21st Century Bob Dylan*

Actually, for conversational purposes, lemme go back to 1998.

1998 Time Out of Mind
2001 Love & Theft
2006 Modern Times
2009 Together Through Life
2009 Christmas In The Heart
2012 Tempest

I see generally acknowledged that Time Out of Mind is a career highlight. Definitely. I happen to like Love & Theft even better.

Together Through Life is actually my second-favorite on the list. I love David Hidalgo's accordion here. He's maybe the best ringer since Mark Knopfler, maybe even since Scarlet Rivera. Some nifty songs, too. I especially love "Beyond Here Lies Nuthin'" and "Jolene" feels even more fun to me than "Maggie's Farm."

But now we're getting into trouble. As Bob says in Chronicles, paraphrasing, there's only so many times you get to call down fire from the gods and have them answer. There's also only so many times you can change the world. At a certain, the world is changed, and that's that.

When I read reviews saying that Tempest is one of the greatest of his career, though, I had to stop myself. Yeah, it's good, and I really do love L&T, and for several of the last few years, I'd say it was my favorite Bob record. Certainly my most-often played, with TTL catching up....

...except for those dang bootlegs in roughly the same span. Even there though, my favorite by far is Tell Tale Heart. By far. But there have been so many great ones from earlier years! SP obviously, plus the 1966 live set, and the Basement Tapes box previews have been mind-boggling.

So I'm now finding myself constantly shifting what I'm thinking about Bob, and the relative weight of his last 17 years. On the one hand, absolutely invigorating stuff. At its best, its brilliant. But how far is too far with the praise? Or do some of you write it off as a waste altogether?

The wild card for me is what you think about his live performances. I was nuts about the shows I saw in 2002 and 2003. Among my all-time favorites by anyone. I had a lot of fun in 2012, especially because of the band, and Bob's general pleasure with being Bob Dylan these days -- a crown he has often worn poorly when he wasn't rejecting it altogether.

So what has this last stretch done for you? I'm still heavily on the side of "I've been having a blast," but I've spent an awful lot of time listening to some of the old stuff, especially the "new" old stuff in the blessed Bootleg series, and thinking, welp, the old stuff is pretty fine too.

 

I have to say I've come to love all recorded Bob. And just his spirit and vibe in the recordings. If there's any one musician alive I'd love to meet I think it would be Bob. It took me decades to be this much a fan, but I am.

There are those early peaks where he was the most amazing column of air ever, and then there were those I'll show them I'm not what they think I am years and then those years of I'm a seasoned weathered rock and roll troubador that I hope never end.

It's all good but I think I listen to 21st Century Bob a bit more than the earlier Bob these days, in large part because Tell Tale Signs gave me a new way in. That will change!

 

It's been a blast. Bob has truly been on fire for the past 15 or so years. Heck, I even like Christmas in the Heart!

 

Like Lonson I've become a fan of the whole thing, beginning to end. And I'm crazy about the work Dylan has done since '98--and I'd go back to Good as I Been to You and World Gone Wrong for the real beginning of the present phase.

That said, there are things that make me a little uneasy or ambivalent at least about the work of recent decades. I put it this way in a thread on Tempest when it came out a couple of years ago (this was in response to a comment that suggested Dylan's reputation in recent years had become a matter of his being able to do no wrong in the eyes of too many people, and that his recent work was wildly overrated):

It may be the case that Dylan is extending a particular approach a few years too far for his own artistic good. It's unprecedented, after all, for a "period" in Dylan's career to last so long and to stretch over so many recordings--and for them to be so consistent in their manner and quality to actually start to seeming like merely a manner, with a slightly hollow ring to it.

I'm not saying it's come to that exactly just yet, for me, but I can see how it might feel that way to others. I'm delighted with the changes Dylan has been ringing on this particular approach--but I'd also love to be taken by surprise again the way I was with the two folk covers records and Time Out of Mind. Maybe that will happen again, maybe not. We'll see.

In the meantime, I don't see any mass, blind acceptance going on. A lot of people--among those who give a damn any more about Dylan at all--are simply enjoying work that's being done at a remarkably consistent level of quality--even if the very consitency of that level is less than we hope for from an artist like Dylan. And if they like the whole vision of the thing, as I do, they're likely to keep responding positively.

