Bob Dylan's Modern Times - your favourite track?

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Dave Gilmour's Cat, Feb 3, 2017.

  1. Dave Gilmour's Cat

    Dave Gilmour's Cat Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Your favourite track from this 2006 LP? And why is it your favourite?

    •••

    Previous polls in this series:
    Bob Dylan's The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan - your favourite track? »
    Bob Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home - your favourite track? »
    Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited - your favourite track? »
    Bob Dylan's John Wesley Harding - your favourite track? »
    Bob Dylan's Self Portrait - your favourite track? »
    Bob Dylan's New Morning - your favourite track? »
    Bob Dylan's Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid - your favourite track?
    Bob Dylan's Planet Waves - your favourite track? »
    Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks - your favourite track? »
    Bob Dylan's Desire - your favourite track? »
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    Bob Dylan's Slow Train Coming - your favourite track? »
    Bob Dylan's Saved - your favourite track? »
    Bob Dylan's Shot of Love - your favourite track? »
    Bob Dylan's Infidels - your favourite track? »
    Bob Dylan's Empire Burlesque - your favourite track? »
    Bob Dylan's Down in the Groove - your favourite track? »
    Bob Dylan's Oh Mercy - your favourite track? »
    Bob Dylan's Under the Red Sky - your favourite track? »
    Bob Dylan's Good as I Been to You - your favourite track? »
    Bob Dylan's World Gone Wrong - your favourite track? »
    Bob Dylan's Time Out of Mind - your favourite track? »
    Bob Dylan's Love and Theft - your favourite track? »
    Bob Dylan's Together Through Life - your favourite track? »
    Bob Dylan's Christmas in the Heart - your favourite track? »

    Search function round-up: http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/search/38885594/?q=bob+dylan%27s+favourite+track&o=relevance&c[title_only]=1

    Thank you for voting.
     
  2. dylankicks

    dylankicks Forum Resident

    Location:
    Oshkosh, WI
    This album has held up very well. Yes, it's built on traditionally established blues themes, but it's executed extremely well. I went with "Ain't Talkin'" but am also very high on "When The Deal Goes Down" along with "Someday Baby" and "Nettie Moore."
     
    Dave Gilmour's Cat likes this.
  3. Dave Gilmour's Cat

    Dave Gilmour's Cat Forum Resident Thread Starter

    "Workingman's Blues #2" for me. Lovely singing.
     
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  4. Crush87

    Crush87 Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York
    I love this album. I went with Spirit on the Water but could have easily been Thunder On The Mountain. If you haven't heard Dylan's band do Workingman's Blues #2 recently do yourself a favor and check it out. Even better live.
     
  5. streetlegal

    streetlegal Forum Resident

    "Deal": manages to say something very human, universal, but without bombast. Touching, and beautifully sung.

    Though, in truth, "Ain't Talkin' " is evenly split for me.
     
  6. tmwlng

    tmwlng Forum Resident

    Location:
    Denmark
    Another vote for Ain't Talkin'... Marvelous closing song. Also a big fan of the two opening tracks and the swinging Rollin' and Tumblin'. Big fan of this album, even if it borrows bits and pieces, Bob welds it into a great soup of Americana in its truest form.
     
  7. hutchenstance

    hutchenstance Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Arlington, VA
    I love this record.. I like Thunder on the Mountain a lot.. and rollin and tumbling but nettie moore is one of his best vocals...just an awesome performance where he croaks "I miss you Nettie Moore"
     
  8. fishcane

    fishcane Dirt Farmer

    Location:
    Finger Lakes,NY
    Great album. I go against the grain a bit here and think that both this and TOOM are superior to the Love and Theft that came between them....

    Aint Talkin'
     
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  9. Champagne Boot

    Champagne Boot Ain't nothin' gonna break my stride

    Location:
    Michigan
    Nettie Moore got the vote, but Workingman's Blues #2 is a close second. Heard an absolutely breathtaking version of the latter live in Detroit in 2009. Hit that town and that crowd at precisely the right time--just felt right. Saw Bob a lot in the 2000s, and that was an instant standout for me.
     
  10. Musicisthebest

    Musicisthebest Exiled Yorkshireman

    Location:
    Manchester, UK
    Working Mans Blues with Spirit On The Water close behind.
     
  11. mpayan

    mpayan A Tad Rolled Off

    I didnt look at who picked what beforehand. I picked "Aint Talkin". Kind of surprised. Everyone (including me) use to pick "Nettie Moore" as the major achievement on this album. "Aint Talkin" has the spook though. Its like a continuation of "Highlands" in which he finishes the walk in the city and goes in the garden then to the woods.
     
