Bob Dylan 101

FOR ABSOLUTELY NO ONE
Self Portrait (1970)
''What is this s---?'' Greil Marcus famously wondered in Rolling Stone at the time. Answer: a motley, seemingly random assortment of cutesy curios, covers, and live tracks intended to throw worshippers off the scent of brilliance.

Street Legal (1978)
Released just before he found God, this suggests he was profoundly in need of some kind of born-again experience. Cloying female backing vocals fatally sandbag a set of so-so post-divorce material.

Dylan & the Dead (1988)
A marriage made in a surprisingly unheavenly place, with each party bringing out the other's sloppy somnambulism. Almost any concert bootleg you could pick up handily beats this (and 1979's At Budokan and 1984's Real Live are almost as lame).

Down in the Groove (1988)
Fans debate whether this or 1986's equally undercooked Knocked Out Loaded represents Dylan's studio nadir. Notice we didn't say passionately debate.

Under the Red Sky (1990)
Produced by Don and David Was with a musical cast including George Harrison, Slash, Elton, and Stevie Ray Vaughan. What could go wrong? Everything, actually, with Dylan phoning in his weakest batch of material ever, defended by a few stalwarts as ''nursery-rhyme-inspired.'' Mother Goose nearly sued.

The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration (1993)
The most memorable moment of this all-star tribute concert — Sinéad O'Connor getting booed off the stage — isn't included, though we do get a lot of the respectful classic-rock homage usually reserved for the recently deceased.

Masked and Anonymous DVD (2003)
Director Larry Charles was a Seinfeld vet, but it took a Dylan vanity project to really make something about nothing. There are a few funny one-liners in this all-star art-house fiasco, but mostly you long for the more disciplined and purposeful days of his botched 1978 flick, Renaldo & Clara.

BOOK: Tarantula (1971)
A random chapter opening from Dylan's sole ''novel,'' better described as an epic poem: ''back betty, black bready blam de lam! bloody had a baby blam de lam!'' Recently republished, due to no particular popular blam de-lam-mand.