Dylan's work is never again going to have the sort of shattering impact that The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan and the 3 mid- '60s electric records had in their different ways. He's not even likely to record something with the wide appeal and emotional depth and openness of Blood on the Tracks again. For better or worse, he's become a different sort of artist, although he's still identifiably himself. The recent work is really just peculiar in certain ways, and it's only going to appeal to certain sensibilities (somewhat inward, historically minded, fascinated with this mirror-world he creates out fragments from various half-forgotten traditions reflecting each other in the half-light of the singer's mind--and flowing out through that gravel-bed of a throat....). It's not directly about life and life only anymore. It's too wrapped up in the insularity of it's own artistic processes. That's what's great about it, but it's also its greatest limitation. But I do think it's great, and I'm not troubled by the attention it gets.

So that's the thing for me. I find it fascinating, but weirdly abstracted from direct experience. Maybe it speaks from a place of isolation (or isolation and imagination) that is Dylan's natural home, or the home he made for himself when he became an artist or in defense when fame got so overwhelming? Or maybe "natural" is the wrong word, and maybe just a part of him live there--the part that remains invested in and lives most fully in his art (as opposed to the other more "normally" human parts of his life)--his artificial, artifactual home? I think it's that aspect of his existence as an artist that he's singing about when he sings that he was born in Scarlet Town. It's the place where all of the more recent songs were written and sent to us from. It's dousing to Desolation Row," but different, too in ways I haven't fully thought-through....

L.

 

You would probably enjoy his current tour since most of the setlist is taken from the recent albums you list. I just saw the first three shows in Seattle and you can read about them here:

http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/bob-dylan-north-american-tour-2014.377621/

 

I would definitely add the two early 90s cover albums to the modern Dylan phase, in fact they might be the most listenable of the bunch for me.
Time Out Of Mind is a great album, with a really spooky atmosphere that feels organic. Taking the old "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean" shtick to its literal conclusion, Bob actually becoming the old blues man he used to imitate. Lanois & co really captured a ghostly blues sound, a truly eerie album that's almost unbearably bleak at times.
I knew Love & Theft would be special when I heard an advance of "Po Boy." What a fun song, the whole album is full of good spirits. That song and "Tweedle Dee" can still make me laugh out loud, "Mississippi" is a modern classic. Lots of interesting themes woven into the lyrical and musical structure as well, I'd agree that it's the best of 21st century Bob and one of his finest albums.

After that I start to tap out. Too much samey, gruff voiced blues, as lschwart stated more eloquently in his post. I want to like those albums, but it seems like every other song is the same 12 bar blues with different lyrics. I can always count on him for something great ("Life Is Hard," "Soon After Midnight," "Ain't Talkin'") but I just can't get that excited about song after song of what I hear as formulaic blues. Not that it's bad, but I just don't hear much invention or inspiration on Together Through Life or Tempest. I wish I liked those albums more but I find them fatiguing and better in small doses.

Tell Tale Signs really does seem like a far better representation of modern Bob than the studio albums. That is a collection that keeps giving and giving the more you listen. I'm just glad he's still recording and writing new music, I always look forward to new stuff. Again, I agree with what lschwart wrote - you just have to accept and cherish what we're still getting from Bob at this point. It is fascinating and most of it is quite good, though I don't find the albums as listenable as TTS.

 

I actually have 6th row tickets to see him at the Dolby Theater in LA on the 24th... and I can't go. I know this isn't the forum for this, but I'll mention just in passing that I'll be happy to set someone here up with them. PM me if you're interested.

It's a stunning venue, btw. I saw Neil Young's solo tour there, and even though it's the Oscars theater and all that, it's super intimate.

I've heard some of the Bob shows on recent legs, and I think you're right about enjoying the setlist. I think the recent stuff really swings onstage.

When I saw him in 2012, Tempest had just come out, and he only did one song from it! (Duquesne Whistle. ) He had more oldies in the setlist than I can ever remember, and it was a gas to go to some of the Bob sites and read the complaints about too little new stuff. Never one to care much about our expectations, that Bob.

Shem, I'm totally with you on "Mississippi." One of my favorite songs by anyone.

 

it's about as or more impressive than Picasso's & Beethoven's late periods.
unsure if it trumps his early or basement period,
but it bookends it nicely regardless.

 

2001 Love & Theft
2006 Modern Times
2012 Tempest
Are my favourites and as for live we've seen him 96 times since 2000 and really only 3 of them had him "phoning it in".
His 2013 spring tour with Dawes was fantastic.
Number 97 is next month.

 

Bob who? Won't somebody please think of the search engines!

