Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes Book

Critic Greil Marcus, author of Dead Elvis, The Dustbin of History and Mystery Train has produced a startling and provocative meditation on one of the great underground classics of American music, the fabled Basement Tapes recorded in the summer of 1967 by Bob Dylan and musicians who would soon be known as The Band. Invisible Republic is not merely the story of the Basement Tapes and their unusual bootleg history, but a critical analysis of the various influences that seem to have led Dylan and his friends into creating this body of work, which is exuberant, haunting and mysterious. Marcus presents a lively and offbeat social history of America while telling the stories of such characters as the eccentric folk song anthologist Harry Smith and a banjo-picking Virginia coal miner named Doc Boggs. Marcus writes with passion, and as he himself says, an "obsession". His analysis of how five men in a basement in 1967 happened to create an alternative folk music for America is not only highly entertaining, but is like a long refreshing dive into a vast lake of American music. --Jake BondRead More