> Incidentally, he occasionally has done protest music
post Bringing It All Back Home
Actually, there's a protest song on there, one which disproves Phil Ochs: Just because you can mistake "Maggie's Farm" for bullshit doesn't mean it's not protest music.
> Me, my favorite Bob is the most "narcissistic,"
hallucinogenic stuff of the mid-60s, Bringing It All
Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, the Basement Tapes.
I still listen to The Basement Tapes a lot, but they're a different creature from the legit releases.
> That's the stuff I return to again and again from a
really absurd Bob collection (every legit recording
and 50-some bootlegs).
You can't get a real appreciation of Dylan without the bootlegs--he and Hendrix are the two musicians of whom I'd say that. (Well, and I guess Prince, given the Black Album.) There's a moment on _Western Electric_ where he starts playing "Desolation Row", and the crowd actually laughs at the line "the other is in his pants". It _is_ a funny line, but the studio recording taught us to take it serious--big mistake. (I also like when he asks the guy with the airhorn, "What are you trying to say? What do you _mean_?")