Happy 68th Birthday to Robert Zimmerman, gives me as good a reason to make a start on this. It'll end up looking like The Fall one, The Neil Young one, The Maiden and The Go-Betweens one and the Who, Bowie, and Sleater-Kinney ones. Hoping that the other Dylan freaks are going to chime in at regular intervals. I do have an etc thread to countdown as well but there we go, they will have to run at the same time as I've said I'd start this today for nearly a year now and don't want my credit record affected.

With this thread constantly hanging over me I've not been on a real Dylan kick for a while so this should be a sense of re-enjoyment for me as well. Very easy to end up listening to nothing but Dylan for long periods of time. It's also been a while since I read Chronicles and Down The Highway so forgive me if I get any facts arse-about-face on this complicated motherfucker.

The reviews will be of every song released on a studio album, on a single, greatest hits and contemporary live albums (as listed below) I will not be reviewing the Bootleg Series or any other famous bootlegs as we go and won't be doing them in this initial run.

Albums with pre-season rating

Bob Dylan C+
The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan A
The Times They Are a-Changin' B
Another Side of Bob Dylan B+
Bringing It All Back Home A
Highway 61 Revisited A+
Blonde on Blonde A
John Wesley Harding A
Nashville Skyline B+
Self Portrait C-
New Morning B
Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid B-
Dylan D
Planet Waves B-
Before The Flood B-
Blood on the Tracks A
The Basement Tapes A
Desire A-
Hard Rain B-
Street Legal C+
At Budokan C
Slow Train Coming B+
Saved C-
Shot of Love C
Infidels C
Real Live D+
Empire Burlesque C-
Knocked Out Loaded C
Down in the Groove D
Dylan and The Dead D+
Oh Mercy B+
Under the Red Sky D
Good as I Been to You B-
World Gone Wrong B-
MTV Unplugged C
Time Out of Mind A
Love and Theft A-
Modern Times B+
Together Through Life B-

As I say, Bootleg Series will be covered at a later date, songs on Greatest Hits will be covered as we get to them. Will also do a section on Dylan by other artists.

(Bob Dylan review will be posted tomorrow night, I've had a long weekend.)

Awesome. I am very much looking forward to this. Good luck, Mitchell!

"raspberry strawberry lemon or lime, what do I care?
when it come to me and my country pie,
call me for dinner honey I'll be there!"

how do you feel about behind the shades?

can't believe you rate blood on the tracks and blonde on blonde as only 'a' records. both 'a+' for mine.

Great reference in the thread title.

That album is an A+, though.

IMHO.

This'll be fun.

Though you should be kinder to Infidels.

this is going to be exciting. kudos for making the thread. i still have a lot of albums i need to hear by the legend, and it'll be great to have some commentary to go side-by-side with my listens. love this type of shit.

I've been on a Dylan tear so far this year, if hearing 5 albums in 5 months for the first time counts as such.

This is going to be epic. I hope Mitchell isn't driven to insanity or Dylan burn-out by the end of it.

yes. very excited for this thread.

I'm a latecomer to Dylan, to say the least. He's one of those I've always appreciated and respected, but never really enjoyed or got passionate about. In short, I'd take the Beatles any day of the week and twice on Sunday, or, 8 days a week.

I apologize.

That being said, I recently purchased Highway 61 and holy shit. It does away with my complaint that Dylan just doesn't rawk enough. Thinking about Nashville Skyline next. Looking forward to this breakdown (be it of the tracks or Mitchell, whichever comes first).

I think so.

This was me for about one month last September/October.

Listened to like seven Dylan albums every day and that's why he climbed up into my Last.fm top 10.

Have barely listened to him since besides Nashville Skyline, though.

Looking forward to your insights and reviews of Dylan....how does it feel?? --- great; to know you're doing this!!

A daunting task Mitch. Looking forward to this as a soon to be highlight of the internet.

I read it about 8/9 years ago, should really get it out and re-read. I enjoyed it though, got through it quick enough. Same with Down The Highway, both did a fairly good job on an almost impossible subject.

