New Dylan album for August.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dylan has not been playing the new songs live.

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

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

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

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

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

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

M@tt furiously correct about everything, tho.

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

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

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

"Street Legal"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

no – he remixed a few tracks.

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

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

Something like that:

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

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

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

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

infidels and oh mercy are way better than empire burlesque.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

just sayin, I can cherrypick quotes from wikipedia too

i forget what we're arguing about

Bob Johnston interview:

What were the sessions for Highway 61 like?

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

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

How do you mike a guy like that?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

re: doing Cash's Live at Folsom Prison

What was the equipment used for Folsom?

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

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

it's this:

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

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

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

ok!

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

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

lol

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

getting the room echo on that slap

i really like that picture.

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

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

THE END

lol

c'mon obviously that's a wax dummy

rumors of a 14-minute song about the titanic.

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

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

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

"most excitingly"

long songs!

He should call his Titanic song "Desolation Row"

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

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

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

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

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

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