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after years of not getting what all the fuss was about i am enjoying 'The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan' after a friend forced it upon me.

so, not crap for the one album and the odd other tune here and there...

Bob Dylan (1962): An inauspicious debut. Not crap but not revelatory either.

The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963): Revelatory. Released a few days after Dylan's 22nd birthday, he was sufficiently mature enough to have written--and included on a single fucking album--the following songs: "Masters of War," "Girl of the North Country," "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall," "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right," and "Blowin' in the Wind." That's more masterpieces than most careers can boast. Not crap.

The Times They Are a-Changin' (1964): More protest-oriented as the title track suggests, but any record that includes "One Too Many Mornings," "Only a Pawn in Their Game," and "Boots of Spanish Leather" is all right by me. Not crap.

Another Side of Bob Dylan (1964): "All I Really Want to Do," "It Ain't Me, Babe," and the glorious "To Ramona" are my favorites from this record. "Chimes of Freedom" is nice, but it's more like a sketch for the surreal visionary epics that would soon follow. I've never been as enamored of "My Back Pages" as most people are; I think that older/younger couplet is pretty cheesy, actually. Still, this album is not crap.

Bringing It All Back Home (1965): His finest record of the 60's, maybe his best ever. I'll take it over either of his next two records, much as I love them. You've got the funky pop hit ("Subterranean Homesick Blues"), a much more subtle take on the protest song ("Maggie's Farm"), some really lovely love songs ("She Belongs to Me," "Love Minus Zero/No Limit"), a surrealist masterpiece ("Mr. Tambourine Man"), perhaps the prettiest song he ever wrote ("It's All Over Now, Baby Blue"), and likely the greatest: "It's All Right Ma, I'm Only Bleeding." Not crap.

Highway 61 Revisited (1965): Then again, it's hard to say that any record is better than this one. Fuck, it's so good: the title track, "From a Buick 6," "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" (a personal favorite), "Queen Jane," "It Takes a Lot to Laugh," and, oh yeah, a little song called "Like a Rolling Stone." Not crap.

Blonde on Blonde (1966): I'm not crazy about the opener, and I rarely put on side 4, but everything in between is pretty much perfect. Everybody says this is his masterpiece--and they're right! Not crap.

John Wesley Harding (1967): A very understated record, instrumentally speaking, after the racket he kicked up in Nashville, but there's nothing understated about the quality of these songs, particularly "Drifter's Escape," "All Along the Watchtower," "Dear Landlord," and the magnificent "I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine," easily in my top 5 Dylan compositions. Not crap.

Nashville Skyline (1969): I can do without the Johnny Cash duet, and sure, it's kinda weird how he sings on this one, but "Lay Lady Lay" and "Tonight I'll Be Staying Here with You" are carnal classics--and "I Threw It All Away" is a heartbreaking work of staggering genius or something like that. Not crap.

Self-Portrait (1970): I quite enjoy listening to this record. I think it was kinda brilliant, actually, to put out a record at the height of sensitive singer-songwriter self-indulgence, call it Self-Portrait (with a shitty self-portrait on the cover) and pack it full of perplexing cover songs. I like covers. They're not all good here, but overall it's not crap.

New Morning (1970): Inspired if uneven, the highs carry it: the title track, "Sign on the Window," "If Not for You" (covered nicely on her debut by Olivia Newton-John), and that song from that movie all you hipsters are so wild about. Not crap.

Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973): Wonderful soundtrack to my favorite movie. "Billy" is as fine a song as Dylan ever wrote, and while I'm as tired of "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" as the next guy (thanks a lot, Axl), its absolutely perfect accompanying Slim Pickens' slow knee-walk towards death. Do yourself a favor and seek out Peco's Blues, Dylan's initial Mexico City sessions for this record. Not crap.

Dylan (1973): I like his version of "Mr. Bojangles," but then again, I like just about anybody singing that song. I suppose this one's crap, though it's no fault of Dylan's: Columbia rushed this out to avenge themselves on him for putting Planet Waves out on Asylum.

Planet Waves (1974): My personal favorite (studio) Bob Dylan record. "Going Going Gone," "Hazel," and "Never Say Goodbye" are lost classics, and that's the tip of the iceberg. Robbie Robertson's solo on "Going Going Gone" is just phenomenal. God, I love this fucking record, his only studio album with The Band. Not crap.

Before the Flood (1974): This isn't nearly as good as one hoped a Dylan/Band live album would be. I hardly ever listen to it, but it's not crap by any means.

