It commonly happens that a musical artist fizzles out but is contractually obliged to provide (say) one more album for release. Usually, the artist resents this obligation and dishes up some rubbish from the vaults (Led Zeppelin's Coda, Bob Dylan's Dylan), or merely compiles a best-of.
However, I read today that two albums I value very highly – Bob Dylan's (1992) and Good As I Been To You (1992) and World Gone Wrong (1993) – were made under contractual obligation. This is not surprising, in retrospect. Not one song on them is an original composition; rather, both albums are unaccompanied acoustic performances of "traditional" folk and blues material. They were released after several albums of sludge in the 1980s with only a small percentage of good material.
Artistically, Dylan was at a low ebb and these two records were seen as a way of taking the pressure off himself and rekindling his muse, whence the rivers of rootsy gold in his three albums since: Time Out of Mind (1997), "Love and Theft" (2001) and Modern Times (2006). His early 90s efforts are curiosities, yet wonderful curiosities, and were it not for that insidious thing known as contractual obligation, we may never have received them.
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
About Let it Bleed
Let it Bleed is a companion blog to Midnight Rambler (see links to recent entries below). Both blogs contain items of interest to the author, but Bleed is short and sharp while Rambler is long and laborious.
The URL let-it-bleeed is a consequence of pollution in the blogspot.com namespace.
The image above is cropped from a Jackson Pollock painting.