"Come back some other day,
You sound like a hillbilly;
We want folk singers here."




Bob Dylan
Released 19th March 1962

Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/album/5ei12Bs1Ivtcok4p6tbS03
Lala: http://www.lala.com/album/504684633538602392

There’s that section in Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch when he muses over the feeling you get when you see the childhood picture of someone who went on to go on to do great things, like a young JFK, Paul McCartney or Susan Boyle as well as when you see a picture of Hitler or Stalin at a young age. It’s a strange sensation of knowing what lies ahead and wondering what they would think if they knew the place in history they would take. I feel the same way about this album. It’s certainly not a bad album by any means; it can be favourable compared to the debut albums of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, which differ slightly from this one in that they were chart bothering monstrosities straight away. (Bob Dylan did not chart in the US however it did chart at #13 in the UK, mainly on the back of the success of following albums). The album is all about potential, within five years he’d recorded so many songs that blow this out of the water that it’s not an album that I, or dare I say anyone, not around listening to music before 1967 bother with much. That’s not to say it doesn’t have its moments, it clearly does.

'You're No Good' is a brief and make weight start to his first album, a cover of a Jesse Fuller song. There's a the rambling, ramshackle train rhythm and the harmonica with influence of Woody Guthrie obvious straight away. It's worth noting that on this album he is, like The Beatles on theirs, putting forward an element of his live act and throughout you sense it's still coming together, embryonic and the amount of covers on here and the way that he will go for a shrill reading of a high part he can't reach stamping his own take when he couldn't imitate to a certain level. On the first side we also run through blues classic 'In My Time of Dyin'" which of course would go on to be included on Physical Graffiti and one of the more staggering things about the rawness Dylan puts it through is that in common with a lot of the songs on the album it wasn't part of his live repertoire and in fact by all accounts had never sung it before. Following that there is another song that has a more famous version, 'Man of Constant Sorrow' which of course features in O Brother, Where Art Thou? It's one of the more obvious songs in thrall to Guthrie, which despite the young age of Pop music as a medium is one of the strange things about this album, that a 50 year old would be the key influence on a 20 year old kid from Minnesota. For anyone mentally unstable and doubting that influence listen to Guthrie's 'Ain't Got No Home' or 'Talking Dust Bowl Blues'.

Towards the end of the first half we are treated to two songs that are so different in mood and subject they show Dylan as performer was every bit as good as Dylan the song-writer would blossom into. Howling through 'Fixin' To Die Blues' copying Dave Van Ronk's arrangement of the song by Bukka White. On the next track he's presenting the world with his lilting harmonica arrangement for the Scottish folk song 'The Bonnie Lass o' Fyvie',also known as 'Pretty Peggy-O' and elsewhere 'Frenario'. The first half is rounded off by his almost thrash take on 'Highway 51'. The second half starts with a switch back to American folk with 'Gospel Plow' another song that appears to be running down the train track and with it's obvious gospel connections (Luke 9:62) means that Slow Train Coming wasn't Dylan's first attempt at tackling something of that vein. Sounding scarily like he would do almost thirty years later on 'his' arrangement of 'House of The Rising Sun' (likely Van Ronk's again) another dark song that brings up the number of songs concerned with death, mortality (The final track is a cover of Blind Lemon Jefferson's 'See That My Grave Is Kept Clean') and despair to a larger number than on any Dylan album up to maybe 1997 it's another song where Dylan brings his own pained vocal knowing that he couldn't begin to match the more resigned and despondent version that Nina Simone did on Nina at the Village Gate two years earlier. 'Freight Train Blues' was also rattled through in a single take and is the only track on here that touches country despite that it's obvious traditional and blues roots. For me the least essential track on here but I can't help but smile when Dylan coos and huh-yuks like the bumpkin he affected (in the same way that Ramblin' Jack Elliot did) after holding the title for that long note. The style of this song would of course show up time and time again over the next four albums.

