I just wanted to be the 100th post in your thread Mitchell -- excellent thread ---- as much as I love Dylan, I am sorely lacking in owning early period material of his carreer -- pre Highway 61 revisited--of course I've heard a portion of it, but I've obviously been missing a lot...

This is definitely an ALBUM experience...yeah, if you break it down, a few songs are clearly standouts, but the album as a whole is a perfect portrait of Dylan and his position in the folk era...not just the protest songs, but his sense of humor, tradition, romance, etc. Some of his later albums gets slagged for dropping his best songs during rerecording/reconfiguration, but Dylan TOTALLY got it right with this one, recording better material to replace some old ones, and programming something that perfectly defined where he was at and what he was about.

Based on various personality conflicts, I've had grave doubts about this thread. I think you're way too hard on'80s Dylan, but you gave "Baby Let Me Follow You Down" the best ranking on the debut (and you're absolutely right, of course), and I find it hard to do more than quibble here and there with anything said so far. Call me a convert.

I will lobby hard for Infidels, Empire Burlesque and Down In the Groove when you get there, however. Especially Infidels.

Is Infidels part of his Christian phase or did that end with Shot of Love?

Bob tends to maintain his "Christian phase" never really ended - he just stopped doing gospel records. But Infidels is definitely a return to the secular.

this is going to take forever.

but awesome stuff so far.

It will take a while, but that's because I want to do it properly. If it takes me three hours to write each post then so be it.

It tailed off through those two albums. Slow Train Coming and Saved were definitely evangelical Bob. On Shot of Love things definitely begin to tail off.

There's a touch of religion in much of the lyrics, but Infidels is definitely more secular, enough that it's rarely considered one of his religious albums (and definitely not Christian...I think Bob even reacquainted himself with Judaism at this point?)

Infidels is a good album

Take your time. I've tasked myself with listening to each album as you post them, so slow and steady is fine by me.

This is what I'm doing as well and I'll probably need every day I can get, at least if I want to get more than a meaningless first impression of each album.

I have a couple of long train journeys to contend with over the weekend, should be good for one each way.

Hello. I like Bob Dylan a lot, even live - even now! - but I don't often reach for his work and I'm curious as to why that is.
Hoping I will get to the bottom of it in the course of this handsome exercise. My first post in this thread but won't be the last.

I am in the same boat, hermano. Enjoying Mitchell's write-ups, but I rarely feel like listening to a Dylan album and when I do, that's usually enough for a while.

yep

Not going to be this ambitious but certainly hope to add few new albums on the back of this thread as well.

That's one of my favorite things about Dylan; the way he intersperses religious/moral themes and Biblical images in his lyrics -- he definitely doesn't shy away from any of this -- from specifically Christian images, "we all wear the same thorny crown" from Modern Times -- to more general images such as "they say prayer has the power to heal so pray....etc..." from MT ,-- to "walking with the village priest" and the "sinners prayer" (both Catholic references) from Together Through Life --

Nowadays he doesn't seem to want to be pinned down to have any particular religious affiliation. When Jann S. Wenner asked him in Rolling Stone's 40th aniversary issue--May 3-17th 2007 -- "What is your faith these days"? Dylan responded "Faith doesn't have a name. It doesn't have a category. It's oblique. So it's unspeakable. We degrade faith by talking about religion".

I'd disagree with Bob on this, because I believe Jesus Christ established a Church and a faith, when he came down to earth to redeem us all. -- I looked on You Tube and found Dylan is still singing "I Believe in You" --(from Slow Train Coming ---- you being Jesus Christ) on 3/22/09 in Stockholm, so who knows??

I tend to think that Bob's got it figured out that it's true: Keep God first in your life, others second, and yourself third; in that order of importance, and you've got things in their proper perspective. Of course, it's got to be decided, how to keep God first in our lives...

Planet Waves is so good. Never gave it a fair shake, really. Finally spun it tonight. Wow, wow, wow.

Don't worry, not forgotten this or anything. The next five or so albums I've been re-listening to a lot of late (before I started listening to every UK number one.) There are fragments of reviews for them either on laptop, paper or in head. Glastonbury is this week so we'll be back on this when I return.

Ah, cool. I like the next four more than anything else he's recorded. I'll be interested to see how you think Another Side of Bob Dylan compares to, say, Blood on the Tracks.

so be it.... it'll be worth the wait. just heard that Counting Crows song "Mr Jones" -- "I wanna be Bob Dylan"-- love that line, and the song; -- and yesterday online I saw a recorded live performance of Forgetful Heart from the new album ---- a beautiful performance -- his voice sounded suprisingly good for a concert performance-- and he added some fine harmonica to the song -- very nicely done. --- it seems also that lately he's been playing guitar more in concert. Happy 4th of July SOMBIES !!

dude, don't sully this thread with counting crows.

seriously.

