Introduction

Bob Dylan

The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan 

The Times They Are A-Changin'

Another Side Of Bob Dylan

Live 1964

Bringing It All Back Home

Highway 61 Revisited

Blonde On Blonde

Live 1966: The Royal Albert Hall Concert

John Wesley Harding

Nashville Skyline

Self Portrait

Dylan

New Morning

Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid

Planet Waves

Before The Flood

Blood On The Tracks

Live 1975

Hard Rain

Street Legal

Live At Budokan

Slow Train Coming

Saved

Shot Of Love

Infidels

Real Live

Empire Burlesque

Biograph

Knocked Out Loaded

Down In The Groove

Dylan And The Dead

Oh Mercy

Under The Red Sky

Good As I Been To You

World Gone Wrong

MTV Unplugged

Time Out Of Mind

Love and Theft

No Direction Home Soundtrack

Modern Times

---

That used to be, according to my good ol' high school friend Toby Bargar, an announcement made daily out of a dorm window at the small Kansas City-area Methodist liberal arts college just prior to a loud public performance of 'Rainy Day Women #12 and 35' accompanied by some...um...herbal aromatherapy. Yeah, that's it. And the song...by this guy. Perhaps you've heard of him. Perhaps you've heard that he was big in the 60's and every once in awhile comes all-awrinkled up on TV to accept an award and say something stupid in that voice of his that creaks worse than an old floorboard. Maybe you've even caught one of his recent videos or television appearances, where this old creep scratches at a guitar and garbles out some dry syllables to some decidedly elderly sounding backing music. Or you've seen a new album of his on the racks whilst rifling through for the newest Rage Against The Machine album. Perhaps you've been wondering what the big deal is.

Thing is, this is precisely what Bob Dylan has been doing since at least the late 60's. He does his music year in and year out, makes precious little sense in public appearance and even less than that in many of his career decisions, and almost always does only what Robert Zimmerman wants to do at any particular moment. He used to never tour. Then twenty years later he toured so much people got sick of him. He did fun folk. Then un-fun folk. Then did fun rock. Then important rock. Then folk. Then country. Then roots rock. Then Vegas. Then gospel. Then totally out-of-character slick 80's rock. Then some more totally out-of-character slick 80's rock. Then folk again. And now some sort of rootsy stew that seems to tie it all together again. This can lead to some truly strange twists and turns, no doubt tossing off a few more of the fickler fans at each junction. And while he also hasn't been batting with consistent quality since the late 1960's, he also has precious little that can be dismissed entirely...and he's got like 40 albums. Why do people care? I mean, I remember when I was a kid and this guy was a wadded up embarrassment, with my friends' parents groaning and shaking their head as he mumbled his way through a Grammy performance in 1990. Why keep digging this old fossil out and have the industry kiss his pile-covered ass 35 years too late  after all his original fans have started dying out? Why put him up there on MTV or whatever just to hear those two polyp-infested vocal cords strain themselves to get up out of the rocking chair like a centurinarian diabetic going to get another insulin shot in his fibrous ass muscles? Why care at all?

Because the guy could, and can, write popular song lyrics better than anyone who has ever lived. And not only that, he introduced the idea that lyrics could be important, open to interpretation, contain references, and above all act as poetry. He took the populist American folksinger tradition and opened it up to the modern world. But more than that was his brilliance in execution: while most people expected such a talented 'folksinger' to fill us up with protest songs and message songs...something to march to, to organize to...Bob Dylan began writing songs that were a little more slippery than all that. He wrote about love, about relationships, about psychedelia, schizophrenia, heartache, and all the stuff that was supposed to be below someone like Bob Dylan. And if that wasn't enough, he was singing along to rock 'n' roll music, like some greasy teenager in a hot rod taking his date to the prom would listen to.

But you know what? He made rock 'n' roll music that was more intelligent, more serious, and more meaningful than anyone had ever dreamed of, and made it okay for other people to try to bring the same things into their own music. After Dylan, everything was different. While his folk recordings often sound like museum pieces nowadays, his more personal and humorous work remains as vital today as ever before. This is why people hold on like they do, and why at points in the late 60's and early 70's, people followed Dylan's words and actions like he was the Messiah. Who hasn't felt at some point like they'd lost their direction home? I know I have. Who wouldn't like to kiss off an ex-girlfriend with something like 'Positively 4th Street'? Or look at their hometown and think of 'Desolation Road'? Or feel a few mystical hairs stand up on the back of the neck when hearing 'All Along The Watchtower'?