'Talkin' New York' is of course were things really get started, not only the first original on the album but not possible to hear without thinking of Dylan in a black cap and sheepskin jacket arriving there and immersing himself into the Greenwich scene. Even on his own material not released at this stage there's already that strong story telling element to the songs as well as what would go on to be his trademark wit. Likewise the other original song (well lyrics, it's the first of many Dylan songs with original lyrics and a borrowed tune, in this case Guthrie's '1913 Massacre') 'Song To Woody' sees another, more poignant and moving take on the road Robert Zimmerman was travelling down. It catches Dylan in reverence to the man that he idolised and ironically finding his own voice in paying tribute to him.

For me though, the best track on the album is prefaced by the spoken word intro highlighting how Eric Von Schmidt taught him 'Baby Let me Follow You Down', it features some of Dylan's best harmonica playing of maybe his entire career it's the only moment on the album for me that holds up to his strongest work. It's the track where the passion, emotionally intensity, forcefulness and moodiness are all in place as well as the doffing of the cap to what came before whilst stamping his own personality firmly on the song.

1. You're No Good 5.5/10
2. Talkin' New York 6.5
3. In My Time of Dyin' 6.0
4. Man of Constant Sorrow 5.0
5. Fixin' to Die 5.5
6. Pretty Peggy-O 6.0
7. Highway 51 Blues 5.0
8. Gospel Plow 5.5
9. Baby, Let Me Follow You Down 9.0
10. House of the Risin' Sun 8.0
11. Freight Train Blues 4.5
12. Song to Woody 8.0
13. See That My Grave Is Kept Clean 6.0

Initial score. C+.
May 2009 Score C+

Think that's still fairly accurate.

ah, yr brilliant.

This is going to be a fantastic thread.

Hopefully it'll convince me to finally check out the Dylan albums I haven't heard yet.

Whatever that spotify thing is, it doesn't work for us lowly Canadians.

Anyway, to be frank I'm not a huge fan of the first album at all, aside from "Song to Woody".

per wiki:
In an interview on the documentary No Direction Home, Dave Van Ronk said that he was intending to record it at that time, and that Bob Dylan copied his version of the song. The Animals enjoyed a huge hit with the song, much to Dylan's chagrin when his version was referred to as a cover of The Animals' version — the irony of which was not lost on Van Ronk. Dave Van Ronk went on record as saying that the whole issue was a "tempest in a teapot", and that Dylan stopped playing the song after The Animals' hit because fans accused Dylan of plagiarizing the Animals' version.

Spot on with your scoring. "Baby, Let Me Follow You Down" and "Song To Woody" are certainly the highlights here.
I love the Live 1966 Bootleg Series version of "Baby, Let Me Follow You Down." He rips it apart on there.

His debut is a fun little romp, a nice debut that doesn't exactly cement his place in the scene as a talent to be reckoned with. Personally I love the Jesse Fuller cover (though no one but Jesse can be Jesse, that guy was on a plane of his own. one man band, lol). Baby Let Me Follow You Down is also classic.

"people going down to the ground, buildings going up to the sky" always loved that line about NY.

The album is so unassuming in his canon that I never really consider listening to it anymore. But now I want to hear it again.

I skipped it but I feel like I can't go any further into his work until I hear where he started out. Maybe I can get it at the library or something.

I'd give this an A

i think it's underrated, but A is a reach as far as i'm concerned

great thread

at first blush i'd have to say i think some of the preliminary reviews are a bit low, but i'm a big dylan fan. in terms of the rankings they look to be more or less in line with my way of thinking

John Brown alone makes it an A. Some of the best versions of those tunes ever recorded, IMO. Desolation Row being one that is especially noteworthy. The musicianship, overall sound and cadence are also nice. The set list is well contrived.

