Bob Dylan – The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3

Dylan’s peculiar genius is maddening, and possibly never more so than on this collection. Whether it’s his preternatural ability—at such a young age—to deliver a masterpiece performance like “He Was A Friend Of Mine,” or the fact that it turns out he was recording incredible work like “Blind Willie McTell” at a time when we despaired that he’d ever write anything good again (i STILL can’t fathom why he’d leave the recording on the cutting room floor), Dylan has been confounding and delighting us for so many decades it’s virtually impossible to remember he’s actually just another mortal like the rest of us. Admittedly, as these recordings make clear, a bizarrely talented mortal, but a mortal all the same.