Bob Dylan - Shadows In The Night (Part 2)

[MODERATOR NOTE: Continued from part 1, http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/bob-dylans-new-album-shadows-in-the-night.367525/page-40 ]

Yeah, well, its not like Billboard was ever counting every album at the point of sale anyway. I mean in the old days it was just self-reporting from a handful of retailers and it was highly manipulable. Then it was POS scanning at X number of retailers with some algorithm for extrapolating out to a likely total across all retailers. Now we have his crazy mix. Comparisons across time, or even considering taking the actual number reported to be 100 percent verifiable we-counted-'em-all sales numbers are all dicey. But it is the system we have, it's likely in the ballpark, and I think you can still get the stats for actual sales vs. sales plus "equivalents." In the case of the Dylan album it was pretty much all sales, 99% according to Billboard.

 

Yes let's stay on topic. This LP (and cd) is a great sounding disc. It is really a "anti-loudness" record, you can really turn the volume way up!

 

I was going to hit "like" for this, because you & I have a similar interest in sales/charts, but I really UNlike what Billboard has done. You've done a good job of pointing out the shortcomings of their new system.

I really think this is all symptomatic of the sea change we've seen in how people listen to music over the last few years. Fewer and fewer folks buy "albums" but I suspect the label presidents and A&R men still want their up and coming start to "top the charts" as up and coming stars have done since the inception of rock 'n' roll.

It's just a personal hunch, but I suspect it's been somewhat embarrassing for those label folks to see older acts put out reissues of their glory days (Beatles, Zeppelin, etc) and see those albums chart really highly on the Billboard 200, when the younger stars are having trouble selling 30,000 copies of their new disc for more than a week or two. By incorporating "streaming", they're giving greater weight to folks that may have no intention of actually purchasing the art in question, but they're ensuring those "consumers" (cough, cough) give a little push to the newer acts and keep them in the higher reaches of the charts. After all, who's gonna stream more these days, a new Iggy Azalea track or an album track from a reissued Physical Graffiti?

I think they should've stuck with sales only for "album" charts, but I guess I'm just an old fogey.

 

Well, I LIKE what you say---despite what Billboard does.

Arnie

 

It sure beats their system in the 70s. I worked for two labels and every Monday I would calls some of the local shops like Tower, Wherehouse, Record Factory etc and speak to the person who reported sales to billboard. I'd suggest they report higher sales for some of our releases

 

Yeah, it was never a terribly accurate system and certainly could be, and was, manipulated by some in the recording industry, no question.

 

So that's why Dwight Twilley went to number one

 

i think the most telling point of this verbal sputter is that you would consider the period before Blonde on Blonde as 'one' voice, and that you would consider the period between 2007 and 2012 as one period. AND that you would think that your myopic view could be expressive of MOST Dylan fans. First listen to his Debut, followed by BIABH (both of which should be enjoyable experiences) and tally up the number of 'voices' you hear from moment to moment. THEN listen to 2009 next to 2010 next to 2011 and then next to 2012, and THEN give yourself a spanking if you don't hear any differences. The only commonality about those years I could cite is that people of your political position uniformly criticized Bob and suggested he had nothing to offer on the stage, when in fact it was probably the most artistically viable period of his career next to the Sound of Street-Legal, the thrills of Blonde on Blonde, the historicism of H61, or the boldness of WGW/GAIBTY.

SITN, while existing in the proper place of audio-ecstacy, couldn't hold a candle to force and ingenuity that took place on stage during those years. people talk about putting his heart on the line when he sings 'authentically' ... well, he put his pancreas on the line for those tours, barring 2011, which wasn't as hot, IMO.

 

Wasn't it much more accurate once soundscan came into place, circa '91 or so?

Anyway, I apologize for getting the discussion a little far afield from His Bobness' new disc. I'm genuinely glad the album is being well-received, but it just isn't working for me. I listen to something like "Lone Pilgrim" and hear much better use of Bob's voice to convey emotion and feeling than I do on the new album. I know that disc was 20 years ago, but I still think Bob could've sung these songs better. Perhaps I'm in the vast minority this time around...

 

Petty and Steely Dan

 

Elvis Costello is enjoying it: http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/6465894/elvis-costello-bob-dylan-womans-day-red-dress-awards

 

All the people that keep going on and on about Dylan's voice (or should I say their distaste for it), I wonder if they ever got Dylan in the first place? I mean seriously, isn't it a little late in the game to be so critical of it?

 

I don't think it works that way. You'd have to be in serious denial to say he sounds the same as he always did. I've been a Dylan fan for more than 40 years, and there were times in the last 10 years when I found it very difficult to listen to him. You can love the guy and still admit that his voice has taken a real beating.

That said, his singing on this album is the best its been in the last 10 years.

 

The reporter seems to be suffering from Red Sky Amnesia !

 

I worked at Tower Records in Berkeley in the mid-1980s and some of the guys there used to talk about the good old days when they were a Billboard reporting store - free records, concert tickets, backstage passes, coke, parties, etc. from the major reps - all so "the right numbers" got reported. I've not trusted the charts at all since then.