This is why it's hard to really rank those early Beatles/Dylan albums with the later stuff. Albums hadn't really become albums yet. It was still normal for half of a record to be covers, for albums to simply be collections of songs and to record things pretty quickly.

this, so far, may be the most impressive thing about this thread. the fact that you've listened to all of these records and were able to grade them so. i'm a fan, but i'm not a big enough fan to have heard everything he's done. i tend to shy away from all the records that everybody else says are terrible.

i'm looking forward to reading, helping out talking in here.

i really gotta re-start that Who thread again...

nah, he didn't listen to 'em either

I am out on a limb when it comes to the mid to late-60s shit. The nasally, ranting troubador is not my thing. Highway 61 Revisited is amazing (A+), but I have never been a huge fan of B on B or JWH. They are really good and interesting, but I don't go gaga over them like others do that I know. This is Dylan's heralded lyrical period, it seems, whereas I think his lyrics are probably better even in the 80s. Nashville Skyline kills B on B, IMO.

The early guitar shit is great and timeless.

I still don't understand the C on uplugged, but the rest is pretty decent, I suppose.

I re-listened to Modern Times the other day and I'd have to say it's gone from about a B- to an A- for me since I first heard it.

fuck it. i've just played it through in the background at work on youtube and i might just agree with you. dignity, man. shit

Ha ha, I haven't listened to those nearly as many times as the better ones but I do own them all on CD for my sins.

These are two of my favorite under-appreciated Dylan albums.

This should be an interesting thread because I love Dylan, love the thread: and the thread's creator has a long ignore list: with myself included...

I am so with you on that. It's hard not to give Oh Mercy an A, but I can respect the B+.

I like Jokerman, but I agree with the C there. Album sounds pretty tinny, also. Vocal sounds make Blonde on Blonde sound good in comparison, and I hate B on B vocal sound wise.

Good luck Mitch - here's hoping it doesn't send you nuts.

Great start too

Not ignoring people, just not much point me responding to points on albums that are 25 entries away from now. I'll get to them.

The debut's okay...of the outtakes, "He Was a Friend of Mine" was good and "House Carpenter"'s amazing. I wish he had included those. Otherwise, nothing great on the debut, not even the originals.

A better representation of his early years is the 'Minnesota hotel tape' he recorded in December 1961...easy to find bootleg (I posted a link here once).

I listened to a bunch of Bob Dylan albums a couple months ago but in retrospect really only enjoyed another side, nashville skyline, and highway 61 revisted

nashville skyline the only one that i thought was really enjoyable without having to force myself to do so.

Yeah, those are my three favorites, too, funnily enough. Undercooked Sausage OTM.



Oh, and Time Out of Mind sounds cool.

Basement Tapes has a lot of good songs.

Blonde On Blonde is good if you skip like half of it.

I dunno, it's too late for me.

I do intend on reading every word of this thread, however!

wow. i mean...wow.

and no.

fall in love with Blood on the Tracks, or something man.

i don't listen to Dylan either :shrugs:

Blood On The Tracks is an F-.

Best thing this guy ever did was provide "Tears of Rage" w/ some competent enough lyrics, so good for him.

simply bogus

I am holding the mouth of the canon open and pissing into it itt.

you just can't say things like that, it isn't done!

In a coffee shop today had to do a double take at a guy who looked uncannily like present day Bob.
Was walking out and commenting on it to the person I was with and the lady working there says, yeah..right...I thought the same thing.

I really don't care much for Blonde on Blonde, but I can still recognize it's genius.

Nashville Skyline is one of his finest records. His vocals sound better, yep with the weird voice, on this album than at any other time in his career, besides the '73-'76 era and arguably every album since Time Out of Mind, and including Time Out of Mind. Overall, his greatest song in terms of song craft is probably Lay Lady Lay, IMO. That song likely marks the height of his creativity for me: the persona, the sound quality of the recording, the mastery of a genre on a whim and only done once, the accessibility, and ultimately: the mega-hit.

Another thing is: once you play Nashville Skyline on the piano you are blown away by the mastery of craft there. Ironically, I think the same goes for BonB: awesome song craft: just such a horrid sounding vocal tone.

I was listening to It's all right ma, today and I was struck by the pretentious nature and youthful idealism that I found there. Bob's grown up a lot since those days. Excellent album cover right here:

I disagree, I think Blonde On Blonde features very listenable Dylan singing.