New Dylan album for August.

Weird, cause I just reread "Chronicles, Vol. 1" the other day. Apparently he's co producing with Lanois, and it's supposed to strike a chord somewhere in between "Time Out of Mind" and "Love and Theft". Thoughts?

love and theft continues to be one of my fav dylan records ever.

Bob Dylan will break a five-year hiatus from the studio later this summer with his 44th album. Due Aug. 29 via Columbia, the 10-track "Modern Times" was recorded earlier this year with Dylan's touring band.

It's the follow-up to 2001's "Love and Theft," the No. 5 debut of which was Dylan's best showing on The Billboard 200 since 1979's "Slow Train Coming." The set has sold more than 757,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

"Modern Times" includes such tracks as "When The Deal Goes Down," "Spirit on the Water," "Thunder on the Mountain" and "Workingman's Blues," according to Columbia.

Dylan, who recently began hosting his own "Theme Time Radio Hour" on XM Satellite Radio, is not currently on the road, having wrapped a six-week North American tour last month in Hollywood, Fla.

And who knows - could be his second good one! It's only been 40 years since Highway 61, folks - he's due for a winner!

Dylan has not been playing the new songs live.

M@tt completely OTM about L&T's greatness.

L&T is very very good and significantly different from most earlier Dylan, although it doesn't slay me the way e.g. Blood on the Tracks does. I was just playing "You're a Big Girl Now" at home yesterday (not the record--playing it on guitar--all the BotT tracks were written in open-D tuning, easy to play that way, nearly impossible to play decently in standard tuning).

Said Steve Barnett, chairman of Columbia Records. "He continues to be as contemporary and relevant as any artist in music."

Now i like dylan, but clearly this guy is from an alternate reality where exists only 60 year old Rolling Stone readers.

...Love & Theft to me seemed to be his real renaissance, it's the most "alive" feeling thing he's done since, fuck, I dunno, Desire for me....so playful, so many jokes and wierd odd asides, reminds me a lot of how his autobio was written....also had a little fucking spring in it's step...Lanois's reverb bayou theatrical bullshit works great for awhile, but it becomes really transparent after awhile, at least for me....everything sounds like it was written to be a "dramatic" interlude for a montage in some cop movie where the hero is going thru tough times, drinking too much, sitting under neon signs in the rain, blah blah blah....

i think you just ruined Time out of Mind for me.

M@tt furiously correct about everything, tho.

Dylan's 45th album should be produced by Steve Albini.

(tho he already tried don was, so...)

Who should produce it then? Rick Rubin, Max Martin, Timbaland...?

"Street Legal"

Unlpugged was surprisingly great (it's got my sometimes-favorite version of "Desolation Row" -- and the unreleased "I Want You" is killer).

But yeah, L&T kills all of 'em.

If anything, the theatrics in L&T just comes off as too cartoony for me to really enjoy them.

"Thunder on the Mountain"
"Workingman's Blues"
"When the Deal Goes Down"

that said, i like "time out of mind" an awful lot. i've listened to it a lot more than "love and theft", but that's simply because i never got around the buying the latter, though i liked nearly everything i heard off it. i still get a kick out of hearing "moonlight" and "floater". he sounds positively jaunty in it, something he hasn't seemed in 20-odd years.

apparently i read the news blurb incorrectly. my bad.

yay! i brought that up, that i hadn't seen it in the RS story, but it's good to hear confirmation.

I just hope the record as as much fun as Love and Theft.

http://spacemonkeylab.com/dylandaily/blog/archives/00000175.php

The enigmatic singer is back on form and keeping his fans guessing with a walk-on role for diva Alicia Keys on his new album

Caspar Llewellyn Smith
Sunday July 2, 2006
The Observer

It has been five years since the release of Bob Dylan's last album, but any notion that the 65-year-old singer might have lost touch with the contemporary world is dispelled by the first verse of 'Modern Times', the opening song on his new record.

'Thunder on the mountain, fires on the moon, There's a ruckus in the alley and the sun will be here soon,' it begins, before quickly skipping to the lines 'I was thinking about Alicia Keys, couldn't help from crying/When she was born in Hell's Kitchen, I was living down the line/I'm wondering where in the world Alicia Keys could be/I been looking for her even clean through Tennessee.'

It is not known whether Dylan really is a fan of the soul singer 39 years his junior - ever the enigma, he has not discussed the new record yet. But the two of them are thought to have met at the 2001 Grammy awards, when Keys was a five-times winner with her album Songs in A Minor and Dylan won Best Contemporary Folk Album with Love and Theft. Dylan also seems to have done his research - Keys was indeed raised in the Hell's Kitchen area of New York.

'I first heard through the grapevine that he'd mentioned my name in one of his new songs,' Keys told The Observer, the first newspaper to hear Dylan's album, last night.

'I just knew somebody had to be playin' with me! How could such a legend know me? And bigger than that, want to write about me? I haven't heard the song yet - it's top secret. But I'm crazy excited about it and I'm honored to be on his mind.'

This is not the first time Dylan has introduced real characters into his songs - 1963's 'I Shall Be Free' featured Brigitte Bardot, Anita Ekberg and Sophia Loren - and ever since the early Sixties his lyrics have been subjected to close scrutiny.

Debates about the autobiographical and political nature of his work will be revived with the appearance of this 32nd studio album. His last, Love and Theft, was released on 11 September, 2001, and the reference on the title track of the new record to 'all the ladies in Washington scrambling to get out of town' might lead some to speculate that Dylan has been brooding on the events of that fateful day. Similarly, while the title of the song 'Workingman's Blues' pays an obvious debt to Merle Haggard, with whom Dylan recently toured, and his record of that name, it's the line 'I got a brand new suit and brand new wife' that will have the gossips' tongues wagging in the light of Dylan's uncertain matrimonial status. But, inevitably, the songs elude strict interpretation, and instead the listener is left to contemplate the grander themes of nature and mortality.

The new album may be Dylan's first for half a decade, but in the interim he has starred in the film Masked and Anonymous, written the best-selling Chronicles, appeared in the Martin Scorsese documentaries devoted to his early career and is currently hosting his own show on XM satellite radio in America. Then there is his relentless touring schedule, which this week brought him to Britain for two shows in Cardiff and Bournemouth.

