The Great Bob Listening Project 2022
(January 19 – April 12,
2022) John Browning
Prologue
Certainly the idea of listening
to All of Bob Dylan as a short-term pursuit or project is a daft idea, suitable
only for the get a life! crowd, but that is just what I determined to do
and then did. I’m not sure why I chose
this journey, exactly, but I’m glad I did.
In the year after whatever year
it was that Bob Dylan was given the Nobel Prize for Literature, I decided to conduct
a more-or-less exhaustive listening project of his (to that point) recordings. Easier said than done. The Minnesota artist
formerly known as Zimmerman had deposited a boatload of sonic artifacts by that
point the mass of which has only increased since then. I got through most, but not all of them.
After a couple of years of pandemic
and interesting developments in Bob World (his Rough and Rowdy Ways album,
the continuation of the Never Ending Tour, more official bootlegs, etc.) I said
( to myself) “Duh, I ought to listen to Bob again.” Just the overwhelming nature of plowing
through the official recordings stood like some Australian mountain range
before me, but I had time and motivation, so I started and listened straightaway
to the first 8 (Bob Dylan, Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A
Changin’, Another Side, Bringing It Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on
Blonde and John Wesley Harding) albums to get warmed up. It would have been reasonable to stop there,
but why be reasonable (I reasoned)?
I listened to everything covered
here in the timeframe above.
This is my highly disorganized
report on this project.
Listening Procedures while
Pledging My Time
I have a fair number of Bob
releases in my own holdings, and I reasoned that the rest were available
through my library and it’s network. (There are also things on YouTube
unavailable through Normal sources).
This approach has resulted in a studiously haphazard listening sequence,
to say the least. I get em when I get em
and listen to what I have in whatever order I get it. Not to mention, it’s a lot to keep score on.
This guy has released a lot of product in varying collections and formats
asynchronously (much twentieth century stuff has been released for the first
time in the 21st century and so forth). I stuck mainly to “Official Releases” (no
bootlegs or haphazard compilations).
My listening has been done
variously on: 1) my Bluetooth Disc Player / TV stereo soundbar. 2) my record player 3) my truck and car CD players. 4) a new cheap but sonically excellent Disc-man type
personal player. Okay, none of these are audio elitist-type set-ups, but then
again, I’m not that discerning an audiophile and neither is Bob, one could say. Dylan, it is reported, records by feel, which
overrides minor considerations like Mike Bloomfield being slightly out of tune (reportedly)
on Queen Jane Approximately.
This puts me in mind of the
situations and methods, accidents and casual set-ups through the years in which
I have experienced Dylan’s music. When
he (and I) started, it was either the radio or vinyl records. No other media carried Bob Dylan. As far as I know, he wasn’t featured on any TV
programming until around 1965. I can recall crazy amounts of moments almost song-by-song,
discussions of his music on sports fields as a boy, specific songs heard in
specific cars on radios and stereos with specific quirks and sounds, specific
states of mind I heard songs in and specific states the songs induced, specific
people and places associated with specific songs, what the feel was, what
weather was upon us, what the world felt like at the time. Listening evokes an entire animated, moving
Rorschach situation for me. It’s all a sort of tangled up with Bob music thing,
so much so that I doubt that I can manage any objective commentary at all.
I fit the listening in whenever wherever
I could, like on a trip by auto to Ohio from New Jersey. (My wife gamely put up
with my private Never-ending Bob tour). I did regular morning listening, listened in
the truck wherever I went – birding, to the library, to the grocery, etc.
I haven’t done any close-reading
of lyrics, close listening to songs / albums and pretty much just let the music
and my reactions flow. In fact, I have
never done much analysis of Dylan lyrics – they just reach me as they reach me.
I’ll leave that to my pals, the dylanologists.
Needless to say, I haven’t kept
careful score of what I listened to when and my interest and focus was mainly
for the listening pleasure and mindless challenge nature of the project, but
let me start by discussing the relative few recordings I found disappointing
and distasteful - not up to Bob standards.
There’s something really wrong with the following three releases In My
Opinion (you may well disagree and, I
may well disagree at some later date, as is often the case with Bob releases
and my slowly altering taste). You might
want to skip these:
Sub-standard Bob
Before the Flood (1974): This
could have been one of his best releases, but he perversely rearranges a bunch
of his classics, altering phrasing, voicing, melodies, lyrics, etc. He is
backed by the Band, so the music is high caliber, but gee whiz, Bob, if you are
tired of “the hits” play something else, don’t assault us out of spite.
Fortunately, he alternates sides with the Band here and they are in top form
and wonderful, as usual. So, the Band isn’t totally wasted here. This record angers and aggrieves me. As Johnny Rotten said, “Did you ever feel
like you’ve been cheated?”
Bob Dylan at Budokan (1978): There
must be some way out of here I said to the unsuspecting Japanese audience. For this one, sometimes called “THE WORST
RECORD IN ROCK HISTORY” we can accuse Bob of cashing out in the most perverse
way possible. It’s sort of a soft-rock
FM take on Bob-ism. It’s sounds like he
listened to John Denver, Firefall and Barry Manilow and said, ‘yeah, I can do
that.’ Hey Bob, what the heck is going
on here? To be fair, I like the music,
it’s sort of like a pop orchestra rehash of Dylan songs, with melodies and
lyrics intact. Weirdsville, man.
