It's a Wonder We Can Even POLL Ourselves: The Bob dang Dylan Thread for Nominating, Balloting, Competing, Beating, Cheating, Mistreating and Talking That the Heat Put Plants in the Beds, But ...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v335/gypsyfrocksbedlam/bob-dylan-by-ralph-steadman_zpsdceb7f81.jpg

OK, so:

BALLOT PART ONE: POLLED ON THE TRACKS

Up to 50 (fifty) of your favorite Bob Dylan songs, ranked top to bottom. Here's how the scoring will work, for simplicity's sake:

For numbers 1-20, standard ILX poll allocation in effect: 1:40, 2:36, 3:33, 4:30, 5:28, 6:26, 7:25, 8:24, 9:23, 10:22, 11:21, 12:20, 13:19, 14:18, 15:17, 16:16, 17:15, 18:14, 19:13, 20:12.
For 21-30, all songs will be worth 10 points.
For 31-40, all songs will be worth 7 points.
For 41-50, all songs will be worth 5 points.

Please note: You can specify a particular version of the song -- studio, live, outtake, etc. -- and in cases where there's a lot of different versions I will note those in the rollout. But all versions of any given song will be counted as one song for the purposes of the poll.

BALLOT PART TWO: SELF-POLLTRAIT

Up to 20 (twenty) of your favorite Dylan albums. I am not going to worry too much about what constitutes an "album." Studio releases, live albums, compilations, bootlegs both official and unofficial are all allowed. The Dylan mixtape your boyfriend/girlfriend made you in college is fine too. Scoring will be same as the top 20 in the tracks poll.

BALLOT PART THREE: YOU JUST SORTA WASTED MY PRECIOUS TIME

Up to 10 (ten) of your least favorite, most hated Bob Dylan songs. Ranked worst to not quite as worst. Scored as above for the top 10.

BALLOT PART FOUR: IT AIN'T ME, BABE

Up to 20 (twenty) of your favorite Dylan covers, specifying the performer, album, or whatever other identifying information is necessary.

BALLOT PART FIVE: HOW YOUR HEAD FEELS UNDER SOMETHIN LIKE THAT

Up to 5 (five) of your favorite photos of Bob Dylan looking ridiculous. Just send links to urls, I don't need actual photo files. These will be used for entertainment purposes during the rollout.

Ballots should be sent to blingboygrunt AT gmail DOT com. Put DYLAN POLL or some such thing in the subject line.

DEADLINE{/b]: All ballots should be in by whatever time you go to bed on [b]Monday, May 26th. Whenever I wake up at Eastern Standard Time on Tuesday the 27th, I will make a final sweep of the inbox and then declare the poll closed.

And here we go!

Holy shit

Oops, sorry about those bad tags in the second-last graf. Well, he's a first-take guy, this is a first-take poll.

I have real work to do this next month

Fuck you

Also note that is indeed blingboygrunt in the email address. All iterations of blindboygrunt I tried were unsurprisingly already taken.

Thank you for making it 50. This is the big one people.

Excited

Waiting for someone to drop a best of the 80's playlist before I finalize and send in my ballot (yes, I was anticipating this poll enough that I've already made my ballot).

my #1 will be from the 80s & I'm sure I won't be it's only #1 vote

If it's the song I'm thinking of, it's likely making my top 5.

Holy shit at the ballot sizes -- kudos to you for being willing to take all that on, tipsy. Looking forward to mid-May when I can put some brain juice into my ballots. In the meantime, heavy rotation listening and note-taking for the next three weeks at least.

Everybody vote for "Dear Landlord" and "Time Passes Slowly"!

covers poll YES!

I AM EXCITE

Everybody vote for bootleg series acoustic idiot wind

Rejected Side Polls:

- Top 10 "New Dylans"
- 10 Most Misguided Attempts to Write/Sound Like Dylan

oh man

seein him tuesday! good timing. williamc otm, dear landlord poss top 5.

everybody vote for handy dandy and went to see the gypsy

everybody vote for DIGNITY

gonna be a lotta caps lyrics in this thread later sry

Five favourite quotes from the 1966 Nat Hentoff interview (which may or may not have actually been one)--apologies for the length:

1) Carelessness. I lost my one true love. I started drinking. The first thing I know, I'm in a card game. Then I'm in a crap game. I wake up in a pool hall. Then this big Mexican lady drags me off the table, takes me to Philadelphia. She leaves me alone in her house, and it burns down. I wind up in Phoenix. I get a job as a Chinaman. I start working in a dime store, and move in with a 13-year-old girl. Then this big Mexican lady from Philadelphia comes in and burns the house down. I go down to Dallas. I get a job as a "before" in a Charles Atlas "before and after" ad. I move in with a delivery boy who can cook fantastic chili and hot dogs. Then this 13-year-old girl from Phoenix comes and burns the house down. The delivery boy - he ain't so mild: He gives her the knife, and the next thing I know I'm in Omaha. It's so cold there, by this time I'm robbing my own bicycles and frying my own fish. I stumble onto some luck and get a job as a carburetor out at the hot-rod races every Thursday night. I move in with a high school teacher who also does a little plumbing on the side, who ain't much to look at, but who's built a special kind of refrigerator that can turn newspaper into lettuce. Everything's going good until that delivery boy shows up and tries to knife me. Needless to say, he burned the house down, and I hit the road. The first guy that picked me up asked me if I wanted to be a star. What could I say?

2) Well, anyway, second of all, you've got to respect other people's right to also have a message themselves. Myself, what I'm going to do is rent Town Hall and put about 30 Western Union boys on the bill. I mean, then there'll really be some messages. People will be able to come and hear more messages than they've ever heard before in their life.

3) I mean, what would some parent say to his kid if the kid came home with a glass eye, a Charlie Mingus record and a pocketful of feathers? He'd say, "Who are you following?" And the poor kid would have to stand there with water in his shoes, a bow tie on his ear and soot pouring out of his belly button and say, "Jazz, Father, I've been following jazz."

4) When I was a boy, Harry Truman was President; who'd want to be Harry Truman?

5) Colleges are like old-age homes; except for the fact that more people die in colleges than in old-age homes, there's really no difference.

http://www.interferenza.com/bcs/interw/66-jan.htm

BOOMING POLL

Sooooooo, I can't be alone in seriously considering 3+ Wilburys numbers?

clem you blew the punchline on the first quote!

DYLAN: Carelessness. I lost my one true love. I started drinking. The first thing I know, I'm in a card game. Then I'm in a crap game. I wake up in a pool hall. Then this big Mexican lady drags me off the table, takes me to Philadelphia. She leaves me alone in her house, and it burns down. I wind up in Phoenix. I get a job as a Chinaman. I start working in a dime store, and move in with a 13-year-old girl. Then this big Mexican lady from Philadelphia comes in and burns the house down. I go down to Dallas. I get a job as a "before" in a Charles Atlas "before and after" ad. I move in with a delivery boy who can cook fantastic chili and hot dogs. Then this 13-year-old girl from Phoenix comes and burns the house down. The delivery boy - he ain't so mild: He gives her the knife, and the next thing I know I'm in Omaha. It's so cold there, by this time I'm robbing my own bicycles and frying my own fish. I stumble onto some luck and get a job as a carburetor out at the hot-rod races every Thursday night. I move in with a high school teacher who also does a little plumbing on the side, who ain't much to look at, but who's built a special kind of refrigerator that can turn newspaper into lettuce. Everything's going good until that delivery boy shows up and tries to knife me. Needless to say, he burned the house down, and I hit the road. The first guy that picked me up asked me if I wanted to be a star. What could I say?

PLAYBOY: And that's how you became a rock-'n'-roll singer?

DYLAN: No, that's how I got tuberculosis.

trying to decide which version of Isis to vote for...

(xpost) Yes. (Although maybe "What could I say?" is the punchline, and "tuberculosis" is the rimshot.)

My favourite Dylan quote of all is his description of hearing the Beatles in 1964: "We were driving through Colorado, we had the radio on, and eight of the Top 10 songs were Beatles songs...'I Wanna Hold Your Hand,' all those early ones. They were doing things nobody was doing. Their chords were outrageous, just outrageous, and their harmonies made it all valid...I knew they were pointing the direction of where music had to go."

Outrageous but valid: that's why he had to pull into the next drug store and buy some sunglasses.

Do the Music from Big Pink versions of the Basement Tapes songs co-written with Dylan count as covers for the purposes of pt. 4?

BALLOT PART THREE: YOU JUST SORTA WASTED MY PRECIOUS TIME

Up to 10 (ten) of your least favorite, most hated Bob Dylan songs. Ranked worst to not quite as worst. Scored as above for the top 10.

BALLOT PART FOUR: IT AIN'T ME, BABE

Up to 20 (twenty) of your favorite Dylan covers, specifying the performer, album, or whatever other identifying information is necessary.

might do these two tbf

You can submit to any or all parts of the ballot. (Though even if you only like Dylan songs sung by other people, you can still vote for those songs in the tracks poll.)

And sure, Big Pink songs can count as covers. I'm not policing anything too strictly with this, because the volume of work is too huge to try to fence it off.

trying to decide which version of Isis to vote for...
The one for Leonard if he's still here.

the one on Biograph is my fav.

I'm not generally a huge fan of the Rolling Thunder tour stuff but the versions of Isis and Shelter From The Storm are definitive.

I could easily make a top 30 just of songs from the 21st century.

I'm typically a fan of making these polls fast and easy, but I'm on board with such a large window for this one. I mean, I already know what's going to make up a good chunk of my ballot, but it gives me time to narrow down covers and maybe even worsts.

What about Dylan's song with the Traveling Wilburys? There's at least a couple of candidates from the first album that I could slot.

Wilburys are fair game, iirc.

Pretty huge list of Dylan covers.

I'm not sure anything could top Fairport Convention's "I'll Keep It With Mine", but hopefully I can find a few pleasant surprises in that list.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUtFXmS9FmA

Wilburys are fine. Would not want to exclude Tweeter and the Monkey Man.

Gonna rep for this as my fave Dylan cover:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfesHDG9i78

It's a shame Dylan's collaboration with Cecil Taylor wasn't recorded; that'd be my number one by default.

I could easily make a top 30 just of songs from the 21st century.

This. Modern Times is gonna occupy a significant chunk of my ballot.

Probably my favorite Bob cover:
http://youtu.be/UwRkK7mNWEA

all the Every Picture Tells A Story fanboys are having this as the number one cover I'm sure

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eqho7jpQjJ8

My fav Dylan cover...not sure yet but this is up there

http://youtu.be/wipPRxEXAPY

will rep for:
* mixed up confusion
* the letterman version of "jokerman"
* huck's tune
* when the ship comes in
* i ain't got no home

covers:
* jamie saft trio- ballad of a thin man
* the roots- masters of war

The Nazareth cover of Hollis Brown might be worth ten minutes of your time if you've never heard it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnYfIos4CqY

naturally "Tight Connection to My Heart" will appear on a few ballots.

i'm gonna have practically all of "love and theft" but prob the only modern times stuff i'm voting for is workingman's blues #2 and nettie moore; never been crazy abt that record. will vote for the telltale signs versh of someday baby tho.

once i would have voted someone's got ahold of my heart instead of tight connection easy, but i don't think the former has the random star trek quote, so these days it's hard.

the correct thing to do w idiot wind i think is to vote for both the nyc version and the directly-to-sara ultrasarcastic 10-minute hard rain version and have both votes collapsed into a single large vote for the difference-splitting album track.

SHENANIGANS

I love the Fairport Convention's one, and Nico's, but I'll always have a soft spot for this "I'll Keep it with Mine": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5ZehtWDRUE

Of Modern Times tracks, "Ain't Talkin'" will rank highest for me. I've enjoyed stuff since then, including the Christmas album, but I partly wish he'd just signed off with that.

Guessing I'll be the only ballot with nothing after Blood on the Tracks.

My Bowie, Stones and Elton John ballots showed me up as a dinosaur who quit listening after I graduated high school, but even I'm going to vote for Dylan tracks from at least five different decades.

You don't like L&T, clem?

Except for the Xmas album, my interest ends mid80s

I played it once, Alfred, and it just didn't do anything for me. Ditto everything else I try. As I've said many times, I stopped liking his voice after Blood on the Tracks, and that's an insurmountable obstacle for me (i.e., I'm sure he's written many brilliant lyrics since then).

Man, his singing on L&T and Modern Times is some of my favorite singing by him or anyone. It is a different thing, but it's built on everything he'd learned up to then.

Yeah, his singing on everything starting with World Gone Wrong is up there with the best of his (or most vocalists') career.

U guys are insane

His singing on L&T is more compelling than some of the songs.

I can understand clem's hesitation. Without hearing many of the live bootlegs that might've mitigated my reactions, I think the Desire and Street Legal singing -- that braying, hectoring, loud tone -- is contemptible.

The only Dylan singing I dislike is some of his 80s stuff where it sounds like he's doing a Bob Dylan impression. iirc, he admitted as much in Chronicles.

I won't even attempt to defend my antipathy. So many writers I respect love those recent Pazz & Jop winners, I just put it down to individual preference. I think the way you respond to a vocalist is as inexplicably subjective as sense of humour.

L&T's Crooner Bob ("Bye and Bye," "Floater," "Moonlight") freaks me out a little. It might be as much due to the instrumental arrangements as the voice.