Bob Dylan's drawbacks are obvious and irrelevant in their obviousness. You know his voice is unpretty. You know his music is always pretty basic and ho-hum, and while it's sometimes brilliant, you're not getting amazing hooks most of the time here. You know he often comes across like an old fart. He never cared much for making something 'radio friendly', and never really had much chart success anyway, even at his very peak. His guitar skills are rudimentary, and his harmonica is totally basic level. Since 1968 he's made a handful of excellent albums and a massive mountain of hit-and-miss toss offs. But you know this stuff, and the guy never makes any attempt to cover any of that up. He has never once deemed it necessary to explain himself or apologize (unlike John Lennon, who was similar in his wild left turns, and who never got tired of dismissing what he was doing last week as trash). Dylan never throws anything away. His live shows can feature any of the hundreds of songs he's released in his lifetime, and he's not afraid of his past whatsoever. You know, I really respect this guy much more now that I'm older...I used to worship guys like Jimmy Page who were suck 'rock 'n' roll' guys, but you know Bob Dylan is someone I've really grown into more and more over the course of my life. Fuck it. I'm getting too into it here...listen here, I'ma tell you something:

*Pssst....over here: It's the words, man.*

Dan Zozula
Any Short Comments?: I didn't want to review this album.... i wanted to review your introduction. An 18 year old Dylan fanatic, I find it hard to describe why I love the man so much. My friends constantly complain about his voice, about him, etc, without ever giving him a chance. But from now on when someone asks me "how can you listened to that old shit
from that old bastard" i'm going to print out a copy of your intro and hand it to them. Right on. And yea, it IS in the words, man.

Jim H.S. jim887arc@yahoo.com
Any Short Comments?: I don't want to review any album, but like Dan, comment on Dylan and your intro. The early 60's: me, Brit, puberty, sick of all the crap in 'pop'. Oh, the blues was there, for some relief, but what about all those vanilla-syrup no-balls folk songs?  But it began to change (times do, don't they?)  Someone in the next grade or two up played me this album he'd got.  I heard "Talkin' New York", "Song To Woody".  I woke up. Oh, sure, I don't like every single thing he's done, but damn if the guy doesn't keep on keeping on, and doing it better every time.  Even now, 2004, over 40 years on, we've reached the same point; the same cheap pop, the same vanilla pseudofolk.  I'm glad of the same antidote: Bob Dylan.

Jeff jschneek@yahoo.com

Any Short Comments?: Just a few Dylan general comments: I agree with your "Times" review - too strident, sub-Phil Ochs idealistic bullshit. Ranks down there with "Saved" in terms of cringeworthy moments. "JWH"/Basement Tapes-era is my favorite period - some of his deepest, most mysterious songs ("St. Augustine") and also some of his dumbest ("I took my potatoes down to be mashed...") But it all works. Look for "(Be Careful Of The) Stones You Throw" on bootlegs or Soulseek. Finally, here's some proof that you hit the nail on the head with the "he was just fucking up" analysis of the mid-80's period from his "Chronicles" book: "There were many reasons for the whiskey to have gone out of the bottle. Always prolific but never exact, too many distractions had turned my musical path into a jungle of vines. I'd been following established customs and they weren't working. The windows had been boarded up for years and covered with with cobwebs, and it's not like I didn't know it."
Basically, that's Dylanese for "I was fucking up"

Marcia Soprou soprou2@aol.com
Any Short Comments?: To the writer of the intro at the top of the page:  Bob Dylan started touring again because I turned him into the DEA because he is a heroin addict, and Phil Morris of the Malibu Police Department, a DEA officer, then called me back on the telephone to tell me that the DEA had sent helicopters to surveill all of Bob Dylan's property in Malibu, CA, so Bob had to immediately split his scene!  This happened because Bob Dylan had been making and distributing porn films of me without my knowledge, and then the feds and the Malibu police department told me about it, among others, including Mick and Keith of the Rolling Stones, who have tried to help me dump the horrid, horrid, porn and heroin problems that Bob Dylan still insists on, ever since!  This is the truth, and I also started an FBI investigation of Bob Dylan over this, and was instructed, after meeting with the FBI about this in Los Angeles, to send all information about it directly to the Director of! the FBI, which I did!  Do you want to hear more?  Do you still think you like Bob Dylan?  As I understand it, he is harrassing the boys in your colleges these days because, of course, really he is a homosexual and always has been.  Just to let you know.  I am 54 years old, and listened to Bob Dylan from 1965 on, all my life, and myself I never could have imagined all of this if I myself had not been caught up into it by the hypocrite Bob Dylan, who I have been told is really a member of the Mafia!
(Capn's Response: Porn films of a 54 year old? He MUST be a sick motherfucker. Oh, and write some more. This is the funniest paragraph on this site by far.)

