Planet Waves - Bob Dylan - 1974

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by godstar, Jun 29, 2012.

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  1. milankey

    milankey Forum Resident

    Location:
    Kent, Ohio, USA
    I always liked Planet Waves, it was the first Dylan album I bought when it first came out - I was 20 years old. I was disappointed the 1974 Tour didn't come to Cleveland...
     
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  2. ggergm

    ggergm another spring another baseball season

    Location:
    Minnesota
    Good album. It's a college album for me. I like its loose-goosey feel. But better than Blood On The Tracks? Maybe not.
     
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  3. [​IMG]

    Planet Waves / Bob Dylan & the Band (Asylum)

    Planet Waves is a really great album. It has an air of freshness about it that I have always liked, and on a recent listen I could almost imagine I heard Neil Young's harmonica playing!
    Interestingly 'Planet Waves' & 'On The Beach' were both recorded round about the same time and both records feature Band members Rick Danko & Levon Helm.

    Forever (Neil) Young / (Planet) Waves On The Beach!
     
    Last edited: Oct 23, 2013
  4. majorlance

    majorlance Forum Resident

    Location:
    PATCO Speedline
    Substitute "high school" for "college" for me. A middling Dylan album, though not without its charms.
     
  5. ssmith3046

    ssmith3046 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Arizona desert
    I bought an Okki Nokki RCM a few months ago and have been going through my albums ( originally cleaned with a Spin-Clean ) giving them a proper cleaning. Anyway, this one was in a batch I cleaned Sunday and I gave it a listen. I forgot how much I enjoyed this record years ago. I used to play it all the time when it was released so it was great to hear it again.
     
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  6. Mike B

    Mike B Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York City
    My point of view is probably not worth much since I was born in the 70s and thus had to come to Dylan historically and burdened with the weight of critical consensus and conventional opinion, which this thread was created to be contrarian with.

    Re-iterating the obvious that "consensus" can be "right" or "wrong," and individually we all have our own preferences, I am pretty much in sync with the consensus on Dylan, including his 70s work. My only significant departure point is Desire.

    Planet Waves is a pleasant enough album but considering it was a reunion of the most pre-eminent singer/songwriter of his generation with one of the coolest bands right after they made their most enduring works (and I am HUGE fan of those first 3 The Band records), it had to be amazing in order to meet expectations and it just isn't. It has some decent songs performed competently, not genius songs performed with unique vigor and passion. Thus the music is not as organic as Dylan's justifiably heralded masterpiece Blood on the Tracks.

    I am perhaps not as big a Dylan fan as some because for me the success of his work is primarily related to the strength of the songs he writes. Blood on the Tracks, like his prime 60s run, has music and lyrics that make me think and laugh and feel, Planet Waves doesn't.

    Because of this thread I am re-visiting Before the Flood, an album I didn't put much stock in after only hearing once because live albums generally have to be pretty amazing or historical for me to revisit and own. And now I'm remembering the annoying thing about it- Dylan is doing these exaggerated vocalizations like "Lay Lady LLLLAAAAAAYY... stay the NNNAAAHHYYIIGGGHT" constantly. Of course the The Band sound amazing and the sound quality is, ok, I guess, so I can see why some love it and others don't.
     
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  7. C6H12O6

    C6H12O6 Senior Member

    Location:
    My lab
    I'm not really thrilled about this album, but I'm surprised how some people rate it so low. It's definitely a letdown if you had high expectations of something on par with Dylan and the Band's best work (either the '66 tour and the "Basement Tapes" or the Band's masterpieces, Music from Big Pink and The Band).

    But reviewing everything he did from Nashville Skyline to Down in the Groove, it's actually one of his better and more consistent albums. Not nearly as good as Blood on the Tracks or even Desire, but end-to-end, it's still better than the rest.

    The problem is the material. The performances are good - Dylan sings very well and the Band is terrific, especially on a track like "Tough Mama," where they're all featured - but the songs often feel too undeveloped. Despite the raw feeling involved, ambitious material like "Wedding Song" is filled with pedestrian lines, and then there are songs that are or feel like throwaways ("You Angel You," "On a Night Like This," etc.) Even Robertson says it was the best album they could've made given what they had, conceding that it was cobbled together before they had enough top-drawer material.

    Topically, it's a nice warm-up to Blood on the Tracks, but when you compare its relationship songs to the ones on that album, at best that's what you can call Planet Waves, a warm-up to a masterpiece, not a fully-realized work.

    "Forever Young" has become a standard, but it's not exactly one of my favorites. The only track I consider a keeper is "Going Going Gone." The rest have something to like, but they all have their shortcomings too.
     
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  8. majorlance

    majorlance Forum Resident

    Location:
    PATCO Speedline
    I believe I've seen a quote from Dylan himself referring to one or both of the above as "dummy lyrics."
     
  9. C6H12O6

    C6H12O6 Senior Member

    Location:
    My lab
    Yeah, that really wasn't a great tour, and on both Before the Flood and the bootlegs, it shows. It wasn't terrible either - I wouldn't mind taking a trip back in time and seeing one of those shows - but if you listen to the bootlegs, the earlier shows were a bit tentative, a bit rough around the edges, and on the later shows (especially the last ones that supplied most of the tracks for Before the Flood), Dylan's over-singing is ridiculous, and he knew it, but he was exhausted and trying his best to blow through the shows just to finish the tour.

