The Kolog

And The Beat Goes On

Bob Dylan’s Tell Tale Signs, the eighth and latest release in The Bootleg Series, is fantastic.

Alternative versions of (relatively) recent classics–from “Most of the Time,” “Everything Is Broken,” and “Dignity” to “I Can’t Wait,” “Someday Baby” and “Mississippi”–exhibit Dylan’s sustained artistic prowess, not to mention his never-ending artistic process. Throughout his career, Dylan has continued to work through songs so that each performance is a unique utterance. Think of the difference between “Like a Rolling Stone” in 1965 on Highway 61 Revisited and in 1994 on Unplugged. Logically, then, the tunes on Tell Tale Signs have changed as have the lyrics–on “Dignity,” for example, Dylan includes an entire verse that is absent from the original release.

So, you want to be familiar with Dylan’s latest artistic phase in order to appreciate Tell Tale Signs more fully. Since returning to folksongs on Good as I Been to You and World Gone Wrong, Dylan has created a new mask: I like to think of it as the traveling troubadour. Rejuvenated, he has produced three more classic albums in the past decade: Time Out of Mind, Love and Theft and Modern Times. It’s a span in Dylan’s career that begins to rival the mid sixties of Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde. Only, most casual Dylan fans would not know it.

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