None of the 10 new songs from Modern Times has been played live yet, but the expectation is that this will change after the record's release on 28 August. Dylan rehearsed at the Bardavon 1869 Opera House in Poughkeepsie, upstate New York, in late January and early February, before recording the album in a Manhattan studio.

Steve Barnett, chairman of Columbia Records, said that the company was 'approaching Modern Times as the third release in an outstanding trilogy of recorded works along with Time Out Of Mind and Love And Theft'. The new album certainly has a similarly rootsy sound to its predecessors. Among the 10 tracks are at least three pieces that many will see as masterpieces: 'Working Man's Blues', 'Netty Moore' and 'Ain't Talkin', Just Walkin'.'

· Caspar Llewellyn Smith is the editor of Observer Music Monthly.

Odd couples

Musicians love paying tribute to fellow singers. Among the best-known examples are Van Morrison's 1972 'Jackie Wilson Said' in praise of the soul singer and the Commodores' tribute to Wilson and Marvin Gaye, 'Nightshift'. Not every namecheck is positive. Public Enemy's 'Fight the Power' includes the couplet: 'Elvis was a hero to most/but he never meant shit to me.' And Lynyrd Skynyrd used 'Sweet Home Alabama' to rebuke Neil Young. Those who prefer their tributes wry should turn to Leonard Cohen's 'Tower of Song' which notes: 'I said to Hank Williams how lonely does it get? Hank Williams hasn't answered yet.' Kurt Cobain gave Cohen a similarly wistful send-off singing: 'Give me a Leonard Cohen afterworld/so I can sigh eternally' in Nirvana's 'Pennyroyal Tea'. Dylan has been namechecked in song by everyone from David Bowie to Belle and Sebastian.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1810789,00.html

Nearly 160 years later and hacks stil assume Dylan's songs are autobiographical.

http://ec3.images-amazon.com/images/P/B000GFLAI0.01._SS500_SCLZZZZZZZ_V64760613_.jpg

http://artfiles.art.com/images/-/Ted-Croner/Taxi-New-York-Night-1947-small-Print-C10281679.jpeg

yeah well picture of a checkered cab antiquated futuristical swooping text - definitely some irony or something going on there.

Track List: Modern Times by Bob Dylan

Thunder on the Mountain
Spirit on the Water
Rollin' and Tumblin'
When the Deal Goes Down
Someday Baby
Workingman's Blues
Beyond the Horizon
Nettie Moore
The Levee's Gonna Break
Ain't Talkin'

Thunder on the Mountain
Spirit on the Water
Zeitgeist on the Prairie
Tempest on the Tundra
Bungle in the Jungle
Lightning on the Creek
The Wind That Shakes the Barley
Beyond the Horizon
Crash on the Levee
Ain't Talkin'

DYLAN IN COVERING JETHRO TULL SHOCKA!

I somehow read "The Wino That Shakes The Baby".

"Blowin' on the Wind"
Blonde on the Blonde
Time on the Mind
Love on the Theft
"A Hard Rain's on the Fall"
"Like, on the Rolling Stone"

That's a great band name!

July 13, 2006, 10:50 AM ET
Jonathan Cohen, N.Y.

Bob Dylan has finalized the track list for his new album, "Modern Times," due Aug. 29 via Columbia. Four of the 10 cuts push the six-minute mark, including the nearly eight-minute "Spirit on the Water" and the nearly nine-minute closer, "Ain't Talkin'."

As previously reported, "Modern Times" was recorded earlier this year with Dylan's touring band of bassist Tony Garnier, drummer George G. Receli, guitarists Stu Kimball and Denny Freeman and multi-instrumentalist Donnie Herron.

The album will also be available in a special edition with a bonus DVD featuring four additional songs, details of which have yet to be announced. Dylan will support "Modern Times" with his third annual tour of minor league baseball stadiums, which gets underway Aug. 12 in Comstock Park, Mich.

Meanwhile, Dylan will be the subject of a star-studded tribute concert to be held Nov. 9 at New York's Avery Fisher Hall. Such artists as Patti Smith, Phil Lesh, Cat Power, Philip Glass, Natalie Merchant and the Black Crowes' Chris and Rich Robinson will each cover one of Dylan's tunes at the event, proceeds from which will benefit the Music for Youth Foundation.

Other acts on the bill include Rosanne Cash, Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo, Medeski Martin & Wood, Gov't Mule and Al Kooper and the Funky Faculty.

Here is the track list for "Modern Times":

"Thunder on the Mountain"
"Spirit on the Water"
"Rollin' and Tumblin'"
"When the Deal Goes Down"
"Someday Baby"
"Workingman's Blues #2"
"Beyond the Horizon"
"Nettie Moore"
"The Levee's Gonna Break"
"Ain't Talkin'"

and thought, jesus fucking christ

It got a great review from Christgau in the new issue of Blender. He said it's not quite as rollicking as Love and Theft, but still excellent.

But with that many xpost long songs, at least some fricking well should rollick (sp?) like L&T.

Rollin' and Tumblin' rollicks for a full six minutes. Many, many verses all about this crazy woman who is causing Bob pain.

i'm enjoying it, at least.

Great Bob cover story in Rolling Stone, written by the novelist Jonathan Lethem.

I like it very much.

Haven't heard the whole album though--still psyched for the midnight release at Vintage Vinyl.

I'm still gathering my thoughts, but it's rather fine -- a lesser Love & Theft. Musically "Someday Baby" is the only dud.

"There's no nostalgia on this record," Dylan insists, disputing critics who hear bygone times on Modern Times, which arrives today. "Pining for the past doesn't interest me."

Mining his past, however, is a boomer preoccupation. Last year, Martin Scorsese's No Direction Home, accompanied by a soundtrack and companion scrapbook of memorabilia, traced Dylan's early rise. It followed 2004's autobiography, Chronicles: Volume 1, and the sixth edition of Dylan's Bootleg series. An upcoming biopic and Broadway musical also raid Dylan's back pages.

Yet Dylan did not sew up 20th-century glory to sit in the grandstands now. The '60s trailblazer who reinvented pop music and revolutionized songwriting is still a groundbreaking artist at 65, according to critics dazzled by Modern Times, Dylan's 31st studio album and third in a career renaissance launched by 1997's Time Out of Mind. Asserts Rolling Stone: "There is no precedent in rock 'n' roll for the territory Dylan is opening."

