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Previously published asInvisible Republic and already considered a classic of modern American cultural criticism,The Old, Weird America is Greil Marcus's widely acclaimed book on the secret music (the so-called "Basement Tapes") made by Bob Dylan and the Band while in seclusion in Woodstock, New York, in 1967--a folksy yet funky, furious yet hilarious music that remains as seductive and baffling today as it was more than thirty years ago. As Mark Sinker observed inThe Wire: "Marcus's contention is that there can be found in American folk a community as deep, as electric, as perverse, and as conflicted as all America, and that the songs Dylan recorded out of the public eye, in a basement in Woodstock, are where that community as a whole gets to speak." But the country mapped out in this book, as Bruce Shapiro wrote inThe Nation, "is not Woody Guthrie's land for made for you and me . . . It's what Marcus calls 'the old, weird America.'" This odd terrain, this strange yet familiar backdrop to our common cultural history--which Luc Sante (inNew York magazine) termed the "playground of God, Satan, tricksters, Puritans, confidence men, illuminati, braggarts, preachers, anonymous poets of all stripes"--is the territory that Marcus has discovered in Dylan's most mysterious music. And his analysis of that territory "reads like a thriller" (Ken Tucker,Entertainment Weekly) and exhibits "a mad, sparkling brilliance" (David Remnick,The New Yorker) throughout. This new edition ofThe Old, Weird America includes an updated discography.… (more)
Greil Marcus is teaching a class this fall at the New School on this book, if you're taking that class please, please help me sneak in.
That said, the book isn't so much about Bob Dylan as it is about the legacy of the "folk" song in America. Marcus's prose is beautiful and he knows how to write about music in away that makes it seem important and relevant. Like his description of Dylan's "Ballad of a Thin Man," ( )
Seldom is it noted that springing hope can prove a real pain in the ass. I continually harbor and hope. There are always lists and plans: prerequisites for other texts clamor for attention. This vein continues however vain. I am thinking of reading all women in April, this highlighted by reading Second Sex in Serbia. There is module on slavery I was imagining for May. We shall see. Wait, I haven't really broached The Weird Old America, have I? Well that treatment is tantamount to Marcus' fleeting placement of The Basement Tapes within the text: they remain central, yet absent. It is fitting that Marcus cited Camille Paglia as that appears to be his lodestar, though he lacks her scrutiny as well as her writing panache. Marcus establishes The Basement Tapes as a nexus for myriad paths of American expression and legacy. Tracing these routes is intriguing but hardly conclusive. I think I prefer Nick Tosches in such free association . When considering this challenge for 2016 it was obvious that reading five books by or about Bob Dylan would be much more problematic than achieving the same with Derrida and Dickens. Marcus gives us hagiography, Dylan the mystic awakened something eternal when he went electric. One almost imagined William James, perhaps Robert Graves on Sufism . One can glean of course that the Nirvana song Polly harkens to a ballad Pretty Polly from the 17C. Again Marcus entertains without marshaling the requisite evidence. ( )
This was the original 1997/98 edition of what was later reissued as The Old, Weird America: The World of Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes (2011). It was a completely fascinating account of the continuum that Greil Marcus perceived in the early 20th century folk and blues recordings documented on Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music through to the music produced by Bob Dylan and his then-regular backup group (who later became famous as "The Band") when they woodshedded and recorded at the house that would later be immortalized as Big Pink in upper New York State after Dylan's 1966 motorcycle accident. Later the tag-line was appropriated and updated as "The New Weird America" to describe various contemporary performers whose music harkens back to early folk and blues roots. A lot of the aura about the Basement Tapes at the time was built around the fact that most of the songs hadn't been officially released in 1997 and were only available through bootleg recordings.
Saying goodbye to several dozen books due to a water damage incident and I thought I'd write at least a little memorial to each of them and about why I kept them around. ( )
Helped me belatedly understand what was at stake in the folk revival and Dylan's exit from it; and also what lies behind recenter weirdness like the Sun City Girls.
Ate this one up. Not sure if it is just the old Romantic story-under-the-story trick, or if Bob Dylan really was onto myths so ancient that they are practically DNA -- at least in Appalachia. I got interested in this topic when Joni Mitchell called Bob a plagiarist. Of course an academic would be interested in stolen songs right out in public with his own name right on them. Outrageous. But the back story is: plenty of popular music is recycled recycled recycles. Bob just knows it and borrows freely. In fact, he takes the old song one level deeper, as Marcus shows in the book which is formally about Bob and The Band hanging out in a basement writing and recording for fun one summer. NB: Marcus is sometimes as impressionistic as Bob's stranger lyrics, hence the 4 stars. But if you ever read gonzo journalism, you know what s up anyway and expect as much. ( )
Most of the basement tapes still travel the fugitive path the music took from the first; each performance makes part of a map, which like so many of the songs, and the territory they describe, remains unfinished.
Previously published asInvisible Republic and already considered a classic of modern American cultural criticism,The Old, Weird America is Greil Marcus's widely acclaimed book on the secret music (the so-called "Basement Tapes") made by Bob Dylan and the Band while in seclusion in Woodstock, New York, in 1967--a folksy yet funky, furious yet hilarious music that remains as seductive and baffling today as it was more than thirty years ago. As Mark Sinker observed inThe Wire: "Marcus's contention is that there can be found in American folk a community as deep, as electric, as perverse, and as conflicted as all America, and that the songs Dylan recorded out of the public eye, in a basement in Woodstock, are where that community as a whole gets to speak." But the country mapped out in this book, as Bruce Shapiro wrote inThe Nation, "is not Woody Guthrie's land for made for you and me . . . It's what Marcus calls 'the old, weird America.'" This odd terrain, this strange yet familiar backdrop to our common cultural history--which Luc Sante (inNew York magazine) termed the "playground of God, Satan, tricksters, Puritans, confidence men, illuminati, braggarts, preachers, anonymous poets of all stripes"--is the territory that Marcus has discovered in Dylan's most mysterious music. And his analysis of that territory "reads like a thriller" (Ken Tucker,Entertainment Weekly) and exhibits "a mad, sparkling brilliance" (David Remnick,The New Yorker) throughout. This new edition ofThe Old, Weird America includes an updated discography.
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That said, the book isn't so much about Bob Dylan as it is about the legacy of the "folk" song in America. Marcus's prose is beautiful and he knows how to write about music in away that makes it seem important and relevant. Like his description of Dylan's "Ballad of a Thin Man," (