Since this poll is anything goes I'm gonna vote for Dont Look Back as my number one

i like the crooner bob self-critique on floater: "i left all my dreams and hopes buried under tobacco leaves".

Love and Theft is my #2 Bob record behind only a Highway 61. I don't see how any Bob fan could not love that record.

Boys I'm going to speak to the crowd!

I never connected with L+T or any of the other post-comeback albums (though, strangely, I quite like Tempest), but it has less to do with his singing than with the old man blues-style arrangements. Obviously I recognize them as being better than his 80s crap, but most things are.

The thing about his loud, braying tone on Desire is interesting--I love that record, and while I can hear what you mean, his singing on it isn't that different than on, say, "Idiot Wind," is it?

it has less to do with his singing than with the old man blues-style arrangements

"l+t" i think is rly lively and variable but modern times i totes know where yr coming from. that said "early roman kings", the least musically chancy song possible, is practically my favorite song of the surrounding decade.

Some amazing covers being put forth. So cool to hear Rainy Day cover I'll Keep It With Mine after listening to Fairport's definitive version.

My add is Van's live cover of Just Like A Woman from 1971. Takes 2 or 3 minutes to get going and then Van and the band are all over it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZpKAB_6qkM

dylan sits at the top of my favorite artists for sure, along with a few other people. and i will cop to owning and enjoying basically all of his studio albums (the only ones i don't own are "down in the groove", "under the red sky", "good as i been" and "tempest") plus a bunch of live shit and most of the bootleg series. but even still i'm never on board with the folks who say modern times and L&T and all that measure up to his best work. fuck that that shit. shakey is right = you people are insane.

that said i really do love "time out of mind" and would put it up above anything post blood on the tracks, except for a few isolated pockets here and there (e.g. brownsville girl, precious angel, covenant woman.) i also put the best christian period songs way above desire and street legal. desire i think could be his most overrated album?

also i saw the ballot specifications in the OP and i was like, "fuuuck i love dylan but i don't have time for this shit." but i think will make some time. it will be the first ILX ballot poll will vote in.

see loving TOOM to me is insane. It has three good songs and dreary old man sentimentality embalmed in Lanoiserie.

desire i think could be his most overrated album?

fuck yes

The deal with these is usually that the side polls are optional. In the case of the Miles Davis poll, some voters skipped the tracks poll and only voted in the albums part. xxp

i admit that there are songs on TOOM i never listen to, but the best ones are definitely dripping with "dreary old man sentimentality" and tbh i think that's why i love it. "standing in the doorway" for example. i wish the other late-period dylan albums were dripping with that sentimentality. instead we get a bunch of boring standard old man blues albums.

yeah i will take standing in the doorway over someday baby every day of the week

(and let's be clear here i will still stand by those boring standard blues albums)

well that's like saying "Tryin' to Get to Heaven" is better than "Trouble."

i.e. "Someday Baby" is weak tea

i wouldn't know; never listened 2 shit of love

Some great very-early ones: "Mama, You've Been On My Mind" and "He Was A Friend of Mine".

And "Who Killed Davey Moore?" and on and on.

Ballad Of Emmett Till, yo

i love those first two, eazy, ("mama" and "he was a friend") but i find some of the protest songs - especially "davey moore" a little grating

Linda Ronstadt's recording of "You've Been on My Mind" will be high on my covers ballot.

The deal with these is usually that the side polls are optional.

Yeah, basically ALL parts of the poll are optional. If you just wanna vote for worst tracks, that's OK.

Will second Ward's endorsement of the Nina Simone's "Just Like Tom Thumb Blues" as the best Dylan cover ever, but here's yet another great "I'll Keep It With Mine"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u83Qy1FBahI

some of davey moore i find rly affecting, it's early and clumsy but aometimes the rhythm breaks througb (i hit him i hit him / yes it's true / but that's what i'm / PAID to do) and it feels so urgent you know why this guy stood out

might vote for last thoughts on woody guthrie just for the last stanza. you can go to the church of your choice, or you can go to brooklyn state hospital.

Tempted to select my entire ballot from the Bootleg Series 1-2.

SHE'S MAKIN ME INTO AN OLD MAN AND MAN I'M NOT EVEN TWENNY-FIIIIIIIIIIVE

the only opinion i've ever heard anyone express abt desire is "overrated" but as i have not discussed it with everyone in the world i suppose it could still be true. i never listen to it but i do like the rolling thunder bootleg series version of romance in durango; scarlett rivera makes up for dylan having no apparent control over his voice.

sugar baby, nettie moore, floater, and some stuff on telltale signs i've forgotten the names of all drip with plenty of old man sentimentality and none of them have the reverb turned up to a mark where lanois has stuck a labelmaker strip reading "poignant"

love the waitress section in highlands tho, i am not made of stone.

i'm a big fan of 'desire' tbh and do not really understand what seems like near-universal antipathy to it among dylan fans. 'sara' has prob my favorite dylan vocal of all time.

have often had occasion to say

THE BEACH IS DESERTED
EXCEPT FOR SOME KELP

in my best exaggerated dylanvoice, to no one

i understand the 'time out of mind' hate but honestly it is a pretty good soundtrack for shitty, self-pitying moods. not sure i ever enjoy it much, apart from 'highlands' which is delightful.

near-universal antipathy to it among dylan fans

i didn't know there was widespread dislike of "desire" until fairly recently. when i was a teenager buying most of the dylan albums i own i always thought it was well-liked. it was even one of my favorite dylan albums when i was 16 or so

times change, though. even self-portrait, for which i've repped for a while against it's detractors, has had a critical reappraisal (mostly due to the "another self portrait" set though)

*its!

yeah I'd heard "Desire-era Dylan" as a critical catchphrase for years for music I thought I('d) liked, so when I bought Desire I was bummed out. "Hurricane" might make my top 50, for its dumbly catchy rhymes

I just love the violin + Emmylou and even though most of the songs aren't really among his best, I really dig the atmosphere.

Some of these songs got better as they evolved, though (agree w/ dlh about the Rolling Thunder "Romance in Durango", also really really like "Oh Sister" on Live at Budokan.)

also as side-note i never understood how anyone could reasonably call self-portrait the "worst dylan album" while overlooking the shit like down in the groove

i understand the 'time out of mind' hate but honestly it is a pretty good soundtrack for shitty, self-pitying moods.

can confirm that i put on not dark yet p much every time i wanna kill myself but idk if i'm counting that in its favor.

also as side-note i never understood how anyone could reasonably call self-portrait the "worst dylan album" while overlooking the shit like down in the groove

exactly. or oh mercy

i just love that line in "trying to get to heaven" about miss mary jane and her house in baltimore

down in the groove and knocked out loaded etc are from a prolonged percieved slump so they're not hated like self-portrait, which fans seemed to take as a attack. if anything of course this earns it points.

xp ha, now "oh mercy" i think is decent. i have little to no qualms about lanois-dylan, apart from "series of dreams" which is fucking terrible sub-"where the streets have no name" shit

I didn't know that Desire had such a bad rep until now either, but as I said above, its one of my faves. "Joey" will be way, way up on my ballot, and "Romance in Durango" is sure to find a comfortable spot somewhere in the latter 25.

The diversity of opinion here--like, how there are those of us who don't go for the comeback-era stuff, and those who will have Love and Theft and Modern Times high up on their album ballots--is gonna make for a fun and fascinating poll, though. I'll try not to get too defensive and stick Desire at #1, though.

haha i was gonna say earlier that the most challopy vote i could think of in a place cool enough to appresh the xtian stuff would be for "joey". maybe i'll join you.

*high five*

People really hate "Joey," huh?

i think some of the bad rep 'desire' has picked up in retrospect can maybe be traced back to lester bangs's ridiculous review where he basically takes like 10 pages to point out that the guy 'joey' is based on was actually a really bad guy.

re: knocked out loaded -- i can't remember who said it but somebody who played in the sessions said there were a bunch of outtakes that were as good as "brownsville girl" but that dylan didn't want them on the album. al kooper maybe? anyway, brownsville girl is sublime, i love the whole thing

gtfo calling bangs ridiculous. his ridiculousness was his point

WHAT TIME IS IT?? SAID THE JUDGE
TO JOEY WHEN THEY MET
FIVE TO TEN SAID JOEY
JUDGE SAYS THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT YOU GET.

oh i love bangs, that take on the song just always bewildered me. i mean jesse james was a bad guy too!

There are some great covers being posted, I'm glad I get to post this all-time classic. It's obvious, but undeniable.

Bryan Ferry: A Hard Rain's a Gonna Fall
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zwBHd4kll0

i think some of the bad rep 'desire' has picked up in retrospect can maybe be traced back to lester bangs's ridiculous review where he basically takes like 10 pages to point out that the guy 'joey' is based on was actually a really bad guy.

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.),

well there's also a sapient paragraph pointing out what a colonialist and musical nightmare "Mozambique" is too – and it was a single!

'his ridiculousness was his point' is kinda true of dylan too.

well if Bryan Ferry had captured "Romance in Durango" or "Joey" I might give them third chances

'his ridiculousness was his point' is kinda true of dylan too.

absolutely!!!

thirded

guys. There's a dumb song on KOL called "Under Your Spell" with brain-dead rhymes I like too.

Rob Sheffield, in the Rolling Stone Album Guide, calls the "New York/fork" rhyme in "Joey" the "dodgiest lines of Dylan's whole career," which, okay, but this guy has also heard "Lenny Bruce," "Man Gave Names to All the Animals," "2x2"...

LENNY BRROOOOSSE IS DEEEEEAD

mozambique is the weirdest most inappropriate song, so much so that i feel simultaneously that i'm Missing Something and that my suspicion that i'm missing something is itself a monstrous privileged apology. points for confusing me, anyway.

Joey is a big goof, and Bob has written hundreds of better songs but I still love it in all its ridiculous glory.

The head-scratcher on Desire for me has always been Black Diamond Bay.

the head scratcher on Desire is the drum sound

What does everyone think of Street Legal? I'm not a fan but Changing Of The Guard and Where Are You Tonight will both be high on my ballot. Changing Of The Guard especially.

it has some good moments but i can never get through the whole album in one sitting

The remaster did wonders.

guys i'm just going to listen to 'brownsville girl' on repeat until voting time

I can understand someone liking it after hearing the remaster, but to me it boasts Dylan-esque songs that sound as if Dylan weren't singing them, or rather, he forgot to to be BOB DYLAN so he puts on his best BOB DYLAN voice. "Señor" is a good second tier song; so is "Where Are You Tonight." But "Is Your Love in Vain" is crackpot sexism.

CAN YOU COOK CAN YOU SEW CAN YOU MAKE FLOWERS GROW

xp ha, now "oh mercy" i think is decent. i have little to no qualms about lanois-dylan, apart from "series of dreams" which is fucking terrible sub-"where the streets have no name" shit

― marcos, Monday, April 28, 2014 2:20 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I liked Oh Mercy a lot when it was released, decidedly less so lately, though. I'll still rep for "Most of the Time," but the live-in-studio video version (not on youtube, unfortunately) completely trashes the studio version.

in high school señor was my apocalyptic antiinstitutional jam. changing of the guards is a hilarious blimp of a song; def love it. is your love in vain is indeed the ludicrous terminus of a partic kind of hateful 60s-prophet narcissism; it's actually kinda valuable for that.

not sure about Oh Mercy, but "Born In Time" is choice

i don't know if i'd call it "good" but 'baby stop crying' has a certain magnetism for me, just sounds really heavy and desperate

CAN YOU COOK CAN YOU SEW CAN YOU MAKE FLOWERS GROW

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, April 28, 2014 11:49 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

DO YOU UNDERSTAND MY PAAAAAAAAAAAAIN???

Who was talking shit upthread about Man Gave Names to All the Animals, them's fightin words

down in the groove and knocked out loaded etc are from a prolonged percieved slump so they're not hated like self-portrait, which fans seemed to take as a attack. if anything of course this earns it points.

― difficult listening hour, Monday, April 28, 2014 2:19 PM (30 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Funny that a tune from Groove ("Silvio") was (is?) one of his most enduring concert staples.

and he does "Señor" often these days

Speaking of Señor, the Willie Nelson version is definitely going to be on my cover ballot.

http://www.you.tube.com/watch?v=CiShjSrGsPk

Wait that's not it. WHat is the trick with the period in the link? Don't click on that above one, it is very unsafe for work as I just found out the hard way. UGH

Who was talking shit upthread about Man Gave Names to All the Animals, them's fightin words

― How dare you tarnish the reputation of Turturro's yodel (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, April 28, 2014 2:55 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

*raises hand*

and if there's gonna be people here repping for that, well, then I refuse to feel any shame over any of my choices!

I like the dirty lick on "New Pony"

my son would probably love man gave names to all the animals

When my son was 2, he used to ask me to play the video for When The Deal Goes Down over and over, it was his favorite thing to watch. I thought he had really advanced music taste, but turns out even 2 year olds like Scarlett Johansen.

