In the sleevenotes to the 2000 CD edition of Odetta Sings Dylan I read that that album
… started the genre of Bob Dylan cover version or tribute albums, a genre that — 35 years later — has grown to more than 100 different albums, from the purely adventurous (The Rockridge Synthesiser Orchestra Plays Bob Dylan or Strings for Pleasure Play the Best of Bob Dylan) to the truly sublime (Tim O'Brien's Red on Blonde or Steve Gibbons' The Dylan Project)
I made a note, and sought to track down these examples of the sublime. I ended up making a "Markeplace Pre-order" on Amazon for the Dylan Project, and it arrived nearly a year later, at the beginning of last December.
I've already let slip what I consider the best Dylan covers album, and I have to say I'm disappointed by this one. I was talking to Paul recently about it, and he agreed. He knows more about Steve Gibbons than I do: apparently he's a Birmingham rocker who had a Number 1 album back in the 70s, but now he has difficulty selling out the back room of a pub as the Steve Gibbons Band, whereas he can sell tickets in their thousands for the Dylan Project.
Paul and I agreed that the performance and arrangement of Dylan's songs are too much in debt to the originals. The phrasing is lifted directly from Dylan's idiosyncratic style, whereas Barb Jungr completely reinvents the delivery. The playing is good and rootsy, to be sure — in the tradition of The Band — and the hats off to them for recording and mixing the album "in real time without clicks, in ten days". I like the version of Dark Eyes: many of these cover albums are at their best when they go off the beaten track.
The website says, "Although the phrase 'tribute band' can mean a slavish facsimile or a big-name cash-in, The Dylan Project is far more than a mere copycat act." A bit more, sure, but not enough for my liking.
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