Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

  • Apple
  • Android
  • Windows Phone
  • Android

To get the free app, enter your mobile phone number.

Buy Used
$4.25
FREE Shipping on orders over $25.
Condition: Used: Good
Comment: FREE Super Saver and 2nd day shipping (for Prime members) direct from Amazon, backed by Amazon's famous customer service guarantee. Previously shipped item.
Have one to sell? Sell on Amazon
Flip to back Flip to front
Listen Playing... Paused   You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more
See all 2 images

The Old, Weird America: The World of Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes Paperback – September 22, 2001

3.3 out of 5 stars 20 customer reviews

See all 4 formats and editions Hide other formats and editions
Price
New from Used from
Kindle
"Please retry"
Paperback, September 22, 2001
$3.30 $0.01

Best Books of the Month
Best Books of 2016
Looking for something great to read? Browse our editors' picks for the best books of the year in fiction, nonfiction, mysteries, children's books, and much more.
click to open popover

Editorial Reviews

Review

About the Author

See all Editorial Reviews
NO_CONTENT_IN_FEATURE

New York Times best sellers
Browse the New York Times best sellers in popular categories like Fiction, Nonfiction, Picture Books and more. See more

Product Details

  • Paperback: 304 pages
  • Publisher: Picador (September 22, 2001)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0312420439
  • ISBN-13: 978-0312420437
  • Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 1.1 x 8 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
  • Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,190,043 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Important Information

Ingredients
Example Ingredients

Directions
Example Directions

Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

By John Proctor on April 14, 2009
Format: Paperback
This is what seems to be a word-for-word reissue of Marcus's Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes, confusingly given a completely different title. In the Author's Note, Marcus says this is the title he originally wanted to give it. I have to say, they still got it wrong. The new subtitle, The World of Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes, is an improvement, but still doesn't completely address the main fault with every title and subtitle given so far - the book isn't really about Dylan, and only tangentially about the Basement Tapes. It's just as much about Harry Smith and his Anthology of American Folk Music, and in fact gives probably as much space to the relatively unknown Dock Boggs as it does Dylan or The Band, and it's just as much an attempt to mythologizes history as it is a work of musical criticism.

This isn't necessarily a complaint - one could argue that folk music's primary function is to mythologize history, and Marcus is simply attempting the same thing as the musicians he writes about. Boggs, for example, would make a logical choice for a book with this intention, as there's not that much written about him (especially compared to Bob Freakin' Dylan) and Harry Smith gives in the liner notes and Boggs gives in his own recorded conversations cloak him in both mystery and danger, two of Marcus's defining elements of the "old, weird America.
Read more ›
1 Comment 28 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
Format: Paperback
This is a retitled re-issue of _Invisible Republic_. For its content, then, it clearly deserves a 5-star rating (at least from here). However, you ought to know what you will be getting if you already have that classic.
Comment 54 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
Format: Paperback
(this is the updated verion of Marcus' "Invisible Republic")

In 1965, Bob Dylan played Newport with an electric band. Playing songs from the groundbreaking "Highway 61 Revisited", Dylan-- in one of the finest performances of his career-- was roundly booed by the audience and condemned by critics.

Why?

Greil Marcus' fascinating book starts with this question: why were audiences so hostile to Dylan's new material and style? Marcus' thesis is that Dylan on Highway 61 rediscovered the folk music that America had forgotten, a folk music which had been co-opted by the '30s (and subsequent) Left, a music which was much older and much, much weirder than the work of Woody Guthrie and other late '50s exemplars of the folk tradition. Audiences were in for a shock when Dylan's surreal imagery and often apolitical but weirdly resonant lyrics replaced his plainer earlier folk tunes and protest songs.

The book's former title is an allusion to Ralph Ellison's novel "The Invisible Man," whose protagonist is invisible to his fellow Americans because they choose not to see him. In the same way, the very, very weird music of Dock Boggs, Mississippi John Hurt and many others, documented with loving care by Harry Smith, the compiler of the seminal "The Anthology of American Folk Music," was invisible to mainstream audiences during the 1950s and '60s, just as the history they documented was invisible to the majority of its time. It is a countercultural history in song of the U.S., including everything from slave narratives, love ballads, ancient blues, mythical re-tellings of political events, etc. This music is much richer and more complex than the mid-twentieth century folk music familiar to Dylan fans.
Read more ›
2 Comments 33 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
Format: Paperback
I like Greil's approach, which worked so much better in the recent "Like A Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan At The Crossroads", of honing in on small detail to produce something profound. Maybe this book can be considered practice for the latter, because it simply didn't work here. I welcome experimental writing, but in this case the wash of minute detail combined with nonlinearity produced confusion rather than clarity. I'm afraid for me the insights are Greil's alone rather than universal. To his credit though, in the same way I'd rather see an ambitious indie movie that fails than a Hollywood blockbuster, reading this is worth a shot. I may try again some time.
Comment 13 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
Please note that when your Kindle informs you that you've completed reading, you're only 59% of the way into the book. The back matter of the book is much more than dry reference material; the long Discography section is much more than a listing and there are very interesting song-by-song insights into almost all the individual recordings on The Basement Tapes with anecdotes from members of The Band and others. I'm currently listening to the complete Basement Tapes and using these references to enhance the experience (Greil Marcus and his publisher may want to revise 'The Invisible Republic' / 'The Old, Weird America' once again to take advantage of all the songs, titles, and versions on this latest complete official Bootleg Series Vol 11 edition of the Tapes that appeared in 2014).
Comment 4 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse

Most Recent Customer Reviews

Pages with Related Products. See and discover other items: rock biographies, beatles music, country musicians biographies