![]() His creative and existential malaise was all too clear throughout “Shot of Love,” the third and final album Dylan made during his two-year born-again Christian period. I’m in the bottomless pit of cultural oblivion. Wherever I am, I’m a ‘60s troubadour, a folk-rock relic, a wordsmith from bygone days, a fictitious head of state from a place nobody knows. He was adrift and struggling to find his place.ĭylan admitted as much in his admirably candid 2004 memoir, “Chronicles Volume One,” writing of the 1980s: “I felt done for, an empty, burned-out wreck. ![]() The advent of CDs, MTV and sleek but aesthetically questionable new recording technologies had transformed the music industry - and Dylan’s relevance was in question, if not jeopardy. It was an era when big beats, big hair and big images ruled popular music. He was 40 when “Shot of Love” was released half his lifetime ago. Now 80, the Nobel Prize-winning Dylan is set to launch his first concert tour since 2019 on Tuesday in Milwaukee. The albums chronicled on “Springtime in New York” are 1981’s “Shot Of Love,” 1983’s “Infidels” and 1985’s “Empire Burlesque.” The bookending “Shot of Love” and “Empire Burlesque” are among the least inspired and most dispensable works in this iconic troubadour’s extensive recording career. Together, they suggest how improved - and markedly different - the first three albums of Dylan’s “lost decade” could have been with more astute musical choices and much more careful curation. The result on this 5-CD set is an engrossing alternate aural history, thanks to the 54 previously unreleased tracks, alternate versions, studio outtakes, rehearsals and live recordings featured here. It is a testament to Bob Dylan’s greatness that a box set chronicling three of the albums he made as he neared the low point of his career is as fascinating and rewarding to hear as the newly released “Springtime In New York: The Bootleg Series Vol. ![]() Bob Dylan, “Springtime In New York: The Bootleg Series Vol. ![]()
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