Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes
While focusing on a select group of musicians performing privately in a brief  window of time, noted music and culture writer Greil Marcus cuts to the core of the  American musical legacy to study it as a slightly blurred snapshot, full of shadow and  mystery.Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapescenters around the  now legendary recordings made by Bob Dylan and The Band in 1967, and how this  music signaled a change in American music by capturing the essence of the moment  within the context of a rich folk tradition. During these casual sessions they recorded  more than 100 songs, some originals, but most borrowed from barely remembered folk,  blues, and country musicians.This music they derived from had been part of the American fabric in an anonymous way  that can only be explained as folklore and myth, and they breathed new life into it while  adhering to its legacy. Though never intended for release, these recordings molded into  the tradition of music as oral history, and appropriately, a few tapes were passed hand to  hand, then some were pressed as bootleg records, which then spread like rumors. This  folk revival conjured up a collection of timeless stories that many had heard in a slightly  different form without ever knowing who started them. Just as Dylan did with theBasement Tapes,Marcus's exhilarating book extends beyond music and into the  psyche of America, making the present more clear by putting the past into focus.