In earthy blues, ragtime and rockabilly, the language shifts from mischievous to mysterious and romantic to rueful as Dylan surveys a crumbling world in doubt-shrouded songs about love and vengeance, faith and fate.

The 10 songs, recorded with his touring band in January in New York, "are in my genealogy," he says. "I had no doubts about them. I tend to overwrite stuff, and in the past I probably would have left it all in. On this, I tried my best to edit myself, and let the facts speak. You can easily get a song convoluted. That didn't happen. Maybe I've had records like this before, but I can't remember when."

Perched on a chair in a beachside hotel suite, Dylan fervently discusses his new music, smoothly evades unwelcome topics (politics) and dispenses disdain slyly. Asked to elaborate on today's hit-driven environment, he cracks a broad grin and says: "I don't want to disparage anyone in pop music. I'm sure it's all good. I'm sure people are thriving."

Modern's pared lyrics and spirited music evolved naturally, with Dylan never in fevered pursuit.

"The obsessiveness about songwriting is far away from me," he says. "I can let it go for long periods. I don't need the songs. When you're younger, you keep writing so you have them to play. After a certain point, you can't play it all, anyway. It gets harder to find a purpose to do something different.

"What I have to do is space out and almost hypnotize myself, without drugs, of course," he says with a laugh. "Those are my best songs, when I'm not really conscious. Once my motive is established, it's up to me to find the ideal terminology, vocabulary, rhythms to work it out. I don't like writing songs where I have to come up with a far-fetched poetic thing and find a melody later. I've done that, and it doesn't work that well for me."

He completed 14 or 15 songs last September, shelved those he considered "lukewarm" and pruned others. Tattered hymn Workingman Blues #2 pays homage to Merle Haggard, who has pledged to write a Blowin' in the Wind sequel, Dylan says.

Writing poignant waltz When the Deal Goes Down "demands all your attention," he says. "There's no song you're listening to that's influencing it. The song you wrote before is irrelevant. All you can do is hang on and hope you do it justice."

The initially nettlesome Nettie Moore "troubled me the most, because I wasn't sure I was getting it right," Dylan says. "Finally, I could see what the song is about. This is coherent, not just a bunch of random verses. I knew I wanted to record this. I was pretty hyped up on the melodic line."

Shifting from playful romps to haunted ballads, Dylan encounters angels and lazy sluts, floods and the plague, a blind horse, a sick mule and Alicia Keys, his quest in Thunder on the Mountain. He never met the R&B ingénue but admired her performance at the 2001 Grammys. He says: "I liked her a whole lot. People stay in your mind for one reason or another."

The unusually accessible Modern still leads into dark mazes, and Dylan isn't handing out flashlights.

"Words go by awfully quick," he says. "Maybe it's hard for a listener to comprehend them all. Maybe they don't want to. I couldn't say what these songs add up to, any more than I can say what the rest of my songs add up to. They mean what they say they mean. They strike you where you can feel it, and you can feel what they mean. With this kind of music, you want to move somebody, and you have to move yourself first."

Still making planet waves

Dylan's undiminished authority springs from supernatural talent, says friend and admirer Tom Petty, stating simply: "He's better than all of us. Backing him in the '80s had a huge effect on our band. Bob has a spontaneity that comes from folk or even the best jazz artists. It's very fresh and alive. We learned if the song is durable and good, you can approach it a lot of ways. He gets better and better. He's had his patchy periods, but we all hang with him because we know any day he might write the best thing he's ever done."

Dylan's evolution runs counter to the industry's growing reliance on forged images, synthetic sounds and boundless technology. When recording spare folk albums Good as I Been to You (1992) and World Gone Wrong (1993) in his garage, an engineer suggested he pin a microphone to each guitar string.

"It was the height of insanity," Dylan says. "There are so many layers on records today. There are so many tracks in studios, and producers think they have to use them. This is no art form. It's just corporate sound. Because there's very little there, you have to dress it up with all these tracks. For me, everything has to have a purpose or it should get lost.

"The beat stuff people play, that's as far away from real rhythm as the sun is from the moon. Those beats make people pose, but they don't make people move or change their lives. They're low-key and laid-back, and that's what popular music has come to. Even metal is ponderous."

He stops himself and chuckles.

"I hate to go on my soapbox about the recording industry. I'm sure there's a lot of good songs getting recorded today, but I can't hear them. I'm just hearing buzz. There's a superficiality to it which might be successful, but people forget about it real quick and go on to the next one instantly. I don't want to be a performer like that."

Dylan aims to tell a truthful story and nourish it on stage. Keeping it real doesn't mean copping ideas from CNN or responding to the conflict du jour, which is why you won't find an updated Masters of War on Modern Times.

"Didn't Neil Young do that?" he jokes, referring to the rocker's recent anti-war disc. "What more is there to say? What's funny about the Neil record, when I heard Let's Impeach the President, I thought it was something old that had been lying around. I said, 'That's crazy, he's doing a song about Clinton?' "

Topical songs "are not my thing. I'm not good at it. Stuff you read in papers is secondhand information. My stuff is my own experience."

Contradicting a label report, he doesn't regard Modern as the last in a trilogy, because Grammy-winning Time Out of Mind, produced by Daniel Lanois, is an odd fit.

"I had no band," Dylan says. "I didn't pick half the musicians. It was a mystery to me how I was going to get anything out of those sessions. It was just a mess. There was hardly any communication."

Under the pseudonym Jack Frost, Dylan reluctantly produced 2001's Love and Theft and Modern. He says the only producer he ever felt comfortable with was "Bumps" Blackwell, who guided early Little Richard and Sam Cooke records and co-produced 1981's Shot of Love.

"He made simple records and understood my stuff inside out. A producer should be raised on the same kind of music. When I bring in a song, it's not that well known — to me or anyone else. How can I expect to show someone the intricacies and nuances?"

A freewheeling free agent

Dylan waxes ecstatic about his current sidemen, yet he's a defiant solo artist who dismisses the concept of bands as little gangs.

