Greil Marcus opened his Rolling Stone review of Bob Dylan’s ironically titled 1970 covers album Self-Portrait with a not-so-rhetorical question: “What is this shit?” Marcus was writing not only as a scorned fan but also as a concerned citizen of the music world. His fear was that an inveterate shape-shifter had succumbed to his own penchant for alienation effects. “ Self-Portrait is a concept album from the cutting room floor,” he wrote. “It has been constructed so artfully, but as a coverup,