After every great musician dies, everybody suddenly wakes up to the fact that they were fascinating and hugely talented. A whole string of biographies is often released from every quarter possible and these are usually hungrily devoured. Bob Dylan will most likely suffer the same fate. The stages of his life will be extensively well-chronicled including his dramatic late-life comeback to music in the form of endless tours.

The Bootleg recordings will be hailed as his greatest endeavors in his career and indeed they are. The series, which incorporate 27 songs were recorded in the period between 1989 and 2006; they signify the period which Bob Dylan revived his passion for the Blues and made CDs that were widely accessible.

Although his comeback voice is not quite as prolific as it once was, these songs are a tribute to when music was literally pouring out of the man. At first, he may sound like an imitation of Southern blues with a few attempts at stripped-down rock and folk, but the more you listen, the more you will appreciate his love for American roots music.

This love is even personified in his picture on the cover of the booklets that accompany his CDs. With a circus master’s moustache, he has on a white jacket with a black collar, a white shirt and a black Kentucky Colonel tie.

By listening to his two CDs, one comes to appreciate the sheer musical brilliance of the man that was born in 1941. His music is ideal as pleasant background music or as something to nod to in the car. Intrinsically, Bob Dylan offers an alternate vision of America. A shame if people waited for him to die to discover this.
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