I get the utility of MGNTAtA, but as far as kiddie Dylan goes, I really like his version of "Froggie Went a Courtin'" from whichever of those early 90s trad albums that was on.

genius of the song is the missing last line

Bob also does a killer version of This Old Man, I shit you not.

i changed my mind abt the level of personal detail i wanted to indulge in over "señor". actually in high school i made a documentary abt senior cut day that ended up being a documentary abt the failure to present a united front on the question of the actual date of senior cut day and the administration's insistence on a date of their own specification (thus turning senior cut day into a lame school-sanctioned holiday) on pain of "taking away" "senior week", and the last shot was from a car pulling out of my school parking lot while dylan went THIS PLACE DON'T MAKE SENSE 2 ME NO MORE!!!!

see cuz "senior"

'street legal' was actually the first dylan album i ever heard, this cute hippie girl i sat next to in my hs freshman science class lent it to me after discovering i'd never knowingly listened to dylan. she was disappointed by my tepid reaction.

dlh, I forget you had liberal parents.

'street legal' was actually the first dylan album i ever heard, this cute hippie girl i sat next to in my hs freshman science class lent it to me after discovering i'd never knowingly listened to dylan. she was disappointed by my tepid reaction.

haha

aw

haha my friends and i checked out "good as i been to you" from the local library when we were 12 or so. i think my reaction was like "why is this guy so famous?"

hahahaha

#dylanstories

but "mr. tambourine man" soon became well known to us -- "dude, it's about a drug dealer!" "cool!"

luckily i was turned on to the trinity early on and didn't stray from them for awhile

Never actually heard Good As I Been To You, but World Gone Wrong is one of my all-time favorites, the best thing he'd done since "Blind Willie McTell," and the true beginning of his "comeback."

those two albums are the ones i most need to revisit for the poll.

World Gone Wrong is one of my all-time favorites, the best thing he'd done since "Blind Willie McTell," and the true beginning of his "comeback."

http://www.dieselbookstore.com/files/diesel/GreilMarcus.jpg

the song "World Gone Wrong" is def gonna make my ballot; some deep spook in that take

I hope "gimme some reggae" wins the cover poll btw

but World Gone Wrong is one of my all-time favorites, the best thing he'd done since "Blind Willie McTell," and the true beginning of his "comeback."

Yes. An astounding record. Blood In My Eyes alone makes it essential.

World Gone Wrong slays

It's a good album, on the shortlist of Dylan albums I never play like H61R or BOB.

feel like this poll is going to devolve quickly into Dylan Challops

well yeah he has so much stuff!

That's it. He recorded so much that I never spend time with The Classics anymore, JWH excepted.

haha, i'm okay with that xp. do we really need any more words on the genius of highway 61 revisited? (though setting challops aside i will prob vote for 61 as my top album)

It's a good album, on the shortlist of Dylan albums I never play like H61R or BOB.

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, April 28, 2014 8:49 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Challenging Opinions 101

i think it's a testament to his greatness, honestly

I don't know about words but I'll never tire of "Obviously Five Believers", maybe gonna be my #2 in this poll. all the other BOB songs I'll take on various boots but Robbie Robertson's licks on "Obviously Five Believers" are one of a kind

i also rarely listen to BoB, especially the second half

bob just has the biggest and most insane catalog, this is the first poll for me where 50 songs doesn't really seem like enough.

you guys should listen to BoB, it is a great album

also: can we vote for photographs
https://31.media.tumblr.com/44f42bae5e43d436a80a43443933a988/tumblr_n4qj3sSqRs1sv2pn3o1_500.jpg

who's the guy in the glasses behind Bob?

Yeah I still listen to it all the time, same with the other two from The Trinity

tbh guys i might take self portrait over BoB #challops

jwh is #1. h61 is p much perfect. bringing it all back home is an improvement on another side but not on freewheelin or possibly times. blonde on blonde is Genuinely Overrated but at least half of it is still terrific. there's a big loud rocking version of visions of johanna on telltale signs that is like the platonic dylan track. fourth time around is funny.

that visions of johanna on the scorsese soundtrack. . man oh man

i would also call New Morning straight up perfect

yeah that one, i think i meant that one. xp

my last major dylan plunge had me really loving nashville skyline through planet waves

i think the trick with 'blonde on blonde' is just to skip whichever 2-3 songs you're sick of. 'fourth time around' is even better when you realize it's a total pisstake of 'norwegian wood.'

New Morning probably on my ballot. Not perfect. He didn't make perfect albums, and I don't want him too. It defeats the idea of being Bob Dylan to make perfect albums.

*to

yeah that easy lazy pleasantly lovesick early 70s dylan is rly lovable. in happy exile from prophethood. time passes slowly up here in the mountains.

aaaaaaaand the locusts sang

great bootleg series song from that era: nobody cept you.

love his piano playing on NM: also lazy pleasantly lovebuzed

i dearly hope it's him tinkling the supper club ivories on noted pinnacle of dylan ridiculousness if dogs run free

I think Al Kooper plays the complicated stuff

babe i couldnt find the door

great bootleg series song from that era: nobody cept you.

A band called Sixteen Horsepower, kind of an alt country act, does a splendid cover of this. Well worth hearing.

https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=cMnQgZc9xJg&feature=kp

Maybe my favorite Dylan cover. Doesn't depart hugely from the original, but still makes it something different.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tI5L_tehaQ0

Blowin' in the Wind has been covered to death. But take a listen to what Stevie Wonder & Glen Campbell do it with it. Really gets going when Glen starts singing on the second verse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8YazOALrCo

I'm definitely not as big a Dylan fan as some but I've got a lot of love for both Desire and New Morning, love the loose, playful feel of those records. Looking through a few old threads and I had no idea 'Black Diamond Bay' was disliked, it's definitely going to be high on my ballot.

Bruce covering BOB Bob in 75, also high on my cover ballot. Bruce knew about circuses in town.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yr48uFCjBG4

feel like gene clark's "tears of rage" will definitely be in my top covers

look i know everybody knows these but i'm posting anyway

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wipPRxEXAPY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xx-T28uWE-o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJweaXxHckc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjE9knInIV8

the presley 'don't think twice...' is great too

definitely gonna vote for the 13th Floor Elevators version of It's All Over Now

lol no joke that falco cover was the first dylan i heard

it's oddly compelling

I'd have to give it some thought, but the first two covers that come to mind are the Them clip above and the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band's "She Belongs to Me."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CnbvYSBsFM

Ferry's "It's All Over Now Baby Blue" is perfect.

I'd owned Them's "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" (on the Bangs compilation, I think) for at least 15 years before I even noticed it, thanks to Beck's "Jackass."

Courtney Love's "Baby Blue" is a long way from perfect, but I still kinda love it.

Does everyone really need to be reminded of Emmylou's "Every Grain of Sand?"

Ah well, I'm gonna post it anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHgzOkeCgVY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWj9uyujDXA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIVEv1cj8Dk

First time I saw Dylan was the Under the Red Sky tour, and even though I think it's sort of terrible now, I kind of like it for nostalgia. My dad took me. The Pogues opened. Good show.

My dad hadn't seen him since 1964.

best in show tonight was "love sick", of all things.

runner-up a nifty full-band "she belongs to me".

caetano velosos jokerman is amazing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgaSNPhQ9vo

Will forever rep for this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sws36Lz5usI

This should be 50 different polls.

Just 24 days left to vote!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA8KR0Qo8R8

starting at the beginning ... NOW. I think I have everything officially released up through Saved with the exception of Hard Rain and Street Legal

I've been doing the same thing, listening from the beginning (though there's a few gaps that I likely won't ever fill). His debut is pretty fascinating; he's totally casting around still trying to find his voice, and his attempts at a Van Ronk-like approach are kind of charming in their way. But "Song to Woody" is definitely on my ballot.

I've never really been into this first album - there's a certain level of frenetic strain and over-exertion going on.

i think the first album is great. a lot of it is some of my favorite early acoustic dylan.

in my time of dyin, fixin to dye, house of the risin sun, and song to woody are all fantastic

ha, i misread your post too, shakey, i thought you said "i've never really been into the first album," and i'm like yea me too the first album is great!

You're No Good, the first song in the debut, is one of my fav Dylan takes. Def on my ballot.

moving on to Self Portrait... never heard this one before

I might vote for "All the Tired Horses."

"you're no good" is fantastic.

"All the Tired Horses."

interesting album opener, almost mantra-like

"Alberta #1", however... what's going on here? it sounds like all the musicians are playing in slightly different keys or something

in general, listening to loads of mainstream country from this period has perhaps prepared me well

"All the Tired Horses."
interesting album opener, almost mantra-like

just listened to this for what i believe is the first time in my life. kinda love it.

proto-Spiritualized

I'm totally feeling this album tbh. Kinda reminds me of the Waylon albums from this period.

there is certainly some garbage on self portrait but overall i think it's a really good album. never understood the scorn for it, especially since it followed nashville skyline which was fairly well-received. there's no consistent position that praises skyline but shits on self-portrait.

the smooth country stuff on self-portrait is wonderful.

imo the really bad stuff on there is the clunky "in search of little sadie" and also "little sadie", "gotta travel on." tbh for those are the only tracks i tend to skip. i really like the rest, even the isle of wight stuff.

the boxer is in a category of its own but i kind of love it.

I have no problem with sappy string arrangements on country material

altho Belle Isle sounds a little screwy

holy shit @ Bob attempting to harmonize with himself lol (this is a first, I think?)

Probably is a first. In Chronicles he said he didn't know overdubbing existed/was possible until 1969.

dude didn't know guitars even could be electric until newport 65 iirc

inclined to say this is better than Planet Waves. Not a patch on New Morning tho.

you gonna listen to another self portrait too? totally great.

dude didn't know guitars even could be electric until newport 65 iirc

― tylerw, Friday, May 2, 2014 4:39 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"That's odd...when you plug it in, you hear this 'boooooo' sound."

lol
listening to the NY Sessions (blood on the tracks original version) this afternoon. what's interesting to me is how totally different this album (especially in this form) sounds from the rest of Dylan's oeuvre. Just funny because obviously it's up there with the top 5 albums he's most know for, but I don't know, he never really returned to this style -- the voice, the songwriting, the production...

also godammit the version of "big girl" here is totally astounding.

i pretty much prefer the new york sessions entirely to the released version. i feel like i don't even listen to the released version anymore

idiot wind may be the exception for me

you gonna listen to another self portrait to

I totally would but no gots

lol Tarfumes

xxp i don't know, i still have time for both versions, but the NY Sessions feels more intimate/unique, that's for sure.

would've been interesting to see the reactions if he put out the ny version, whether it would be as acclaimed. i think it would've been but maybe a little less so. i wonder if it would have sold as well.

don't know if "tangled" would've become the signature tune it's become for him, it's so much more low-key in the NY version.
one thing that might make the NY Sessions so unique is that it's one of the few post-65 efforts that is really based around his guitar playing. guess JWH and to some extent the Billy the Kid sdtk (and of course those folk records from the early 90s) fit in there too, but his style as an instrumentalist is generally played down in the studio.

Is the NY version the one on the first Bootleg Series? Love that one. Also hilarious/revealing how he keeps switching between first and third person, sometimes inside of the same couplet.

think it might be a different take on the bootleg series? but it's the same lyrics/arrangement...

i really have zero sense of what dylan's style as an instrumentalist is like, except for the harmonica obv., and i guess the guitar on the earliest records that i never listen to

i guess because i rarely know what he's playing and he's usually accompanied by a variety of hotshot players

I remember getting into some argument with aero about that, specifically whether or not that's Bob finger-picking on "Don't Think Twice, It's Allright", which is a beautiful piece of playing but also oddly uncharacteristic of Bob, who's usually a bit looser

from seeing him live ca. l+t/modern times just plunk around on a keyboard a bit i kind of assume that he's not playing anything i hear on all the recent records, never bothered to check the credits

I remember getting into some argument with aero about that, specifically whether or not that's Bob finger-picking on "Don't Think Twice, It's Allright", which is a beautiful piece of playing but also oddly uncharacteristic of Bob, who's usually a bit looser

― PLATYPUS OF DOOM (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, May 2, 2014 6:10 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I assume from "Suze (The Cough Song)" that that's Bob fingerpicking.

When I last saw him, in '97, he was still playing guitar, and he took all of the solos. Every solo was just alternating between two notes, or three at most. It was pretty amazing, actually. Closest thing to it I could find online is this stunning version of "Love Sick":
http://youtu.be/Abbu5hcH0kk

My favorite thing about "Leopard-Skin Pillbox Hat" is his lead guitar. I think he's got, or had, chops that he didn't like to reveal for whatever reason.

the guitar on the ny version of tangled--light and jangling but so melancholy, only accompanied by the coat buttons--is maybe the most beautiful dylan sound, better than thin wild mercury i think. one of the bios, i think the clinton heylin one, is v contemptuous of the lyrical changes from ny blood on the tracks to the album version ("if you're making love to her" --> "if you get close to her" on if you see her, for example, which idk i'm pretty sure i prefer the latter, it's not like you don't know what it means), part of a general dylan-doesn't-know-wtf-to-do-with-his-own-material thesis common to huge fans of blind willie mctell. (he does often seem perverse but i've never thought he's just bonkers. i don't think blind willie mctell is finished.) w dylan lyrics i usually like all variations equally because i love the variation itself (when i saw him the other night it was lololol cuz he still switches up the lyrics but it's now 95% impossible to understand a single word he's saying--there must be dozens of whole new late-period verses to stuff like tangled only bob has ever understood) but when it comes to the sound of the thing i agree that as lovely as the band takes on the album version sometimes are the ny version is really special, the finally-fulfilled promise of another side imo.

tarfumes that love sick RULES.

it's leading me to all this live jack frosty time out of mind stuff i'd never heard; how had i never been alerted to this cold irons bound omg.

his unchangingly flat affect

all the looks!!

what a weird video! weird and wonderful!!

changing the exhausted heartbroken album line "i look at you and i'm on my hands and knees / you have no idea what you did to me" to

I'MLOOKINATYOUANDI'MONMY
BENDED KNEE
YOU'VENOIDEAWHATYOU
DO TO ME

is a+ transubstantiation. suddenly it's sex.

it's leading me to all this live jack frosty time out of mind stuff i'd never heard; how had i never been alerted to this cold irons bound omg.

