Dylan, Springsteen And Neil Young: The Coming Fall Trifecta From Rock's Holy Trinity

The upcoming fall new music release calendar just got a lot more interesting with announcements made this week within just days of each other of new albums from three of rock's most iconic, legendary figures.

Although new albums from Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young might not have music retailers seeing big dollar signs the same way that a (likely on the way) new Kings Of Leon or (not so likely) Coldplay record would, it's still a positive sign that the record labels are showing more of a willingness to roll out the big guns this Christmas season.

While nobody can realistically expect these three albums to do anything resembling humongous numbers, what they will do is provide as good a reason as any in recent years to get the still viable baby boomer demographic out of their cubbyholes and back into the record stores this fall. Still, this rarely seen sixty-day window of new albums by what many regard as the holy trinity of rock's greatest living songwriters doesn't come without at least a few caveats.

For one thing, not all of these albums are exactly new.

Of the three packages, only Neil Young's Le Noise (due September 28) is a brand new studio album consisting entirely of music recorded earlier this year (with producer Daniel Lanois). The Dylan and Springsteen packages however, are both retrospectives drawing from the past work of each artist, while also containing rare and previously unreleased material.

Dylan's The Witmark Demos (in stores on October 19) is the ninth volume of his Bootleg Series, and focuses on rare demo recordings made between 1962-1964, including early versions of some of Dylan's most famous songs like "The Times They Are A Changin'" and "Blowin' In The Wind," as well as much rarer, never before heard material.

Springsteen's The Promise: The Darkness On The Edge Of Town Story (which arrives November 16) is an ambitious deluxe re-imagining of his 1978 classic Darkness On The Edge Of Town album. It comes in a deluxe boxed set housing 3 CDs, 3 DVDs (or Blu-ray discs) packed with such extras as live concert footage and rarely heard outtakes. There's even a previously unheard (if somewhat manufactured specifically for this set) "lost album" called The Promise.

Article Author: Glen Boyd

You'll find Blogcritics music editor Glen Boyd sharing his Thoughtmares on his personal blogs The World Wide Glen, and The Rockologist. Glen is also the author of Neil Young FAQ, scheduled for a spring 2012 release by Backbeat Books/Hal Leonard …

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