Real Live (1984): Bob sneers out his lyrics in very altered
arrangements, changes lyrics and melodies along the way, backed with a slick,
professional rock band playing at breakneck speed. Is this a cocaine album? I don’t like it. The emotions of the songs
have been converted uniformly to spleen and spite. What the hell is going on here? Bob is a real joker but he might have been angry
at his audience and fans. Who knows? These
sorts of sideswipes only amplify Bob-ism, I think, setting me up for the great
moments.
(I’m skipping the American
Songbook and Christmas albums here – I really actively dislike them, but am
merely confused and dismayed by these 4 releases.)
Things I Never Heard Before
I did some thinking about why it
was that there were so many Bob Dylan releases I STILL hadn’t heard as of 2022.
After all, I started listening more or less regularly to Bob in 1965. However,
my listening at that point was more 45rpm-oriented. His stuff was really on-and-off the radio
where we all encountered our music back then and I didn’t buy any of his albums
other than Bringing it All Back Home.
I then didn’t buy another Dylan album until 1973’s Greatest Hits, Volume
2. So albums weren’t my focus ever. I continued to buy singles (Gotta Serve
Somebody) until the 80s when my family interests brought my record buying
to a standstill. The next thing I
remember picking up was Dylan and the Dead, the idea of which totally
bowled me over. So, suffice it to say,
although a pretty ardent fan, I missed a lot of what was happening with Bob.
Which of course, was always A LOT always happening.
Another thing about Dylan’s
immense output is that critics and fans pretty much are disappointed if his
latest release wasn’t absolutely astonishing and buzzworthy-newsworthy – like Highway
61 Revisited, Blood on the Tracks, Slow Train Coming, Nashville Skyline or
Rough and Rowdy Ways. That leaves an
avalanche of releases that didn’t get much notice. Indeed, even online dylanologists
were caught by surprise by this year’s Springtime in New York, an
amazing release that everyone loved but which was accorded underwhelming press.
So, with all of that there were
many albums I had never heard which I plowed through in the last 3 months. They
were:
Pat
Garrett and Billy the Kid Dylan
Saved Shot
of Love
Infidels Knocked
Out Loaded
Down in
the Groove Under
the Red Sky
Together
Through Life Christmas
in the Heart
Tempest MTV
Unplugged
I was hazy about some other albums,
like Empire Burlesque. I remember listening to it, but none of the songs
ring any bells now. Also, I had heard a lot of songs from these albums
incidentally, on FM, XM, MTV, VH1 and at work on my part-time job at Borders.
Many people I know would consider
me not a fan at all having not heard this estimable sub-catalog of
brain-shattering recordings. And yet, I was and am. This list doesn’t even include the Bootleg
series, many of which I hadn’t heard before this. I guess my crazed listening project is
atonement for missing so much of the man’s career.
Well, I’m caught up with his
releases now. Good lord, I’m all bobbed
up.
Albums Moving Up my Bob Charts
Some albums have risen in my
estimation since my post-Nobel listen-in.
What once I held suspect, I now think essential for continued listening.
Hard Rain: This one rips right along, live from 1975 and
the Rolling Thunder Review tour. There’s sort of sense of chaos with all the
players on stage blasting away behind Bob. A lot of the excitement here comes from ace
guitarist Mick Ronson, the back-up singers and the electric violinist. The crowd presence is greater than most other
Bob live stuff and there’s an atmosphere of wildness, a wild mercury sound.
Dylan and the Dead: The Grateful Dead are doing their thing here,
but also backing up Bob like no other band is capable. There’s a big-ass-ed-ness to the proceedings
and renditions of tunes like Queen Jane Approximately, Joey, and Knockin’
On Heaven’s Door are really pretty great. I also listened to Dylan and the Dead full
live show in Eugene 1987 on YouTube, which really needs to be heard. It sounds better than anything on the official
release and includes deep cuts like Simple Twist of Fate and Frankie
Lee and the Judas Priest. This stuff is life-affirming, incredible and
unfathomable.
The Basement Tapes: OMG! I guess you have to let these recordings
grow on you, but by now I’m totally in awe of this stuff, where previously I
was merely dumbstruck. It’s legendary
and all that crap, but this is really a whole load of mashed potatoes. Listening to the 6 disk Complete Basement
Tapes is a must-do. You literally can’t
predict what’s going to come up next or prepare yourself against the impact of
the songs are all weird or crazy or unaccountable or blasé or otherly.
John Wesley Harding: When this one came out, I was underwhelmed,
but it has grown on me like untended vegetation over the years. At the time,
this one (and then Music From Big Pink) caused a re-evaluation
throughout the rock and roll world and a move away from the crazy overkill of
psychedelic rock. It’s a quiet, melodic,
Vietnam era set absolutely spare and wonderfully performed. All Along the Watchtower, Down Along the
Cove, Dear Landlord, I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight – this was a far cry from Leopard
Skin Pillbox Hat and Desolation Row.