― difficult listening hour, Friday, May 2, 2014 8:08 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Pretty sure that's from Masked and Anonymous, which is pretty tremendous (though it gets trashed from time to time). But yeah, that band, fucking forget it. Best band he ever had. They did "Cry A While" on the Grammys in 2002, I think, and it was just as jaw-dropping (though it's not on youtube).

that came out at the height of my teenage dylan mania and i don't know why i never saw it. i mean i've never read a good word about it. no idea why that stopped me tho. if it's full of that shit i should see it immediately.

The only positive review I read of it was Jonathan Rosenbaum's, which was reason enough for me to check it out. Fortunately, Rosenbaum was right.

I remember that grammy perf for some reason. They performed in like a little box?

Yeah, they were ensconced off-stage in some corner of the theatre. I used to have a tape of the whole show (which included the famous first "Anti-Piracy" speech from the then-chairman of the RIAA which basically was the music industry's 'swallows a shotgun barrel and pulls the trigger' moment).

Speaking of late-period live stuff, it'd be great to see this make the final results:
http://youtu.be/w3FIF4JZhk4

Masked and Anonymous fucking rules!

(xposts)

I'm glad both versions of BoTT are available but definitely prefer the album as it was released - it just rocks! Also the dynamics between band-oriented tracks and sologuitaring works perfectly.

There seems to be a lot of good live material on youtube these days (I think it will eventually be taken down, reuploaded after some time etc.) like this (the uploader has lots of other good ones)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDIqLnsLkSg
"The greatness of Dylan's guitar playing here is off the charts. Even if only a few people get that."

I can't remember what book or article it was about the recording of BotT, but there's a funny interview with one of the studio guys in the NYC sessions about how they were all sort of bemused by Dylan. They were all total pros used to sheet music and rehearsing and everything, and Dylan would just be like, "OK, this is in A," and expect them to jump in. And of course he never wanted to redo a take. But he also said Dylan was a great instinctive musician, transposing on the fly and coming up with unusual changes out of nowhere.

Keith Richards once said he wished Dylan and Mick Jagger kept the fuck away from electric rhythm guitars because they treated the guitars "like washboards." He's changed his mind about Mick (and he IS an excellent rhythm player), dunno about Bob.

what kind of pro can't play along to 'this is in A'???

Bob Dylan

haha but he calls em

the joke at the end here is hilarious
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVCxpx9x8eA

what kind of pro can't play along to 'this is in A'???

― j., Saturday, May 3, 2014 2:24 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

They could play along fine, it just wasn't what they were used to.

But he's obviously a good band leader, he's had so many good bands.

Session musicians, particularly in New York, were used to being given lead sheets, at the very least. The idea that a session in Columbia's 30th St. studio would have little more direction than "This one's in A" was likely bewildering to professional session cats.

Have the full NY BotT sessions been released officially?

No, but I seem to recall an item in Goldmine/Discoveries sometime prior to first remaster program about how an 'insider' at Columbia was working on a restored original version of Freewheelin' and an all New York version of BOTT. Tracks from both are in the Bootleg series comps.

They need to get on that then.

This isn't the the thing I read before, but gets at the same thing: http://www.glennberger.net/2012/01/15/bob-dylans-blood-on-the-tracks-the-untold-story/.

This hurt. You could see it in the musician’s eyes, as they sat silently behind their instruments, forced not to play by the mercurial whim of the guy painting his masterpiece with finger-paints.
After a few disastrous takes, it ended up just Dylan and the bass player, Tony Brown. Tony sat inches from Dylan, watching his hands, trying to follow the chord changes as Bob made them, never knowing what chord or song was to come in the next moment. This was made especially hard, Tony was to tell me, because Dylan was playing in an “open” tuning. The strings were tuned different than normal. This made it almost impossible for Brown to know what chord Dylan was playing by the placement of his fingers on the fretboard. Dylan was on his own wavelength, and you either were on it or you didn’t exist.

'this one's in…' (starts playing)

you turn on your amp
and you ask what key it is
and somebody starts playing and says
"it's his"
and you say "what chord?"
and somebody else says, "gee whiz"
and you say, "for fuck's sake,
is there a union in this town?"
'cause a song is happening
and you don't know what song it is
do you, mr brown?

lol

hahahaha

great

Looking forward to pushing some nuDylan off the list w/ some of the early guy-and-guitar Bootleg Series stuff.

Anyone else noticed the similarity between the guitar line on Obviously 5 Believers and Willie Cobbs' You Don't Love Me, recorded in 1960?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY4n-2I9PcU

I am bummed that my favorite live clip of Dylan doing "Gotta Serve Somebody" in tails w/women in cages is no longer on youtube >:(

haha, you may have imagined the women in cages (he sings about them)
https://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=271319652338

I thought there was a different clip that you originally posted in the "Dylan Christian Period" thread...? I know there's an SNL clip from around the same time

i think that's the one I've posted before -- the SNL clip is hard to come by for whatever reason (tho I think you can watch the whole episode on hulu?). i really love that band he's got.

@j. hehe yea that's a great joke :D but also true because in my experience it's very difficult/impossible to sing along at dylan shows and these scots do great!

I seem to remember Phil Ramone writing in Making Records about how he got a tip from someone, that he should advice the musicians to focus on Dylan's feet, since they're the best tell tale sign as to what he's up to. I guess the band has to do a lot of guessing when Dylan plays live, wouldn't mind a good article on that...

oh yes also, I can recommend (and yes ofc many of you know all this):

The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia by Michael Gray - it's informative and very funny/idiosyncratic, especially good on connections to prewar blues, but also a nice rock encyclopedia in general.
Chronicles was a great read, very Dylan in voice (duh, I think he uses the word "manhole" on p2 and from there on I was..) and loved the part on Oh Mercy
Both Ends of the Rainbow https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVyJdBC79-s has great anecdotes/criticism from Street Legal to Oh Mercy (interesting stuff abt how Empire Burlesque ended up as terrible as it did)
Don't Look Back is just a great document
No Direction Home has amazing footage + interviews with Dylan and people around him (Seeger, Baez and Van Ronk are outstanding)
I'm Not There was like a great visual poem to me, probably as good as any of the above and turned me on to the gospel stuff bc of Christian Bales performance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWQiS_aEGa0

Would love it if someone could recommend a really good Dylan biography.

Ian McLagan's autobio has some pretty funny stories about playing with Dylan (or trying to) on an early-80s tour.

Also has this exchange between Peter Grant and Bob:

"Hello, Bob, I'm Peter Grant. I manage Led Zeppelin."

"I don't come to you with my problems."

lol

This is a great article from the engineer on Things Have Changed and Love and Theft among others.

Well you know…stadows…
http://www.uncut.co.uk/bob-dylan/recording-with-bob-dylan-chris-shaw-tells-all-interview

So good:

But it turned out that that rough mix ended up being the final mix. And that was pretty funny, because the very last thing Bob did was raise the shaker up like 10db, making it ridiculously loud, and that was the mix he wanted to go with.

I took "Things Have Changed" seriously as title, concept, and tune in spring 2000: a step into clean air after the dankness of TOOM.

that shaw interview is great -- especially this:
But, the thing was, there’s a lyric on the song where Bob sings, “The leaves cast their shadows on the stones,” and, when he was singing it live, he was reading his lyrics off a piece of paper, and, I guess, for a split-second, he got dyslexic, because on the live take, he actually sang, “The leaves cast their *stadows* on the stones.” So, the only time I did any editing on that song, was when I heard this word “stadows” go by, I knew he meant shadows, because I had the lyric sheet in front of me. So, when I tried a remix, I took the vocal, and I found a “sh” from somewhere else, and I chopped the “st” out and put that in, so he was singing “shadows,” y’know. And Bob was listening to all these mixes, and he kept saying, “Nah, man, I really wanna use that rough mix.” Finally, I said, “Well, you know, on the rough mix, you don’t sing ‘shadows,’ you sing, ‘stadows.” And he took a long hit on his cigarette, and he kind of looked at me deadpan, and he went, “Well, you know:*‘stadows.’*”

lol

Previously worked with Booker T And The MGs and Jeff Buckley, but he got the gig with Dylan "when he heard I got my start doing Public Enemy records."

and after discovering the wonders of Pro Tools:

The downside of using that stuff is, though – a couple of times during Modern Times, the computer crashed, in the middle of a take. And, I’ll tell you right now, there is no worse feeling in the world than having to walk out into a live room while the band is playing and have to stand in front of Bob and make him stop and tell him it’s because a computer has crashed.
Read more at http://www.uncut.co.uk/node/14345#b6K7GSvygdqySwC6.99

Throughout the seventeen years Joyce spent writing Finnegans Wake, he began to go blind, so he had a friend named Samuel Beckett take dictation over the phone to complete the novel. At one point in this dictation, someone knocked on Joyce’s door. Joyce said, “Come in!” to the knocker, and Beckett mistakenly wrote the words “Come in!” into the narrative of Finnegans Wake. When this error was spotted by Joyce, and the confusion was sorted out, Joyce insisted that Beckett, “Leave it in!”

re: biographies -- imo there is no perfect dylan biography.

clinton heylin's "behind the shades" may be the most thorough but he seems kind of like a dick, imo. tries so hard to prove that he's not a dylan fanboy that sometimes he just sounds contemptuous of him.

robert shelton's "no direction home" has a lot of good insight into the early years and the greenwich village years, and it's the only dylan bio that dylan was willing to participate in iirc. it's very spotty in the later years though and doesn't even go past the 80s (i think shelton died in the 80s or 90s.)

"down the highway" w/ howard sounes was not very good at all. it had a lot of stuff on bob's romantic relationships through the years if you care about that stuff (which i don't for the most part) and all in all was pretty shallow and weak.

i think there are others but those are the biggest. "chronicles" is a must read.

Heylin's oral biography is essential, and for me it's easy to forget his howlers and conclusions.

"a friend named Samuel Beckett"

heylin is one of the only ones who has really done the legwork, listening to the bootlegs, talking to the session dudes, etc. but yeah, he often seems like a dick and makes some kind of ridiculous leaps (and presents them as indisputable fact).

i enjoy the paul williams performing artist books - occasionally a little starry eyed, but they are good listening guides.

everybody otm abt heylin, lots and lots and lots of fascinating blockquoted talk from all kinds of v relevant people, plus a bunch of dumb opinions.

that michael grey book niels mentions (updated many timew over the years--i took the very first edition, late 60s i think, out of the library as a kid and was v impressed by the flatly authoritative pronouncement "just like a woman is one of dylan's bad songs") is terrific in the bathroom. a random-page sort of book. then you just follow crossreferences.

I don't know if this is verified anywhere, but I have always assumed "tea preacher" was another one of those stumbles Dylan didn't want to correct.

unless you want to argue that he was quietly advocating for homosex

there's an adorable bit in brownsville girl where he starts singing a different version of the chorus from the backup singers, stops, then comes in extra hard with them on the next line

Ah, never bothered to look at the official lyrics before. It is just "preacher." Funny, I've heard people cover the song and sing "tea preacher," because hey that's what's on the record.

i'm unclear on how there can be lyrics to any pop song that are more "official" than what's on the record.

i think dylan "cleaned up" (sometimes just changed outright) a few lyrics for his songbook back in the 70s.

Just a reminder for the covers ballot: U.S. Maple's "Lay Lady Lay".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDOL1cycAKE

I could have sworn someone already mentioned it upthread, but I couldn't find it. Either way, just wanted to make sure it wasn't forgotten.

another "lay lady lay" i'm quite fond of, by the mighty diamonds:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KVpqz2Hvoo

Are we fond of this one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgIkiYks6dc

i'm unclear on how there can be lyrics to any pop song that are more "official" than what's on the record.

― fact checking cuz, Monday, May 5, 2014 10:49 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Bobdylan.com is I'm assuming as official as it gets.

best version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EgiRjW1AeY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bToroklV4uo

this'll be on my covers ballot too

no offense meant below, tyler, euler ; )

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/05/books/the-dylanologists-david-kinneys-look-at-an-obsession.html?_r=0

i'm unclear on how there can be lyrics to any pop song that are more "official" than what's on the record.
― fact checking cuz, Monday, May 5, 2014 10:49 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
Bobdylan.com is I'm assuming as official as it gets.

hmm. if bobdylan.com says it goes like this, and my record player says it goes like that, i'm gonna go with my record player every time. i mean, bob (or one of his interns at his website) is welcome to rewrite "leopard-skin pill-box hat" any time he wants, but if you ask me how the song goes, i'll continue to point to the version on blonde on blonde.

