Reflections on listening to Bob Dylan 1962-2012

Ouch. Mine have all been OK. Only a little sad that a couple of the spines have faded over the years in the sunlight.

Understand the differences of opinion on Another Side... As I say, some great songs. I never knew about the conditions under which it was recorded, which is amazing. But I still recall spinning it on a turntable back in about 1985 or so and being disappointed, and I had some distinct deja vu at the weekend with it.

Currently halfway through New Morning. I think I maybe prefer Self-Portrait!

 

You have the benefit of hindsight there. At the time, we didn't know it was ever going to get any better...

 

Don't feel bad. My chiropractor once told me that the only Dylan album he liked was Self Portrait.

 

"I'm a clean cut kid and have been to college too...".
Love that album. For some reason never could get into Bringing It All Back Home even though the songs are better.

 

Few thoughts...For me, New Morning picks up in the final straight, with songs like Man in Me and One More Weekend (GREAT slide by David Bromberg).

Pat Garrett soundtrack is a really pleasant background listen. And it's arresting hearing the original version of Knockin' on Heaven's Door when I am so used to hearing live versions and covers. It's beautifully recorded.

Next up is Dylan. Not sure I am ready for it...

 

Awww man...I dug your first post in its entirety!

 

Thanks, John! Due to popular demand (ha ha) I am trying to keep it going...

 

Presumably because of It Hurts Me Too...

 

If you really meant to ask me that (and not just windfall), then:

Woody Guthrie - a bit muted, but Dear Mrs. Roosevelt is a highlight.

Isle of Wight - some of the performances don't make it, but the John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline songs are wonderful. As is Wild Mountain Thyme. (Full disclosure: I'm biased, as I was there.)

Bangladesh - love it. Especially It Takes a Lot To Laugh. Wish I'd been there.

 

Dylan was fairly painless. I understand most of it was outtakes from New Morning but it feels like Self Portrait. It breezes by.

And then I emerge blinking into the light of Dylan's early 70s renaissance with the really enjoyable Planet Waves. Great to hear The Band swirling around all over the place again. Some great guitar from RR, especially on 'Going, Going, Gone'. Just a much higher strike rate in terms of the songwriting.

A shame that there is no surround sound option on the SACD considering there was a quad mix release.

My understanding is that the album was mostly tracked live, and it feels that way. It breathes. It's messy in places. It's pretty damn glorious. 'You're beautiful beyond words, you're beautiful to me...'

 

You’ve just relived what it felt like back then.

 

Just being reminded now why I always loved the live album Before the Flood so much. And wondering whether I need to reconsider my standard contention that Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were Dylan's best backing band ever. I know there was something special and revolutionary about 1966, but Dylan as a live performer from 74-76, it is such a peak.

The album sounds great too - mixed with great care, I love how Garth's soundscapes define the atmosphere in many of the songs.

Really nice shot in the book that comes with the Complete Albums boxed set of Dylan and the Band standing around rehearsing something in the dressing room.

 

Plus the version of It's Alright Ma turns what for me was always a bit of a trudge (I will avoid the chair-ducking emoji) into something that really thrills, hits the target ("Even the president of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked") and bleeds all over the stage.

 

Before The Flood is OK, but like most Dylan albums, it suffers from being a poor representation of the tour. There were so many great performances that should have been on the album (though, to be fair, I'm not sure if they professionally recorded all of them): She Belongs To Me, Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues, The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll, and - best of all - Nobody 'Cept You.

I can't stand Another Side. Most of the songs are good, but Dylan's voice is unlistenably shrill. And this is coming from someone who otherwise thinks that Dylan is one of the all-time great vocalists.

 

Windfall, it's good to read your observations, there are few artists that would warrant this exercise. I'm very much a minor league Bob fan by this forum's standards, but I know for sure that you'll enjoy the next couple of albums! "Desire" has always been a particular favourite of mine, I just love the way it sounds thrown together, like they pressed "record" before anyone got too familiar with the material. Keep us posted (and keep working on that book!)
NP

 

Neil, yes, Desire is one of my favourites too. Back in the early 90s, we had two Burmese cats and we named them Joey and Isis. The latter name of course rather unfortunate in this day and age! In fact, I probably just lit up a thousand internet surveillance monitors across the world.

