Bob Dylan
“No Direction Home: The Soundtrack”
Since its initial three-volume installment of unreleased studio material, Dylan’s ongoing bootleg series has focused on historic live concerts. “No Direction Home,” however, returns to archival alternate takes and unreleased versions. At one extreme, Dylan neophytes may wonder about the use of different versions of “Visions of Johanna” or “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright.” At the other, collectors probably have a big hunk of this stuff already, but certainly not of this quality. “No Direction Home” hints at an alternate Dylan history. Just as Martin Scorsese’s excellent doc of the same name showed how the singer changed the world, radically different versions of songs underscore how he could have just as easily changed the world some other way, or perhaps failed to change it altogether.
Best track: “Ballad of a Thin Man,” recorded on Dylan’s legendary ’66 tour with the Band in Edinburgh, Scotland.
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Edited by Curt Wagner ([email protected]) and Victoria Rodriguez ([email protected])