    The Band does give him terrific support, but their own songs come off a bit ragged. Helm sings great, but Danko sounds a bit cartoonish - his singing in general was becoming more exaggerated by this point. A few moments on Before the Flood are great - "Highway 61 Revisited" may be my favorite recording of that track - but it's no classic.
     
  10. Mike B

    Mike B Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York City
    And for The Band live, we are blessed with Rock of Ages and The Last Waltz so we don't need Before the Flood for live versions of their material.
     
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  11. C6H12O6

    C6H12O6 Senior Member

    Location:
    My lab
    Absolutely. They're much better on Rock of Ages (and Live at the Academy 1971) than they are on Before the Flood.
     
  12. malcolm reynolds

    malcolm reynolds Handsome, Humble, Genius

    Location:
    Oklahoma

    That is crazy talk :D. Planet Waves is a great album though.
     
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  13. rstamberg

    rstamberg Senior Member

    Location:
    Riverside, CT
    I love PLANET WAVES to death.
     
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  14. Baron Von Talbot

    Baron Von Talbot Well-Known Member

    It is okay with 3 classic songs and with Forever Young standing out but that does not mean it is a classic Dylan LP. The other tunes arre more or less mediocre compared to Dylan's best work. The sound is mediocre and i never liked the artwork. In fact one of the very few LP's that I never in my record collection for longer periods of time. Not even now !
    But ymmv
     
  15. The Hole Got Fixed

    The Hole Got Fixed Owens, Poell, Saberi

    Location:
    Toronto

    Dirge and Wedding are superior to anything on BOTT. That tips it for me.
     
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  16. TeddyB

    TeddyB Senior Member

    Location:
    Hollywoodland
    Nobody 'Cept You is one of my favorite lesser-known Bob songs. I would have liked to have seen it included in place of one of the other "love" songs.
     
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  17. C6H12O6

    C6H12O6 Senior Member

    Location:
    My lab
    Yes, that would've been preferable, though Dylan's live performances of that song during the first few weeks of the 1974 tour are much better than the studio versions that have been released and bootlegged. (FWIW, Dylan played it solo on the tour, while the studio versions have the full backing of the Band.) Unfortunately, only audience recordings of the live performances have circulated.
     
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  18. cc--

    cc-- Forum Resident

    Location:
    brooklyn
    I used to love "Going Going Gone" but I've either heard it too many times or it's lacking in some layer of depth. Might actually prefer Richard Hell and the Voidoids' version.

    still love "Something There is About You."

    the recording does have a nice sense of space, but the vocal sound is sometimes lacking. I can't remember if it's "Wedding Song" or "Dirge," but the one he recorded last in a piano/guitar duet with Robertson has such a better vocal presence than the rest of the cuts ... a limitation of the all live-one take method, I guess.
     
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  19. Six String

    Six String Senior Member

    I bought it when it came out and loved it then but I only had two or three Dylan albums to my name at the time. Coincidently I found one of the "old" SACDs of Planet Waves last week for $5 so I decided to get it for a digital backup.
    I've always liked it a lot but then I've always liked Dylan and The Band, together or apart. Tough Mama is a personal favorite. That rollicking organ solo by Garth always makes me smile; part circus calliope and part country soul.
     
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  20. Lonson

    Lonson I'm in the kitchen with the Tombstone Blues

    This is one of my very favorite Dylan lps. I too bought it when it came out and loved it immediately. The narrative style Dylan uses on this is just very satisfying to me, and I love Dylan and the Band together. The original lp sounds great.
     
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  21. masswriter

    masswriter Minister At Large

    Location:
    New England
    i love that album

    it's a keeper!
     
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  22. Siegmund

    Siegmund Vinyl Sceptic

    Location:
    Britain, Europe
    I like it, but don't love it.

    It sounds like a rush job and the Band don't really sound like the Band. Quite a bit of it sounds like it was last minute, written in the studio fare - though I wouldn't say any of it is bad.

    The Rolling Stone Ben Fong-Torres-edited book Knocking On Dylan's Door is an essential supplement to this album (it was over-praised on release, as was New Morning) as it also details the 1974 tour (also over-praised, as Dylan hadn't toured in eight years). It was also the first 'proper' Dylan album since 1970, so it was guaranteed to make an impact. Preceding a major tour only made the scrutiny more intense.

    Ironic how contemporary reviews took thing like Wedding Song literally ('proof that Dylan is a happily-married family man') when, as we now know, his marriage was already effectively over and he felt 'lost' both emotionally and artistically. I love the pic of him in the CD tray of the reissue: a man staring into the darkness, in the midst of all the hoopla.
     
  23. EasterEverywhere

    EasterEverywhere Forum Resident

    Location:
    Albuquerque
    Loved Blood on The Tracks,my pick for his best of the 70s,and Desire when they first came out.Somehow it took years for me to warm up to Planet Waves.

    I have the quadraphonic.I have all three Dylan quads.
     
  24. Michael Wittrup

    Michael Wittrup Well-Known Member

    Good but not great, I was disappointed when I heard it for the first time. I expected an album by Dylan and The Band to be pure magic, but I find it a bit too "professional". It sounds like Planet Waves, were Dylan and The Band doing just another album together, in their usual high standard, but not a masterpiece, as we know they were capable of. The best songs are actually the ones, where Dylan are accompanying himself on guitar/piano.
     
    Last edited: Oct 25, 2013
  25. cc--

    cc-- Forum Resident

    Location:
    brooklyn
    would love to see this pic, not having the reissue CD -- if anyone knows where it is online? Is there a photo credit with a name?
     
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