This notion of a “social contract” between customers, labels and artists that has somehow been violated by the $129.99 retail price of Tell-Tale Signs is quite popular on the forums. These formerly law-abiding, CD-buying Dylanites see the 2008 collection of outtakes as the Intolerable Act that pushed them once and for all into the jolly life of the cyberoutlaw. “Best price and what Sony should expect from all of us for pricing it that high:” wrote one poster over a JPEG of a waving pirate flag. “Jelly-Faced Woman” retorted with a call for collective action and solidarity. “When it’s released,” s/he wrote, “we can all hook everybody up with the complete 3-CD set for free. We’ll private message one another to keep this website out of trouble. Bob the kleptomaniac has shamelessly stolen so much of others’ material for his music and lyrics that we have the right to steal from him.”
For some, however cheerful they were about the illegal downloading, this apostasy went too far: “I highly doubt Bob is responsible for this price tag,” protested “AWA.” “I highly doubt Bob has much to do with this release at all other than saying ‘yes’ when they asked him about it.”
The Malibu Mafia
“AWA” might have a point. Much like Elvis was sheltered from the demands of his fans and the world by an entourage known as “the Memphis Mafia,” Dylan relies on a group of close advisers, employees, and friends that filter anything that would distract him from his real interests: his family life, touring, and occasionally getting into a recording studio. We can call these trusted consiglieri the singer’s “Malibu Mafia,” after Dylan’s home away from touring since the 1970s.
Chief among these insiders is Dylan’s all-powerful manager Jeff Rosen; a low-profile, extremely canny operator described by a journalist as looking “not unlike Billy Bob Thornton.” Rosen bears much responsibility for Dylan’s post-1980s renaissance among critics, and for the singer’s current stature as a national icon feted by the Lincoln Center and honored with Grammys and Oscars. Entrusted as Comptroller of The Image and Keeper of The Vault, Rosen also operates by rewarding sympathetic journalists (Greil Marcus, anyone on Jann Wenner’s payroll), greenlighting quality projects like Todd Haynes’ I'm Not There, conducting the interviews for Scorsese’s documentary No Direction Home, and generally keeping the back-catalog-based “cult of Dylan” afloat while Bob himself worries about things like the set-list for tonight’s show in Copenhagen.
Tell-Tell Signs is the ultimate Jeff Rosen artifact, like a personal CD-Rs set of amazing-sounding outtakes and live recordings that he has decided to release in order to show the world Bob's progress through the last stretch of the 20th-century (and the first few years of the 21st). Rosen, as the main interface between the Dylan camp and Sony/Columbia, is proudly credited as the “compiler” of the CD sets.
Some at the forums prefer to give Columbia, Rosen et al the benefit of the doubt. “We actually don't know for SURE what Sony has planned,” another poster wrote. “Hopefully, they have a ‘non-deluxe’ 3-CD set waiting in the wings...” Many, however, preferred to laugh about the callousness of the record business and are self-deprecating about the nonsensical hoarding mentality of record collectors and, specifically, the Cult of Dylan.
