for what the Basement Tapes represent in a larger sense. For that one will have to turn to Marcus, whose study of the Basement Tapes is well-written and provocative, unlike this book.
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11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
"Restriction causes damage, and damage causes lust", November 9, 2007
I pretty much agree with all of Sherringford Clark's points. This should have been a great book, but it's disappointing. Outside of a few interviews, I don't think Griffin did any new research at all. He repeats errors (songwriting credits, details about Dylan's career, even the address of Big Pink!) from other books, showing that he didn't really double-check on things. And yes, his informal, smarmy writing style can really get on your nerves. For a really fun drinking game, take a swig every time Griffin mentions the fact that Danko, Hudson, Manuel and Robertson are Canadian. You'll get pretty smashed. Still, there are some good things here. If you're technically-minded, the discussion of the equipment used in the Basement Tapes recording is interesting. Griffin seems to have gotten the song-by-song musician credits right, and his timetable for when the tapes were probably made is convincing. And while Robbie Robertson's direct quotes in the book aren't too enlightening, I got the sense that for a lot of the book, Griffin was acting as mouthpiece for Robertson. Robertson, of course, has gotten a lot of criticism for his handling of the official album (throwing unrelated Band outtakes on there, overdubbing the original songs, collpasing them into mono), so I guess he deserves a forum to present his own side. According to the book Dylan declined Griffin's request for an interview, but I wonder if he tried to talk to Garth Hudson? As the one who ran the tape recorder and set up the equipment, he could have answered a lot of the questions Griffin asks in the book.
The song-by-song section is all right, especially if you've never heard the complete tapes. But Griffin often doesn't have much to say about the songs, so he just talks about how drunk they sound, or talks about other people who covered them. Some individual song entries are excellent, though ("Sign on The Cross", "I'm Not There"). But he slams some good songs, and is just indifferent about a lot of other good ones, and some of the entries are just rewritten versions of the song-by-song section in the Greil Marcus book.
Will the complete Basement Tapes ever get an official release? They deserve it, and they deserve an excellent book to be written about them. Unfortunately, neither Greil Marcus nor Sid Griffin have managed to write that book. Who's next?
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Some actual new information, at least to me, October 17, 2007
As a somewhat obsessive researcher of written information and comments on the Band, I am familiar with a lot of the sources Sid Griffin used for this book. However, he does seem to have managed to get new talk about what went on in the basement - there is considerable information about the recording process Garth Hudson used and comments from experienced recording engineers about what was done. There are also some detailed notes, sometimes speculative, about who played what when, and who sang various backup vocals. I appreciate having this from skilled musician ears rather than my own guesses.
This book complements Greil Marcus's work on the topic. Marcus usually focuses on the history of Dylan's possible sources; Griffin concentrates on Dylan's results, and what went down on tape. One hopes that readers of this book have managed to track down some of the more recent booklegs of the Basement Tapes; otherwise the book will only cause sadness and frustration.
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