 

Bob Dylan - Columbia 1962

Ima bout to commit the greatest crime the Western world has ever known and elect this very record, that's right, Dylan's debut, as My Favorite Ever Dylan Album.

Jesus! Why'd you throw the mouse like that? Don't froth so! I can have my opinions too, y 'know...

It's almost inexplicable, but I know this bunch of folk covers and hillbilly silliness is supposed to be disregarded from any consideration for any grade above about a B+ at most. It's badly and repetitively produced, Bob's voice sounds like a 14 year old hayseed, the guitar playing is rudimentary, the instrumentation is totally bare-ass, and the songs are bunch of the same old noises over and over about losing a love or riding down the line or burying ones bones when one bites the big bastard donut that awaits us all at the end of this here barn dance. You're supposed to listen once, go 'hey, so that's where he came from before he was writing folk standards', and file the album away far in the back of your record collection.

But I'm always, 100%, to-the-core entertained after this record. I listen to it at least as much as all his other 60's records, and probably far more often than anything other than Bringing and Highway. I jiggle along with 'You're No Good', smile knowingly along with 'Talkin' New York', and chilled frost-hard by 'In My Time Of Dying'...and that's just the first three of these American Beauties. Each one is super charming, and unless you're a die hard folk fanatic (in that case you already own and have worn out a few copies of this, no doubt), you'll probably not have heard more than a few of the songs on here. But the ones you have may be quite familiar, albeit from some strange sources. You've heard the Animals' 'House Of The Rising Sun', yeah? Sure nuff...and it's common knowledge that they were covering the version off of this album and not the ancient original that Bob took from. But what about Led Zeppelin? 'In My Time Of Dying', hey! So THAT's where that one came from. Of course there's a few less highly distorted 5 minute blooze-metal guitar workouts on this version, but I suppose you'd have thought of that. The Dead and Simon and Garfunkel used to do 'Pretty Peggy O' all the time, but their versions have less humor than this one's got in the first five notes. Woohoo, indeed...Bob sounds like he's riding a bull with a wild hair up its boo-tay in this performance. Let it not be said that young Zimmerman did not have a blast recording this album, far more fun than any album he's done since.

Gosh, what else? He plays acoustic guitar just like me, meaning sloppy as all get out, but rocking when need be ('Highway 51 Blues'), pretty when called for ('Song To Woody'), and just plain goofy spirited the rest of the time. But then, I learned to play along with this album and Bob learned from Memphis Minnie and Leadbelly and all those old dead folks. The voice? Well let's just say that never again did Dylan use his voice to play act they way he does here...just check out all the inflections on 'Gospel Plow', or the tension buildup of 'Rising Sun'. NEVER, not once, when listening to this song, have I failed to totally break out in all over-body chills when Bob howls out 'tell my baby sister...not to DOOOO WHAT AYYYYYEE HAVE DUUUUUU-HUUUUUN!!!!' I have all respect for Eric Burdon and his band's pop version of this song. It's no small feat what they did to convert this into a rock mini-epic in 1964, and cut out just enough to leave the feel of the song intact (the version here has 3 or 4 more verses not on the Animal's cover). But Bob Dylan packs more impact with two hands and one throat than the whole band is able to do...and isn't afraid to keep the protagonist female, either. Turns the song from a usual 'poor boy blues' to something a bit more meaningful and terrifying. Oh, and I'm sure I've heard 'Baby Let Me Follow You Down' done by some country guy or another, but my memory has been permanently damaged by a toxic combination of Robitussin Maximum Strength, Red Man chewing tobacco, and un-treated Russian automotive exhaust fumes.

