SLOW POLL COMING - the Best 70s Dylan Album

kinda torn between New Morning and Slow Train Coming, myself

As tempting as it is to avoid the obvious, it has to be Blood On The Tracks.

Yeah, that one.

Almost went "SelfPortrait" for the heck of it..

I can't vote for anything other BOTT, the first Dylan album I ever owned, despite never playing it.

Dylan and Desire are two of his very worst.

I'd vote forPlanet Waves and New Morning next.

I'd never even heard BOTT until a few weeks ago (thx to that weird-ass Lester Bangs Desire review that someone posted)

no love for Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid...? possibly the mellowest of all Dylan albums

Lots of people I know say it's their favorite Dylan.

pat garrett soundtrack is great, but i definitely wouldn't vote for it over a lot of these...blood on the tracks is probably the best, even if that is the obvious choice.

Yeah, don't see how I can, in good conscience, vote for anything other than Blood on the Tracks. Not the first Dylan album I heard (that was Desire, which I don't think is as awful as its ilx reputation would suggest), but it was the first Dylan album that helped me realize that dude is a legend for a reason.

This poll would be a lot more interesting without Blood on the Tracks. If it weren't there I would have to go with Street Legal. I love that soulful call-and-response stuff.

was not expecting this uniformity of opinion tbh!

Desire without a second thought.

My ranking: Desire > Blood On The Tracks > Self Portrait > Slow Train Coming > Planet Waves > New Morning > Dylan > Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid > Street Legal

Why Desire? I'm curious.

Even though there are a few of Dylan's clunkier tracks (like the much maligned (and rightly so) "Joey"), I love the sound of that record. It's big and sloppy and exuberant, and the violin is a great instrument to counter Bob's voice. It also is one of great personal relevance; my exposure to it was during the hot hazy summer when I was 19 and living life a little too fully. The record seems a little too full as well, careening about and often totally off the rails.

If I were to somehow remove myself and my associations from the evaluation I'd probably put Blood On The Tracks ahead, despite my loathing for "Lily, Rosemary and that Jackass", because so much of it is Dylan at his finest, both as writer and performer.

planet waves isn't exactly a masterpiece, but it might be dylan's best backyard bbq album. also contains a contender for one of the man's weirdest songs, "dirge."

EZSnapping, with you all the way. Desire's got such an energy about the playing, beautifully recorded too.

voting Planet Waves cause it's always been one of my favorites - spare, haunted, evocative. The Band can sound cluttered or busy w/Dylan but not here.

I've rediscovered Slow Train Coming lately - much better than remembered. soulful, for lack of a better word. good lord is Dire Straits rehab next?

no.

yeah BOTT should have been taken out of this poll cuz there's really no way not to vote for it. i think it's the first Bob album I heard - still def. my favorite of his. The lyrics on this ("big girl now", "twist of fate", "if you see her") kill me every single time

The singing kills me every time.

Yep, gonna vote Blood on the Tracks. To add to the praise, I love the bass on this album, both the playing & the sound.

full ranking b/c why not:

Blood on the Tracks > Slow Train Coming > Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid > Planet Waves > Street Legal > Self Portrait > New Morning > Desire > Dylan

Blood on the tracks
New Morning
Desire
Planet Waves
Street Legal
Self Portrait
Dylan
Slow Train Coming
Pat Garrett

Desire is a good record, it's weird to me that people hate on it

it's just Alfred.

Yeah, without going back and re-listening to all of them, Desire would probably be my #2. Had no idea people particularly disliked it.

#1 is the obvious one.

I like BOTT and it should win but New Morning is the one I've played most out of this batch.

it's just Alfred.

It certainly isn't on ILM!

I dislike the whole gypsy thing he was going for and lyrically, it's pretty ho-hum, but thanks to 2-3 songs I still put it in the top tier

so for me:

Blood on the tracks
Slow Train Coming
Pat Garrett
Desire
New Morning
Street Legal
Planet Waves
Self Portrait
Dylan

I hear what a few of you do in Desire: that gypsy vibe. But I'm indifferent to or just hate quite a few of the songs.

