The run from 70-74 (Sit Down/Read My Mind -Sundown) is as good as it gets. Honorable mention: the first 4 albums on the United Artists label are really good, too. I wonder if we’ll someday see the 1974 Massey Hall recordings released. RSD release?
That's a great run, for sure but I think the one from '75 - '83 is even better, and his sporadic releases since have been highly decent too. What a catalogue!
I don’t think so, the ones after this really get into some electronic sounds that are much more dates by todays standards. if I understand the timeline the documentary follows, this is is last album before he stopped drinking. For me I’d say it’s his last great record. I’m not saying there is a correlation but possibly.
As if that were rock bottom. That video of him singing it wasn’t a high point in his work but it’s not a bad song that should result in rehab.
Somehow I always knew my worst nightmare would come true and I'm starting to suspect this was always your long game
My top three come to me quickly. Sundown feels cliché because it has the big Radio hit but it’s a fantastic album. From start to finish. It has an old most sleepy groove at parts and feels like a cigarette. Sit down young stranger/if you could read is right there at #2, the kris kristoferson cover is a bit of a clunker and feels out of place on what is a classic divorce record, Bob Dylan may have been aware of this when he wrote BOTT. And with a very controversial selection I’m give my third place to Gords Gold. Sure it’s a comp but re-recording the UA tunes makes it feel like an album, it all fits together and sounds cohesive from start to finish without being a greatest hits record, but it is a greatest hits. I think you can certainly argue the original UA recodings are better in a case by case basis but none of those albums are better than Gords gold. 4 and 5 are where I fall apart. “Wreck” is an amazing song but Summertime Dream is an album that loses me a bit. I think I’m “The Way I feel” at number four and will round out the top five with “Don Quixote”. Number 5 could just as easily be Cold on the shoulder, Dream St. or Shadows.
He was pissed at United Artists for re-releasing material when he got huge with Warner/Reprise and re-recorded those songs to spite them.
This album hasn’t got as much love as the other UA albums here, but it really is great. It approaches the feel of Reprise albums to come. The Long Thin Dawn>Bitter Green>The Circle Is Small run is as stunning as anything he did.
So many great albums by this man, but I find it hard not to truly appreciate the album by him that Bob Dylan has said was a favorite of his and that is Shadows! There are a lot of overlooked Gord classics on this album and here is just one of them ... All I'm After