I listened to this one many times during the course of this listening
project as a mechanism for resetting my listening palette, so to speak.
Desire: For whatever reasons (maybe it
was panned in Rolling Stone magazine?) I never bought this one or heard its
tracks anywhere but FM radio, but this is premium quality stuff. It still gets
bad noise from the “critics”, but this is magnifique. Hurricane, Isis,
Mozambique, One More Cup of Coffee, Joey and Black Diamond Bay are really ridiculously
good. Oh, Sister is good, but is done better on Hard Rain and elsewhere.
The songs are all co-written with
Jacques Levy and the band and singers really cut loose. Bob seldom has been as unrestrained and
casual except here and with Rolling Thunder which is kind of a shame, I think.
Saved: This is a pretty much flat-out
gospel record and it is short and sweet. The band is largely his touring band
of that time and the singers led by Clydie King are maximum gospel
hummingbirding it here. Bob is in good
voice and this album has really dwelt beneath the hip radar.
36 Disks of Listening Bliss!
So, around March 21, I found
myself driving 45 miles to an associate library to pick up the Bob Dylan
Live in 1966 box set of 36 discs and was starting to seriously doubt my
mission. (I could tell that my wife had
enough of Bob at this point, when she started referring to him as
“What’s-his-name”).
This is
dedicated to the people who read Time Magazine. -stage announcement by Bob Dylan in
Liverpool, May 1966.
I had already listened to almost
all the official Bob releases (or about 80% of them, which by the way, is A
LOT). 36 live discs is a whole lot of
Bob by most standards, so I started my music appreciation of 1966 writ large in
my blue pickup heading home. I was apprehensive – I had already listened to the
other live 1966 stuff and it was high quality even by Dylan standards. I knew that this was pretty much the same 2
sets (one acoustic solo and one electric with the Band) repeated 18-20 or so
times. On the face of it, this sounded like
it might be redundant and possibly of dubious sound quality (1966
sources). I was prepared to be
disappointed. However, my anticipated
disappointment was completely unfounded. This stuff is uniformly ridiculously
great and everything seems to improve as the tour progresses through 1966. Full
levitation. I got my first taste of this
while driving home from the distant library, listening to disc one (from
Sydney, Australia) and noticing that I had become absolutely lost in the
performance of Desolation Row, and then in Mr. Tambourine Man. Throughout
my listening to this big box, I found this happening – the Bob trance, getting
lost in the music despite myself.
Strange things happen listening
to a repeating set list like this – for instance, after 10 or so listens to “Tell
Me, Momma” I note that the general format mimics that of Elvis first
recording, “That’s All Right, Mama”, but in a decidedly surrealist mode.
The Scotty Moore rockabilly picking is there, but it’s like Rimbaud re-wrote
the lyrics. Compounding my amazement over this song (the electric set opener
throughout the 66 tour) I find that it was never committed to vinyl and was
never played after the 66 tour. What’s up with that?
For another thing, there is the
case of Mr. Tambourine Man rising out of this collection like never
before in my tabla rasa. I have always
had a tenuous relationship with this song, ever since the Byrds Bach / choir-boy
/ High-EQ / dumbed-down single came to Top 40 AM radio. I didn’t get the appeal. Later, I heard Dylan’s version on Bringing
It Back Home and it seemed second string to It’s All Over Now, Baby
Blue and Gates of Eden. I
have largely ignored it over the years, based on these considerations until
listening to it roll out across lo, these many evenings of then and now. It is, show-by-show a singular sidetrack in
the proceedings whereby Dylan leads everyone disappearing across the smoke
rings of our minds, together. The vocals
and harmonica weave a web, you could say, leaving the chief impression from the
set’s residue. It becomes magical in
this setting and I got carried away each time I listened to it This one has now become LARGE to me, perhaps
a greatest number, by virtue of appreciating it here, over and over and over again. The effect of the song embodies its lyric.
Continuing favorites:
Anything reputedly recorded live in
1966: Live in 1966, The Real Albert Hall Concert, and a
studio release related to these, the Best of the Cutting Edge. Among
these I hold the live solo acoustic stuff (Dylan on vocals, acoustic guitar and
harmonica) in highest regard: She Belongs to Me, Visions of Johanna,
Fourth Time Around, Gates of Eden, Desolation Row, Mr. Tambourine Man.
For me, this is the best work ‘Mr. Song and Dance man Dylan’ has ever done. It’s like, totally flabbergasting. The Live in 1966 double disc is a must
hear, the other two are merely great, but also should be heard. The Live 66 36
disc set almost defies description (see description above).
I admire The First 8 albums
(I listened to these in order to
get started on my project, then went catch as catch can). Bob’s first eight
albums constitute a tour bus ride through the Dylan sixties from 1962 to 1968
(we didn’t hear from him again until 1970). Starting with Bob Dylan in 62
and ending up with John Wesley Harding in 68, this was and is a blur of reimagined,
future and past American music as well as being a breath of fresh air in the
freeze-dried realms of popular song.