A gorgeous guy at the library saw Desire at the top of my CD checkout pile and said it was Dylan's best album because "it was the perfect melding of music and lyrics." And then something about how the lyrics do what the music does and vice-versa. Quintessentially modernist and all that. Never really dug it myself but wish I had an opportunity to chat him up more and, um, have him elaborate...

Voted the obvious but why was Before the Flood left off? I love Dylan in speedy, fuck off mode.

His true masterpiece of the era, though, is Renaldo and Clara.

"Hurricane" is a sound in search of a song.

Voted the obvious. I remember a time when Desire was my favorite Dylan album, and then listening back to it recently, I couldn't recall why. Probably because of "Isis" and "Sara," but there are more clunkers on here than masterpieces. I love Street Legal too. Actually I love all of these, in different ways. But BOTT is the obvious choice, a vote for anything else is pure contrarianism / heresy.

yeah removing BOTT makes it a little harder. i've still never heard Dylan and i should listen to the Jesus stuff a little more, but i would probably say New Morning's the one i would pick as my 2nd. much love for PG&BtK and (most of) Desire, a certain fondness for Planet Waves & Self Portrait

Voted the obvious but why was Before the Flood left off?

because it's a live album presumably, this is all about the studio albums.

Dylan isn't as bad as it's painted, well what is?

There's nothing on it that couldn't be on the "bootleg" series, but it's been issued and has provenance so it won't be CD reissued.

dylan has some great stuff -- some dreck, too, but it's entertaining dreck.

Voted the obvious but why was Before the Flood left off? I love Dylan in speedy, fuck off mode.

I dunno, didn't see it in the wikipedia discogs entry since it's a live album. I've never heard it.

The singing kills me every time.

having just gotten into BOTT, yeah... when I heard "Twist of Fate" I thought "hmm it sounds like he's actually TRYING here". some great delivery on that record.

could probably do a 70s Dylan Live album poll: flood, live 75, hard rain, budokan....

yeah, but the "albert hall" one'd walk it.

oh soz, 70s...

yeah in a career spanning live album poll 66 would be impossible not to vote for.

Well, if there was a "best albums ever made" poll, it'd be up there someplace...

Let me completely disrail this thread: Blood on the Tracks...I only have four of these--I wasn't even sure about Desire and had to check. Near the end of my arena-show days, I saw Dylan and Rust-era Neil at Maple Leaf Gardens; I'm pretty sure Dylan led with "Tangled Up in Blue," and it was amazing. I've got a bootleg VHS of Renaldo & Clara--I started it one night, but didn't get past 10 minutes, KJB. It all seemed so dark and murky (the actual images, I mean; it was hard to figure out what was going on). If I could see it in a theatre, I'd be first in line. I could be way off here--does it reflect a big Nashville influence?

well, both renaldo and nashville have ronee blakely in them ... not sure of the chronology though. R&C was filmed in 1975 (didn't come out til 78 though). When was Nashville made?

I saw a big chunk of Renaldo and Clara years ago. All I remember is it's very long, with very little Bob. Nashville came out in 75 or 76, I believe. Around the time of the bicentennial.

renaldo and clara is ... interesting. it's not good, really, but there are some good parts. here's my long review from last year: http://notcoming.com/reviews/renaldoandclara/
warning, i'm not a film critic.

Nashville's '75 (unless Dylan got invited to the Kael screening...). Not so much direct influence in the narrative--"narrative"--or anything. I'm thinking more that Dylan saw Nashville, loved the scope of it and the improvisational feel, and decided the world needed a three-hour film directed by him. And fact that he cast Blakely is also part of why I think there may be an influence there.

By the way, Dylan and Neil didn't play MLG together; the two shows were within a few months of each other.

it's a shame dylan didn't just hire altman to document the rolling thunder tour...

"Hurricane" is a sound in search of a song.

― The Edge of Gloryhole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, June 9, 2011 3:27 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

but it's the best sound

i've barely heard any of them, but i kind of want to track down solo records by dylan's rolling thunder sidemen. stuff like these:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_1FfeEq4IS8I/TNscCPw-aoI/AAAAAAAAEB8/ukykPoNYIpQ/s1600/cover.jpg
and
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-89JC-tugygI/TeqIl_2wTrI/AAAAAAAAFI4/-DRTo7qwr_w/s320/Rob%2BStoner.jpeg
they're probably terrible?