Sure, I just think he didn't mean to sing "tea preacher" -- he starts to sing teacher, catches himself and sings preacher instead. Which it's hard to imagine anyone else leaving in, but he must have liked that take.

@marcos cool i'll try heylin&shelton
@tylerw thx, will try williams, don't mind a good listening guide :)

re: encyclopedia here's a few nice quotes:

Lay Down Your Weary Tune
And just as Dylan’s vision in ‘Lay Down Your Weary Tune’ corresponds to Frodo’s perception of the land of Lorien, both correspond, in turn, to an aspect of what an LSD vision can offer, by transforming an ordinary world into an earthly paradise. Anyone who ever dropped acid will recognize this: ‘. . . Frodo stood awhile still lost in wonder. It seemed to him that he had stepped through a high window that looked on a vanished world. A light was upon it for which his language had no name . . .(...)"

Cohen, Leonard
Few people named Leonard Norman (or Cohen) are as cool as the poet, novelist and singer-songwriter born in Montreal, Quebec, on September 21, 1934.

Simon, Paul
(...) Always more accessible, more melodic and less substantial than Dylan, Simon (and Simon & Garfunkel) outsold Dylan many times over.

U2
Inexplicably successful Irish rock group formed in 1980, fronted by one of the world’s most self-important and vain celebrities, Bono (rhymes with con-oh, rather than with oh-no).(...)

Sure, I just think he didn't mean to sing "tea preacher" -- he starts to sing teacher, catches himself and sings preacher instead. Which it's hard to imagine anyone else leaving in, but he must have liked that take.

fair enough. makes total sense. i just think it's natural that people covering the song would leave the "tea" in, because that's how the song came out in the end. if you leave a mistake in the public record, it becomes part of the public record.

so this was pretty weird last night

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89QJUE7lVGA

not bad really. although kinda makes me pine for a Dolly Parton version

not too shabby! i don't really understand miley cyrus.

she's not for you

(or me either really)

Listening to Empire Burlesque for the first time in ~10 years. If nothing else, it contains the wonderful lyric "He ate Burger Kings, he was well-fed".

lol

"Dark Eyes" and "Never Gonna Be the Same Again" are the worst songs.

What does everybody think about the I'm Not There soundtrack that came out a few years ago? I posted the Glen Hansard/Marketa Irglova cover of "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" earlier, and there were some other great renditions in that version, including John Doe's "Pressing On" and Iron & Wine's "Dark Eyes." There were also some retreads, like Eddie Vedder's "All Along the Watchtower," which is utterly unnecessary.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwCwd0Aq4x8

Hey, didn't mind the Miley Cyrus at all. I'd like to think that just before or after what you see in the clip she identifies the songwriter. I'd like to think she gets at least a few people in the audience to investigate further.

I really liked Willie Nelson's version of Señor on the I'm Not There soundtrack. Then last year there was a triple cd Dylan cover project for charity, I think maybe Amnesty International? Kesha did Don't Think Twice It's Alright.

This is insane. I know about 200 Dylan songs and i still feel like a total dilettante....

i remember being hugely disappointed by that ke$ha don't think twice; you'd think the bitchy kissoff would be her metier but it was all po-faced and mournful iirc, in Respect.

The Los Lobos track is good on "I'm Not There" too.

Three ballots in. 19 days left to vote.

Vote suggestion of the day: "Yea! Heavy and a Bottle of Bread"

Bright eyes did don't think twice as well. He just retitled it and took the writing credit.

The I'm Not There soundtrack is so amazingly good and underheard/underrated in my opinion. Standouts are:

Jim James & Calexico - "Goin' To Acapulco"
John Doe - "Pressing On"
Stephen Malkmus & Lee Ranaldo - "Can't Leave Her Behind" (this one just aches)
Willie Nelson & Calexico - "Señor (Tales of Yankee Power)"
Tom Verlaine & The Million Dollar Bashers - "Cold Irons Bound"
Charlotte Gainsbourg and Calexico - "Just Like A Woma"

Almost all the Calexico stuff is worthy. The whole thing hangs together so much better than it should. Hell, I even like the Sufjan Stevens tune!

I mentioned this upthread, but here's a link. First song on her first album, when her voice was just this gorgeous silver stream.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbtSIaEkaZg

There's something I'd like to quote on this thread, but I can't remember where I read it. It's Marcus talking about Dylan, and he says something to the effect that such-and-such was more important overall--maybe the Beatles, maybe them and someone else--but that for a couple of years, '65 and '66, Dylan was the most important person on the planet. Anyone recognize that?

I recognize it as ridiculous hyperbole

i think it's from his basement tapes book, sounds familiar.

I think it was in response to someone--an interview, or maybe even the rockcritics.com thing. I'm going to look around for it.

Yes--rockcritics.com. He doesn't quite say it the way I did, so put the hyperbole on me.

I don’t think he’s the towering figure of the rock & roll era. For one moment, from roughly the time Highway 61 Revisited was released in the fall of 1965 to the end of his tour in the UK in May 1966 he truly did tower over everything around him--everything, not just other musicians, but other artists, other politicians, other philosophers, other evangelists. He knew it, and you could hear the fact and the knowledge in his sound, and you can hear it now. But if anyone has to tower over an era, it was the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

When I listen to "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" and "Desolation Row"--which I was doing in the car on the way home tonight, which is why I brought it up--I believe.

huh I had never heard this before. Crazy that it was recorded for Freewheelin', feels pretty close to his electric stuff from a couple years later.

er this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWLffsKKPrU

When I listen to "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" and "Desolation Row"--which I was doing in the car on the way home tonight, which is why I brought it up--I believe.

― clemenza, Thursday, May 8, 2014 6:23 PM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ha, I was listening to those on my drive home, too. And yeah, I believe.

huh I had never heard this before. Crazy that it was recorded for Freewheelin', feels pretty close to his electric stuff from a couple years later.

― stadow shevens (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, May 8, 2014 6:29 PM (28 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The electric version was released as a single (his first, as it turns out):

http://www.n-b-u.de/1962-MixedUpConfusion.jpg

remembered today (while driving to work blasting it) that one of the things clinton heylin is contemptuous of is the 1964 halloween show (bootleg vol 6), which as far as i can tell is the definitive pre-electric best-of.

you drove?

i like when the working title "it's alright, ma (it's life and life only)" gets a few nervous audience giggles and his response is "yes. it's a very funny song." then eleven minutes of doom drone.

i'm an excellent driver.

Dylan's non-album singles are a pretty interesting lot

yep, gonna vote for some of them

Voted for two--one of them quotes the other.

Re cyrus/amnesty her Lonesome cover was the highlight of that comp for me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2wvaWTTmz8 (ke$sha was terrible, sadly)

Re I'm Not There OST agree was great indeed, best track must be "I'm not there" (lol) but rly loved Cat Powers spot on impersonation on SIOMWTMBA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkrOlsnzUeE

Ferrys Dylanesquye was decent too, especially positively 4th https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VW-MTglbHU

xp If they are what I think they are, they'll both be on my ballot too

Wanna rep for this, Wilko Johnson and Roger Daltrey doing "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?":
http://youtu.be/CxRB7djsbvg

Pete Townshend doing "Girl From the North Country" in 1974:
http://youtu.be/90psROC4yxY

Willie Nelson's "Señor" is great! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiShjSrGsPk

ahh yes, also a question maybe some of you can answer: what is Dylan doing with his guitar when he plays live? If you look at the Obama concert https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2sYIIjS-cQ you can see he moves his hands quite a lot, but he doesn't strum a lot, does he? I guess it sounds good, but still it seems the weirdest way to play guitar, something I'd anticipate from a jazz-musician improvising, maybe, but not rly from a folk guitarist. Does it have something to do with the kabala chord system he describes in Chronicles? Is it genius?

so much good stuff on youtube, this nelson-duet is great!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fd41cVwl9FY

this christian rock rocks! (feat. petty!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nDpkJhn55s

this is classic i guess (mentioned in the encyclopedia too), bob's comic timing is great - always liked reading about his slapstick routines when he started out
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeBzvgewgsc

Listened to New Morning yesterday, first time in a while. It's an odd record. The title is kind of wishful thinking, it's all a little inconclusive -- bits of it prefigure both BotT and the Christian period. Like he wasnt' sure what he wanted to do, but he wanted to do something.

"Went to See the Gypsy" goes on my ballot, along with "If Not For You" and probably "The Man in Me" too.

One song that will be far from my ballot: Lily Rosemary and the Jack of Heart. Going back to Blood On The Tracks, it seems more inexplicable than ever.

I wish he swapped that out for Up To Me, which will certainly be on my top 50.

I am a "Lily, Rosemary" stan but wouldn't put it in my top 50. I think it fits in fine with BotT.

it's v funny, it's the album's one speedrant throwback but is closer to the precision of tangled up in blue than to the big mid60s sprawlers, it's secretly as heartbreaking as everything else on the record (well not if you see her or buckets of rain), the continual references to "the drillin in the wall" are lol, and it has "the hangin judge was sober / HE HADN'T HAD A DRINK", but it is pretty exhausting to listen to. it's that unchanging pum-pum-pum-pum-pum-pum beat, for eight-or-whatever minutes. so yeah, not on my list.

went to see the gypsy is very high on mine.

jack of hearts (sprawling but linear, vividly cinematic but more grounded than memphis blues again) feels like a precursor to the jacques levy co-writes on desire actually, all of which it's better than except for isis. changing of the guards a kind of late echo of this too, again better than most of the levy songs, because it's less (read: not remotely) dramatically disciplined--the slipperier the better with these things imo.

i mean he's always written ballads; i appear to just be talking about ballads. idk i think there's a lil subgenre in the mid-to-late 70s there, but i guess there's no reason it doesn't also fit something like frankie lee+judas priest. anyway while we're on the subject i'm pretty sure that titanic song sucked.

man, i haven't even started on this. think i'll try for the full 50 tracks, but that's gonna involve a lot of hair tearing.

Frankie Lee and Judas Priest a lot more enjoyable for me than Rosemary, better groove, better pucnhlines, less sense. Better singing as well maybe, "it's not a house it's a home". Something off with the sequencing on BotT to me, what's up with side 2? Has If You See Her and Buckets, but apart from that? Reminds me of side 3 on BoB, wouldn't mind skipping it - but that's probably because it's surrounded by THE GREATEST stuff of all time.

Title track of New Morning is a great way to start the day, used to do a college radio morning show, always started with that. Anybody remember if Man In Me was popular before Lebowski? It is a really good track, but I'd never noticed it before.

Any Planet Waves stans in here? I never got it, but wouldn't mind an introduction.

Listened to Tempest this weekend, like the songs (Duquesne, Pay In Blood, Scarlet Town, Tin Angel) but lyrics seem weak. I'd suggest Roll on John is his best track since Modern Times, even though especially 6th verse is terrible (Slow down you're moving way too fast/Come together right now over me/Your bones are weary, you're about to breathe your last/Lord, you know how hard that it can be) first verse is excellent imo:

Doctor, doctor tell me the time of day
Another bottle's empty, another penny spent
He turned around and he slowly walked away
They shot him in the back and down he went

"Frankie Lee and Judas Priest" is great -- funny, spooky, weird. One of my favorites.

I love the sound of Planet Waves, the Band rocks. Songs are variable, but "On a Night Like This" is great and I like the fast (but not the slow) version of "Forever Young."

I'm mystified that Dylan left "Nobody 'Cept You" off Planet Waves (as trite as it is to lament his sequencing choices from the 70s on), but I love the enthusiastically ramshackle sound of that album too.

i love "lily rosemary", but prefer the NYC sessions. so many great lines. "thinkin about her father / who very rarely saw / thinkin about rosemary / and thinkin about the law"

planet waves is great, "going going gone" is a really solid and "something there is about you" is spectacular. "rainy days on the GREAT LAKES, walkin the hillls of old DULUUUUUUTH". it's not a consistent album but i think its peaks are higher than "new morning."

i really love planet waves -- not a masterpiece, but a totally fun record. the first side in particular is a great backyard BBQ set of songs.

Sometimes I prefer the ramshackle early seventies records to whatever else he recorded. It took the sixties for him to master the craft and hone his confidence enough to record uneven and wonderful period Merle Haggard albums.

Planet Waves: I just love Dirge, and it will be on my ballot.

I'm mystified that Dylan left "Nobody 'Cept You" off Planet Waves

in one universe is "Nobody 'Cept You" not on Planet Waves? It's on my copy. Best song on the album imho.

in WHAT universe

really?

tracklisting from wikipedia:
All songs written and composed by Bob Dylan.
Side One
No. Title Length
1. "On a Night Like This" 2:57
2. "Going, Going, Gone" 3:27
3. "Tough Mama" 4:17
4. "Hazel" 2:50
5. "Something There Is About You" 4:45
6. "Forever Young" 4:57
Side Two
No. Title Length
7. "Forever Young (Continued)" 2:49
8. "Dirge" 5:36
9. "You Angel You" 2:54
10. "Never Say Goodbye" 2:56
11. "Wedding Song" 4:42
Total length:
42:12

i don't have it on my copy

it's on the bootleg series vol 2

weird

Is yours a non-U.S. release? This is an interesting mystery.

I first noticed this song while listening to it on my iPod where it's the last track on the album, maybe I dl'd a random copy of it with it stuck on there for some reason. I'll look at my vinyl copy when I get home but I assume it's the same as anyone else's.