"The performers who changed my life were individuals," he says. "They didn't conform to any sense of reality but their own. The last performer who stood up to be counted as an original is Bruce Springsteen, I think. Individuals move me, not mobs. People with originality, whether it's Hector, Achilles, Ted Turner or Jerry Lee Lewis or Hank Williams."

That explains why he has been drawn to boxing since high school.

"Almost everyone else played a team sport," he says. "I liked boxing because it was just you and you alone. And you didn't get hurt. It seemed like you got mangled in football and hit in the head with baseballs. Team sports were not my cup of tea.

"I took a professional opponent on the road with me, and I'd box in the afternoons to focus my mind. This guy could walk across a football field on his hands. I kept it up. Still do, as much as I can. I'd like to race a car around a track. Those guys are really alone too."

Dylan is a busy loner. As he wraps up his third tour of minor-league baseball parks, he's planning a fall arena tour that starts Oct. 11 and enjoying his weekly DJ stint on XM satellite radio. He has yet to carve out time to write the second Chronicles book.

He's only peripherally entangled in other enterprises. Todd Haynes is directing I'm Not There, a Dylan biopic with a half dozen actors portraying the bard at various stages. Twyla Tharp plumbed his catalog for Broadway-bound dance musical The Times They Are A-Changin'. He consented to both projects without much hand-wringing.

"A lot of people are very protective of what they've got and rightfully so," he says. "But so much has been done to me and to my work, and it's been exploited on such grandiose levels with no thought of me, that you get to a point where you don't care anymore. Anything that comes your way is better than somebody taking it their way.

"I don't care about image. I don't have any image problem. It matters not to me which commercials or movies or TV shows they're in or not in or how many are being sung in clubs or school plays."

No ranking of best artists, songs or songwriters fails to name him. He topped Paste magazine's list of greatest living songwriters in June, then led the August issue's roster of greatest dead songwriters, because he'd obviously be there eventually, anyway. Always ahead of his time. Dylan laughs at this news. Once hungry for immortality, he no longer sweats his place in the pantheon. He doesn't need to.

"I got past that," he says. "Posterity has to take care of itself. All that's important in the present time is: Do the songs work for me when I play? I can't get away with singing cover songs like Rod Stewart. Nobody's going to buy it, first of all. I love those songs, but I have to play my songs, and they have to work in a crash-and-burn kind of way. There's more to my music than the lyrics. You would only know that if you have open ears and an open mind, and you give me a clear channel."

He laughs. "Give me an unpaved road to your heart."

"There are so many layers on records today. There are so many tracks in studios, and producers think they have to use them. This is no art form. It's just corporate sound. Because there's very little there, you have to dress it up with all these tracks. For me, everything has to have a purpose or it should get lost....The beat stuff people play, that's as far away from real rhythm as the sun is from the moon. Those beats make people pose, but they don't make people move or change their lives. They're low-key and laid-back, and that's what popular music has come to. Even metal is ponderous. I hate to go on my soapbox about the recording industry. I'm sure there's a lot of good songs getting recorded today, but I can't hear them. I'm just hearing buzz. There's a superficiality to it which might be successful, but people forget about it real quick and go on to the next one instantly. I don't want to be a performer like that."

'She says, "You can't repeat the past." I say, "You can't? What do you mean, you can't? Of course you can."'

What struck me with that album and this one as well is how much fun Dylan seems to be having just being Bob Dylan, or at the least reacting to the reaction to "Time Out of Mind." Perhaps that's reflected in the charm offensive of "Chronicles" and the contemporary interviews in "No Direction Home." He's having a hoot, which he didn't always sound like he was having for the preceding, oh, 20 or so years.

Now, why he never seems to be having any fun on stage is another matter, save his occasional choice of venues.

Oh, and Springsteen an original? I love Springsteen, but that's pretty funny, too. I guess Bob's still cracking up at his own backhanded flattery of "Tweeter and the Monkey Man."

And it is a line record, as Matos suggests, but those funny, sweet, stinging lines also benefit from some terrificly inventive, even for Dylan, phrasing--he's playful in all kinds of ways he hasn't been before and he's in tune with all the shades of meaning on just about every line.

Maybe it's the 180 gram double LP version I bought but: Tony Garnier's bass is a mutha.

And Harvilla's Dylan-should-act-his-age-and-die-already thing in the Voice last week was insipid.

i love his phrasing these days, i just wish his voice hadn't diminished so dramatically.

It's been bumped down to 90 because of some asshole from NOW magazine ("a feeble anachronism in which our man cynically attempts to pass off public-domain blues and folk tunes as his own by changing a few words...considering the compositional weakness of his declining output and his reliance on cheap ploys like name-dropping Alicia Keys to appear current, the dead-boring results seem more due to natural creative atrophy or just laziness. Not really up to his bank commercial standards."), so now it's below Savane and the Tropicalia comp but still above Fishscale and Destroyer's Rubies.

spirit on the water has a really pretty chord-progression-as-riff thing going. can someone tell me what it is, or what pre-60s pop form it's meant to be doing?

I do wish (like someone mentioned) that there were one or two other big, hooky songs, in the "Mississippi" vein, to anchor the album down and give it a little more heft. It's still a real pleasure, though!

(Some of the songs maybe seem to go on a few verses too long -- but that's NOT a big deal!)

That's how L&T stands in relation to Time Out of Mind in my book. I still prefer L&T to the other two, partly because I prefer it when his blues tropes are embedded in faster, hookier tempos.

Well, in the RS thing he was kind of bemoaning the fact that records used to sound better in the '60s and '70s, but lots of Dylan's records from that period had the vocals and guitars "WAY up front", so I don't think that was the particular thing he was complaining about.

You're probably right. But neither one can touch Highlands.

I love this record, but not as much as Love and Theft. L&T is just so much fun. You can call Modern Times a lot of things, but not necessarily fun.

Still, he's on such a hot streak right now, it's hard to fathom. It seems as if he can do anything right now.

The lyrics are just blazing though.

Bob's in unprecedented territory yet again. Nobody can touch him right now.

as far as 30 years in between #1s: i can't think of a single bloody one, besides possibly santana, and you're right, it was mainly because of all the guest artists. steely dan didn't have a hit for 20 years, though i don't know if aja or two against nature ever actually hit number 1.

Johnny Cash did it a couple of months ago, albeit with the lowest first-weeks sales since Soundscan's inception.