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  12. footprintsinthesand

    footprintsinthesand Reasons to be cheerful part 1

    Location:
    Dutch mountains
    Nettie Moore is my favourite Dylan track, period.
     
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  13. Nipper

    Nipper His Master's Voice

    Location:
    Wisconsin
    "Ain't Talkin'".

    Though "Spirit On The Water", "When The Deal Goes Down", "Workingman's Blues #2" and "Nettie Moore" are right there, top-notch songs. "Thunder On The Mountain" and "Beyond The Horizon" are good. The blues numbers are generic but fun and fit in nicely. "Someday Baby" is far superior on Tell Tale Signs.

    I like this album better than "Love And Theft".
     
    fishcane likes this.
  14. Thomas Casagranda

    Thomas Casagranda Forum Resident

    It's a great album........pity he cannot do another one like that; I'm fed up with the Great American songbook albums.
     
  15. ruben lopez

    ruben lopez Nunc Est Bibendum

    Location:
    Barcelona Spain
    It's my fav Dylan album since TIME OUT OF MIND,and the best song for me is Ain't Talkin'
     
  16. LonesomeDayBlues

    LonesomeDayBlues Forum Resident

    Location:
    Long Beach, CA
    Workingman blues #2... although When The Deals Go Down was close.
     
  17. JohnT

    JohnT Senior Member

    Location:
    PA & FL gulf coast
    What's the best way to hear this one?
     
  18. LonesomeDayBlues

    LonesomeDayBlues Forum Resident

    Location:
    Long Beach, CA
    I play the record at home and cd rip on my portable player. The record is slightly better than the cd in terms of sound.
     
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  19. babyblue

    babyblue Patches Pal!

    Location:
    Pacific NW
    Workingman's Blues for me. Love the melody and world-weary vocals on this one I also thought the song was a highlight of the 2014 shows I saw.
     
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  20. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    I never much cottoned to this album, maybe Dylan's single most overrated album in my book, but I do really like "When the Deal Goes Down," which is pretty much the only song from the record I find myself ever caring to return to.

    I recall really liking "Nettie Moore" at the time but I confess I probably haven't heard the song since around the time the album came out.

    I did really like the version of "Thunder on the Mountain" Jack White did on Wanda Jackson, one of those very rare occasions where I prefer a cover to a Dylan original.

    Personally, whatever everybody else hears as special in this album escapes me.
     
  21. fuhrsy31

    fuhrsy31 Forum Resident

    They say that whiskey will kill you but I don't think it will.....
     
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  22. Champagne Boot

    Champagne Boot Ain't nothin' gonna break my stride

    Location:
    Michigan
    Define "original," because Dylan pretty much shamelessly stole half of it from Memphis Minnie and the other half from Chuck Berry... But that's a contentious discussion for another day.
     
  23. ManFromCouv

    ManFromCouv Employee #3541

    This album is kind of a slow grower, but it is very good ... maybe even a late era classic. Spirit On The Water is probably my favorite, but there are a numbers of good ones.
     
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  24. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    Well "stole," I mean, you know Dylan's working habits have always been to cobble found materials together into some kind of other thing -- at least that was part of his process -- but I do think with Modern Times it almost kind of became the whole and only process and instead of making the record sound rooted and timeless, the way the borrowing and references do in his best work, it just kind of made the thing sound like a stale contraption cobbled together by a guy not quite firing on all cylinders. He does a lot of borrowing on Tempest too, and "Love and Theft" (I mean the title -- besides itself being borrowed from an academic study of blackface minstrelsy -- says it all, including the fact the title's in quotes), but I think on those two albums, Tempest in particular, which I think is Dylan's best album of the last 25 years -- I don't know why I'm one of the few who think that, but I'm sure time will judge the album kindly, the sources are better integrated into an individually expressive whole that doesn't. That's not the vibe I get from Modern Times. But that Wanda Jackson version of that song is really quite good. The thing about Dylan and his sources, he's always taking stuff -- the vamp for "Tweedle Dum..." from Johnny & Jack, or the line about railroad men drinking your blood like wine from Bascom Lamar Lunsford or the music for "Duquesne Whistle" from Jelly Roll Morton, or whatever, civil war poetry, Bogart movies, etc. -- but its not like T.S. Eliot or Ezra Pound where the taken stuff is kind of part of a coded message. It's just kind of stuff that functionally gives the work this sense of being connected to and part of an eternal American present.
     
    Last edited: Feb 4, 2017
  25. babyblue

    babyblue Patches Pal!

    Location:
    Pacific NW
    I like Modern Times, but it is my least favorite of his later albums. For me, it's largely the band's lackluster performances that lets it down, especially the guitar work that meanders around.
     

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