Any Planet Waves stans in here? I never got it, but wouldn't mind an introduction.

Tough Mama is my favorite, and will definitely be on my ballot.

Somehow, PW was my 2nd Dylan record after the first Greatest Hits volume. Listening to it again for this poll, though, I haven't found it holding up very well. The fast version of "Forever Young" is definitely preferable to the more famous one, however, and "I love you more than blood," from "Wedding Song," is a wonderfully, spookily intimate lyric.

oh yeah "Wedding Song" is great

drew friedman shared this on facebook today, seemed v timely:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJ4--fWQDtw

Oh wow, took me a minute to recognize Meathead there.

I'm with the PW comments here: Always liked Wedding Song for that line, and the fast Forever young is the best

"Wedding Song" is incredible. Hadn't thought of that song in years.

Aaron Freeman (Gene Ween) and Slash, "Wiggle Wiggle":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjMI-33HBdI

Thanks for inputs on PW, will give it a spin when I get home. Can only find Jerry Garcia versions on youtube (but they're pretty good too!). I forgot going going gone was on that one, but that's def a great track. Also forgot The Band was backing lol - they're obv great w dylan.

Did we discuss Basement favorites? Million Dollar Bash or Acapulco probably my favorite, but I remember liking the complete tree w roots set - especially "See you later Allen Ginsberg Crocagator, Crocagator)". Been awhile. Guess I'm Not There is also from the basement, and that's perfect.

This project seems crazy btw http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/elvis-costello-marcus-mumford-jim-james-record-lost-dylan-lyrics-20140325

But then again, reading the Q Mag articles on making of Oh Mercy and 90s albums, it does seem like the lyrics kind of are the songs for Dylan...

Off Basement, "This Wheel's on Fire" is a probable top 10 for me, and "You Ain't Goin Nowhere" is all-time too. But I really love the goof-offs, which I imagine will split votes too much to place in the poll. I could vote for any/all of "Million Dollar Bash," "Lo and Behold," "Yea! Heavy," etc.

I've never heard the whole Tree With Roots, but "Allen Ginsberg" is great -- maybe the best snapshot of what it was like in the house while they were recording all of that.

"Odds and Ends"! -- "Keep that juice to yourself."

I really like "Open the Door, Homer".

'Santa-Fe'!

"Apple Suckling Tree" is high for me; I hear it as such a lewd song but looking at the lyrics, I couldn't really point to anything besides the word "suck" and "you and me"

I find "Clothesline Saga" totally hilarious, even more so when someone pointed out that it's a parody of "Ode to Billie Joe."

One of my favorite little moments is on "Please, Mrs. Henry", the way he delivers the line "Why don't you look my way and PUMP me a few?" and cracks up on the first line of the chorus.

puttin Acapulco, Apple Suckling Tree and probably This Wheel's on Fire or Tears of Rage on my ballot too

Lurching ahead a bit, what's the (or is there a) consenus on "Every Grain of Sand"?

It's hokum, but I still fall for it.

Not hokum. The arrangement is gorgeous: that lilt! Best Dylan harmonica solo ever, which is saying something.

I prefer the one on the Bootleg Series vol 3 over the album take, but it's a keeper.

yeah, i like the dog-barking version, too. but totally -- a great song in most contexts.

Agree about the gorgeousness. And the Bootleg take is great too. Still find it a bit much -- I don't really believe him -- but I get swept up anyway. And a few lines do really resonate -- "temptation's angry flame" "ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea."

(I realize it might be as much that I don't believe as that I don't believe him. I'm more in sync with "There's no one here, the gardener is gone.")

every grain allows for that tho: sometimes i turn, there's someone there / other times it's only me

"Clothesline Saga" is a hilarious title, haha. Delivery in general lovely on BT, gotta love the cadence and tone of "I PUNCHed mySELF in the FACE with my FIST". Similar to the Mrs. Henry flow, guess it's a BT style.

Reminds me of the anecdote abt recording Oh Mercy, engineer Malcolm Burn explains:

So, other than that, we were just trying to get ready in the normal way, and then, I a week before we were due to start recording, we received a cassette from Bob. And I thought, Oh, great, we’re going hear some songs. We got this cassette, and it had this little note from Bob: “Listen to this, this’ll give you a good idea of what’s going on.” And so Dan and I and Mark Howard, the other engineer, we sat down to listen to this cassette, and we put it in the machine – and this Al Jolson music started playing. And we were like, "What the Fuck? Al Jolson?” So, we fast-forwarded it, and it was just a whole tape of Al Jolson. And we looked back at the note, and it said. “Listen to this. You can learn a lot.” So Dan and I sort of looked at each other and – you know, Al Jolson’s great –but we sort of thought it was a bit odd.
http://www.uncut.co.uk/bob-dylan/bob-dylan-tell-tales-special-online-exclusive-part-2-interview

Producer Chuck Plotkin has a great "Grain of Sand" anecdote http://youtu.be/r47QfRFfROU?t=2m2s

I guess that Jolson-quote isn't self-explanatory out of context:

But, y’know, anyway, when Bob arrived and we started making the record, I’d sort of forgotten about this. And then, one evening in the middle of recording, we were taking a little break, and somehow, something came up about favourite singers, and who were great influences, especially when it comes to phrasing. Bob had said a number of times that phrasing was sort of everything. You can have really great lyrics, but if you don’t deliver them properly, they’re not gonna mean a thing. And it’s quite true. And in this conversation, Bob said, “My two favourite singers are Frank Sinatra and Al Jolson.” And I thought, wow, now I get it. And it’s interesting, because when you have that in your head and you go back and listen to Al Jolson, you can sort of make the correlation with Bob Dylan, that concatenation, that kind of rapid-fire thing. That was kind of an interesting learning experience. Al Jolson. Bob Dylan.

million dollar bash, clothesline saga, lo and behold!, please mrs henry: all sublime yeah, my favorite stuff on that album. "i'm goin down to tennessee; get me a truck or somethin. gonna save my money and rip it up." PUNCHed mySELF is like the second biggest ever dylan laugh for me (after "hope i don't find out too much! good god.")

Well, that big dumb blonde
With her wheel in the gorge
And Turtle, that friend of theirs
With his checks all forged
And his CHEEKS in a CHUNK
With his CHEESE in the CASH

STOP THE POLL NEW SONG AT BOBDYLAN.COM
http://www.bobdylan.com/us/home

!

and appropriate to the sinatra/jolson discussion above, it's a cover of an old tin pan alley kinda tune (that sinatra sang)

It's pretty goddamn wonderful.

Dang, he's in pretty good voice there. That's really nice.

yeah i dig it. dunno if it is from a new album or what ... i think he's been threatening to do an album full of tin pan alley things since the 80s.

Supposedly, a new album's due out later this year: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/bob-dylan-releases-frank-sinatra-cover-plans-new-album-20140513

http://www.bobdylan.com/sites/bdylan/files/shadows-cover-new.jpg
!!!

Recorded by Rudy Van Gelder.

(not really, but that'd be amazing)

ha, reminds me of those fake wu-tang blue note covers from a few years ago.

Yes, Every Grain of Sand is kind of hypnotic; I'm also rather fond of In the Summertime from Shot of Love too. Unfortunately, it also boasts the execrable Lenny Bruce.

i probably won't be doing much off-album track trawling but i gotta remember to vote for the 'house carpenter' on 'another self portrait', i love that thing

Was just listening to I'm Your Teenage Prayer on my ipod, and it was like the best Holy Modal Rounders recording.

that sinatra cover is a mess.

glad i found out about this in time.

i worry that different versions of some of the same songs will split votes

also "i threw it all away" better win motherfuckers

i worry that different versions of some of the same songs will split votes

Addressed in the poll by-laws at top: "You can specify a particular version of the song -- studio, live, outtake, etc. -- and in cases where there's a lot of different versions I will note those in the rollout. But all versions of any given song will be counted as one song for the purposes of the poll."

The one that really hangs me up on this are the two versions of "Forever Young," which are actual separate tracks on the same album. But they're not really that much different from each other than the different versions of other songs available on separate albums, so I'm just putting them all together. Basically I'm treating the tracks the way ASCAP would -- arrangement, whatever, it's the same song.

Somewhat random musing -- what to make of the twinkly nihilism of recent vintage? I'm thinking of all the offhand vengeance on Modern Times and Tempest -- "I'll slaughter them where they lie," etc. -- and also of the videos for "Must Be Santa" and "Duquesne Whistle," which both position Dylan as this above-the-fray observer of mayhem and bloodsport.It all feels sort of reactionary, but in a good-humored way. Maybe he's just being honest about getting old and not giving a damn, enjoying the viscera while he can. "I used to care, but things have changed."

the way in early roman kings he goes from talking about leaders, rulers, capitalists, frontiersmen--violent and cruel but "great" like basileis, placing themselves above other men and assuming power of life+death--to eventually talking abt himself--first as a cartoon badass (wave yer handkerchief / in the air) but then as an artist, a singer, whose similarly merciless power to "break it wide open" is greater than the kings' because it is more permanent--and then finally threatens to put you on trial "in a sicilian court", is my favorite example of late growlingly conceited hostile judgemental demigod bob. of course he's always been judgemental.

He has, but it's taken different forms -- moral righteousness in the folkie years, then hipster shade, confessional passive-aggression up through Desire, then the wrath of God, and now lately it's more of a free-floating all y'all contempt, but with a wink. Demigod is a good way to put it. It's kind of a pagan tooth-and-claw thing.

And speaking of his misanthropy, I just realized I've left "Positively 4th St" off my draft ballot. Hell's bells.

you've gotta lotta nerve

i love that song. it sticks out from his work of that time b/c it's so literal.

Just speculation, but I feel like the menacing threats of violence on recent Dylan albums come out of his listening to hip hop.

12 days to vote.

http://www.esquire.com/cm/esquire/images/gx/esq-01-young-bob-dylan-052311-lg.jpg

thanks for the reminder, i need to get to this.

"Positively 4th Street" has lines that rank with the most toxic ever written: "you know as well as me/you'd rather see my paralyzed," "don't you understand, it's not my problem," and, the best, "you'd know what a drag it is to see you."

@amateurist I don't know if you were being ironic but "Threw It All Away" would be an insane winner of this poll and I'd go instead with "Lay Lady Lay" from Nashville Skyline any day and probably also "Tell Me That It Isn't True", also NS wouldn't crack my top 5 albums, probably not even 10.

Also that "Blue Moon & Empty Arms" is GREAT, musically a "return to form" thing for me - sounds more like Love & Theft than TTL and Tempest - which is good imo, not trying too hard, leaning back, being old and cool...

There's this nice part in Gray's encyclopedia where he describes accurately enough TOOM as an old man being very depressed and cynical about growing old, no future kind of stuff, and L&T is an old man being nostalgic, reminiscing, it has a playfulness to it in its dealing with growing old and being "disconnected".

So anyway, I don't much like all the blood/violence on TTL/Tempest, mostly because it sounds to me like Dylan's trying to be cool/badass/provocative. "Mississippi" is hella badass without any blood! "High Water" (probably my #1 21st century Bob) has terror and doom, but somehow it makes a lot more sense to me - maybe descriptions are simply better, lov the atmosphere and environment of lyrics/sound.

Revenge is a classic Dylan motif right? "When the Ship Comes In" is amazing in that sense, and also "Positively 4th Street" is an act of vengeance - as is "Like a Rolling Stone".

There's this nice part in Gray's encyclopedia where he describes accurately enough TOOM as an old man being very depressed and cynical about growing old, no future kind of stuff, and L&T is an old man being nostalgic, reminiscing, it has a playfulness to it in its dealing with growing old and being "disconnected".

With "Things Have Changed" falling in between and signaling the shift pretty succinctly.

the violence is the best part, the violence and the overdrive

I went through a long period where I just did not want to hear "Like a Rolling Stone" ever again. Even - especially? - the tambourine was driving me nuts. But a few months ago it and I got back in phase again, and now I pump it up when it comes on the radio.

"Like a Rolling Stone" placed very high on my ballot, as much as it should feel overplayed: most of my earliest memories of listening to Dylan can contract themselves into the opening snare hit, and the Manchester Free Trade Hall version still sounds like the crack of doom.

Yeah, as much as I want to be over that song, it's an amazing thing.

Isis has been mentioned a few times, still some ilxors may never have seen the epic thunder performance footage from renaldo and clara, this link should work http://www.timsah.com/Bob-Dylan-Isis-1975/q0QVrVl6x7x GRRRRREAT

Love the storytelling and delivery standout track from Desire, also so many punchlines, can hardly remember all the best things he sang but I'll go with "A man in the corner approached me for a match/I knew right away he was not ordinary" (doesn't read well, but the sound of it!) It's not the same version as on Bootlegs 6, no?

sry! bootlegs 5 ofc

"Isis" and "Sara" are the only Desire-able tracks.

any time i feel like "like a rolling stone" gets worn out (which it rarely does for me) i listen to the bootleg series vol. 4 "live 1966" version and i'm sufficiently blown away again

Ordering the tracks section of the poll is AGONY

That's one reason I adopted the block scoring for 21-30, 31-40 and 41-50 (the other being to simplify the tallying) -- didn't want too much fretting over putting something at 32 vs. 37 or whatever.

xxxxp yeah the live "isis" on biograph (which is unbelievable) is not the same as the one on bootleg series 5 (which is good but not nearly as amazing).

