Music writer Neil McCormick blogs that Bob Dylan has a new album ready for release, and that “in some windowless room deep in the bowels of SonyBMG in London (quite possibly surrounded by armed guards) executives are locked in listening to playbacks while management discuss what to do with it….” That’s a pretty amusing image. What would they be discussing? Whether the world’s ready to hear it — kind of like the Third Secret of Fatima? (I have often suspected that the record company execs have sat on some of Bob’s stuff that was just too mind-blowing to be released to the public.) (OK, I am kidding.) (Mostly.)

Neil believes he is talking about an album of new material, obviously, but naysayers are already speaking up and accusing him of being confused by the predicted release of The Bootleg Series, Volume 8 in the fall. However, even that album qualifies as a rumor, in that I don’t know of any official press release or source for the story (it is written about on the Searching for a Gem site here.) It’s an easily believable rumor, mind you, in that it posits a two-CD set of outtakes and rarities, stretching from 1989 through 2006. It would, in other words, be a natural follow up to the original Bootleg Series (Vols. 1 - 3) which ended at 1989 and with the Oh Mercy outtake Series of Dreams. This new one is said to begin with additional outtakes from that album.

Of-course, if McCormick is right, and there really is an album of new material, then it would bring to mind those rumors 6 months ago and more that Bob Dylan was in the studio with the producer Rick Rubin. Those stories essentially bit the dust when everyone realized that Rick Rubin was actually recording an album with a different guy named Dylan — first name Jakob. People, including me, put the rumors down to wires getting crossed.

So, boil it all down, and as of today about all you can say is (that’s right): Nothing is revealed.

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