^^^^^ the son of Leonard Cohen and Scott Bakula.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Hbhba17i62M/TeqIlT85cTI/AAAAAAAAFIo/aoW7U8HYg7o/s1600/stoner008.jpg
the stoner

or this! i've never heard this. is it bad?
http://www.firestreamvault.com/main/rateimages/4478_08_07_2009_11_21_31_Alpha%20Band%20-%20Spark%20In%20The%20Dark.jpg

(maybe that belongs in the men from the 70s/hipster kisses thread)

I've got the Rob Stoner album, and two Alpha Band LPs (but not that one). Stoner's is more or less rockabilly; the Alpha Band was T-Bone Burnett's band. They're not terrible, I don't think...haven't listened to them in ages.

I dig me some Alpha Band, the kind of Apollonian, mildly bizarre song band soto specializes in describing so damn well. Never heard Scarlet Rivera's album but here's xgau:

Scarlet Rivera [Warner Bros., 1977]
Those who call this the worst record of the year (I've met two) must only listen to sidepeople's albums when the sidepeople are Dylan's (or "his," as the notes here would have it.) In fact, many sidepeople stretch out one or two acceptable melodies and some should-be rejects into an instrumental LP. Although come to think of it most of them come up with eight cuts, not six. And most of them can improvise some. Hmm. D-

xposts

clemenza, I doubt Nashville much influenced Renaldo and Clara. It's closer to Quintet in its impossibility.

I dig me some Alpha Band, the kind of Apollonian, mildly bizarre song band soto specializes in describing so damn well.

haha really? Like what?

Well, I call you ILM's Keeper of the Well-Made Song. I'm blanking right now but Go-Betweens come to mind. So does Ronstadt for some reason (not really bizarre). Do you dig Marti Jones? If not, you will.

'desire' is great, despite being obviously kinda crippled by some too-long and/or ill-advised tracks like 'joey.' doesn't bother me that much -- 'highway 61' and 'blood on the tracks' aside, arguably, all of dylan's albums have some terrible songs.

'sara' has possibly his best-ever vocal -- it's almost too painful to listen to. when i realized it was about his actual wife (whose name was SARA) it was hard not to be a little repelled at BD for doing that to her.

for calling her a "radiant jewel"?

voted for blood on the tracks just like i would have if this had been a poll of every dylan album but if it weren't here i'd either go with street legal or new morning. although i've never heard self-portrait and i bet it's great/hilarious and even if it isn't good riddance anyway to the hierophants.

(x-post) That line is real. Every line in that song is real.

love the way he relishes pronouncing all the pulp fantasy words on "changing of the guards".

the best dylan-being-an-asshole-to-sara moment is the ten-minute live version of "idiot wind" that's on hard rain, which is delivered to sara as she sits somewhere near the front and in which dylan pronounces the climactic but-it's-my-fault-too line "but it makes me feel so sorry" as the most sarcastic thing ever said by anyone

For all the flak Dylan gets for the earring and silver jacket he wore in '85, the gypsy raiments he wore in the mid seventies are just as ugh. It's like the guy, who abjured the spirit of psychedelia in the late sixties, suddenly clung to hippiedom like those washed-up actors on "Hollywood Squares" from the same period.

70s dylan wanted to be a mysterious boho jongleur (with a posse); if he overdressed for the part and if the part was pretentious to begin with that's ok because the live records are rad. his current skeletal-cowboy look is just about as weird.