Anyway, the hard part for me is constantly remembering things I'm leaving off and trying to figure out what to sub out. Can't believe the songs I'm leaving off, but there's so much!

fuck I guess I'd better give Isis a chance, I have like 3 ballot spots left

I appreciate the block system, it's easy to group these things into tiers, but there's been plenty of consternation over tracks 15-25 which are all very close and then whether or not to weigh personal favorites higher than ones that lots of people will vote for.

It's true, 50 sounds like a lot, but I've been leaving some indisputable classics on the cutting room floor.

"Isis" and "Sara" are the only Desire-able tracks.

I mentioned this upthread but I love the version of "Oh Sister" on Bob Dylan at Budokan. The album version is kinda boring, though.

Budokan might be the weirdest album he ever made.

Trying to assemble a top 50. I could easily make a top 20 of just Basement Tapes. It's astounding how good the guy is.

yeah I noticed last night that I have a LOT of those songs on my ballot

Budokan might be the weirdest album he ever made.

― a lot of really bad records changed my life (staggerlee), Friday, May 16, 2014 12:13 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i would agree w/ this.

wow I am listening to the version of Maggie's Farm right now (never listened to any of Bob's post-60s live material) and just ... wtf

it's vegas dylan

who wrote the horn arrangements? it seems like they just randomly inserted brand new horn melodies into things

i realize this poll is for the true Dylan obsessives but is there a minimum # of songs for casual fans who want to throw in a ballot of only 10 or 20 tunes?

Dave Marsh on Budokan from the RS Record Guide (blue/1983 edition):

The versions of Dylan's songs on Budokan sabotage meaning, reduce it to rubble, and walk blithely away, snapping their fingers like so many little hipster hitmen. It was as though Dylan were daring his audience to continue to pay attention -- or even to respect him. This is his worst record by such a wide margin it's hard to fathom it.

I feel that if that review had been written today, the final sentence would be, "This is his best record by such a wide margin it's hard to fathom it."

just b/c that sort of arch irony seems to be a default mode for a lot of culture writers

haha I totally remember that review

lol marsh - "sabotage meaning, reduce it to rubble, and walk blithely away, snapping their fingers like so many little hipster hitmen."
obviously, boomers took budokan kind of personally or something. I don't know, I think that 78 tour was kind of a test on Dylan's part to see how durable his songs were. not that he was "sabotaging" them really, just making them theatrical, into showpieces. that said, i don't really listen to budokan when I want to listen to 78 era live stuff -- the band and dylan found their footing later in the year.

iirc, Dylan's defense of that tour was along the lines of "I had debts to pay, and divorce is expensive."

But I can sort of see Marsh's point, coming as it did from the perspective of someone for whom "Like A Rolling Stone" was a new and overwhelmingly revelatory experience, on every level, in 1965: how the fuck did the same guy who did that do this? Or, more importantly, why?

yeah who knows what i would've thought of it as a serious dylan fan in 78, but what the hell, it's just another weird piece in a weird puzzle.

The snippets I've heard of Budokan were more head-scratching to me than anything else; but then, by that point, he'd already done Dylan and the Dead and Down in the Groove, and what constituted a "bad" Dylan record had taken on a new form.

lol was thinking last night 'it's a shame dylan never collborated w/ the dead' and then a part of my brain went 'um'.

Back in one of the Dylan issues of Mojo, they had a sidebar interview with Weir wherein he told the story of Dylan rehearsing around 75 songs with the Dead and on his first night out, he called out as first track something they didn't know. "Things gradually got better," but he agreed Dylan and The Dead was probably their worst release.

Ha, that reminds me of something Ian McLagan wrote in his autobio. After his first show with Dylan, they ran into each other at the hotel bar. Dylan asked how he thought the show went. McLagan said something like, "It was good, but it would've been nice to play ____." Dylan asked McLagan to write up a list of songs he wanted them to play on the tour, which Ian did. For the rest of the tour, none of those songs were played.

Still haven't found the courage to check out Dylan and the Dead. I would probably rank Budokan second behind the Royal Albert Hall concert as my favorite of the live albums.

I haven't heard Real Live, though. How's that one?

god, i'd blocked that dylan and the dead album out of my mind. have they bothered to reissue that in some remastered form? ugh.

It slipped out again remastered a few years ago

someone grab it and put it back where it crawled from.

i realize this poll is for the true Dylan obsessives but is there a minimum # of songs for casual fans who want to throw in a ballot of only 10 or 20 tunes?

No minimum, I'll count whatever comes in.

Six ballots in, 10 days to vote. This is your second-to-last Dylan voting weekend of the year!

http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2013-08-15-ScreenShot20130815at2.08.59PM.png

I haven't heard Real Live, though. How's that one?

It has the definitive version of Shelter From The Storm, but the rest of it is just OK. I'm not a huge fan of the Rolling Thunder Revue.

I love Before The Flood, particularly the acoustic stuff. I love that arena folk sound, with Bob shouting the lyrics.

Real Live is the 84 one -- Hard Rain is what you're thinking of.
Real Live is pretty boring but worth hearing for the rewritten Tangled Up In Blue.

Ha, you're right. I've mixed up my terse 2 word 8 letter Bob live albums.

listening to Budokan for the first time ever. hilarious. the lead guitar is out of control.

though a lot of it is... really fucking tight

lol at the sax in One More Cup of Coffee

omg this is amazing

wait maybe it's less amazing

nah it's amazing.

on 'it's alright ma' it's like the music stops for every single verse (which there are lots of obv.) and then the band comes back in for the riff

he's enunciating so well!

yeah i think he's in rly good voice on that record even tho he tosses so many lines off like they're meaningless. i like bootleg 5 + before the flood (hard rain less so -- that version of shelter from the storm is p rockin but ultimately i feel like it diminishes the song, obv not true at all of the acoustic-to-electric transmutations on disc 2 of live 1966) but i weary of that 70s voice where every line whips off into a rawthroated howl so one of the things i like about budokan is hearing him sound kinda like he did in 1964 all of a sudden (but on the 844th night of an imaginary vegas show).

oh man the sax solo on 'thin man' is literally laugh out loud inducing

haha the first time i heard that i emailed it to three people.

the urge to write a thinkpiece is so strong right now, i assume that passes

i think we're all just crouched at the starting line eyeing his health. writing is a ghoulish job.

altho idk maybe budokan came out a number of years ago divisible by five. there's always that chance.

Lots of crouching in '97 too. Then bending and kneeling.

well once yr down there

altho idk maybe budokan came out a number of years ago divisible by five. there's always that chance.

bothered to think about this for an actual second and haha it did

Budokan's "Going, Going, Gone" works, even the tempo change. This bombast doesn't sound tossed off -- I can tell he and the band thought these arrangements through.

I remember "Going, Going, Gone" being the one track I would salvage from that album, but maybe I should revisit it. I can admire its defiant strangeness, but Street Legal is about as much as I need from Dylan's brief Elvis-in-Vegas period.

budokan makes complete sense to me in the context of his career, esp. when you realize he wasn't generating a lot of good new ideas in that period (IMO).

and yeah, i think elvis-in-the-70s is really the reference point here. we're lucky (?!?) that budokan isn't just four side-long medleys.

Street Legal is about as much as I need from Dylan's brief Elvis-in-Vegas period.

the '99 remaster really helps the album! But it's an album of zombie Dylan.

Listening to the Isle of Wight set for the first time. Levon's leading the Band as much as, or more than, Dylan.

I only listened to Street Legal for the first time a month or two ago and I liked it. But it was going to bed music and I wasn't paying super close attention.

I'm hoping that this is going to have a huge turnout and that everyone is just doing a ton of listening before last-minute voting.

I'm probably just going to do a 20-track ballot rather than a full 50, because I don't have the time to dig into all the bootlegs and live recordings and collaborations and everything else. I love Dylan and have for upwards of two decades, but I like the challenge of narrowing down my favorites to 20.

Yeah I dont think my ballot will make it up to 50 either. But yeah I am doing a lot of listening before voting

Tbh I think a 50-song ballot was a lot easier for me than a 20-song ballot would have been. There's still plenty of stuff I love that I'm leaving off, but a lot less hand-wringing.

i've been listening to dylan p much 24/7 for two weeks for this haha. been filling in the few remaining corners i was guided away from the first time. (i told myself that all i was gonna mean by this was the few remaining official corners but nah dloaded five discs of basement tapes the other night, finally.)

listening to knocked out loaded this morning. "they killed him" is grotesque (the children's choir!) but "driftin too far from shore" kinda hit me hard in places cuz i think it might be about himself:

Well these times and these tunnels are haunted
The bottom of the barrel is too
I waited years sometimes for what I wanted
Everybody can’t be as lucky as you

Never no more do I wonder
Why you don’t never play with me anymore
At any moment you could go under
’Cause you’re driftin’ too far from shore

altho maybe i'm just being misled by the phrase "the bottom of the barrel". anyway the funny thing about "brownsville girl" on this album isn't just that it's a random Great dylan song on a shitty album but that except for its greatness it isn't an outlier at all; it sounds just like the rest of the album does, gated drums, backup girls, whiny rapping, self-aggrandizing mythopoetic ruefulness re romantic relationships, everything. it's just all of a sudden he makes contact. it's probably just sam shepard. not even anything particular about sam shepard himself: just that another human marked up the lyrics.

After "Brownsville Girl" "Driftin" and "Got My Mind Made Up" are my picks. I do wonder at what might've been if Dylan had allowed Petty to produce and play a whole album. The results might've been boring; on his next album Petty was more interesting Dylan-esque than Dylan might have been Pettyesque.

80s Dylan, with the exceptions of Oh Mercy and "Blind Willie McTell", is still a blind spot for me. From what I've heard, the arrangements and production are the most dated of his career. But more than that, his voice in that period is my least favorite Dylan voice: wheezy, thin, and sounding like a standup comic doing a Bob Dylan impression.

(I saw Petty/Dylan in 1986, and remember absolutely nothing from the show, other than that it was dull.)

as funny-shrewd as "Like Dylan in the Movies" is, I wish Belle & Sebastian had written "Like Dylan in the Eighties."

"You're a joker, man/Like Dylan In The Eighties"

Chap Starfall's "All Along the Watchtower" in Wild Palms--starts at 1:59--will get no votes. In the context of the show, it works. (On the heels of a great sequence set to "House of the Rising Sun," come to think of it. But not Dylan's version.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuRqtYeA21E

XP In all seriousness, I finally listened to Infidels earlier this week--I can see why it was heralded as a comeback: nice, sleek arrangements of wiseass/romantic songs that capture the idea of 'Dylan' better than he'd seemingly been able to muster in years.

keep meaning to rewatch wild palms.

i'm pretty fond of infidels. i'm not sure if i buy that it'd be a masterpiece w/ 'blind willie mctell' and 'foot of pride' on it (it'd still have 'sweetheart like you' and 'neighborhood bully' on it), but it's the one album between xian phase and lanois where i regularly listen to the whole thing and don't just cherry pick it (still have never heard the entirety of down in a groove or knocked out loaded). i've generally only listened to minor or contemporary dylan for many years now, one thing i've liked about this is that it's given me the impetus to revisit the big ones.

I can't get past how awful the second side is apart fro "I&I." Don't think it would've been a better album with those two tunes; they would have revealed how terrible his judgment was.

i really love foot of pride, that's the one i miss most on infidels. neighborhood bully and the union one (yknow they USED to grow food in kansas / now they wanna grow it on the MOON and EAT IT RAW!) are totally hilarious to me but it's not a very nourishing kind of hilarity. a bar near my college campus seemed to have neighborhood bully in regular rotation; i heard it there three times. dunno if the programmer was a passionate zionist or just a finger-snapping hipster hitman.

in the heylin book there's an anecdote abt dylan meeting leonard cohen in the infidels era and supposedly asking leonard cohen how long it took him to write "hallelujah" and leonard cohen saying "ten years" and asking dylan (for some reason) how long it had taken him to write "i and i" and dylan saying "fifteen minutes", whereupon clinton heylin enters the frame to say something like "of course, i and i is far too measured a lyric to have been a mere fifteen-minute flight of fancy" but haha idk clinton heylin.

"Don't Fall Apart on Me Tonight" sounds like it was written in 15 seconds.

Speaking of Infidels, the Tom Petty version of License To Kill from the Dylan 30th anniversary concert is uh, killer. But what a strange song. I wonder why Bob was so against space travel?

the sun's not yellow -- it's chicken?

He seems to really have it in for the moon.

am i the only huge dylan stan who doesn't think "blind willie mctell" is particularly good?

honestly i've never found a good reason not to write off his work in the eighties. i mean, there are a few nuggets here and there (and a lot of stuff where you can admire parts but not the whole) but with all the music out there to explore, it just doesn't seem worth revisiting to me. to my mind his muse just wandered off at some point.

i still like some of the stuff from the early-mid '70s, but as boring an opinion as this is, i'm pretty sure almost nothing from planet waves forward will end up on my ballot. i might be wrong.

re:budokan, I always read that the shows from later on the tour were actually really good, I usually don't listen to budokan, but when I do I go for thin man.

re:hard rain agree that Shelter really rocks, but also dislike that dylan shouting/growling thing - don't really listen to Before the Flood either, for same reasons. Only really think it works on Rolling Thunder, where it's maybe supporting lyrics better in delivery.

re: 80s Dylan - I think very few people prefer 80s dylan to any other decade, but maybe at some point a lot of people ignored that he still wrote&recorded good songs even if only Oh Mercy made for a good album: Every Grain of Sand, Jokerman, Foot of Pride, Blind Willie McTell, Brownsville Girl, Dignity...

