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13/09/2004 ISIS - A Bob Dylan Anthology: an outstanding new book
Fanzines are funny beasts. As a prime source of original factual information, they're welcomed by hardcore fans. And the best fanzines occasionally publish revelatory, insightful articles you just don't see anywhere else. But you subscribe to a fanzine at your peril. By becoming a regular reader, you cross an invisible threshold: entering the world of the true believer, you abandon balance and rationality at the door. Open the typical fanzine and you're assailed by overly generous criticism - fatuous live reviews, overblown evaluations of the artist's work - bean spilling by former associates (both brown-nosed and embittered), the pointless celebration of celebrity, and endless political skirmishes. Most avoidably, you have to contend with fans musing, semi-coherently, on fandom. And there's a lot of distractingly sloppy writing and editing. ISIS, the long-established Dylan bi-monthly, is a much better fanzine than most, though it's not entirely free of the shortcomings of the genre. "If only they would collect the best stuff - which is very, very good - and ditch the rest…", I've often thought, at the Borders magazine shelves, before deciding against buying the new issue of ISIS. Well, now they have collected the best stuff, and the resulting book is a revelation. ISIS: A Bob Dylan Anthology collects the highlights from the first 100 issues of the magazine. It's a "must-read" addition to the fast-growing Dylan library. Edited, like the fanzine, by Derek Barker, ISIS collects together 35 articles, covering all phases of Dylan's career. The pieces are arranged chronologically so you can, if you wish, read the whole book as a narrative, though most will probably use it as a reference book, dipping in and out at random. Nearly all the articles are worth reading. The best are those which get nearest to the main man, notably: the transcripts of Robert Shelton's interviews with Dylan's parents; Matthew Zuckerman's revealing interview with English folkie, Martin Carthy; Ian Woodward's conversation with Mickey Jones, and the three pieces by Al Aronowitz. There is some sharp critical writing, too: Nick Train's splendid piece linking Street Legal to Robert Johnson's legacy had me engrossed for a couple of hours. Almost half the articles are by Barker himself, including some intelligent scissors-and-paste detective investigations - on Daniel Lanois and Jacques Levy, Dylan in Greenwich Village and London, Hurricane and Masked And Anonymous. Many pull together and interpret widely scattered facts; others include impressive interviews; they will inform and entertain all but the most knowledgeable Dylanista. Barker's expert synopsis of issues dear to the heart of most fans - best concerts, best bootlegs, best books, and ISIS readers' ranked list of official albums - and a delightfully cranky evaluation of the SACD remasters, will be particularly welcomed by Bob neophytes. The book isn't entirely free of longueurs from the undergrowth of fanmania, including a few avoidable "what it's like to be a fan" ruminations. And the 1966 pudding, with three articles in 30 pages, is over-egged. Does anyone really care what happened in Australia a month before the Big Match? You find yourself nodding in agreement at most of the hundreds of sound judgements in the book, but Barker's claim that Dylan is "unlike almost any other popular musician… in that his performance art changes nightly" just doesn't tally with my own experience of gig-going. There are plenty of artists who, like Dylan, change the setlist and vary the performance every night. These are minor criticisms. ISIS, the book, is highly recommended. It’s a richly diverse re-telling of the Dylan story, packed wall-to-wall with insights. It's guaranteed a place on the shelf of Dylan books labelled "indispensable" - essential reading for anyone who derives pleasure from exploring Dylan's genius. The revised edition adds a couple of new pieces and some updates to the version first published in 2001. Published in the UK a few months ago, the new version goes on sale in the USA for the first time this month. Two printings of the paperback and a hardback version of the original edition sold out rapidly; this new version is likely to do just as well. A completely new second edition, with another set of extracts from the magazine - Best Of, vol 2 - is promised in due course. The sooner the better. ISIS: A Bob Dylan Anthology. Ed Derek Barker. Helter Skelter Publishing. Paperback. 352pp. £9.99/$17.95. ISBN 1-900924-82-X. Published May 2004 UK/Sept 2004 USA.
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