Six years ago I reviewed every single Dylan album, decade by decade. Why? Same reasons as ever I had room to fill. Here is my look back at Dylan in the 1990s. I haven’t read this in years and years -wonder if it is any good. I do believe I’ve improved of the years. But as a fan recently mentioned, I shouldn’t be allowed to write about music
Dylan went home in 1974 with a copy of his freshly recorded album ‘Blood on the Tracks’ and his brother suggested that he re-records some of the songs ‘because too many sounded the same’. Dylan executed and re-recorded half of it at Sound 80 in Minneapolis with other musicians.
Talk about changing your mind!! Or maybe that’s the wrong way of putting it. What I wrote about Conor and Dylan was true then but six years later can’t withstand a reread but it is getting one any way. Both albums were disappointments by the way, big disappointments. But that was then…
Who knows what anybody is really really like? So take these snapshot deep character studies as semi-fictional impressionistic cliches but with some truth thrown in here and there for taste. Much like TMZ, it is gossip by other means… But there is enough info out on these folks where it isn’t SCIENCE FICTION.
It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) – Bob Dylan – When people claim rock music has been going downhill since the mid 60s, they could easily show this as exhibit # 1. It is not that there is a line here and there which makes sense in the grand scheme of life, it is that some of these aphorisms are now cliches – A+
Back then, though, Buck and Merle were closely associated; two of a kind. They defined the Bakersfield sound. Buck reached out to me in those days, and lifted up my spirits when I was down, I mean really down
How about Bob Dylan’s 28th top ten album., eh? How about that. Costello on the new Dylan: “I think it’s really, truthfully, one of the greatest records he’s ever made. It’s so soulful. He’s obviously lived with those songs in his heart for a long time, and he sings them that way
What have I done to deserve this special attention? No vocal range? When’s the last time you heard Dr. John? Why don’t you say that about him? Slur my words, got no diction. Have you people ever listened to Charley Patton or Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters. Talk about slurred words and no diction
before we get to Dylan’s EIGHTH # 1 album in the UK (about 20% of all the albums he has ever released), let’s scratch our heads in amazement at the return of a guitarist who performed quite well with Dylan himself, Mark Knopfler. Brothers In Arms has two 80s masterpieces an nothing else much.
Johnny Cash recorded some of my songs early on, too, up in about ’62 or ’63, when he was all skin and bones. He traveled long, he traveled hard, but he was a hero of mine. I heard many of his songs growing up. I knew them better than I knew my own. ‘Big River,’ ‘I Walk the Line.’
An unescapable world for Dylan and a heaven in the heavens for the sun. Dylan gives the song the deepness of age, the weariness it bears itself. The music, more than anywhere else here sounds like classicist (indeed, all the songs here sound like they are arranged for a full orchestra – Grade: A
It would probably Bob Dylan’s to lose in the best of weeks, but the two songs I’ve heard are terrific, the reviews are insane, the Diana Krall album is a disaster, Kid Ink is not a fave of mine and nether is Butch Waker, and anyway it is Bob Dylan, right?
“It was a real privilege to make this album. I’ve wanted to do something like this for a long time but was never brave enough to approach 30-piece complicated arrangements and refine them down for a 5-piece band. That’s the key to all these performances.”
Why the peanut farmer former POTUS you ask? Because he is giving Bob Dylan this year’s Musicares Award and while I had my doubt as to Jimmy as far as presidents go, I sure don’t hate him. It is hard being the president, really it is. JFK was a great President, Clinton was a great President, but Carter? Well, at least he’s a Dylan fan.
He is a dynamic, charismatic presence, singing his recent songs, sometimes re-writing them already, with a passion that comes from knowing you aren’t finished, you aren’t a relic of the 60s, or 70s, or 80s, that in 2014 your work is better than it was in 1984
Albert Einstein is truly part of our pop culture and figures in many songs as expected: They Might Be Giants’ ‘The World’s Address’, Landscape‘s ‘Einstein A Go-Go’, Counting Crows’ ‘Einstein on the Beach’, Jimmy Buffett’s ‘Einstein was a Surfer’ Bob Dylan’s ‘Desolation Row’, and even Kelly Clarkson’s ‘Einstein’… so weird!