On first hearing McTell (in I'm Not There) I was really amazed, had to look it up and would use it to demonstrate what Dylan was capable of in the 80s. Eventually the emotion of it kind of wore off on me. Now I think I prefer the more rocky (The Band?) version, really love this one http://vimeo.com/35169429

I rate "Blind Willie McTell" VERY highly, because I think it's Dylan's best lyric. the performance on the bootleg series vol 3 is excellent. but it's a story of American slavery where the singer's consciousness of his relation to the music of slavery is part of the story too. & I suppose I love Baedeker lyrics too.

in the heylin book there's an anecdote abt dylan meeting leonard cohen in the infidels era and supposedly asking leonard cohen how long it took him to write "hallelujah" and leonard cohen saying "ten years" and asking dylan (for some reason) how long it had taken him to write "i and i" and dylan saying "fifteen minutes", whereupon clinton heylin enters the frame to say something like "of course, i and i is far too measured a lyric to have been a mere fifteen-minute flight of fancy" but haha idk clinton heylin.

― difficult listening hour, Sunday, May 18, 2014 7:04 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha, this is great. yea, heylin, that's a stretch

re: 80s Dylan - I think very few people prefer 80s dylan to any other decade, but maybe at some point a lot of people ignored that he still wrote&recorded good songs even if only Oh Mercy made for a good album: Every Grain of Sand, Jokerman, Foot of Pride, Blind Willie McTell, Brownsville Girl, Dignity...

see i think oh mercy sucks. some of those are decent songs but i don't find the arrangements/production on that album listenable.

I loved it at the time, but it hasn't aged well at all, largely due to the production. "Most of the Time" is my favorite on it, but even that's a slog through the Lanois fog.

"Man in the Long Black Coat" and "Series of Dreams" work best in the Lanoiserie. The bit where the synth rises as Dylan sings "Dreams where the UMBRELLAH IS FOL-DED" is one of his best eighties moment (Lanois thought so too, apparently, failing to persuade Dylan to recast the bridge as a verse).

the Cohen anecdote is in Encyclopedia too:
To Adrian Deevoy Cohen reported the cafe conversation with Dylan as being ‘a real good writers’ shop talk. We really went into the stuff very technically. You couldn’t meet two people who work more differently. He said, ‘‘I like this song you wrote called ‘Hallelujah’.’’ He said, ‘‘How long did that take you to write?’’ And I said, ‘‘Oh, the best part of two years.’’ He said, ‘‘Two years?’’ Kinda shocked. And then we started talking about a song of his called ‘‘I and I’’ from Infidels. I said, ‘‘How long did you take to write that?’’ He said, ‘‘Oh, 15 minutes.’’ I almost fell off my chair. Bob just laughed.’

I never know exactly what to make of all the stories abt dylan writing really really fast - baez says he wrote when the ship comes in in less than an hour or something, supposedly sad eyed lady was written in a few hours too, a lot of studio people note that dylan goes out for 10 mins then comes back with the best verses evah - just seems a silly build on the whole genius inspiration idea (though ofc could also be more of an improvisational thing...) Then again, others say he spends years and years perfecting lyrics, who knows.

Oh Mercy sure is very lanois, but I like that style. I like that it's a joint op thing.

Lanois does better on OM than on TOOM, that's for damn sure.

only thing I really dislike abt TOOM productionwise is lovesick, other than that I think it works. But then again, I just really like Lanois stuff - Joshua Tree, So, Wrecking Ball...

i think both OM and TOOM have awful production, but there are also some quite uninspired songs on both albums, and the really long song on TOOM is tedious.

i guess i judge most of this stuff by the "exactly how much worse is this than the dylan music i love" and the answer is usually in shades of "a lor worse." so i haven't spent a lot of time working out the precise distinctions.

a loT worse

For some reason, I don't mind the Lanois cheesecloth as much on TOOM. I have no idea why, since it's more pronounced there. Maybe it's just that the songs and performances (and the shit-hot band) are that much stronger on TOOM than on OM that it's easier for me to ignore the gauzy reverb shit.

and the really long song on TOOM is tedious.

It took a while for it to sink in with me, but I completely love "Highlands." It's Dylan's "He Loved Him Madly."

It's worth noting that Bryan Ferry's nineties stuff experimented with 32-track or whatever recording – six guitarists, two bassists, a keyboardist – into which he'd insert a vocal. But Ferry dressed better and sounded better bellowing like a ship in fog.

also don't kill me but dylan's voice by the time of TOOM had gotten so phlegmy that it is either unlistenable to me, or else it's obvious that the performances were stitched together and then covered with reverb in an attempt to smooth sings out. he still can have great phrasing (often v. funny phrasing) but as an actual instrument i feel like dylan's voice has been irreparably jacked for some time now. (though curiously it sounds better on those two acoustic albums from the early 90s, which i do like.)

that's kind of an appropriate x-post

ferry's voice hadn't deteriorated at that point (actually it's weak nowadays but it hasn't quite deteriorated yet)

I like the second covers album more than I listen to it; and, yeah, I was done with Dylan until L&T came along and he figured out how he wanted to sound and sing.

guys

he's not a genius he's just a great artist b/c he steals

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/18/bob-dylan-s-da-vinci-code-revealed.html

yeah the newer ones (I guess going back over a decade now!) are a major improvement sound-wise... except for his fucking voice. i'm not one of these "give me a lovely voice" folks (hell, i like richard "rabbit" brown as much as the next guy) but dylan's phlegm and rasp levels are off the fucking charts.

For some reason, I don't mind the Lanois cheesecloth as much on TOOM. I have no idea why, since it's more pronounced there. Maybe it's just that the songs and performances (and the shit-hot band) are that much stronger on TOOM than on OM that it's easier for me to ignore the gauzy reverb shit.

― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Monday, May 19, 2014 12:00 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yea, TOOM is my favorite late-era Dylan by a wide margin. the songs are really strong, too.

for the other late dylan albums (L&T, MT, etc) i have to convince myself that i'm NOT just listening to old man blues with a boring, polished, generic backing band.

that organ player on TOOM is fucking great

he should have titled it "days out of mind" or something so we could be writing about DOOM on this thread

xp Augie Meyers!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XboE3_7KZ3Y

as in, "I really like DOOM-era dylan."

The thing about Bob’s voice is that he has very dense print. The microphone loves his voice. He’s got about a 20 dB advantage over other singers – in the sense that he’s got that mid-range in his print. To we record-makers, that means that you get to turn the microphone down 20 dB, because he’s delivering an extra 20, which means you then get a 20dB improvement on your signal to noise ratio. So the bleeding into Bob’s mike is not a problem, it’s an enhancement. But if a quieter singer was in the room, with a lesser print, you could not get away with that recording that we did on Time Out Of Mind cos it would just be junky and mumbo-jumbo.

http://www.uncut.co.uk/bob-dylan/bob-dylan-tell-tale-signs-special-part-ten-interview

When MT came out I'd only listened to 60s Dylan which I loved. Had a friend who didn't like Dylan's whiney 60s voice but he fell for MT and recommended it to me. Couldn't even listen to it because I recognized none of the voice I loved. These days I don't think that much abt his voice in terms of quality (more on the whole delivery thing) - seems to me it's more abt whether he's into the song/trying than an ability, really shows on live stuff imo. Anyway, I can relate to anyone not liking Dylan's voice, but I think it can also be an acquired taste like so many others.

I do think we're spending a lot of energy thrashing good late dylan material right now... So some of it sounds pretty Lanoish - but when's the last time you listened to Down in the groove or Under the red sky? Those are bad.

I don't mind UTRS -- the first step out of the murk before stepping into it again in '97.

"Born in Time" is dumber than "Wiggle Wiggle" though.

wiggle wiggle, title track, handy dandy, cat's in the well: all ballot-eligible honestly. "unbelievable" is cute too. there is definitely something Wrong with the production on that record, tho, wronger even than lanois. find it difficult to articulate.

The guest list is daunting (Axl, George, etc). What made the idea of recording UTRS cooler than OM or KOL?

man if "Born in Time" is dumb then I'm a moran (probably true!)

Nice melody and hook but it has Dylan's irritating latter-day habit of writing around a generalization ("Emotionally Yours," "To Make You Feel My Love"), which was why they get covered: an artist can fill in the blankness.

emotionally yours is the funniest title

yeah I'm inconsistent in attending to Dylan's lyrics; "Born in Time" is one where the melody lifts me along without noticing the words

Under the Red Sky is a good record! I actually like Down in the Groove, too, but not nearly as much.

Under the Red Sky is a good record!
Under the Red Sky is a good record!
Under the Red Sky is a good record!
Under the Red Sky is a good record!
Under the Red Sky is a good record!
Under the Red Sky is a good record!
Under the Red Sky is a good record!
Under the Red Sky is a good record!

It is!

ha, i don't mean to give you shit. i accept all defenses of poor dylan albums, even if i don't agree with them. UTRS just seems irredeemable to me.

Haha, no worries! I can't really defend it in a way that's gonna convert anyone and I'm definitely in the minority, but to me it's pleasant/harmless at worst. Don Was production never bothered me, though.

After Chronicle was published, Dylan said "if there is a next volume" he would write about recording UTBS.

torn between really wanting to read that and my cherished hope that dylan goes out with a single-volume autobiography called "chronicles vol 1"

bleh he should have called it Vol.3 like the Wilburys did

he should have called it "a new hope"

A New Grope

chronicles, vol. 2: the legend of curly's gold

electric folkaloo

Chronicles, Vol. 3: The Return of the Levy.

hey amateurist, i don't know how many of the recent records you've listened to, but do you really think they're on a par? i had an averse reaction to the vox on love & theft, my only dylan after the 70s at that point, and i do think its performances are way more limited than the last few, it seems like he found a better way to work with the current condition of things.

We're under a week out. Time to start making those final cuts!

http://t-rinder.typepad.com/.a/6a01287671918d970c0154352a59f7970c-pi

re guest list on UTRS maybe it's just a don was thing:
There were an unusual amount of cameos on Under The Red Sky. But believe me, there was no earthly master plan governing any aspect of this album. It just kinda unfolded as we went along. We wanted to overdub some funky wurlitzer on a song. I'd just finished producing Elton John and was talking to him every day about mastering his record. He's a superb R&B piano player, one of the most overlooked in the world. It was a no-brainer to call him. I'd also been hanging out with David Crosby too, going through songs for an album we made later that same year. He said, “If you're doing background vocals with Bob, you'd better call me!” He's the best harmony singer I've ever met and he goes way back with Bob. George Harrison was making a Wilburys album with Bob. If these guys were part of your everyday life, you'd call em too. They're awesome musicians. I'd put ‘em on every record if I could!

http://www.uncut.co.uk/bob-dylan/bob-dylan-online-exclusives-under-the-red-sky-with-don-was-interview

so i've been in one of the 24/7 work sprints since this thread started but i'm hoping to get some good listening in over the long weekend but if it doesn't come together i'll send a ballot in with just "i believe in you" at #1 if i have to...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wZtHRr7gH0

i mean, if i vote for 5 tracks it might not still be #1 but i feel this one is going to get insufficient love

why would you hang out with David Crosby

I'm going to be on the road and out of pocket (and maybe time out of mind) through the long weekend, so this is your last official warning/encouragement/reminder -- VOTES IN BY END OF DAY ON MONDAY, MAY 26TH! You can vote in any or all of the categories, there is no minimum requirement. (And "end of day" just means "before you go to bed, wherever you are.")

http://cdn.collectorsmusicreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/dylan_stolenmoments.jpg
http://www.guitaraficionado.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/empire.jpg
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/photos/uncategorized/2009/03/27/bob_dylan300.jpg

Gonna start seriously compiling my ballots today and probably send tomorrow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU1stwHBXI8

I saw the Nat Hentoff documentary last night, and there were a couple of minutes devoted to the famous Playboy interview. Basically, they did the interview, and it was initially very conventional--they even included a bit of original audio. Playboy used to send the transcripts to the interviewees before they went to print, and they had the right to request changes. Dylan hated the first version, so he phoned up Hentoff and asked to redo it--right on the spot. Hentoff said okay, Dylan started in with his too-good-to-be-true tall tales, and Hentoff, picking up on what Dylan was up to, willingly played along. The film excerpted the Mexican-lady-from-Philadelphia answer quoted at the top of this thread.

Not gonna have time to even make a ballot so thinking of just sending in one that lists Neighborhood Bully at #1 andn othing else

Is that okay??

when he destroyed a bomb factory, ain't nobody was glad

got my "short", unordered list together and it is .... 47 songs lol

Trying to order my ballot. This is fucking impossible.

Is Bootleg Series Vol. 4 the only place where Tell Me Momma appears? Absolutely killer opening song and one of my favorites but wondering if there's some other version.

it was the opener throughout that tour, but that's the only officially released version.

gonna place it pretty high I think. the band is so on fire on that recording