Right now "Nettie Moore" is the one that's lodged in my head all day, and his voice on "Spirit on the Water" kills me. And "Workingman's Blues." I almost posted that this was kind of boring about a week ago, but I figured it would reveal itself, as it is presently. I don't know why it is that the album I'm hearing now bears almost no resemblance to the one I unwrapped and and jammed in my stereo, but it probably bodes well. I could see having this one on deck for a long time.

Also, my neighbor insisted today that it is called "Modem Times." I eventually agreed that that might be the case.

Totally. It's getting better with each listen.

OTM. Modern Times flows better (at the risk of seeming samey), whereas Love and Theft is all over the place. There are many brilliant moments on Love and Theft, but there are also a few songs that seem like elegantly-crafted, high-concept Frankenstein monsters - they get up, stagger a few feet, and then fall over.

my wife noted that it has a bit of "blackbird" in its melody. but mccartney probably lifted it from somewhere too.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/Music/09/07/leisure.dylan.update.reut/index.html

http://www.expectingrain.com/dok/cd/2006/moderntimeslyrics.shtml

I wanna be with you in paradise
And it seems so unfair
I can't go to paradise no more
I killed a man back there

But albums are expensive.

That's about how much Compact Discs ought to cost, Alfred (though they'd still only be worth it if they had good design - Dylan's recent album covers haven't seemed very good).

very OTM.

i mentioned ella somewhere upthread, and i think that's the nearest comparison

not OTM.

new one?

Bob Dylan Working on 35th Studio Album

David Hidalgo, multi-instrumentalist for Los Lobos, has revealed that Bob Dylan is currently recording his 35th studio album. Hidalgo told The Aspen Times that he helped the nearly 71 years old musical legend record and produce tracks in Jackson Browne’s Los Angeles studio and introduced him to a number of Latin American instruments, such as the Mexican tres guitar.

While Hidalgo didn’t give many details about the album itself, he did note that, “it was a great experience” and as usual for Dylan, to expect the unexpected.

hmmm much love for los lobos but together through life seems pretty slight as time goes on (slighter than it did when it was released even)

Hope they get the songwriting credits sorted out before it's released.

i dunno, i might prefer together through life to modern times? maybe?

"Together Through Life" is my least favorite of the '00s Dylan album trilogy. Somehow the collaboration between two great lyricists was less than the sum of its parts. But I'm looking forward to this one. I'm in favor of Dylan with Latin American instruments.

Hope they get the songwriting credits sorted out before it's released.

real life lol

i dunno, i might prefer together through life to modern times? maybe?

― tylerw, Monday, March 12, 2012 3:44 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no way dogg!

Hidalgo's on the Xmas album, which I assume is where this partnership sprang from

he was on together through life too dogg!

new record is a concept album about how hidalgo got screwed on graceland, dylan plays the part of paul simon

Don Henley plays Satan.

los lobos should have no fear, dylan doesn't steal borrow from people still living.
& dogg, i kind of know in my heart that modern times has the better songs/lyrics, but the breezier nature of together through life is kinda where i'm at these days.

I prefer Together Through Life over Modern Times by a fair margin; I dislike the production (especially the vocals) on MT, even if the songs themselves are good to great. Then again, I prefer the Christmas record to them both by an even larger amount!

hmm, sounds like the new one was recorded with Scott Litt, mainly know for his work on R.E.M.'s biggest albums.

Hmmm...not sure how I feel about that. Never was too keen on the sound of the Litt.E.M. records.

yeah, i don't know how much i'd read into it-- i imagine dylan (as "jack frost") will still be producing, and Litt will be engineering. Dylan's made a big deal since love & theft how much he likes producing his own albums these days.

As long as Dylan's producing, I can dig that. And now that I look at his credits beyond R.E.M., I like some of Litt's work. Despite its flaws, All Shook Down was the best-produced "Replacements" album since Let It Be. And Repercussion sounds great.

You guys are insane.

...says the Hall & Oates fan ;)

who's insane for what?

Scott Litt and R.E.M. were a marvelous marriage. I'm not even sure what he DID tbh; he has the anonymity of a shrewd engineer.

oh yeah, i have no problem with litt. but i just wouldn't expect the new dylan album to sound like Green or anything.

I wouldn't put it past Dylan to prefer "Hairshirt."

Dylan's so cool, he thought R.E.M. sold out on Murmur.

i think it's been established that dylan has some really dubious taste when it comes to contemporary performers

he probably digs reveal

hey he was into Kurtis Blow

i do not believe a word Dylan says about himself producing unless he means "I instruct the engineer, who on a lesser dude's record would be called 'the producer,' on how I want stuff to sound & he gets me there"

well yeah

exactly. it's a way to get would-be lanois-type dudes to realize they're going to "shape the sound" of a dylan record. has worked pretty well on the albums from the past 12 years.

but I mean - many many artists do that, they just don't get to take a producer credit because the engineers they hire would say "fuck you, I'm not producing your record & letting you take the credit"

what do you mean -- Dylan did it for twenty years. He let others take the credit but most of those sixties and seventies records are self-produced.

here's a quote from chris shaw, who engineered the last few records
"I’m not sure why Bob decided to start producing himself. I think, maybe, because of the success he had with “Things Have Changed”, which he produced himself, and we did a couple of other things between that and “Love And Theft”, and I think he just realised he could do it himself. I don’t think he every really thinks he needs a producer, but this was the was first time he had a chance to do it without a producer, and he just realised, “I can do this myself. I know what I want.” It’s funny, because I’ve met other engineers and producers who have worked with Bob, and I’ve heard stories about, y’know, how he can be difficult, and how he’s difficult to work with. And I’ve found it to be exactly the opposite. I don’t find it difficult to get along with him at all. The thing about Bob is that: he just knows exactly what he wants. And I think the people who have said that Bob is difficult are people who were trying to put what *they* wanted on the record – but that’s not what Bob wants. I heard stories about arguments between him and Daniel Lanois in the studio, and I think that’s basically what it comes down to: Daniel’s got his idea how it should sound, and Bob’s got his idea about how it should sound, and that’s where they butt heads."

From what I can gather from Chronicles, Lanois had far more to do with the Dylan records he produced than creating or establishing a sonic ambiance. Lanois and Dylan argued about song selection, tempos, arrangements, etc. etc.

