The eighties could have been more favorable for many greats.

But how?

MTV and the digital couldn't stop them either.

Everything that a Fender Stratocaster held in their hands was confronted with this clanking-reverberant production method, which in retrospect could only be described as bad, if the guitar was not completely buttered up right away.

Why should Bob Dylan have been better off?

The decade is considered to be its worst, lost one.

But if you take a closer look, you realize that he really only really missed “Knocked Out Loaded” (1986);

In terms of sound, this crap could also have been level 42.

But otherwise?

Unfortunately, the recently deceased musicologist Richard Klein was never really able to penetrate his thesis that the gospel phase that ended in 1981 was also of high quality.

Edo Reents

Editor in the features section.

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It can be proven again.

The sixteenth bootleg delivery covers the period from 1980 to 1985 and essentially documents the sessions for “Shot Of Love” (1981), often dismissed as the end of the gospel trilogy with horror and yet full of strength and devotion;

to “Infidels” (1983), received with relief as a supposed reorientation, here and there even traded as the best since “Blood On The Tracks” (1975);

and “Empire Burlesque” (1985) when Dylan was at least as in good shape before he actually went downhill for a while.

what fun

Anyone who wants to get a first impression of the profound musicality of the material skimmed off here - 57 tracks in the five CD edition, 54 previously unpublished - should first take a look at the liner notes (by Damien Love): “These Test recordings remind you of the fun music can be. ”They were made at a time when even the last studio assistant had to realize: The best songs don't even get on the record. Luckily Dylan didn't throw anything, or if he did, we don't know.

Let's start with the best: “To Ramona”, already featured on “Another Side Of Bob Dylan” (1964), is, certainly thanks in part to Fred Tackett's (known from Little Feat) mandolin playing, to be emphasized. This warm, down-to-earth waltz is easy on the stone, even the version of the Flying Burrito Brothers from 1971 is no longer better. Dylan sings for his life, as was usually the case at that time, urgently, sensitively, often a bit squeezed, probably out of inner need. A surprise is the foreign material, which he rarely does below the classic level. The viscous swamp blues from “Mystery Train”; Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline", from which Dylan deprives everything of triumph and turns it into a drawn-out lament; moving the Motown love pain of "I Wish It Would Rain" and the Dr. Hook howler "A Couple More Years";unnecessarily, at best, “Abraham, Martin and John”.

Never a good record again?

So far, it's recordings from the fall of 1980 and spring of 1981. After that, Dylan almost gave up. “I didn't feel like recording anymore, it was tiring. I didn't like the sounds back then, neither my own nor anyone else's. I thought even if I tried a hundred years, I would never make a good record again. ”After a two-year hiatus, he put on a new one for“ Infidels ”with the help of guitarists Mick Taylor and Mark Knopfler and the rhythm machine Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare Plumage too. Fresh wind came in. Dylan, who came to his senses on sailing trips in the Caribbean, let work more concentrated after the ingenious, clattering sausage of “Shot Of Love” and wanted something very special for the production; at first there were even names like Zappa and Bowie.

But then Knopfler did it.

His band, the Dire Straits, were a synonym for digital sounds back then, and this sterility rubbed off, of course.

Nevertheless, the result was extraordinary, which, you really don't get it, Dylan then simply left out the heartfelt “Tell Me”, the powerfully springy “Foot of Pride” and, for some critics even the greatest, the piano blues “Blind Willie McTell ”;

all three were already represented in different, superior versions at the first bootleg in 1991.

In between and again and again he let the daredevil hang out, who still felt most comfortable in a no-frills skirt ("Need a Woman") and then again congenially intoned Jimmy Reed.

New confidence

Finally “Empire Burlesque”. Dylan must have regained confidence in his songwriting skills, which the critics on this occasion also explicitly highlighted; because he sorted out little. The twelve-minute film "New Danville Girl", which was left out at the time, is all the more noticeable now. Overall, the same applies to each individual phase: Everything is always there - in the form of a style such as blues, country, a noticeable amount of reggae and, strangely, also reminiscences of the Texmex sounds like "Romance in Durango" (from " Desire ”, 1975); and also in the form of individual songs that Dylan basically treats like living beings, for example now "Señor", one of those mysterious titles from "Street Legal" (1978),With which he was apparently no longer completely satisfied and which he took up again in October 1980.

The studio line-ups are a chapter in themselves. From Ringo Starr and Jim Keltner on drums, there is hardly any downward trend; for the other instruments it is to be read accordingly and everything is read. The only question that remains is whether the background choir, in which Clydie King also participates, could not have been mixed a little more discreetly here and there. Otherwise: definitely buy all the stuff!