Bloody Genius

I wake up every day at 415AM. Every day. It keeps my schedule consistent, I don’t need to change my alarm, and it gives me time, even I work days, to listen to music before I head off into the daily grind. For about the past three months my morning routine has included listening to the most recent release for the Bob Dylan Bootleg Series - The Bootleg Series Vol. 14: More Blood, More Tracks. This is a collection of recordings Dylan made in 1974 during the creation of his 1975 masterpiece Blood on the Tracks. What you hear when you listen to the six discs is the creation of art, the sometimes muddled and sometimes brilliant experimentation that can rarely lead to something of pure beauty as is the case with Blood on the Tracks. While one may recoil from seeing a CD with ten versions of Tangled Up in Blue, trust me it is a rare gift to be able to listen to the evolution of a classic song.

I’ll write about this set in more detail in the future, but could not hold back from posting my appreciation for this example of the genius of Bob Dylan.