Bob Dylan – Still Fool Review

If there were a need for any more evidence on how poor these compilations are, just look at the eleventh song. 01 Track 01 is either a cryptic message from Bob Dylan’s early years or an oversight at the slop factory. Folk-Up Records’ compilation is released with little suggestion of quality control. A folk up, indeed. There is never a moment when a compilation like Still Fool can be justified. From the first notes of opener Baby Please Don’t Go, the more astute listener will recognise the replication from compilation to compilation. It must stop. Culturally significant moments are being used as bait for listeners who may not know better. You can find a bulk of these songs in the official bootleg series. If not there, then the unofficial, fan-made bootlegs have a whole lot more care put into them than Still Fool. We live in times where the dissemination of information and the worthwhile facts of life are tricky to find.  

A compilation muddying the waters of an artist, put out by a team working on behalf of Dylan’s work, is a numbing experience. Gather what you can of the online space and rid yourself of it. It’s not an odd way to live, but a slow and steady disconnect from the internet, thanks to a series of poor compilations, is certainly a unique place to find yourself fearing for the future of information. When the official Dylan YouTube channel cannot be trusted with the recorded works, that is how you know trouble is brewing. We must instead rely on the passions of others, Untold Dylan this time. Their writing on Baby Please Don’t Go is vital and yet will be seen less as the more official compilations are released. It makes a mockery of the desire to seek out information on moments in an artist’s life which are not a highlight reel of their hits.  

An early blues cover is where Dylan can test the temperament of himself and his voice in the folk genre. These are moments worth hearing, and yet if you search Baby Please Don’t Go you will be offered the same version spread across a multitude of compilations with no face behind them. A cover of the song features on the unofficial bootleg Talkin Bear’ Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues, and that is, really, the only version you need. Rely on unofficial sources, then. Those who can should gather what they can before the fields of harvestable art are muddied by messy auto-completion and generative artificial intelligence. It is a warning worth repeating. Still Fool is a minor blip of concern, but it is a concern nonetheless. Everything else featured on this compilation can be found in other compilations released by the channel. It’s an active choice to republish these compilations, without credit for where the original recording is from.  

What a dirty choice it is, too. Every song here is featured elsewhere on the channel. This is a shuffle of a deck missing half its cards, because copyright decisions and legal wranglings prevent some songs from being released until a certain point. It is mesmerising just how deep the well goes for songs recorded before the release of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. Crucial to all this is the quality of the recordings. These are excellent blues numbers, like Ramblin’ On My Mind and He Was a Friend of Mind. You are, at this point, better off downloading these pieces and tucking them away into a folder. Who knows which will be lost to the meaningless, frequent re-releases first. These are not the first, nor the last, useless playlists to come from the Dylan camp.