Rating: 
Summary: Terminal
Review: Some book, The Inbvisible Rebublic. TERMINAL. If I didn't know better I would have thought that MR GREIL would have composed this particular work while driving through the backwoods of West Virgina in a black 6 door limo, sipping champagne. The perfect gift for you everyday, overly affected, down and out dylanologist.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting browse, but too esoteric for most people
Review: The book is almost unreadable, because the author makes too many leaps (traveling back and forth in time and place) that require too much effort to follow. This is a book which displays deep knowledge of American music , with some discussion of the Basement Tapes themselves, but not enough. I found the brief description of individual songs in the back more useful that the the main part of the book. The author's leaps and observations are too esoteric - most fans will not find it worth the effort. Also, it goes without saying that you need to hear the actual tapes (which are available in an unofficial 5 CD bootleg set) . -WGL
Rating: 
Summary: A Strange but Interesting and Enjoyable Book
Review: There are numerous problems with this book. The writing is often highly metaphorical and jumps back and forth between Marcus' various musings; even if I reread certain sentences 2 or 3 times, I still couldn't grasp their full content. Also, the book is not about the Basement Tapes, but about the Basement Tapes, Bob Dylan before the Basement Tapes, and everything else that Marcus thinks the Basement Tapes points to (in a highly speculative manner). Having said that, I loved reading (most of it). The description of Dylan circa '64 - '66 and the intense reaction of the folkies to his electric shift is worth the price of the book alone. I finally understand exactly why Dylan going electric at Newport in '65 elicited such an incredibly hostile reaction. Marcus' writing is at his best there. Also his descriptions of Dylan's concerts with the Hawks in this period is equally mesmerizing (as it is in the liner notes to the new Dylan live at Royal Albert Hall which I recently purchased). His descriptions of the Basement Tapes themselves, and how they came about, are scanty at best, and it was frustrating as he described many songs which not only am I not familiar with, but aren't out in public except in obscure, overpriced bootlegs which I don't have access to. Hence, Marcus would often be talking of things in an out of context manner which I wasn't able to put back in context. The last half of the books he shoots off in the statrosphere with his description of Harry Smith's American Hall of Fame Folk recordings which I have heard is an incredible album and which I enjoyed Marcus' analysis, metaphorical as much of it is. The tie-in to the Basement Tapes themselves is at times tenuous, but understanding how Dylan himself reveres the old "folkies" (they're not actually folkies, but lack of a better word) lends credence to at least some of what Marcus has to say. Anyone interested in rock and roll, and folk, as American culture (as opposed to just American music) will enjoy this book, and I intend to get Lipstick Traces and maybe even Mystery Train as soon as this hectic x-mas season is past. To Marcus: keep on truckin'!
Rating:
Summary: Turgid Flapdoodle
Review: Too darn high on his own fumes, a once intelligent writer turns an arrogant essay of sorts into an insulting something or other that smells like hubris gone stale.
Rating:
Summary: Unhand Bob Dylan from your endless historicism, sir,
Review: Unhand Bob Dylan from your endless historicism, sir scholarship, the muse of Bob Dylan does not need to be reduced to the moral and fables of US history. Think rather of empire, of "empire burlesque," and the poetic syntax of a mind resisting US imperialism and the stranglehold of capitalism upon the soul. Think poetry, and the Jeremiah in the wilderness; not the son of Woody Guthrie, was this Bob, but the offspring of David and the sacred heart, "walking between the two deserts, singing." Your endless reach to historicism drowns out the lyrics and would do better on the Berkeley campus where you do in Dwinelle Hall belong. (But your love for the man, yes, is very very real, and the writing keeps on saying the same things. Please write on Van Morrison and "the invisible republic" of Irish lyricism across the Atlantic and the Pacific and the moon.) "Mutual forgiveness is the path to Eternity" (William Blake, or was it Bob Dylan?)
Rating: 
Summary: Pompous
Review: Well. I looked forward to this book immensely. And though, as a Brit, I don't have a personal Yankee context, I was pre-disposed to be favourable. However....I found this book both pompous and, even worse, pretentious. The links were tenuous, the prose was a thesaurus exercise without meaning. But with too much ambition. I bought the Basement Tapes when they first came out. Hell, I bought them on vinyl just off Carnaby Street, as the Little White Wonder. Some time ago, when Pat Garret and Billy The Kid was showing. Marcus attempts to place the sessions on a large social mural - spanning over a century. I don't think, in fact, I'm sure, that Bob and the Band were thinking that way.Just a thought.
Rating:
Summary: The mystery of truly American music
Review: When Bob Dylan retreated from stardom and virtual deification in 1966 and settled down in Woodstock, NY with his musician cronies (the Hawks, later the Band) he recorded perhaps the most enigmatic, strange, and timeless music ever laid down by a major star, or anyone. The fact that it was done by the man who had just released the kalaidoscopic masterpiece "Blonde on Blonde" Ð not to mention "Like A Rolling Stone," "Mr. Tambourine Man," "Blowin' in the Wind," etc. Ð all by the age of 25! Ð is astonishing. Invisible Republic does a fine job of recreating the circumstances and history that made Dylan's embrace of this odd music for release seem inevitiable. The author also draws some very interesting connections between the Basement Tapes music and the strange traditional folk music created in the Appalachians and elsewhere decades earlier. However, Mr. Marcus's writing occasionally veers into pretention and self-indulgence. I wish he had spent more time telling me what actually happened during these fabled sessions and less time creating a fictional village (the "invisible republic") inhibited with mysterious, eerie characters from the fabric of American Folk Song. And while it is not the author's fault, about 90% of the music he writes about is currently unavailable or out-of-print, making his lengthy descriptions of songs and textures as frustrating as they are illuminating. For example, Mr. Marcus notes that many people believe an unissued Dylan song from these sessions called "I'm Not There (1956)" to be not just one of Dylan's best songs, but one of the greatest songs ever recorded (same difference, I guess). Knowing it's "out there" and I can't hear it (yet) is sheer torture! But if Mr. Marcus's book, as pretentious as it is at times, causes Bob Dylan to issue his Basement Tapes (about a hundred songs in all) in full, then my rating for Invisible Republic will go up 3 points. At least.
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