OTM.

"I wanna be Bob Dylan" is only one of about 20 cringe-worthy lines in "Mr. Jones".

lol

it's a good song. but let's get back to bob now

Like RG went to dashes.

it's not a good song. it's a fucking terrible song. counting crows suck.

it's a grower

Hey guys, remember when Hootie and the Blowfish stole a whole verse from "Tangled up in Blue"?

That part where Bob Dylan's like, "I only wanna be with YOUOOOOOOUUUOOOOO" right?

goddam thiefs.

Good thread.

No danger, as soon as I've done my 2nd round list for Paul this will be rolling once more. Have of course been writing about various things and needing to collect them together.

No, they stole a whole verse from "Idiot Wind".

"said I shot a man named gray
and took his wife to Italy
She inherited a million bucks
And when she died it came to me.
I can't help it if Im lucky..

I only wanna be with you"

Before & after that part, he sings "Put on a little Dylan" and "Ain't Bobby so cool?" as if to illustrate that they were merely quoting, but they still got sued for it and Dylan got a big settlement out of it.

moar

listening to the next album you're going to review right now. Just watched No Direction Home after listening to this and I'm sort of in awe of Dylan like I've never been before and have only been about a handful of people - Milch, DFW, Neil Young, Wendell Berry, Jules Chauvet - until now. Getting my mind blown by "With God on Our Side".

Sorry guys, I just don't have time for this kind of stuff right now, see my post count in past year. I actually have to spend the majority of my time at work doing that at the moment. Still, less than six months to go, who knows after that. Fingers crossed.

"Hanginaround" crushes "Mr. Jones."

IMO.

Great album. Holds up. Feels like 1964 like how A Hard Day's Night does. A consistently fun time.

otm

The absence of Mitch has partially inspired my recent posting binge. The board wants you to come back, Mitchell Stirling.

I think I like this album, front to back, at least 1.5x as much as Freewheelin'. The latter has some serious highs - first three tracks, "Hard Rain", "Don't Think Twice" - but The Times doesn't have any of the lows, and it's stunning songs, title track excepted, haven't lost their lustre due to cultural saturation like some of Freewheelin's. The lyrics and structures also fit better w/ the Dylan I've quickly come to admire than the catchy/pithy qualities of the more iconic record.


also, no haste Mitch. Get your shit done.

Oh, I thought you were talking about Another Side. That's what I was mistakenly referring to.

Shows what I know about renowned fuck rock icon Boobs Dylan.

I'll listen to Times one of these days. Always ignored it because the "political" aspect of Dylan doesn't interest me much. Ain't no finger-pointin' songs on Another Side.

watch No Direction Home. Dylan's take on his own socio-political status is enlightening. Reading and watching things about Dylan has led me to realize that the hole he's been pegged into is largely a poor interpretation of only one small aspect of his whole thing. Short version: I don't think he's as "political" as he's been made out to be.

This is usually what it comes down to, yeah.

Fun artist!

super fun, and for a long time I didn't think he was that at all; thought B. Dylan was the opposite of fun, actually. Much more in common w/ the Werner Herzogs and David Lynchs of the world than I had ever realized.

It is pretty accurate to state that the pop music revolution of the '60s was founded upon and eventually proven unstable by large scale excessive romanticization of the individual (Bob Dylan) vs. that of a group of individuals (Beatles.)

Nobody knew what the fuck was going on.

More and more I'm finding myself interested in "art" - lol - that embraces this perplexing "idea" (i.e. not knowing what the fuck is going on) rather than seeing it as a problem to be solved. The best shit happens when people don't know what the fuck is going on and revel in that not-knowing and their own mutability within all the not-knowing going on around them. That's the sort of individualism that needs to be celebrated, imnshfo.

Hey, me, too. That mindset or some variation on it contains the most reliable criteria for identifying art as meaningful/good/something to care about. Not just with regards to consumption, but to the creative process, as well.

Another fun observation:

In my history of close male friends of the late teens through early 20s years, the ones that I have bothered to get to know best have almost all at some point thought that Bob Dylan totally sucked balls. The ones that I see only once in a while have come around on a few albums. The one that I see all the time cannot listen to anything he has done. The ones that I see almost as much as him don't speak harshly of his work but have practically zero use for it in their post high school "getting into '60s music" years. And the one that I completely stopped speaking to a few years ago is the biggest fan of his that I have ever met.

now that's some trend