Not joking, bob should record worth albini, who def seems to see himself more as an engineer

yeah they'd probably see pretty eye-to-eye when it comes to the recording process.

It would probably be about as close add you could get to a 60s style recording process now

Also the cloud nothings guy said steve basically played words with friends during their sessions

lol, cool. just make sure the mics are in the right place, hit record.
here's another quote from shaw:
“Bob is enamored with old Americana recordings like the Carter Family records,” Shaw continues. “He loves the idea that those records were made with one microphone that everyone leaned in around. So he wants the whole band in the room when he tracks. I’ll mic instruments and amplifiers individually, but leakage is a big part of the sound. In fact, I’d say three-quarters of the sound is just what leaks into Bob’s vocal microphone. People have asked me how I get that big thumpy drum sound and I tell them that most of it is coming from Bob’s vocal mic. Virtually all of his ‘pilot’ vocals are actually the vocal you hear on the records.”

and dylan himself:
“I didn’t feel like I wanted to be overproduced any more,” he tells me. “I felt like I’ve always produced my own records anyway, except I just had someone there in the way. I feel like nobody’s gonna know how I should sound except me anyway, nobody knows what they want out of players except me, nobody can tell a player what he’s doing wrong, nobody can find a player who can play but he’s not playing, like I can. I can do that in my sleep.”
there's actually a tape from 2006 or thereabouts of dylan in the studio working on a track, and it shows how in control he is during the session.

Dylan must've ghost-written "ever since the watermelon."

also from the Shaw interview:

I said to Bob, “You know, since this is just a one-off song, it’s not going to be for an album, I wouldn’t mind trying ProTools, just so I can show you the benefits of it.” And he said, “Okay, whatever.” And we did a take of the song, and he was like, “Okay, I want to edit out the second verse and put the fourth verse in there.” And I said, “Okay,” and by the time he walked into the control room from the studio, I had it done. And his eyes just opened wide. “You can edit that fast on ProTools?” “Yeah.” “And you can keep everything?” “You can keep everything, Bob.” You could just see the gears in his head suddenly spinning.

The thing is, now, he’s gotten so used to the speed of that, when we were doing Modern Times, he was actually getting impatient with the machine. He’s be, like, “Okay, let’s swap the second and third verse.” And ten minutes later he’s like, “Are you done yet?” I’m like, “Bob, don’t you remember the last record we did, it took me about an hour to do that, can you give me somewhere between zero and an hour to get it done?”

If Dylan could go back to old-timey editing, I can definitely see him working with Albini. But iirc, Albini is ProTools-averse.

ah yeah definitely not then

Like Albini would even consider it. The refugee from Montana has never, ever seemed much attracted to Americana or whatever you want to call D's Elder Statesman stance (although he might dig some of the Endless Tour's remodels, but D don't do that stuff much in the official releases). Albini doesn't need it for his resume either, always gonna have "Oh wow--he produced Nirvana, and now us!" Prob doesn't even have to charge that much, just make it up in VOLUME VOLUME VOLUME. If ProTools were that fast in the first instance, yet took up to an hour for a seemingly similar transplant, could see how it would get on his nerves. You think he messes w laptops etc? Maybe, but the faster they usually work the more spoiled I get when they slow down.

I don't think Albini's thinking about resume padding, and I'm not convinced that he's ever really thought about it too much. He's always struck me as a kind of asshole version of Rudy Van Gelder: he'll work with whoever wants to work with him, he'll stay out of the band's way during the sessions and only focus on getting the sound, but then he'll talk shit about them later.

...dow you really need to check out the string of albums albini has done with Nina Nastasia, beautiful folk (and on the earlier ones vaguely countryish) recordings

also albini has a sliding scale, he's basically said he will do an album with any band that wants to record with him, it's a business first and foremost. for example, the Bush record he did funded most of the construction of Electrical Audio, and obviously he did the Page/Plant record and it doesn't get much more classic rock icon than that.

he will also do small indie bands for a lot lower rate if he has openings, but yeah i think people think he's this raging auteur guy and he sees himself more in the vein of like old school dudes that would record frank sinatra or prog rock or whatever came through

also, he's a very nice person if you deal with him by all accounts, i met him briefly at a show we played with him and he was very chill...as far as talking shit i'm not sure he's talked shit about a band that recorded with him in years, but people seem to have him frozen in this eternal 1988 or whatever

but yeah van gelder is a good comparison, just set up and get good mics on the intstruments, not much in the signal chain and press record

Good to know... and I do love me some Nina Nastasia, did he produce the tracks she did with Jim White drumming? What band are you in, mr upper ms sir?

oh not big bands, one called unbelievable jolly machine (lol) and another called maps of norway....my friends got shellac to their wedding and we "opened"

actually albini has produced all of nina's albums all the way back to Dogs and onward, including the one with Jim White

Good on him, would like to get Albini and Nina and Jim White and the rest of the Dirty Three and Los Lobos on the next Dylan album, or maybe with Hidalgo's percussion connections he'll get back to that "Hurricane"/"Mozambique" crisp conga bounce.

The refugee from Montana has never, ever seemed much attracted to Americana or whatever you want to call

lol what are you talking about - upper mississippi otm, A's recorded a lot of (really good sounding! eg Viva Last Blues) "Americana" style stuff. he will work with anybody who wants him to record them & everybody gets treated the same, and nobody gets condescended to afaik.

you're right, I stand corrected.

It would probably be about as close add you could get to a 60s style recording process now

I don't think so at all. Maybe a record like Cheap Thrills, but not your prototypical '60s production. You could get closer in a lot of ways.

Dylan did it for twenty years. He let others take the credit but most of those sixties and seventies records are self-produced.

So Bob Johnston was just taking the credit?

I take a hard line - if you don't know how to place microphones & tape op*, you're not producing. you're just throwing your weight around. I would bet a hundred dollars that if Dylan can neither place a mic nor splice tape

*or work in Pro Tools

he probably can't do that, but i doubt that john hammond/tom wilson/bob johnston (the dudes listed as "producer" on his biggest albums) could do it either. we might just be splitting hairs about what a producer vs. an engineer does?

I don't know anything about Hammond, but there's absolutely no reason to put quotes around the word "producer" with Bob Johnston. Why the inclination to do so?