Each album in this sequence was a shock to the system at the time. Mid-stream, when the worlds of Dylan and the Big
Beat smashed together, the results (“Dylan Goes Electric!”) were sensational
and surprising, to say the least. This
is where we found out the denim folkie really longed to be Little Richard all
along.
Listening to these albums in
sequence now is a great entertainment – they are full of life, memory,
nostalgia, melody, poetry, and philosophy. Before, the albums each were jarring
and back then I would follow along on the music of the words, not even thinking
so much of the sentiments those words represented, but marveling at their
boldness. Nowadays when I hear them, the
words and their meanings are clear to me.
I have finally caught up to the point at which the songs are integrated
in my head.
That’s a curious effect of Bob’s
music on me. With first listening (and for several years, usually) I don’t
exactly get what is going on. I’m on an enjoyment (or sometimes annoyance)
level and have to grapple with the music until it’s a part of my consciousness
and it’s context has clarified itself in my mind.
Nowhere was this effect more
dramatic than the early years / albums: Bob Dylan, the Freewheelin’
Bob Dylan, The Times They Are a Changin’, Another Side of Bob Dylan, Bringing
it All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde and John Wesley Harding.
There is a distinct disconnection
between Blonde on Blonde and John Wesley Harding which Dylan has attributed to
a change of attitude brought on by his motorcycle accident – he switched from a
“don’t look back” or just making things happen mode to a more restrained,
relaxed and planned process. I think he
switched from breakneck youth to young adult and family man, but that probably
is an oversimplification that only hints at what was going on Bob-wise up in
Woodstock, down in Nashville and out in California. We thought he “mellowed out” (in sixties
terms), but this guy never mellowed out: he’s still generating nothing but
sparks.
A lot can and has been said about
these collections but let’s just say they are still vibrant and exciting, entertaining
in 2022. One can still listen to them un-dismissively
and avidly. If you have never listened
to “The Times They Are a’ Changin’”, for instance, or haven’t heard it
in a long while, get ready to get lost
with Bob on this one.
The Next Really Great Period in
Bob History (post-motorcycle wreck)
I spent a disproportionate amount
of time listening to and thinking about the following three art objects to
inspire myself and to keep me going while I listened to the rest of Dylan’s
output. For whatever reason, this is the
period I best like to listen to (along with John Wesley Harding,
recorded in the midst of the Basement Tapes)
The Basement Tapes (recorded
66-67 and released in 1975, and later) I highly recommend
listening to the 6 disc Basement Tapes Complete official bootleg if you can
track it down. The sound quality varies, but if, like me you don’t care much
about that, this is great stuff. Bob and
the Band play everything under the sun and all of it entertainingly. I listened to the 1975 original Basement
Tapes release, the Official Bootleg Basement Tapes Raw and the Complete Basement
tapes. They’re all good and different
enough to enjoy separately and together.
This is Bob holed up in New York State after his 66 tour and motorcycle
accident, just playing old songs, writing and recording new songs as demos for
other groups and putting together a new electric roots music in a casual
atmosphere. The escape from the previous “Bob Dylan” persona is evident
throughout. It’s loose, enjoyable, new and old at the same time. The material from these sessions has flowed
through popular music and Dylan’s concerts ever since. This is good stuff with vocals from Bob, Rick
Danko, Richard Manuel, Robbie Robertson and unbelievable accompaniment from
master musician Garth Hudson. (If nothing else, it's worth listening to this
stuff just to listen to Garth Hudson). Again,
near the end of the Basement Tapes period, these fellows released two albums
that turned music on its ear: Music From Big Pink and John Wesley
Harding.
Music From Big Pink (1968)
Yes, I know this is technically a
recording by the Band. It contains songs co-written by Dylan and is influenced
throughout by the collaborations in The Basement and at the Big Pink House in
Saugerties, New York where Bob, Robbie Robertson, Richard Manuel, Rick Danko,
Garth Hudson and later, Levon Helm played, rehearsed, wrote songs and
recorded.
I keep Big Pink on my
upstairs high quality 3 disc changer and listen to it before my Zoom sessions
and when I’m working on crazy projects. This album is particularly wonderful
and has mesmerized me since I picked it up on vinyl before heading off to my
freshman year of college in 1968.
Everyone was talking about it (around the world) it seems and everyone I
knew loved it – farmers, greasers, hippies, frat boys, male and female. To me
it has only improved with the decades. It seems to capture ancient days and
slices of life that had already past when it was recorded. The songs have
emotional resonance unequaled before or since – if you ask me.
The versions of Tears of Rage, I Shall Be Released, the Weight, Chest
Fever, Long Black Veil and others are emotional dynamite. It’s pretty,
professional, loose and creaky all at once.
This could only have happened after woodshedding with Bob Dylan for over
two years.
This album changed popular music,
swerving it back away from sixties pop glitz to country and roots-influenced
music and composition – or something like that. It’s just crazy good and never
gets old. As I say, I use it to
punctuate the work of Bob Dylan.