I guess what I like most of all here is the juxtaposition (thanks, 11th Grade English Teacher!) of moods here. You got the heavy weather voodoo 'death trilogy' ('In My Time', 'Fixing To Die', 'See That My Grave Is Kept Clean'), the almost exploding with jollitude ('Freight Train Blues', 'Gospel Plow', 'Pretty Peggy-O') and a few pensive reflections (Dylan's own 'Song To Woody', which sort of sucks unless you're feeling really sentimental about Woody Guthrie). I laugh, I cry, I fear for my daughter, I look over my shoulder expecting to find a hellhound on my trail, and dread 'that coughin' sound'.  Bob Dylan introduces himself by playing a great bunch of songs written by other folks and only two by himself (the other is the funny and apropos autobiography 'Talkin' New York'), in such a spectacular way I fell in love with the guy and wanted to hear all his other records. What a strange precedent...to start with the debut record. I suggest you do the same.

Capn's Final Word: Oh my God...there must be some store of this kind of stuff deep in the fibre of my bones. Just like Pepsi runs in my veins and I can make biscuits and gravy with my eyes shut, hillbilly blues covers are in there somewhere from way back in my ancestry.

Mike     Your Rating: A
Any Short Comments?: No crimes were committed. I think this is one of his all-time best albums too. Just listen to his voice - it's so raw it's practically elemental. And those covers of "Man of Constant Sorrow," "Fixin' To Die," and "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean" - brilliant. "Talkin' New York Blues" is pretty funny, though not as funny as later genius-spazmo classics like "Motorpsycho Nitemare" and "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" (which is pretty much exactly the same as "Motorpsycho Nitemare" with different lyrics and amplifiers). Fantastic album.
 

Funny. Bob Dylan releases an album nearly as much fun as his debut, except this time he writes all the songs himself. If you were to blindfold two Cambodian boat people who've never once heard Bob Dylan before, and play them Bob Dylan and Freewheelin' back to back, and then asked them what they thought, the first thing you'd hear is a request for some food. Then after smacking them around a bit, they'd probably tell you that the songs on Freewheelin' sound stronger, more fleshed out, more fat on the bone, more juicy, higher calories. Then they'd demand some food, and if you didn't give it to 'em they'd probably kill you with their bare hands and go and knock over a Denny's. Frigging Cambodians. Illegally kick some Commie ass up in there 30 years ago and what do you get? Genocide and a neverending stream of hungry refugees that won't ever buy a Bob Dylan record.

Anyway, like the slope said, I hear that Bob Dylan writes better, funnier, catchier folk songs than the real guys used to do. Want meaningful, humanist, tunes that shake the world by the lapels and as Why? 'Blowin' In The Wind' may do it for ya. If you need something with a few more sharp teeth, try the Biblical-scoped 'A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall', a tune that describes the coming Apocalypse better than that crazy motherfucker out on the corner with the sandwich board, anyway. Want love songs? You get the nostalgic 'Girl From The North Country' or if you're in a less charitable mood, the marvelous countryfolk kiss off 'Don't Think Twice It's Alright'. Topical humor? 'Talkin' World War III Blues' is hilarious in a political way, and 'I Shall Be Free' is just plain hilarious in a Bob Dylan way, along with his 'Blues'. This guy's got a monster sense of humor, in case you hadn't been privy to all the new shit, and when John Kennedy calls him up and asks what the country needs to grow, Bob answers 'Bridgette Bardot, Anita Eckberg, Sofia Lauren' (sic?) it got a fucking good laugh that got outta me, lemme tell you what.

It's not like every song on here is a clear winner, and it seems like the thing goes on just a tad long, 13 songs and almost 50 minutes...and just to think a concurrent Beach Boys album was like 6 songs and 25 minutes, and most of those songs sounded like 'Surfin' USA'. Okay, all of the songs on here sound like, well, one of the Major Categories of Folk Songs (The Basic Strum Tune (like 'Blowin') The Rusty Country Blues, The Minor Key Lament (aka Dirge, maybe)). You couldn't dance to this stuff even if you tried real hard. And had extensive training in Dancing To Music Without Connection To Black People. 'Bob Dylan's Dream' passes through my synapses without leaving much of a residue, like 'Song For Woody' without the hamhanded nostalgia that almost makes me feel like crying when I'm not bored out of my brains. For political stuff, Dylan makes his point much clearer using humor than speaking earnestly in the manner of some bored bystander as he does on 'Oxford Town' (sample line not used: 'Oxford Town Oxford Town, cops made me take my weed plants down, maybe 'cos they're world renowned, no one getting high in Oxford Town'). And while 'Masters Of War' is as powerful as a turkey baster full of freebase, it's also so bald-faced venom-spitting, to those used to Bob Dylan's usual form of taking someone apart with snappy turns of phrase and such, this song seems way too blunt, like performing surgery with a chainsaw. But he never did get all that good at true protest singing, maybe because his heart wasn't really ever in it. He could write those sorts of metaphorical songs like 'Blowin'' all day long, but get too concrete and Bob loses his charm and just gets sorta irritating. See The Times They Are A-Changin' for further evidence.