EDIT: I see Mazzy's later post mentions the other side of that transaction

 

When I put the CD on for the first time I was wowed on the second, repeating line: "I'm a foool to want you." Not that it was going to be hard, but he sold me on the whole record with that one word.

 

SHADOWS IN THE NIGHT continues to impress me mightily.

I think it may well be a classic.

 

I just listened to the album for the first time and besides loving the full album, that last song blew me away! Incredible performance. Man, I love Bob.

 

Am I the only one with a case that has a death grip on the center hole of the CD?

 

I definitely see your point. I guess I've always been fascinated by the different incarnations of Dylan's voice. I actually prefer his singing style now compared to say on Real Live. It's all personal preference I suppose.

And I absolutely agree about his singing on Shadows, I've really been enjoying this album.

 

More accurate in the SoundScan era, probably in that it probably wasn't routinely widely manipulated. I remember SoundScan was instituted and suddenly NWA was the nation's best selling act and the industry was shocked to discover gangster rap had a white suburban market. But it still involves collection data from X number of stores in Y number of markets and extrapolating what total sales must be. It's kind of like polling in presidential elections... You call X number of voters, you collect not only who they're voting for but their demographics -- race, gender, political party, age, etc -- then you guess at the demographics of the likely election turn out and apply your findings to that guess. You may have collected great data, but if your guess at the demographics of the turn out is wrong, your prediction is off.

Listening to the album again now. It's one of those great september of my years kinds of collections, and so beautifully and quietly recorded -- with audible amp hiss and all kinds of natural performance sound and performed. It's an old man's record and a old man's ragged voice with it's wavering pitch on held notes just suits the mood and the moment. Very effective. Shockingly enjoyable album that I never thought would work. I like it better than I like the late career Verve Billie Holiday sides (when she was only in her 40s but her voice was completely wrecked). To me those are painful in kind of unintentional ways. This just has a sweet valedictory quality, even when it's a wavering mess like remembering your grandfather singing you to sleep (badly) on "Some Enchanted Evening" (which I must admit has always been one of my favorite songs).

 

Same here. I played it for the first time last night with a little skepticism about all of the hype. By the time I got to What'll I Do, my jaw was on the floor.

I played it again tonight, wondering if I had been under the influence of demons last night. Once again, I'm blown away.

What a wonderful feast!

 

I called those Bay Area Towers stores. Greased the wheels.

 

If I might, I think people are misunderstanding what hamburger helper is saying about Dylan's voice--although the fault is partly his because he's not being clear about a key distinction, and many of you are following and responding to a confusion of issues.

There's a difference--or their should be in discussions like this--between taking notice of and trying to give an account of the physical deterioration of Dylan's voice, which is of course an objective reality, and an aesthetic evaluation of what he does with that voice in whatever condition it's in at any given point in his performing career or during any given show or recording session.

I'm afraid that hamburger's account of the physical deterioration sounds pretty accurate to my ears on the whole, once you take into account variations from night to night, and at different points in a given tour. But as I said earlier, that's hardly the whole story when it comes to the aesthetic quality of Dylan's performances. Those PBS Soundstage performances are Dylan at a peak of not only performing maturity and skill, but also of physical form and ability. And it's a pretty amazing combination. I don't think that it's a thread crap in a thread about his most recent record to note that while his skills and maturity as a performer have continued to grow, that growth has had to deal with a narrowing economy of means beginning around 1978, some of it inevitable with age, but a good deal of it due to deterioration caused by other less inevitable things. Part of the aesthetic power of his singing--especially in more recent decades--has been a drama of resourcefulness, one that has been beautifully successful despite some bad stretches where the physical difficulties made for a bad combination with plain old lack of real or at least consistent engagement or a simple lack of clear aesthetic direction. But when Dylan has had a clear sense of what it is he wants to accomplish--as he clearly did on the new record--he has been able to perform with terrific emotional expressiveness through out the periods stretching between '78 and the present. And he's still able to summon and manifest that presence we call "Bob Dylan."

If he couldn't, people would stop listening.

Sure it's not the same presence he could summon with his full voice in the mid-70's and earlier, but he's not the same man or same artist he was then. Why should he still sing like that? He's--like all of us--the sum in the present of the choices he's made and the things he's done. And since he's an artist all that matters for us is whether not his work still has the power to move us to feel and think. For those of us still listening it plainly still has that power, not just in spite of the deterioration, but as I and several others have said in this thread, because of what he's still able to do with his deteriorated instrument (not to mention his pen, which also writes very differently than it used to, getting strange rather than deteriorating, but rich and strange if you can get on his wavelength).

I for one have in been especially enjoying this most recent period of more careful, quiet singing. I've always liked it when Dylan pays attention to nuanced detail and weighs his words when he sings. Not that I haven't liked the blowtorch singing of, say 1981, or the weird affectations of '66, or, well, take your pick..... And in recent years, there have been plenty of nights where the voice was blown-out on the trail and he couldn't do anything with it, and others when he found astounding things to do that ravaged thing. And then there are those nights when he was in relatively good voice and still did nothing with it. Again the aesthetic power of a given performance is not down simply in Dylan's case to the physical state of his voice.

L.