Blood on the Tracks (1975): All of the superlatives you've read are true. An absolute masterpiece of self-reinvention and soul-searing courage. "You're a Big Girl Now" is my number one Bob Dylan song, though I prefer various live versions circa the Rolling Thunder Revue to the more subtle incarnation here. "Buckets of Rain" has been a favorite in recent years, but I adore every song on this record. Even if it featured "Simple Twist of Fate" over and over across two full sides, it would be not crap.

The Basement Tapes (or, preferably, the complete Tree with Roots) (1975): A backwards revolution that is still being played out in our millennium. Not crap.

Desire (1976): Like New Morning, this record is wildly uneven, featuring some bona fide classics like "Isis," "Oh Sister," and "One More Cup of Coffee," as well as subpar stuff like "Joey" and "Sara." I've never liked "Hurricane" either--it's got some of Dylan's worst lyrics ever, if indeed he wrote them. More likely it was Jacques Levy's doing, and it'd be easy to blame him, but nobody forced Dylan to write with that Chesnut Mare-ridin' motherfucker. Unlike most folks, I'm not real crazy about how Dylan's and Emmylou's voices meld on here (or don't, as the case may be), but the playing is ace and the record sounds great; the material's just not as consistently strong. Nevertheless, this is a firm not crap. Incidentally, I love "Romance in Durango."

Hard Rain (1976): Love it. I am more than mildly obsessed with the Rolling Thunder Revue, my favorite live era of Dylan's career. Some of the performances on Live 1975 outshine what's here, but this is a great live album. Seek out the Hard Rain video, which was shown on television in 1976, for a glimpse of Dylan at his absolute peak as a singer and bandleader. Not crap.

Street Legal (1978): Will Oldham's favorite Bob Dylan record (he has covered "New Pony"). I love it, too--I put this album on as often as any of Dylan's records. Dark but spirited, thanks to the controversial backing singers. "Senor" is a minor masterpiece, and "True Love Tends to Forget" is a hidden gem. My high school chemistry teacher skipped school to wait in line for tickets to this tour. Not crap.

At Budokan (1979): One of only three official Bob Dylan records--all live--that I haven't heard. Abstain.

Slow Train Coming (1979): In some ways, my least favorite of the Christian records, but "I Believe in You" still slays me when Dylan trots it out in concert. Not crap.

Saved (1980): I haven't listened to this in ages, but I don't remember not liking it (and I would if I had). Still, in an attempt to be fair, I'll abstain. Love the cover art.

Shot of Love (1981): Slight but endearingly so, if a record that features "Every Grain of Sand" (Dylan's "People Get Ready"), "Heart of Mine," and the awesome "Lenny Bruce" can be called slight. Not crap.

Infidels (1983): Dylan's best record of the decade--yes, I prefer it to Oh Mercy, which I like just fine. I'm just not a big fan of Daniel Lanois' production. Besides, how can you not love a record that features a Sly and Robbie rhythm section with Mick Taylor and Mark Knopfler on guitars? Not crap.

Real Live (1984): Never heard it. Abstain.

Empire Burlesque (1985): Jesus, look at the cover of this record. Then check out the song titles: "Trust Yourself"? "Clean-Cut Kid"? "Emotionally Yours"? It's no wonder that this is Dylan's first bona fide crap album, a scant 24 years into his recording career.

Knocked Out Loaded (1986): "They Killed Him" is an intriguingly eccentric cover of a Kris Kristofferson song, and I like the epic Sam Shepard collaboration, "Brownsville Girl" (though not as much as "Highlands"). Still, I'll have to admit that this record is pretty much crap.

Dylan and the Dead (1988): I haven't heard this one either, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it's just got to be crap.

Down in the Groove (1988): This is often held out as the third prong in Dylan's Holy Trinity of 80's crap before the "comeback" of his next record. I do not subscribe to this theory. It's not a great record, to be sure, but "Death Is Not the End" (later covered by Nick Cave) and "Silvio," one of the rocking mainstays of his live set, are surrounded by enough decent material for me to enjoy listening to this record once in a while. Not crap.

Oh Mercy (1989): A really good record, certainly, but not as great as people say--nor is it that much better than many records that came fairly close before or after it. But it's damn good, especially the absolutely gorgeous "Most of the Time" and "Shooting Star." It is one of his finest post-1970 records, but I just resent how it's mythologization seems to eclipse so much other good Dylan music of the last 25 years or so. Not crap.