That and the fact that besides a trap set and bass showing up on the sweet cover of 'Corrina Corrina', this is just Bob and his trusty twanger and hummer for an hour, this could add up to a bit of a bore for folks used to hooks and neat production and all those aural pacifiers all the time. But get into it, and listen to the words and the way he sings 'em and you'll never again wonder why I just don't give a pretzel for most artists' lyric sheets.

Capn's Final Word: Bob at the top of his 'folkie' game, maybe less of a raucous good time than Bob Dylan, but sheeeit, you used to sing some of these songs in grade school music class, man!

Joe     Your Rating: A+
Any Short Comments?: Love this album, it deserves nothing less than an A+.

Bob plum forgets he's got a sense of humor and lays out a line of protest songs so lock-step and preachy and slow and dire that you'll wonder if you have the strength to make it through the whole thing. And I wouldn't blame you if you didn't, because this album flat out sucks. The big 'hit' here, meaning it's firmly filed in the American Lexicon right after 'Blowing In The Wind', is the title track, and it's okay for something that doesn't hold a candle to much of anything on the first two albums, and has a message that nowadays seems more than a little out of date. Ain't nothin' changed in those times or these, Bob, and that's where your legacy really lies. That's why we still care.

But not about such pieces of dry rot as 'With God On Our Side', 'Only A Pawn In Their Game', etc. etc. etc. It's all so obvious.  The words sound like listening to some crusty hillbilly's life story for 40 minutes, and if you can get some entertainment value out of sad but dull tales of human misery like 'North Country Blues' you must be an animal-torturing sadist who steals elderly women's underwear, because this stuff just bums me out. Sometimes I wish I'd been there when Hattie Carrol was dying so damned lonesomely and sped the motherfucker on his way with a baseball bat, get my meaning? 'When The Ship Comes In' is snappier, but its just a bald rewrite of 'Hard Rain'! Musically you can almost hear Bob Dylan trying to steel himself into sounding convincing, but he seems happy to fuck with the tempos like on 'Pawn'. See, Bob liked writing tunes like he did on Freewheelin', you know, goofy funny stuff mixed with heady emotion-drenched impressionism. Here it's like all his friends went, 'Hey Bob, what, you selling us out? Don't you know there's heartache and pain out there you should be telling people about? And you better keep it as clear and punitive as you can, or the 'little man' won't understand what you're talking about...forget all those metaphors and shit. Oh, and keep that voice of yours as sedate as possible so we don't start any riots!' This is folk music for aging liberal intellectuals who privately get off on tales of human misery while publicly shedding tears for every black man who gets offed by the cops.    It gives them a feeling of superiority covered up by their feeling of being champions of the unwashed populace. It's the kinds of folk music those people like, one where all the answers are plain to see, all of the fingers of blame are clearly pointed in the politically correct positions, and no one ever even has to get up off their fat arses and think for themselves at all. It just pushes some old bleeder party line, circa 1932, 's all. It's not all a big blimp of blahs, but it's darn close. I think the heartbreaking 'Boots Of Spanish Leather' is quite pretty (George Starostin says its a lesser rewrite of 'Girl From The North Country' and he's right, but I know I still like it, and small pleasures are harder to find here than a height-weight proportionate woman at a Golden Corral buffet), and 'One Too Many Mornings' is like a preview of later triumphs of loneliness in the big world like 'Desolation Road', but most of this stuff is aimless, rambling, and as likely to crack a smile as that frowning mug on the cover. Who stuck a cockroach in that man's coffee that morning?