Self-Portrait (1970)
Critics bleated in dismay over
this release, but it was a great success, otherwise. I only really got on to
this one about five years ago when I did my first Bob Dylan post Nobel Laureate
Listen-In. Needless to say, I couldn’t believe my ears. From accounts by people
involved, like returning Dylan alumnus Al Kooper and folk / blues guitarist
extraordinaire David Bromberg, Bob was taking songs out of old songbooks and
recordings and trying them out, sometimes in several arrangements, a la the
Basement Tapes: reach into the song-barrel and play some antique curiosities from
the rural past. It features a Bob oil self-portrait on the cover, to boot.
This method worked devilishly
well. The collection is amazing and diverse with a moonshiner ballad, murder
ballads, instrumentals, pop songs (Let It Be Me, the Boxer) and
uncategorizable stuff (All the Tired Horses, Wigwam). Bob is in fine voice throughout, pushing the
crack musicians for all they’re worth. It’s pure magic and I never tire of this
one, either. I have heard long
discourses on his version of the Boxer. It’s like an aural Rorschach
test – everyone hears something sprung from their own psyches, I think. I hear it as Bob duetting with Paul Simon and
Simon barely keeping pace (this is a mistaken impression, I have been told).
Some years back, Bob was kind
enough to release Another Self Portrait, an official bootleg of material
from these sessions, that is even better (almost) than Self Portrait.
This is perhaps my favorite official bootleg, among many favorites. It just goes on and on, extending the idea of
the original. When I listened to both of these for this
listening extravaganza, I just got lost in the experience. Bob, you maniac!
the Nashville Skyline, New
Morning and Planet Waves era
I lump these three together, all
coming in the period after the Basement Tapes, Self Portrait and the
motorcycle accident, when Bob was going country, changing his vocal approach
and getting all situated as a family man.
Nashville Skyline is Bob’s most carefree, happy-face, real country
album and a delightful listen. Smooth
Bob. New Morning is a move back
toward dynamic Dylanism and features collaborations with George Harrison – very
nice. This too is adult Bob as is Planet Waves, a mainly overlooked
album that I found to be most excellent, with many great songs and the Band
back supporting him. These three
releases would take you a long way and in conjunction with Self Portrait
and Another Self Portrait, they constitute a 1969 to 1971 ish
onslaught of really great music. The
sequence of Basement Tapes, John Wesley Harding, Self Portrait, Another Self
Portrait, New Morning and Planet Waves has been my new favorite swathe
of Dylan-iana over the past 5 years or so.
Re-listening to all of them now continues to balance on my head like a
mattress on a bottle of wine.
KOOK
OR GENIUS? -UK
Newspaper Headline, 1966
A Minority Report
I have always been a devotee of Bringing
It All Back Home – one side of jumped-up rockabilly folk vituperation and
one side of surrealist acoustic folk music from 1965. This was my introduction
to Dylan and I have remained a fan of this dualistic masterpiece. It was and is crazy good. When I listen to it, it seems like I’m
listening to my whole life as sub-text, all the images and emotions float along
on its waves.
The next album up in 1965 for
Dylan is the one everyone loves, Highway 61 Revisited. This album is
revered beyond all reason, I think. I
have never much liked it. I had the Like
a Rolling Stone single and really loved Positively 4th Street
and Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window? Of these, only Like a Rolling Stone made the
cut for this album. I guess that angered me at the time and that resentment has
foolishly clung to the album for me. I
do like Highway 61 on the album, but the rest of it sort of bores
me. I know this is heresy, but oh well.
I always held Blonde on Blonde,
the next 1965 album, in higher regard than Highway 61. In fact, it has
grown in my estimation through the years until I value it even beyond Bringing
It Back Home (gasp!) This one is Dylan’s best, in my opinion. (He seems to share this opinion, mainly, in
some interviews). And the compositions seemingly get better and better as the
years crawl by. My antipathy for Highway
61 is a definite minority opinion, but you can scratch the whole thing and
listen to the Live ’66 and Cutting Edge discs instead which make
the whole thing moot. But, Blonde on
Blonde contains my favorite Bob Dylan song, in its original format: Visions
of Johanna. I can never get too much of nothing with this one. I need to hear that “Jewels and Binoculars hang from the head
of the mule” and “the Ghost of Electricity Howls in the Bones of her Face.” It’s right there, man!
Just an aside here about Fourth
Time Around, the second song up on Side 1: This is one that it took decades
to begin to sink in. Very confusing at first with nonsense lyrics and the same
melody as Norwegian Wood, it slowly accretes meaning as quibbles fall
away to the immanence of the song itself.
Depending on which account, Dylan taught the Beatles this melody and
Lennon went ahead and wrote his somewhat-self-deceiving Norwegian Wood -
which Bob then parodied in Fourth Time Around. But then, listening to it for years none of
that matters, is just fodder for the tired horses. Hearing it over and over on the Live 66
discs, it just seems like a great song sang well as an acoustic solo. And the song still retains it mysteries.
Now, when I listen to Blonde
on Blonde, it seems perfect, from the drum beats opening Rainy Day Women on
through to the dreamlike dirge Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands. Let’s put this sucker on repeat, why don’t we?
