Introduction: The Basement
“The Basement Tapes” Album Artwork, Courtesy of Sony/Youtube
In the late 1960s, Bob Dylan recorded over 100 songs in the basement of a modest pink home (nicknamed the “Big Pink”) in upstate NY, near Woodstock. This was an unheard of practice, music had been almost exclusively recorded in professional studios, yet here was Dylan and the variable characters of his band recording on 3 microphones into what one member called a “crappy little recorder”. They had changed the music scene by casually recording in a basement, a place that many people just use to store out-of-season decorations and old photo albums. The collection of recordings received a name when a reporter probed Dylan for information about these mysterious recordings. She asked where they had been recorded and he said “out in somebody’s basement – just a basement tape,” thus the Basement Tapes were born.
Bob Dylan’s Band Practicing in the Basement, Courtesy of Sony/Youtube
An incredible collection of music emerged out of, what is for many, a neglected spance The space became a creative haven for Dylan and his simple name for the room is cemented in the history of American Music.