I haven't heard everything, but Blood on the Tracks is one of the best albums about relationships ever made. There is a particular mood that leads me to listen to it and has for years. "If you see her, Say Hello" really gets to me. The band he had on that record seemed really sympathetic to what he wanted to do.

i voted for 'new morning' because it makes me genuinely happy and makes me suspect sometimes that dylan was genuinely happy when he made it, though that is a suspect enough conclusion for any of his music.

and something feels off to me about especially valuing 'blood on the tracks' for being a relationship-album. let's cling to the dylan-let-us-write-songs-about-things-besides-love myth a little bit more tightly than that!

went to a screening of renaldo and clara recently, the guy introducing said that the big influences on dylan, filmwise, were enfants du paradis (hence the white face make up) and truffaut's shoot the pianist

i only own Blood on the Tracks from the 70s, my collection of Dylan is from the 60s.

and something feels off to me about especially valuing 'blood on the tracks' for being a relationship-album. let's cling to the dylan-let-us-write-songs-about-things-besides-love myth a little bit more tightly than that!

Don't get this
Sure BOTT is a relationship album, a doomed one specifically - but over the years I see it more and more as a "moving on" album - keep on keeping on despite the hurt along the way, blood on the tracks if you will.

I wish I could post Allen Ginsburg's defense of R&C, complete with thorough explanations of its symbolism. It must be read to be believed.

xpost the theory that the blood is the artists own is posited by NGallagher on one of his songs...

the guy introducing said that the big influences on dylan, filmwise, were enfants du paradis (hence the white face make up) and truffaut's shoot the pianist

Intriguing--Shoot the Piano Player's one of my favourite movies, so that makes me more interested in making the effort. On the Friedkin thread, we were speculating on why Sorcerer's never had a proper re-release. I'm kind of amazed Renaldo and Clara's never had one either, especially during that period around Chronicles, the Scorsese documentary, and the Bootleg series. That's got to be Dylan's call, right?

i know dylan has cited shoot the piano player several times (in regards to R&C) but i couldn't make the connection. enfants makes more sense because of the theater/performance aspects of it. title lettering of r&c is obv. an homage.
but yeah, the film's unavailability is entirely down to dylan, as I understand it.

Blood on the Tracks is, on some days, my favorite Dylan album, so I have to vote for it here.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

huh, people don't like desire?

Nope!

i voted for 'new morning' because it makes me genuinely happy and makes me suspect sometimes that dylan was genuinely happy when he made it, though that is a suspect enough conclusion for any of his music.

this. perfect small town album. always in a good place when i'm listening to this.

self portrait has some of my favorite dylan songs too.

Obvious and kind of boring, but it has to be "Blood On The Tracks".

Desire is a good record, it's weird to me that people hate on it

Indeed it is. My second favourite in the list here.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

honestly had no idea this was going to be such a foregone conclusion going in

Really? I figured it was written in stone.

as someone who mostly accepted the conventional wisdom that Dylan stopped being interesting after his motorcycle crash, my initial peremptory view of his 70s stuff was as an undifferentiated mass of half-assedness with the occasional gem thrown in ("oh this one has Knockin on Heaven's Door/Forever Young/Tangled Up in Blue on it? weird"). I took my sweet time digging into the actual albums, oblivious to general critical consensus. I had assumed the critical consensus in the 70s was "not as good as his 60s work" and/or "A RETURN TO FORM!"

If this poll was done without BOTT, i.e. "Second place you guys", I reckon those positions would be markedly different.

Lots of us rarely listen to the sixties stuff!

I'm pretty worn out on it myself

dude has a lot of bitter/mean songs in his catalog but sheesh Idiot Wind has got to be the most brutal

yep. was just driving home listening to BOOT and 'idiot wind' came on and christ is that a cruel, horrifying song, like dylan was suddenly half-possessed by the spirit of the judge from 'blood meridian' or something -- 'one day you'll be in the ditch, flies buzzin' around your eyes, blood on your saddle.'

we can all thank god we were never married to bob dylan.

it's the little miracles we should be thankful for

idiot wind' came on and christ is that a cruel, horrifying song

yeah, sheesh, just the title alone. "even your farts are stupid"

after the basement tapes i think new morning and planet waves are my favorite dylan records. love how he sounds like he's mimicking levon helm on "tough mama"

'slow train' is such a weird record, i'm surprised it didn't pull at least a few ilm contrarians or secret stans

I've now heard "One More Cup of Coffee" TWICE this month out in Tokyo, once in a Burger King in Shinjuku, now in a Mos Burger in Asakusa. This is why I should avoid burger joints in Japan.