Wikipedia:Today's featured article/July 21, 2015
The Basement Tapes (1975) is an album recorded by Bob Dylan and the Band (pictured), the sixteenth studio album for Dylan. After the Band (then known as the Hawks) backed Dylan during his world tour of 1965–66, four of them moved to be near Dylan in Woodstock, New York, to collaborate with him on music and film projects. They recorded more than 100 tracks together in 1967, including original compositions, contemporary covers and traditional material. The world tour had controversially mixed folk and rock; Dylan's new style moved away from rock, and from the urban sensibilities and extended narratives of his most recent albums, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde. The new songs covered a range of genres, with lyrics expressing humor, alienation, betrayal, and a quest for salvation. Many of the songs circulated widely in unofficial form before the album's release, and for some critics, they mounted a major stylistic challenge to rock music in the late sixties. When released in 1975, the album included sixteen songs taped by Dylan and the Band in 1967 and eight songs recorded solely by the Band since then. Critically acclaimed upon release, The Basement Tapes reached number seven on the Billboard 200 album chart. (Full article...)