 

I love the later stuff, indeed i tend to see it as inseparable from the work as a whole. Bob has said that he can't write the songs he produced in the golden period of 63-66 again.. but would we want him to? Do we need another Its Alright Ma or Desolation Row delivered now?? And if not, then what would we want him doing that he is not doing, as he continues to work at a very high level of creativity across multiple disciplines.

Seeing Bob live in Blackpool late 2013 was a totally engaging and enthralling experience. I've been fortunate enough to see him live most UK tours since 1981, but if the 2013 concert was the only one i had ever seen i would still have been blown away and party to a most unique insight into how a great artist works his magic.

Although i don't share Ischwart's slight ambivalence on the recent decades, I have to say his is the single most insightful post I've ever seen on any Bob-related forum, in that it is written (as so little criticism is) from the perspective of the artistic world which Dylan inhabits. As for mass acceptance, well it strikes me as both unlikely and unnecessary at this stage and having no significance for Dylan's artistic endeavours. Did the late works of Eliot, Auden or Larkin (to pick 3) enjoy much in the way of mass acceptance? Rather they enabled us to see consistent threads of creativity throughout the artists' work, which is what key songs from Tempest - Soon After Midnight, Long and Wasted Years, Scarlet Town - do for me.

 

I have been a big DYLAN fan since 1985 and up until about 2007 I owned everything he'd ever done. However, following on from the release of Modern Times I decided that his then most recent four albums only went to prove how utterly terrible the 1980's were, not to mention a large chunk of his 70's output than maybe some might care to admit. In a nutshell, and partly helped by recent re-releases I've narrowed by Dylan collection down to what I consider to be the essential components:

1. The Sixties - Essential and all you'll ever need is in the MONO CD box, nothing more. Nashville Skyline is the first " stereo only" album and luckily it coincides with his first poor effort so I left that one out.
2. New Morning - vinyl and CD. The MOV LP sounds fab. A welcome response to Self portrait. Not even ASP can make the original sound any better.
3. Blood On The Tracks - original UK LP and CD.
4. Street Legal - 1998 CD: all other versions of the album on LP and CD sound terrible to me. The '98 is a remix so essential for a not-so-good badly recorded album that does nevertheless have great appeal to the "hardcore" fans.
5. Slow Train Coming - original UK LP and CD: Dylan's most powerful album of the 70's after BOTT and the sole "Christian album" that is bearable to me these days.
6. Oh Mercy - MOV LP and CD: what, no Infidels? You bet. Though loved by many, Infidels to me is a bad 80's sounding half-baked collection of pretty miserable songs. Famously, the best songs were even left off the LP. I also feel that the polished productions of STC and OM help to link them together. Spiritually they are also quite close in my opinion and I can see OM as a follow-up to STC without all that unnecessary 80's guff to spoil the view between them. Everything in-between is as bad as the critics once said. Don't get me wrong I used to love all of it but time and over-exposure to it has made me realise how weak a lot of the material really is.
7. The "renaissance years" - starting with Good As I've Been To You, I have now got a copy on CD and LP of all Dylan's later work up to Tempest with the exception of Christmas In the Heart which is just plain awful. However I think Tempest is grossly stupefyingly over-rated in some quarters and much like the original poster my favourite from the last 20 years has to be Love & Theft. To my ears that album sounds like Blonde On Blonde remade by an old aged pensioner. Dylan hadn't been quite so witty lyrically since 1965.

 

Just to correct a few typos: I meant to say, "...maybe just a part of him lives there..." and that "Scarlet Town," as a figurative place, is "cousin" to "Desolation Row."

L.

 

I still cant get into Christmas In The Heart, sorry. Together Through Life was a bit of a throwaway too. Tempest has some really good moments. But I think the peak was reached on Time Out of Mind and Love and Theft.

 

I just completed listening to the Complete Albums box set, and I have even more respect for Bob Dylan than I had before, which astounds me, as I rank him right at the top. Breathtaking work.

 

I'm new to Dylan, no more than 5 years really listening to him, altough i knew his classics since much before that. Even saw him live in 1998 with the Stones. But, even since i still have to hear some of his most important works, it seems to me that the present time is one of the best to be a Dylan fan. And for "present" i mean since 1991 to this day. Of course, the Bootleg Series have to do a lot with that, since Dylan is releasing since the first set, at a regular basis, high quality material, that sometimes is even better than what was released at the time. But their current releases are great too, some of them very high regarded (Time Out Of Mind, Love And Theft) and of course you have the Chronicle book, the movies and documentals (I'm Not There, No Direction Home). And the man is still touring, at a very generous rate, even compared with artists half his age. So i think there's no other time when Dylan was so generous with his fans, quality and specially quantity wise, and i'm glad i'm one of them.