Under the Red Sky (1990): I guess this is why everybody crawled up Daniel Lanois' butt--they must have figured Oh Mercy was all his doing. Crap.

Good as I Been to You (1992): Dylan and acoustic guitar return to the folk tradition with fantastic results, particularly "Sittin' on Top of the World" and "Hard Times," the latter by a cat named Stephen Foster. Not crap.

World Gone Wrong (1993): Second verse, same as the first, only this time you get two Mississippi Sheiks songs, plus "Delia" and "Stack A Lee." As an added bonus, Dylan's notes on these songs, equal parts cryptic surrealism and fanboy gushing, read like rock & roll versions of Russell Edson, the appetite-whetting precursor to Chronicles, Vol. 1. Not crap.

Time Out of Mind (1997): Like that other Lanois-produced Dylan album, this is overrated but still quite good. I can't think of a 56-year-old man (or woman) who's made a better record. Not crap.

Love and Theft (2001): David Berman called this beer commercial blues rock, a remark that pained me because I could kinda hear what he meant. There's plenty of loose, spirited language here, though, a real departure after the heaviness of Time Out of Mind. And this, Dylan's first self-produced record, sounds really fucking good. It's too long, but it's a fine record to put on in the summertime. If I drank beer, I'd probably like it even more. Not crap.

Modern Times (2006): I for one think that it's pretty incredible that a senior citizen could top the pop charts--while openly lusting after Alicia Keys. I like this record a lot--it's leaner and meaner than either of its immediate predecessors. Bonus points for updating a Merle Haggard classic. Not crap.


If I've tallied correctly, it goes like this:

Not craps: 27

Craps: 5

Abstentions: 3

That's a a pretty good track record, if you ask me.

I think BER's assessment is pretty spot-on, coming from another hardcore Dylan fan.

I also haven't really dug into the late 70's/80's stuff, which I'm almost tempted to do now.

Dylan live: Eh, less than impressive. I don't think I would pay to see him again, mostly because he renders most of his songs completely unrecognizable due to his graveyard keeper croak.

The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3 is incredible, as is The Rolling Thunder revue concert.

My personal favs:

The Basement Tapes
Time Out of Mind
Blonde on Blonde
Nashville Skyline
Highway 61

Sure, he's kinda turned into a creepy old man, but he's certainly not crap.

he did a good show last week in buenos aires, he still has it, not crap!

alex maiolo wrote:Yes, if a moderator wants to move this stuff I think it's a great idea because frankly it's more exciting than talking about boring old Bob Dylan and his snooze fest music.Fair enough - ok then, I'm in.I listened to a bunch of old recordings the other day. First some four-track stuff, then early in the digital transition. First impression: I know we were using shit instruments and plastic mics and everything, but damn, these are bad sounding mixes. Listening to this stuff makes me feel so much better about more recent recordings - serious progress has been made! Why the hell did we ever mix these songs this way? I can only assume that we couldn't really hear them properly. And we were stupid.Anyway, I don't miss wrestling with the four-track at all. Not a bit. But it's true that the four-track recordings, being all murky and grainy and saturated, hide some of the flaws that the too-clean early digital recordings expose. Things got a little worse on the way to getting better.

projectMalamute wrote:That is the exact sound card I'm using out in my garage. It is in a 10 year old Athlon 64 machine running a free DAW on a free operating system. I use it to record band practice.Sounds like this:phpBB [media]The Elma song linked in my sig from the Lake of Fake comp was tracked to Pro Tools and mixed on a desk (using cheap outboard gear + stock plug ins) going in and out of one of those.

SorenKierkegaardsMom wrote:ISo noone has a favorite Bob Dylan album?!

I have mono copies of Freewheelin' and Highway 61 Revisited because ''you have to hear Dylan in mono maaan'' that I enjoy but I don't think I '*get* them the way Dylan hardliners do. Maybe you had to be there? Dunno.Definitely some standout tracks for sure due to people and places but couldn't give an educated C/NC vote either way at the moment. Just never been compelled to really dive in.

The Dylan thread bump got me thinking about the song Queen Jane Approximately for some reason. It started running through my head whenever I would click on this thread.Anyway, it's a perfect and really beautiful song. I wish I could write something that great. It's astounding what he did with just that one track: the thin reedy sound he was always going for, the wordplay, the incredible hook, and the vocal is right on.

Bringing It All Back Home