Someone's got it in for me -
They're planting stories in the press
To put it mildly, Bob Dylan has
not been immune to criticism. I am sort of amazed now that none of this matters
much when I am just listening to his recordings. All of the notoriety, fame, rumor, innuendo,
over-analysis, hype and craziness has blown over. Now he’s just that Nobel
Prize winner whose music is everywhere.
These are some of the negatives Dylan has been charged with:
He can’t sing
From the start, this has been the
omnipresent knock on Dylan – what’s with that voice? Listening now, the voice
is familiar, but I am struck with how much of a pose his use of voice has
been. He started out with the whiny, nasal,
talkative voice of the first few albums which astonished popular music listeners, whose
aesthetic preference at the time was the studied, well-modulated, tone-perfect
voice. More expressive vocals (African
Americans, rock and rollers) were on the rise, but Dylan’s voice was totally unanticipated.
His voice has changed, it seems,
every year of his career. When I listen
to Real Live, or Saved, or his later period albums (Modern
Times, Rough and Rowdy Ways), it sounds like he’s becoming a different guy
each time, with different phrasing and tone in each album. Most of it works, and his approach is varied
but effective for the most part.
An element of the enjoyment of
listening to Dylan continues to be “What the heck is he doing now?” The vocals are interesting, considered,
comical or serious by turn. He’s an
interesting bunch of guys, as they say.
All of his music, much of his
lyrics are “borrowed”
I didn’t bother much with
thinking about this as I listened to EVERYTHING, but it was well in mind and
constantly reinforced by dylanologists online and in books I read (Old Weird
America, Why Bob Dylan Matters) that Bob is a major borrower of
melodies, phrases and styles. The other
way this has been said is that Dylan has stolen everything he’s ever done.
This is a common complaint. Everything
from the melody to Blowin’ in the Wind to big chunks of his memoir Chronicles
has been noted as lifted from elsewhere.
The purloining of material
certainly mattered not to me as I cranked my way through the recordings. I could associate a lot of his work with
other things, some songs are covers, some are clearly inspired by others, some
(Fourth Time Around, Clothesline Saga) are parodies of other songs (Norwegian
Wood and Ode to Billie Joe).
To the casual, or more active listener, this doesn’t matter except in a
positive way – it adds to the experience, one could say. But this remains a constant complaint.
His recordings are inconsistent
and flawed
Well, I certainly heard this as I
worked my way through the catalog. From the start, he has included false
starts, mid-song laughter and uncorrected out of tune recordings. All is
sacrificed to the feel of the performance, so to speak. Dylan has stated in interviews that what’s
important (over lyrics, melodies, etc.) is the performance. By this I think he means the correctness of
the feel of the performance. (Compare
and contrast to the Eagles, those post-Dylan millionaires whose notes and tones
are never out of place, but who sound pre-fab compared to the organic messiness
of Dylan).
It’s all hype, man!
This is an unfair, or beside the
point, I think. This complaint has always been leveled at Dylan. “Hey, this guy
ain’t so great!” He has always been a
tireless song-plugger and self-promoter, but that’s to his credit, I think.
It’s hard to be an artist and a business person, so hat’s off to Bob on this.
Certainly, the show biz angle came into play early with the early hobo attire
and the name change from Zimmerman to Dylan and the later personas and styles-
Bob the Country Gentleman, Born Again Bob, Endless Tour Bob, Traveling Wilbury,
etc. There has been endless hype on the endless tour and the endless recording
career. None of this comes in to play as
I listen now – the music goes straight to me.
Compilations:
The Greatest Hits (1967)
Out of the chrono-synclastic
infinidibulum with the flower-power rainbow-hair poster and best known songs of
the first seven albums, this one was the starter set for many. If you quibbled
with the selection or sequence you could still stick the poster up on your
bedroom or dorm room wall. I prefer
Best of The Original Mono Masters (see below) – sort of the same turf with
different flowers.
The Greatest Hits Volume 2 (1971)
Really more of a compilation /
retrospective. This one is good if only for new recordings by Bob of some of
his great ones and the then-current When I Paint My Masterpiece / Watching
the River Flow single. This collection
includes master re-recordings of Basement Tape classics, I Shall Be Released,
You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere, The Mighty Quinn, and Down in the
Flood. The last one, Down in the
Flood, has become a new favorite. It has taken a long time to sink in but
now when I hear it, I just can’t get over it.
Wonderful. Great song collection, hard to quibble.
The Greatest Hits Volume 3 (1994)
This was a big surprise to me. I
had planned to skip it but found it perhaps the strongest single disc in the
whole catalog. I’m getting a copy to keep in my truck (for truckin’). It opens
with a powerhouse trio of songs: Tangled Up in Blue, Changing of the Guards
and The Groom’s Still Waiting at the Altar. This opening is shockingly effective. The
rest of the disc is great stuff: Series of Dreams, You Gotta Serve
Somebody, Brownsville Girl, Dignity, Silvio and others. Nary a weak
cut here. Not really Greatest Hits, but
more a “Best of” this portion of his career.
Biograph (1985)
Inexplicably good – this one is
an early career summary over three discs that is just fantastic. I enjoyed listening to this one all the way
through again. Essential Bob.