Or Tom Wilson, who produced Simon and Garfunkel, the Animals, the Mothers, Velvets, etc. I don't get it.

Well, to me the engineer(s) place the mics, tape op, protools even, and the Producer is responsible for establishing how/what is to be done.

Tom Wilson was often described as "that guy was always on the phone to some girlfriend or some such.."

those weren't ironic quotes, they were quotes -- just saying that's what it says on the back of Dylan's albums.

what, it says:

bob johnston : "producer"

?

I take a hard line - if you don't know how to place microphones & tape op*, you're not producing. you're just throwing your weight around. I would bet a hundred dollars that if Dylan can neither place a mic nor splice tape

*or work in Pro Tools

― tempestuous alaskan nites! (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Tuesday, March 27, 2012 11:28 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

By his own admission, Dylan didn't know overdubbing was possible until 1969 or so.

Tom Wilson was often described as "that guy was always on the phone to some girlfriend or some such.."

Often? This sounds really dismissive for a guy who had a pretty long career. Phil Spector might have been on the phone to someone or other also. Wilson produced jazz records, Dylan, Blues Project, Soft Machine, Eric Burdon, etc. Lots of records.

I'm not dismissing him. I'm saying "Producer" is not necessarily a 'technical' role.

anyway, is dylan's producer title something of a vanity title? sure. but is it entirely vanity? nah.

btw it's not an inconsiderable thing that he uses a moniker. I had no idea who "Jack Frost" was in 2002.

It's because he doesn't want people to think Modern Times had the same producer as Empire Burlesque.

oooo, zing! Didn't Arthur Baker, officially or not, produce Empire Burlesque? Some people called it disco Dylan, but I thought it was good (although I wouldn't have minded hearing some actual disco Dylan--faster versions of "Shelter From The Storm" sometimes came close)

no – he remixed a few tracks.

A couple of horrors outside, EB is his best eighties album.

Didn't Arthur Baker, officially or not, produce Empire Burlesque?

Something like that:

[Ronnie] Wood later described his surprise at Dylan's lack of authority during the mixing process. "[The engineers would] say, 'Hey Bob, we don't need this,' and he'd say, 'Oh, okay.' And they'd make a mix to their ears, and he'd just stand outside and let them do it. And I'd be saying, 'Hey! You can't let these guys...Look!! They've left off the background vocals!' or 'What about the drums?!' But there would be something going on in the back of his head which didn't allow him to interfere. And yet if he'd have gone into the control room with the dominance that he had while we were cutting the stuff, it could have been mind-bending."

infidels and oh mercy are way better than empire burlesque.
the 1978 versions of Shelter are definitely disco-y.

he probably can't do that, but i doubt that john hammond/tom wilson/bob johnston (the dudes listed as "producer" on his biggest albums) could do it either.

I dunno about Hammond but Wilson and Johnston definitely knew wtf they were doing with a tape machine and I would say with mics too.

infidels and oh mercy are way better than empire burlesque.

song for song EB >>> OM and Infidels but we won't agree.

yes, i believe we've agreed to disagree! (yr still wrong though!)
and i dunno about wilson being super-technically proficient -- iirc it was Gary Kellgren who engineered a lot of that stuff, and the artists generally said that Wilson's greatest asset as a producer was staying out of the way and letting them do what they wanted. though i guess he did add the rock band to sounds of silence w/o simon's knowledge, so what do i know.

the artists generally said that Wilson's greatest asset as a producer was staying out of the way and letting them do what they wanted

is that why Sounds of Silence, Queen Jane Approximately, and Sunday Morning all sound so similar

I mean you can definitely tell, sonically, that those were all produced by the same guy

do those songs sound that similar? i mean, SoS and Queen Jane might have some of the same musicians, but I don't hear too much similarity, other than being 60s folk rock. Anyhoo, not downplaying Wilson at all, just saying that I have no idea what his technical proficiency was.

the artists generally said that Wilson's greatest asset as a producer was staying out of the way and letting them do what they wanted.

This is like Mark's comment! Which artists? Sun Ra? Dylan? Simon and Garfunkel? The Mothers?

Zappa: "Tom Wilson was a great guy. He had vision, you know? And he really stood by us ... I remember the first thing that we recorded was 'Any Way the Wind Blows,' and that was okay. Then we did 'Who Are the Brain Police?' and I saw him through the glass and he was on the phone immediately to New York going, 'I don't know!' Trying to break it to 'em easy, I guess."

and the VU quotes I've read seem to suggest he basically stayed out of their way. dunno, it seems like he acted as a barrier between the suits and these weird new bands, and the suits would go along with him because he had hits with dylan and s&g.

He also produced Ill Wind, Fraternity of Man, 1st Nico album, Central Nervous System, Dion, Country Joe, and five Animals/Eric Burdon albums.

he sure did!
this is fun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87Cyw9yhkMs

In the 1969 Rolling Stone Interview, Jann Wenner asked, "There's been some articles on Wilson and he says that he's the one that gave you the rock and roll sound. Is that true?" Dylan: "Did he say that? Well if he said it... [laughs] more power to him.[laughs] He did to a certain extent. That is true. He did. He had a sound in mind"

ha, maybe, but that whole interview is dylan trolling wenner, so ....

just sayin, I can cherrypick quotes from wikipedia too

i forget what we're arguing about

Bob Johnston interview:

What were the sessions for Highway 61 like?

The old studios on 52nd Street were a big complex with tons of staff engineers. I walked in on the first day, and there was a German engineer in the studio waiting for me, and he said, “Vot are ve vorking on today?” I told him it was Bob Dylan, and he said, “Do ve haff to?” And I said, “Hell, no,” and got another engineer. [That turned out to be Mike Figlio, who also recorded Tony Bennett's “I Left My Heart In San Francisco,” and who would follow Johnston down to Columbia Nashville a few years later.]

