Rating: 
Summary: Pompous
Review: I think the people who are complaining that they are not getting a conventional song by song disection of the tapes here are missing out on the much richer and insightful text that we do have. The greatest understanding of the Basement Tapes comes i think comes out of an explanation of their context. In this fashion, rather than providing a staid run-of-the-mill anaylsis of this collection of songs, Marcus aims, and is able to push them gently into the light. This also leaves room for the reader to make up his or her own mind about the music to a degree. By the way there are some great interpretations of some of the songs; i enjoyed the segements which discussed 'Tears Of Rage', and 'Lo and Behold!'.
Rating: 
Summary: Expansive, intelligent, good fun
Review: I think the people who are complaining that they are not getting a conventional song by song disection of the tapes here are missing out on the much richer and insightful text that we do have. The greatest understanding of the Basement Tapes comes i think comes out of an explanation of their context. In this fashion, rather than providing a staid run-of-the-mill anaylsis of this collection of songs, Marcus aims, and is able to push them gently into the light. This also leaves room for the reader to make up his or her own mind about the music to a degree. By the way there are some great interpretations of some of the songs; i enjoyed the segements which discussed 'Tears Of Rage', and 'Lo and Behold!'.
Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant and flawed, like its subject
Review: If for no other reason, this book is worth reading for Marcus's brilliant dissection of the '60s folk revival and Dylan's troubled tour of 1966 with the Hawks. No other writer has ever put his finger precisely on the reason for the hostility that greeted Dylan's decision to "go electric." Although the discussion of the "Anthology of American Folk Music" is useful and provides a nice context for Dylan's work in The Basement Tapes, Marcus tends to stretch the analogy beyond any useful point. And the lengthy digression on the career of Dock Boggs seems to serve no purpose whatsoever and sheds no light on the subject at hand. Also, some of Marcus's pet phrases (such as "second mind") seem clever at first, but become tiresome after the umpteenth reprise (after a while, you can almost see them coming). More discussion of the actual Basement Tapes songs would have made this book the definitive treatment of the subject. Nevertheless, what we have is excellent. Easily one of the best books ever written on a single aspect of Dylan's work.
Rating: 
Summary: Not really about Dylan, but a fun read
Review: If this book truly dealt with the subject of its title, it would easily get five stars from me. For most, Marcus' writing is an aquired taste. His lengthy ruminations on the meaning and symbolism in songs can at times seem a bit more than most rock and roll music deserves. But at the same time, this unpredictable and sometimes self-indulgent approach can actually open new vistas to the reader/listener. While Marcus' admiration for Dylan, The Band, and their Woodstock work is well-founded (if not discussed at any real length), he curiously doesn't see fit to discuss the underside of the Basement Tapes. When preparing the tapes for commercial release, Band member Robbie Robertson recorded many overbubs, and in places artificially made the tunes sound low-fi and woodsy. He even substituted several tracks that were not recorded at the same time, leaving off better tunes that have become legendary. Kind of cuts the myth down a bit, no? Lastly, if Marcus wanted to write about Dock Boggs, mining wars, and Appalachian musicology, it would have made a fine book on its own. Most rock fans can't make the leap from extreme one to the other like Marcus can.
Rating: 
Summary: Excerpt from Chapter One: Another Country
Review: In the dressing room in London, the guitarist was looking for a melody. He picked tiny
notes off the strings until they fluttered, snapping in the air. The singer turned his head,
caught the tune, the title flashing up: sure, "Strange Things Happening Every Day," Sister
Rosetta Tharpe, when was it, 1945? Closing in on Tharpe's own guitar line, the guitarist felt
for the syncopation in the rhythm, and the song came to life in the singer's mind.
On that last great Judgment Day
When they drive them all away
There are strange things happening every day
She was shameless, the singer remembered: purer than pure when her mother was alive,
backsliding after that. She came onto the Lord's stage in a mink; she had a way with a
guitar few men could touch. She was the black church in the Grand Ole Opry--she'd even
recorded with Pat Boone's father-in-law, Red Foley, Mr. "Old Shep" himself. On the other
hand, Red Foley had recorded "Peace in the Valley," hadn't he, the spiritual the Reverend
Thomas A. Dorsey had written as the Second World War began? The sainted gospel
composer, in earlier days known as Georgia Tom, who'd put his name on dirty blues? The
singer shook his head: why was he remembering all this? His memory raced ahead of him.