Best of The Original Mono Masters (2010)
This is a good one for the truck,
pretty much gets all of Greatest Hits Volume 1 PLUS Can You Please Crawl Out
Your Window and Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat. I love it.
Bob Dylan the Bootleg Series
(1-3)
I have trouble choosing between
this one and Biograph. Similar, but different. More rare cuts here and
nobody sings the blues like Blind Willie McTell (not even Blind Willie
Mattel).
In their own uncategorizable
category:
Christmas In The Heart Bob sounds like a demented elf or
crazy old Uncle Bob on this one. Sheesh!
Only Christmas Blues is worth digging out.
Great American Songbook recordings (Shadows
in the Night, Fallen Angels, Triplicate) Out of all the off the wall stunts Dylan has
ever done, this one takes the cake. Bob
Dylan channeling Mel Torme and Jerry Vale?
I listened to these again
(excluding and I just can’t get with this stuff. Mainly, this illustrates Bob’s
vocal limitations. Even Willie Nelson
does this stuff better.
A few things embodied since Bob’s debut in 1962:
The Kennedy Assassination Beatles,
et al. Apple (both of them)
The Moonwalk (both kinds) Cable
TV Death of the Soviet
Union
Bob goes electric Bob
goes gospel American Songbook Bob
Disney World Voting
Rights Act the Viet Nam War
The personal computer COVID The End of Apartheid
The AIDS epidemic Gulf War 9/11 and 20 years of war
Hippies and Woodstock Electric
Cars Cell Phones
End Stage Capitalism Punk
Rock Public Education
decline
Red Sox, Cubs, White Sox win World Series Watergate
The Persistence of Dylan Memory
In addition to world events which
Dylan’s career has spanned, consider the musicians and musical styles his
career has preceded and outlived:
Passing musical styles
Ska Fusion New Age Gangster Rap
Punk Second
wave Punk Folk Revivals 1 and 2
Psychedelic Folk
Rock Synth Rock
(there’s a lot of other styles
I’m not conversant with which have also come and gone, but you get the idea)
A few recording artists who have come and gone
during Bob
John Prine Pink
Floyd the Eagles the Beatles
Michael Jackson Prince Otis Redding Led Zeppelin
Aretha Franklin Dusty
Springfield Jimi Hendrix Crosby, Stills and Nash
The Byrds New
Wave Tom Petty the Monkees (hah)
John Denver Soul
Music Tom Jones Sir Doug Sahm
I can hear some influence of these trends and artists in Bob’s
recordings, but not much.
Some New Old Favorite Bob Songs
Angelina and Blind Willie McTell -
take 1 (from Springtime in New York), note: Angelina take on Bootleg
Vol.s 1-3 is good but not as compelling
Down in the Flood / Crash on the Levee –
Greatest Hits vol 2, the Basement Tapes
Sitting on a Barbed Wire Fence (from The
Best of The Cutting Edge)
Series of Dreams (from Bootleg Vol. 3,
Greatest Hits 3 and one other)
One Too Many Mornings (from the Times They Are a
Changin’ and ubiquitous elsewhere in varying arrangements)
Every Grain of Sand (on many releases)
Joey and Black Diamond Bay (from
Desire)
A Simple Twist of Fate (from Blood
on the Tracks) -check Joan’s version, too
New Danville Girl (Springtime in New York and Brownsville
Girl (Knocked Out Loaded) – these are versions of the same song, both
versions are excellent
The Bootleg Series, Briefly
I listened to about everything I
could in the Bootleg Series. There’s really nothing to complain about much
here, but Travelin’ Through is pretty thin. It’s a lot of fooling around. Comparatively, covering
the same time frame “Another Self Portrait” is a better choice.
|
Bootleg Series Entry (in
listened-to order) |
My Rating |
My listening order |
|
Vol.s 1-3 (rare and unreleased 1961-1991 |
4 stars |
6 |
|
Vol. 4 (Live 1966, The Royal Albert Hall
Concert) |
4 stars |
7 |
|
Vol. 5 (Live 1975, The Rolling Thunder
Revue) |
4 stars |
8 |
|
Vol. 6: Bob Dylan Live 1964, Concert at
Philharmonic Hall |
3 stars |
1 |
|
Vol. 7: No Direction Home, the Soundtrack |
5 stars |
10 |
|
Vol. 8: Tell Tale
Signs: Rare and Unreleased 1989–2006 |
4 stars |
11 |
|
Vol. 9: The
Witmark Demos: 1962–1964 |
5 stars |
12 |
|
Vol. 10: Another
Self Portrait (1969–1971) |
5 stars |
3 |
|
Vol. 11: The
Basement Tapes Raw (& Complete) |
5 stars |
2 |
|
Vol. 12: The Best
of the Cutting Edge 1965–1966 |
4 stars – studio 5 stars - live |
4 |
|
Vol. 13: Trouble
No More 1979–1981 |
5 stars |
12 |
|
Vol. 14: More
Blood, More Tracks |
3 stars |
13 |
|
Vol. 15: Travelin'
Thru, 1967–1969 |
3 stars |
5 |
|
Vol. 16: Springtime in New York
1980–1985 |
5 stars |
9 |
(note
that my ratings above are relativistic –
none of this is bad, all of my ratings are subjective and shift over
time). I particularly like the
Witmark Demos (early Bob, casual demo recordings), Trouble No More –
two concerts from the Born Again Bob phase – hot stuff!, Springtime in New
York and No Direction Home.