I don't know how Tom Wilson recorded him, but when I did Dylan, we set up all of the musicians in the same room, with Bob behind a glass baffle so you could see him. With Dylan, you always had to keep your eye on him. He came in and played a song to the band once and that was how they learned it. He never counted off, just launched right into it, so you always had to keep the tape rolling. And that wasn't easy at Columbia; we were using 4-track for that record, 8-track on Blonde on Blonde, and the machines were way down the hall. We had union engineers, so one would be in the control room at the console with me, and I'd say, “Roll tape,” and he'd tell his assistant near the door, “Roll tape,” and he'd yell down the hall to a guy at the other end, “Roll tape,” and then they'd start all over again yelling, “Is tape rolling?” God, it took 20 minutes to get those damned machines going. It was like a Three Stooges short. So I got in the habit of using several machines with Dylan so as not to lose anything. He would start a song on the piano, and if the musicians dropped out during it, he'd go to the guitar and start playing another one. I lost one song that way and said never again, so I always used multiple machines.

How do you mike a guy like that?

I always used three microphones on Dylan, 'cause his head spun around so much. I used a big [Neumann] U47 on him, same as I used on Johnny Cash later. I would put a baffle over the top of his guitar because he played while he sang lead vocals. I didn't use any EQ on the band, just set the mics up right to make each instrument sound the best it could. I used some EQ on Dylan's voice.

How did you help Dylan make the transition to Nashville for Blonde on Blonde?

I had been doing record sessions in Nashville with the old A-Team guys, like Grady Martin and Floyd Kramer. They were great musicians, but they were used to working a certain way. I'd ask them to play this or that part, and they'd say, “Nope, don't want to play that.” They wouldn't play anything they didn't want to play. So, my wife talked to Ray Stevens' wife and she told her about all these musicians who had moved up from Florida [and other parts of the South] to Nashville, guys like Jerry Kennedy and Wayne Moss and Kenny Butrey. I started using them on demo sessions there and liked them. I brought [harp player] Charlie McCoy up from Nashville to play guitar on Highway 61 and Dylan liked him. But not everyone thought recording in Nashville was a good idea.

When we were doing Highway 61, Bill Gallagher and [Dylan manager] Albert Grossman were in the studio when I mentioned to [Dylan] that maybe we should try recording in Nashville, they got these great musicians. Bob just kind of said, “Hmm,” and put his hand to his chin, looking like Jack Benny. That's how he always was with a new idea — everything you ever said to him he always heard, but he never reacted right away. He'd just file it away, and it would come out later if he liked it. But a little later, Grossman and Gallagher came to me and said, “If you ever mention anything about Nashville again to Dylan, we'll fire you. The reason being, we're having too much success the way we're doing it now.” I said, “Okay, you're the boss. Then I took Dylan down to Nashville for Blonde on Blonde, and he loved working there.

Was it a radical shift in musicians, from guys like Mike Bloomfield to Jerry Kennedy?

We also bought some of the guys from The Band, like Rick Danko, who Dylan had been working with, and Al Kooper. I'll tell you a great Al Kooper story: Al was in Nashville dressed in an undertaker's hat and a black cape and high-heeled boots, real hippie-like, and he went down to Ernest Tubb's Record Shop on Broadway. Well, the boys there didn't care for the way he was dressed and they chased him out of there, and he ran into a phone booth to get away and called [Elvis Presley “Memphis Mafia” member] Lamar Fike, who came and rescued him in his Cadillac.

Bob got real into recording in Nashville. For the next record, John Wesley Harding, he was staying in the Ramada Inn down there, and he played me his songs and he suggested we just use bass and guitar and drums on the record. I said fine, but also suggested we add a steel guitar, which is how Pete Drake came to be on that record.

sounds pretty involved to me - suggesting instrumentation, arrangements, mic techniques etc. this is what a producer does.

re: doing Cash's Live at Folsom Prison

What was the equipment used for Folsom?

We had a truck full of whatever we could take from Columbia Studios in Nashville. Charlie Bragg, who was on staff at Columbia, was the engineer. The show was done in the prison cafeteria, and it was huge and echoing, and catwalks and hard surfaces everywhere. So, we put up as many mics as we could on the stage, sometimes a couple or three for each player, close in. We recorded it to 8-track. But it was the show that made itself, really. I think the most important thing I did on that recording was, instead of having an announcer work the audience up, I told Johnny to walk out there and just say, “Hello, I'm Johnny Cash.” You can hear the explosion after that.

is this because i put quotes around producer? i'm sorry. these guys are producers! i just said i had no idea what sort of technical know-how a lot of 60s producers had back in the day.

it's this:

I take a hard line - if you don't know how to place microphones & tape op, you're not producing ...
*or work in Pro Tools

[Dylan] probably can't do that, but i doubt that john hammond/tom wilson/bob johnston (the dudes listed as "producer" on his biggest albums) could do it either.

and I'm telling you, Wilson and Johnston definitely knew how to place mics and operate tape machines

ok!

eh - hear a noise? point a mic at it! press record!

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lofxg1vqrT1qhyxxwo1_500.jpg

lol

pretty sure wilson should've had that mic boom pointed out the artists. amateur.

getting the room echo on that slap

i really like that picture.

http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lgfdcnRApK1qecpfvo1_500.jpg
Bob & Tom: A Short Play

bob: do you know what all these things do, tom?
tom: no idea, bob.

THE END

lol

c'mon obviously that's a wax dummy

rumors of a 14-minute song about the titanic.

I hope it's just all the folk songs about the Titanic rolled into one.

Or that it's the story of the sinking done in real time.

it's going to be dylan jamming out a version of Gavin Bryars' "Sinking of the Titanic".
According to Dylan magazine Isis, the album will contain 10 tracks and is 68 minutes long, and will most likely be released in September. David Hidalgo previously revealed he recorded accordion, guitar, and some "Mexican instruments" on the album. Most excitingly, the album is rumored to include a 9-minute long song, AND a 14-minute long song either about or named "Titanic."

"most excitingly"

long songs!

He should call his Titanic song "Desolation Row"

Kate Winslet & Leo DiCaprio
fighting in the captain's tower
while James Cameron yells at them
and Billy Zane takes a shower

in other bob dylan news
http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4sz9d7k0c1qz802uo1_500.jpg

imagining Titanic song in the mold of "Blind Willie McTell" except "about" continuing to pay for sins of Gilded Age economics

wanted to make a joke somewhere in there but couldn't figure it how, sorry

And I know no one can dodge this ice
Not even Captain Edward Smith

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4usy6qwZg1qzmowao1_r1_500.jpg