For some reason he remembered that "Strange Things Happening" had topped the black
charts the same week Hitler killed himself. It was April 30, 1945; the singer was a month
short of four, Sister Rosetta Tharpe was thirty. "There's something in the gospel blues," she
would say years later, "that's so deep the world can't stand it." Now he heard the song as if
the war had ended yesterday, as if it were the first time he'd heard it, wherever that had
been--off some road he'd never remember anything else about, like waking from a dream
you had to get up and live through.
If you want to view the climb
You must learn to quit your lyin'
There are strange things happening every day
The guitarist was beginning to mumble the words, faking them, getting only the title phrase.
The singer grinned as he made for the door. " 'Strange things happening every day,' " he
said. "She got that right."
To read more of the excerpt, check out:
http://www.fsbassociates.com/books/invisrepub.htm
Rating: 
Summary: This is no Mystery Train
Review: Marcus has written a BOOK, and entire BOOK for heavens sake, on a collection of songs. He goes on for pages and pages, dissecting songs that Dylan probably wrote in minutes. Searching for the meaning of life in a song like 'Lo and Behold' is fruitless, I can assure you. Read Mystery Train again if you need a dose of Marcus.
Rating:
Summary: Marcus is a boob.
Review: Mr. Marcus is a sort of post-modern groupie. He tries here to get into Dylan's smelly pants, but really, who cares. His theories seldom "match up" with anything palpable. Why do people read this crud. I'm going back to New York City, I do believe I've had enough.
Rating:
Summary: Not just music, not just history
Review: Not just music, not just history, Invisible Republic, like Mr. Marcus' classic Mystery Train,explores the secret history of America. It's not the history of facts, or even Dylan and the Band's Basement Tapes, but the history of America's spirit. He writes of characters real and fictional whose lives embody the American journey. Hope, desperation, dreams, doom -- he makes these abstractions concrete through the lives of these people. Even Bob Dylan the man is not as important as what Dylan and the Band created the songs they wrote and the songs they chose -- an "Invisible Republic" that is home to the individuals of history we never hear about, the everymen and women. In addition, Marcus "rediscovers" the true folk artists who inspired everyone from Dylan to Judy Collins and Pete Seeger. These original artists carried on the last oral tradition in America, focusing on the not-so-pretty elements of rural American life -- violence, coupled with a damn good time. Greil Marcus has an insight into what makes America really function (and dysfuction), that the great artists have. He writes with the voice and passion of a fiction writer, funny, sad, and true
Rating:
Summary: reading too much history into one album
Review: OK, I love The Basement Tapes. They always sound like a collection of folk and pop songs found under a rock... some of them with intense personal meaning for anyone (Wheel's on Fire, Tears of Rage) and just plain fun and silliness (Apple Sucklin' Tree and Please Mrs. Henry). But, can rock music's most noted historian really justify Lo and Behold to the problems of ethomusicology, race relations, and the individulity of the American psyche? He can, and does; it just doesn't hold enough water. The book would have been better with more stories about how the album was made as an anology of for something greater. But, I still love this album!
Rating:
Summary: If only the sub-title (and the author) were accurate
Review: Perhaps I began this book with too high a set of expectations; like, for example, it would actually focus on Bob Dylan's (and The Band's) Basement Tapes. The set piece that opens the book--a brilliant recapturing of the infamous 1966 Albert Hall concert--plays to Marcus' strength as an evoker of places and atmospheres, and includes some incredible quotes from the protagonists. And even though this chapter is too brief to be thorough, it's the best thing in the book, because in setting up the context for The Basement Tapes, it delivers something close to the advertised product. But it's all down hill from there, because Dylan, The Band, the tapes all dissappear into the shadows. They end up becoming just another facet, rather than the focus of the book. There's a lengthy chapter on Harry Smith's "Anthology of American Folk Music" and Marcus' woefully insubstantial literary analysis of a handful of "Tapes" songs that tell us more about the workings(?) of Marcus' mind than of the music. After all, how much can lyrics like "Ooh baby/ooh wee/it's that million dollar bash" really be explicated? The answer found in this book is: far too much. If this had indeed been a book about Dylan, about the months he and The Band spent in Woodstock NY, about the process of making music--specificaly the music the book claims it will be about (and The Basement Tapes, as eventually distributed by Columbia are important enough to enough people to merit such consideration)--about the atmosphere and events surrounding the music, this would have been a much more enlightening read. I wanted to see Marcus do for the making of the tapes what he does so well for the Albert Hall concert--make me feel like I'm there. But Marcus' context overwhelms his alleged focus to the point that the title and the jacket are essentially false advertisements. Dylan fans: caveat emptor.
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