 

I hate Christmas records. But I really like Christmas in the Heart.

 

He needs to put out a more rocking album.

I dont care for another Modern Times, Together Through Life or Tempest. All which are good-very good. But Im tired of that genre.

 

Me too. And it gets better every time I trot it out in December.....

L.

 

I think it's kind of pointless to lump Time Out of Mind and the stuff that lead up to it with Love & Theft and everything that's come since. Bob started something new with Love & Theft, a decade+ flirtation with pre-rock modes that I've greatly tired of.

 

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "pointless" here. It seem pretty clear to me that this period of work, whatever you might think of it at this point, began around 1992 with the aborted Bromberg sessions, the recording Good As I Been To You and World Gone Wrong, and the tours of around that time.

L.

 

I hadn't thought of it that way, but you're right. I'd been thinking of it more in terms of his renaissance (imo) as a composer as well as a performer, but his consciously vintage "Old Time Radio Hour," riverboat gambler kind of persona definitely dates back to then. I'll have to give those two albums another listen.

In that sense, I guess I could have asked how people feel about 19th-century Bob Dylan. LOL Or 1930s Bob Dylan. I confess that there are a couple of times I've thought about Leon Redbone when I hear some of these later songs.

But listening again to them while I think about this, though, Love & Theft and Together Through Life stay planted on my list of favorite Bob albums, and L&T as one of his best, period.


Crimpies, I can see why some people felt that my original name for this thread was ambiguous, but I believed that it was self-explanatory. However, re: the 20th century giants, you left off the greatest Bob of all:



May I also note that, with a trimmed moustache, a string bow-tie, and a suit piped in black rather than white, this one could actually pass for that one.....

 

You may be right about the 2 Bobs......

I like Together Through Life very much, although I do think it's the weakest of the bunch in this particular period. But Love and Theft is the album that most perfectly crystalizes what Dylan started working his way toward around 1992. In a way, fine as it is, Time Out of Mind, is a slight detour or digression he maybe had to go through (including the struggle of working with a strong-willed producer with a clear sonic sensibility of his own) to find his way to the sound and feel of L&T. One thing we can say for sure is that he seems to like the formula he arrived at on that record, since he's been giving us variations on it ever since. And long may be do that (or whatever other things he comes up with)!

L.

 

I find myself listening to more Bob from this era than all others.

'Love and Theft' is my favourite Bob album of the period chosen, and maybe in the top 3 of all time. Time Out Of Mind is great too of course, but Together Through Life is forgettable and a disappointment after what had come immediately before.

Modern Times is somewhere between TTL and TOOM - some great, some filler. (And lets not forget the stray soundtrack songs, Things Have Changed, Cross The Green Mountain, Waiting For You, Tell Old Bill and Hucks Tune, all of which if gathered together with a few others would make another stellar album.)

Christmas In The Heart doesn't really count for me, but it has certainly become a tradition in our household since its release. What's not to love about Bob singing Must Be Santa (and that video !!)

I actually think that Tempest is in a class of its own, and given time and good fortune may be the start of another phase in Dylans career. It is incomparable to the others in my mind. Not that its better than L&T (i don't think it is) but it's very different from anything else he's ever done. There's no choruses for a start and in each track the band plays the same progression from start to end. And all these songs work beautifully in his latest show.

I had tired of the NET after 11 shows over 14 years and didn't think I would see Dylan again after a shocking show in the spring of 2009. I stopped listening to shows, and my interest waned. Tempest renewed that and the show I saw last November in Glasgow was simply astonishing. It was perfect in every way - song choice, execution, pacing. The static setlist has worked a treat and has reinvigorated the live shows.

Although the varying setlists were for a long time one of the highlights of the NET, in my opinion this tour with it's static setlists can stand proudly alongside the 1966 tour and it's non varying set for it's quality of performance night after night.

 

I've been trying to come up with the reason why I haven't gotten to know Dylan's "modern" albums (which you peg as Time Out of Mind to Tempest) as well as I should, and then I realized that it's because there's been such a steady stream of archival releases during the same period. I count six albums of newly recorded material, and about twice that many releases from the vaults, including the mono and complete boxes. So I ask to be excused until I've gotten to know some of these "new" works from the last 15 years a little better.