Chimes Of Freedom – Bob Dylan – Speaking of secular hymns, this was is as inclusive as a hymn can get, more so, every hung-up person in the whole wide universe even includes ETs!!! – A+
Here are the inductees for the Grammy Hall Of Fame and it is sure difficult (and a suckers game) to argue with any of them, though I’ll be happy to try but I’d have to really take a look at all the past songs inducted because, I mean, who thinks that’s Hank’s only tracK
Dylan has fought against our expectations and it has lead him, as a live performer I mean, down some dead end streets and back alleys. But at 73 years old he can manage our expectations and if you care and if you want to care and if it matters, you can leave your baggage behind and enjoy a vibrant important artist performing living, breathing pop music.
The setlist concentrates on the past 15 years to the exclusion of the golden age. Also interestingly enough, I couldn’t care less. In my opinion, Dylan has never had a fallow period but even so, this has been an incredible late period for the poet laureate on the 20th and 21st century.
this guy has recorded with about everybody in the music business, from The Rolling Stones to the Who, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin, the Eagles, The Beatles, the Kinks, the Clash,… basically there is a great chance that the classic song stuck in your head right now, was recorded by Glyn.
If the sound wasn’t so crappy, this might have been my favorite on the entire enterprise. The first 12 tracks are real good with some much closer to being completed tracks. “Jelly Bean”, “Any Time” and “Down By The Station” may not be the major major “sign On The Cross” or “I’m Not There”… still, I don’t know em so it is more exciting.
First, liner notes helped but I tried not to steal too much. next, the heart of the matter are blues vamps after blues vamps. Writer Rob O’Connor claims it is his favorite, for me? A masterpiece no doubt, but I’m not a big blues guy…
So now the first two CDs feel like working off the rust, country and folk covers while they get in a groove, and the 3rd and 4th CDs are the heart of the original material. The problem is, it is a litle too archivival. I’m not trying to pass my exams.
Here we go, all basement tapes 75 all the time and I love it all but especially “You Ain’t Going Nowhere” take one and the stupendous mindbending “I’m Not There”. One of Dylan’s greatest.
Show me a show that opens with “Things Have Changed”, includes another movie soundtrack song, the excellent “Waitin’ For You”, has four songs that open albums, five songs off Tempest, (including the two best) and ends with a very early song and a Sinatra song that will be off his next release, and I’ll show you a set worth catching twice.
He starts off doing drunken covers, raids the cupboard from some gone and little remembered country and folk contemporaries, and ends up with a handful of originals which are basically blues workouts.
Grade: B+
In roughly chronological order, the first thing you might notice is 16 of these songs are covers. The second is it is footed in country much more than folk. Third? It is awesome.
In the book, the songs are presented in alphabetic order, and the way it is printed respects Dylan’s own writing — based on Dylan’s personal notebooks and manuscripts; for example, a long line sprawls across the wide page if it is supposed to be unbroken
Not a bad line up but not the 30th Anniversary gig either, where both Lou Reed and George Harrison played among many others.The story floating around that George was furious at Dylan because he had assumed it was a charity gig but it was, of course, for profit. george’s last live performance as well.
To quote the great man to the great man, I’d see him in anything, I’d stand in line. But even by those standards, four nights at the Beacon Theater? Wow!! Friday November 28th, Saturday, November 29th, Monday, December 1st and Tuesday December 2nd, 2014.
I have a really really bad feeling about this one. rock nyc have already voiced serious concerns about the T Bone Burnet (the man who gives bad taste a bad name) produced high concept album, where in big time pop stars of a certain type, let’s call em Americana follies wherever they might come from, write the music to recently discovered Bob Dylan lyrics from when he was 26 years old.
People were jumping from electric poles, the crowd was pushing and the barricades were not holding up, it was scary! I have seen a guy passing out at a Shins in-store show at Amoeba, the poor kid had been waiting too long in the sun without water probably, but what else out of the ordinary could I remember?
Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I Go Mine) – Bob Dylan – This is the live 1974 version and as it heralds the finishing end of the 1960s, it also seems to strike out at… the audience? The US? Some girl who says Dylan’s kisses are not like his? The Band have never played purer pre-punk hard rock and Dylan never sounded more enraged – A
“Ballroom Blitz,” Sweet. Mixing bubblegum pop with Townshend power chords, songwriters Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman wrote a series of U.K. hits for Sweet, including “Little Willie,” “Wig-Wam Bam,” and the excitingly punctuated “Block Buster!” “Ballroom Blitz” is Sweet at their irresistible best and was a major international hit – it went to #2 in the U.K. in 1973 and #3 in the U.S. in 1975.
“I’ve lost you, I’ve lost you…” A hard tough break up song true, but it makes me think of their earlier band. “Age Of Consent” was New Order’s second album and their big break through and the album where they, indeed, surpassed Joy division. But this beautiful, lively but deeply depressing song is a Joy Division concept (without the Curtis poetry) added to a dance band concept.
Early Roman Kings – Bob Dylan – One verse is “taken verbatim from Robert Feagles translation of book 9 of the Odissey, where Odisseus meets Polyphemus”. So now you know – A
The great WW2 English songwriters Art Noel and Don Pelos (they did “Kiss Me Goodnight, Sergeant Major”) find a way too make the conceit on this singalong stick in your throat along with the childlike rhymes because whenever you’re singing “nursie nursie imma getting worsie” maybe you’re not thinking high concept but you are thinking danger. Where there is a nursie there is an injury – A
New York State Of Mind – Leon Russell – The horns sound like they escaped from a Sinatra Swinging Lovers album but it soon darkens down and Leon does exactly what you thought he would and does it for a long time – C+
The struggling, stranger rocker before he straightened his life out takes a love of his life and ties it to a specific time and place (nyc the week before 9-11), struggles through a freezing cold and adds an image for all time: “I was holding your arm, you were holding my trust like a child” and then it’s over. “I’ll always love you, love New York”.
Is it worth noting that the top four songs are Dylan covers and the following two are other covers? Call me an aging cynic but I kinda date people will be covering “Phreakin Awesome” thirty or even one year from now.
Bloody Burnett. I am so tired of this guy, there isn’t a thing he does I approve of any more. I blame the Coen Brothers, it all delves from the O Brother Where Art Thou, where he took Harry Smith’s work and put his name on it.
Franklin’s Tower – Grateful Dead – Less a Dave Mason soundalike on this version, and less a dance marathon than the Allman Brother’s superb version of Friday, but not bad at all – B+
In the mid-1990s I went back to the Bob Dylan of the 1980s and revised my opinion of his work that decade. At the time I thought it was a disaster, but with five years between myself and the end of the decade, I found myself returning and reappraising
From our own Mary Magpie’s Ghosts Of The Haunted, an ambient distorted track, like in the old days when you leave the TV on overnight and the station goes off the air, is matched with a single note by single note piabo composition and Mary’s disengaged voice – A-
some real awkward statements such as let Germany brew your beer/Let Switzerland build your watch/Let Asia assemble your phone/We will build your car’… wow, did Dylan the poet actually say this?
How Deep Is Your Love – Bee Gees – Exquisitely perfect disco ballad that changed the Gibbs brothers once and for all and the best line? “And you may not think I care for you when you know down inside that I really do” – A+
I think where mxdwn and I seem to differ is in what constitutes an impressive list of musical guests. When your biggest names are Built to Spill and Craig Finn, you might excuse me for not jumping up and down and clapping my hands. Still, I loved Bob Dylan In The 80s so who knows.
It doesn’t sound like that, most of the versions were kinda lame and except for Reed (and not except for Harrison who probably had a cold that night) the versions are nothing to really care about. In other words: you had to be there.
New York – Angel Haze – the final release of 2013, after poet cum rapper got sick of waiting for Interscope to release , I’m considering 2014 so I can include it in my 2014 brain. This is a reggae beat ode and very very good – B+
