Everybody believes this is the decade of Blood On the Tracks and I worship that album as well but like the big albums of the 60s, I can't really listen to it anymore. Maybe MAYBE, I could throw in "Lily" or "Lonesome"… but instead I have 4 songs off Greatest Hits Vol .
1. Watching The River Flow – "If I had wings, and I can fly…" I know it from Greatest Hits Vol II which included a number of new songs, including this piano based masterpiece with Dylan wishing he was back in the city and running into a man who was really shook.
2. When I Paint My Masterpiece – It is anomoetapiac (metaphorically at least). Dylan on the road in Europe and getting a little sick of it: "One day, everything is gonna be smooth like a rhapsody…" he declares, as he considers his impending masterpiece even as he writes it.
3. Serve Somebody- As big a risk as going electric, maybe bigger. His voice never better and the song has become a Gospel standard.
4. Isis – One of his greatest story songs, all tarot cards, greek gods, and loves arrow being chased.
5. Baby, Please Stop Crying – A cowboy story with Dylan as Gregory Peck. The woman in question has been "down to the bottom with a bad man babe" and so he gets his gun to settle all debts. Awesome stuff.
6. Going, Going, Gone – A paean to suicide as dark and light as it appears to be.
7. Knocking On Heaven's Door – That Sam Peckinpah really got to him. Best Dylan cover ever? Warren Zevon's version.
8. Mighty Quinn – When the Shaman arrives he will be bringing gifts is this heavy duty drug song. That's why you're gonna go to him.
9. The Man In Me – An ode to secual intimacy, rush released after "interesting effort" Self-Portrait.
10. Down In The Flood – And I'll throw in "You Ain't Going Nowhere" just for the shits and giggles.