Volume 7 of Bob Dylan’s Bootleg Series is the companion soundtrack to Martin Scorsese’s excellent Dylan documentary No Direction Home.
The album, like the film, traces Dylan’s development as an artist from his earliest days through his electric phase, culminating with the famous “Royal Albert Hall” concert where an angry fan yelled out “Judas!”
My next ‘Folk Rock Derivative’ artist is both a perfect example of the genre and an argument for scrapping the concept of musical categorization altogether.
Nobody can argue that Paul Simon isn’t a folk rock artist — the man practically invented the genre when paired with Art Garfunkel in the 60s. But he has since explored so many different styles — from gospel and jazz to a few continents worth of world music — that one could be a huge Paul Simon fan and have no affinity for folk rock whatsoever.
I probably never would have considered including a ‘Country Plus’ category in my musical genome before I discovered Brad Paisley.
The other artists I’m including in that group would still have shown up, but I would have lumped them under ‘singer-songwriters’ or shoehorned them into ‘folk.’ I never would have considered embracing the ‘country’ label.
The next ‘Piano Man’ who occupies a strand of my musical genome is the loved-by-me, loathed-by-everybody-around-me Rufus Wainwright.
Wainwright uses quite a bit of acoustic guitar, not to mention orchestral music and horns, in his music but at heart he is a tickler of the ivories. Look no further than his sixth studio album, All Days Are Nights: Songs For Lulu, which featured nothing but his piano and vocals.
Today we arrive at another of those ‘Oddball’ misfits whose music I enjoy despite the fact that it sounds like nothing else in my collection.
Beck defies categorization not just among my musical preferences but in general. Early in his career, he blended an alternative singer-songwriter style with hip-hop and electronica, but was just as comfortable releasing an acoustic folk album. He followed the kaleidoscopic pastiche of Odelay with the somber mope balladry of Mutations, then shifted gears again with the dance party of Midnite Vultures.
