Dylan's latest disc marks three creative milestones

To know Bob Dylan, professed "song-and-dance man," is impossible. He has said as much. It's part of his capricious attitude toward musical careerism. He is who we want him to be, and what we want him to be is who he is not.

Superficially, he is Bob, at least to associates who know him best, which is not very well. Wags have called him "Zimmy," a bastardization of Zimmerman, his family name before the distortion of fame and fortune blurred fact and fiction.

To awed fans, he is DYLAN -- and, being a veteran contrarian, he dismisses his hallowed status. So Dylan is not even Dylan. Such is the contradictory and enigmatic mix of mythos, perception and fact that swirls around this beatified poet, writer of towering songs and trader of tall tales, a reluctant cultural icon and a riddle tangled up in clues.

A good way for the determined and foolhardy to try and piece together a tangible identity for Mr. D. is through Dylan's Bootleg Series, of which the eighth volume, the teasingly titled Tell Tale Signs, was released last week.

Tell Tale Signs is two discs, three if you pony up the big bucks for the overpriced deluxe edition. As all previous volumes of the series, it contains a trove of previously unreleased high-quality songs, songs written for films, live performances, alternate versions of songs and studio demos.

Each volume exhumes artifacts from various key periods in Dylan's career -- the folk/protest-singer years; the infamous 1960s British electric tour with The Hawks; the Rolling Thunder Tour; and two volumes dedicated to sorting through the flotsam and jetsam of his career from the 1960s through 1991. All are marvelous, head-shaking affairs. Think about it: Dylan has released eight highly acclaimed sets made up of material tucked away. That's more albums than most modern performers ever get a chance to make -- and all are vital ones.

Tell Tale Signs is dedicated to what Dylan seems to mark as three significant latter-career creative bursts: There is his 1989 album Oh Mercy -- a highly acclaimed disc that has become a point of contention for Dylan; a song from the sessions for World Gone Wrong (1993), one of two spirited, fully realized traditionalist "folk" albums that Dylan made to revisit songs that he loved or influenced him.

And finally, two tracks from Modern Times (2006 -- his latest disc, and the third offering in a highly satisfying trilogy of discs (the others are Time Out Of Mind and Love and Theft) that Dylanologists have decreed as another creative pinnacle and slippery slope for mere mortals to scale.

Dylan's last three albums found him again focused and engaged in his work -- something that has not always been the case in a career that dates back to 1962 and that contains, inarguably, some of the most important songs and albums in the history of recorded music. More precisely, it signals the end of a long fallow period -- Oh Mercy was the last truly laudable Dylan album of original music for eight years. It was not until 1997 that Dylan wrote an album that he, and the critics, considered wholly worthy.

Tell Tale Signs lacks the historical significance of the live Rolling Thunder Revue release, or the infamous, contentious electric Royal Albert Hall concert by Dylan and the Hawks. Nor does it offer the shocking discarded creativity and the all-encompassing alternate cultural paths plotted by The Bootleg Series: Vols.1-3 or Bob Dylan: No Direction Home.

Rather, Tell Tale Signs' purpose is threefold. First, Dylan shores his often-stated belief that producer Daniel Lanois' work on Oh Mercy left good performances "beaten into a bloody mess" by including alternate takes from those sessions.

There are superior versions of that album's "Most Of The Time" and "Everything Is Broken." Then there is the spellbinding unreleased "Born In Time," and unadorned and honest readings of "Dignity" and "Series Of Dreams," songs recorded for the album in various busier styles and ultimately abandoned for a time. It all makes a strong case for Dylan's less-is-more argument.

Second, the choices of songs from certain albums, while leaving other albums unrepresented, if pondered, seem to point the path of progression for Dylan's creative rebirth. The inclusion of the under-produced outtakes from Oh Mercy underscores his belief that modern production hurt his creativity and contributed to his period of musical disillusion. A terrific reading of bluesman Robert Johnson's "32-20 Blues" from World Gone Wrong points toward Dylan's return to the roots of his musical loves -- something reflected by the stylistic determination to add new spirit to blues and old-time musical forms on Time Out Of Mind, Love and Theft and Modern Times.

He is now working a jiggered folk tradition, writing new songs that sound old.

Finally, Tell Tale Signs shows the work of a man who wholly embraced the tenet of folk music, to keep songs in a constant state of creation. The various versions of songs offer lyrics and verses that disappeared to return later in older songs. Vastly different versions of songs show Dylan's drive to keep his music alive, simultaneously moving backward and forward, not on a whim but on a quest to bend, twist and resculpt songs to suit and reflect the moods of time and place. They may be shaped by forms from the past, but they are not preserved in amber. In the folk tradition, Dylan will continue to manipulate these songs over time.

Tell Tale Signs is a fascinating musical maze through the most recent phase of a career that continually wages battle against (and occasionally adds to) its own mythology.

There are glimpses of revolution, and peeks behind the curtain. But nothing is resolved. Nothing is even remotely finished. It is, as Dylan wrote, just the latest in a series of dreams.