A temporary top ten-list as of 3/25/2022: 1) Visions of Johanna 2) Positively 4th Street 3) Lay, Lady Lay 4) Gates of Eden 5) I Shall Be Released 6) A Simple Twist of Fate 7) Can You Please Crawl Out of Your
Window? 8) Murder Most Foul 9) When the Ship Comes In 10) It Ain’t Me,
Babe and from 4/13/22: Down
in the Flood, Crossing the Rubicon, One Too Many Mornings, 4th Time
Around
Bob songs that now I mainly skip over, and why
Ballad of a Thin Man: This song now strikes me as cruel and unkind,
so I skip it. (Yes, I know it’s based on Brecht’s Pirate Jenny which Suze
Rotolo played for Bob.)
(I make an exception here for the
Live 1966 stuff, where this is played on every electric set before the closer, Like
a Rolling Stone – I think it was done well there. It still sounds nasty to
me in the original studio version – it leaves a bad taste. I think it might be
the instrumental flourishes by Garth Hudson on the box set that make it more
than tolerable).
If you gotta go, go now: Here,
the speaker of the song seems a bit of a sexual predator and thinks it’s cute
and funny. No, thanks.
Bear
Mountain Picnic:
This is a goofy story song, that although documentary, once I heard it,
that was enough.
Leaving at my own chosen speed
After listening to the 36 discs
from 1966, I admit that I was growing a little Bob-weary but I soldiered on and
was rewarded with gems on each of the albums I had never heard before. These included Under the Red Sky, Down
in the Groove, Soundtrack for Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Empire
Burlesque, Greatest Hits Volume 3, MTV Unplugged, Tempest and
Together Through Life. These albums, for one thing, all feature great
musicians. Mick Taylor, Sly and Robbie, Jim Keltner, Roger McGuinn, Danny
Kortchmar and numerous other luminaries hold forth persuasively on these discs,
tightly reined in by Dylan, the consummate band leader. On the negative side, I
listened to Dylan, the album Columbia put out without Dylan’s approval,
in 1973 when Bob left for Geffen records. This album is terrible and should
have been titled Out-takes and Discards.
Covers, tributes and adaptations
Briefly, I’ll touch on after-artist
work. First, let me sneer sidewise at
the soundtrack from the Broadway musical The Girl From the North Country. This is bad. It seems like the Broadway crew
decided they would make some Dylan songs “pretty” and completely stripped all
the feel out, replacing it with schmaltz. Ugh!
Lu’s Jukebox: Songs of Bob Dylan by
Lucinda Williams (also YouTube full-band performances)
Joan Baez Sings Bob Dylan: Aces!
Richie Havens Sings Dylan and the
Beatles: Richie was a great interpreter of Dylan. I play
this quite a bit.
The Byrds Sing Dylan:
Definitely worth a spin. Bob Acolyte Roger McGuinn kept the Byrds ever focused
on Bob’s songs, to the benefit of both artists.
A lot of unique arrangements.
Chimes of Freedom: Amazing 3
disc compilation for Amnesty International. Great cover art and inspired covers
throughout. Put a star on Angelique Kidjo’s rendition of Lay, Lady Lay – it’s
arrangement based (I think) on the Byrds’ version.
Nod to Bob: Mostly neo-folk Bob covers – good listening.
Bob Dylan: the 30th
Anniversary Concert: All-Star Bob Birthday concert. Good set,
including Dylan himself.
What Was It You Wanted? (Nothing
Was Delivered)
This has been a unique though
determined lark of a project – systematically listening my way through the Bob
Dylan library. It took diligence, but
was self-reinforcing because I kept finding and rediscovering absolutely
captivating gems of musical compositions, and even a spoken word piece (Last
Thoughts on Woody Guthrie). There were moments of displeasure that also
kept me glued to my seat (so to speak). But the thing about Bob Dylan is he is
always changing in surprising, entertaining or perplexing ways. It occurs to me that he never answered to
anyone but himself and he never asked himself, “How will this play in Peoria
(or London, or L.A.)” He remains, for better and for worse until death does him
part from us, his own man. That’s pretty
amazing in its own right.
What the Great Bob Listening has
taught me, is that I’ll never be done with Dylan. His work changes with time
and in the ear of the beholder (me).
When I don’t “get” what he’s doing, I can trust that time will knock the
rough corners off it and all will become clear – because this has happened time
and time again. Even in his least
popular phrase, the (so-called) Born
Again phase, he was making remarkably great music. To my credit, I somehow saw that at the
time. On the other hand, the Great
American Songbook phase has confounded me since he began it and since he ended
it. I may get on board with it and I may
not, but Dylan was, I suppose, true to himself.
Another great thing - we never
know what the man will do next. An album
of Jamaican Hymns? A classical album?
It’s impossible to guess. But,
likely it will be confounding to some and a work of genius to others. How does it feel?