I am beginning to think that the mid 70s may be my favourite Dylan period overall. Planet Waves/BOTT/Desire and the surrounding live albums (including the excellent Bootleg Series release covering the 1975 RTR). I just wish the Hard Rain album was recorded better, but I am getting ahead of myself.

Currently listening to Blood on the Tracks in surround sound (absolutely overwhelming musically, vocally, lyrically). I don't think I have anything enlightening to say about this album that has not been said by countless critics and listeners before me. It is something to be set alongside the greatest works of art ever created in any medium and on its own explains why Dylan stands alone in the field of popular music.

 

Bring On Bootleg Series Vol 14. Man, I'm ready.

 

@Chemguy, you are right, should have put Basement Tapes where it belongs chronologically! It kind of went by and I did not pay a lot of attention. One to revisit via the Bootleg Series.

Meantime, Desire... an album I have always loved, but never really "got" the opening track. I think it's something about the cramming of words into lines that he does over and over again. Maybe the story has just taken too much precedence - for me the song suffers, the rhythm repeatedly stumbles. I love the sound of it, built around the violin, and Emmylou hanging on for dear life as she tries to keep up with harmonies. But the first song is one I always used to skip. The rest of the album I find utterly absorbing. A real shame there is no surround sound layer on the SACD but the stereo layer is lovely and detailed.

 

Always loved Hard Rain too. The relatively disciplined sound of the 1975 leg of the RTR immortalized in the Bootleg Series was a shock to me after being so used to the ragged, Neil-Young-Circa-Tonight's-The-Night vibe of Hard Rain. I had had some bootlegs, but nothing in high enough fidelity at the time.

So, I am still very fond of the ramshackle sound of the band at the end of the 1976 leg of the tour. I love the fact that Dylan plays idiosyncratic slide on 'Shelter from the Storm' on an odd white National guitar he had recently bought, and then it was apparently never played on stage again. I love the pedal steel on Lay Lady Lay. The mob-handed vocals all over the place. Above all, I love the performance of 'Idiot Wind' which has to be in the top 10 of Dylan's greatest ever vocal deliveries caught on tape. The venom brings the lyrics into sharper focus than on BOTT to these ears. And did anyone ever in the history of the world sound LESS sorry than Dylan does when he sings, 'And it made me feel so SORREEEE!" No, I didn't think so.

My only problem with the album is the very dull sounding drums. It's not quite the wet cardboard sound of so many audience sourced bootlegs, but it's far short of what a drum kit should sound like.

I hope in due course we get a full 1976 show in the Bootleg Series.

 

Great thread man. I've really got to get those SACD's. I've heard nothing but good things about the sound. I need to take on a second job to keep up with all the Dylan boxsets.

 

Thanks. Really enjoying this listening thread! Yeah, can't recommend the SACDs highly enough if you have a system that can make the most of them.

 

Moving into a new era, I think, with Street Legal. The sax, the backing vocalists. The voice is starting to tilt into the kind of Dylan voice people do when they mimic him. Definitely getting thinner and more nasal.

But I do really enjoy a lot of these songs; a wide palette of genres, great tunes, intriguing lyrics. Favourites include 'New Pony' - such a mean and dirty blues, love those backing vocals (how much, how much, how much longer?), Dylan in great voice; always really admired 'Senor', and the album is top and tailed by two great epics. Once again, the SACD is superb.

Here's something different - a take on Senor by one of my favourite artists, Jeffrey Foucault.



Next up will be Budokan which takes me back to my courting days. A much spun album for me and my wife back in the late 80s!

 

Street Legal also has a superb cover shot and an absolutely TERRIBLE photo on the back cover of the album. What were they thinking?! I thought Dylan stopped trying to be Elvis back around the time of Self-Portrait.

 

Yep, a fine encapsulation of the RTR, except for the lack of recording dynamics.

 

And for me, late 70s, listening to the tape in my Datsun 510.