Capn's Final Word: Really, besides being disco, this is a nice laundry list of things Bob Dylan shouldn't be. Long, tuneless, overserious, realistic, depressing, preachy...and listening to others. Best thing Bob ever did was to stop considering what other people thought about his work.

Daniel Zozula     Your Rating: C+
Any Short Comments?: I've agreed with all your Dylan assessments, especially your introduction. Yeah, this album blows, for the most part. But "Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" does, in fact, not. A harrowing song. Listen to the verse where Dylan sings "and she NEVER done NOTHIN to William Zangziner.." . Truly a chilling moment
(Capn's Response: Yup, I'll bite.  That's a mighty strong moment, especially whenever I've heard it played live. But that doesn't quite make up for a long-ass album of greytone platitudes of boredom.)

As an album I used to hate but have since reconstructed myself, I still hold this album up as some weird linear interpolation between Times and Bringing It All Back Home. Like, if you drew a line between the marvelous bright-eyed fresh rock music on Home and the colorless suckfest of Times, and found the precise middle of that line, that's where you'd find Another Side Of. Musically, this ain't changed none at all, its all tempo-retarded strumming and the occasional (but much rarer this time) harmonica punctuation, which probably explains my initial distaste in this one. It could also be considered to be Bob Dylan's version of In A Silent Way or Rod Stewart's Smiler, the last ever album by an artist still holding to fans' initial expectation, even if by the thinnest of threads, enough to cause uneasiness but not enough for a diehard fan to begin to panic wholesale. 'Cos Bob more or less makes an album loaded with pop songs disguised as folk, arranged for only Bob with guitar or Bob with piano. Listen to 'Black Crow Blues' raucous barroom piano and tell me that ain't rock 'n' roll, or that if played by a full band (and possibly by a different singer, you know how it is), 'Spanish Harlem Incident' wouldn't be prime for Top 40 radio. Of course he's not quite as far out as 'Mr. Tambourine Man' yet, of course (hey, it's 1964...LSD hasn't even gotten around!) but his lyrics have gotten much more personal and oblique...'To Ramona' sounds very much like Bob is writing for someone close (probably Joan Baez, who he used to Zimmerman, doncha know) and the journey-through-this-hard-life travel imagery of 'My Back Pages' definitely rank as some of Bob's best work as well as pointing to the future. This is the first time his words get twisted and 'psycho' (as opposed to the more down-to-earth goodness of Freewheelin'), and one can truly warp a brain trying to get every twist of phrase and reference Bob throws out, but I suggest you try. This is real lyricism, thanks.

Only the middle songs seem to revel in oldness. 'I Shall Be Free No. 10' may or may not be a flat out sequel to 'I Shall Be Free' but it sounds like one. It's funny, sure, but he already wrote that song. He hadn't written 'Motorpsycho Nightmare' yet, though, and wouldn't rewrite that one until 'Bob Dylan's 115th Dream' on Home. Both of 'em are funny as hell, though, especially if you dig 60's movies and politics (there's tons of shit about Fidel Castro on this album). And 'Chimes Of Freedom', though kicking the piss out of most anything on Times, fits in with that albums' Nebraska straightforwardness and Iowa corniness to a Texas Tea what with its' misty eyed dedications to protesters and refugees and other such human trash. Just kidding. Me, I love the Cambodians. And I think 'Ballad In Plain D' is a bit long and slow and limp to finish the album, but then again, it's the first in a line of similarly down-hearted album finishers. Maybe it's a new genre or something, the rambling Bob album closer. Of course this one's a narrative of a breakup rather than, you know, a description of the planet like 'Desolation Row' or whatever 'Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands' is, so maybe at certain times in one's life one could relate to this if one has ever had one's heart ripped from one's chest by one's life love. I have! By I blocked most of it out! I cherish my psychological defense mechanisms!

Shite. 'Plain D' is not the last song on the album. It's actually another one of those durned Top 40 pop songs, 'It Ain't Me, Babe'. So forget all that. This song rules! It's not long or dull at all!

Capn's Final Word: So if you're a big lyric person this is the album for you. If you tire easily of strummed guitars and lots of words words words, you'll have much less fun with this album than the three immediately following. But didn't those narrow-minded folk fans get it? He's so a rock guy now!

Live 1964 - Columbia 2004.

I'm not usually the kind of dude who likes to listen to a hick with a voice like Phillis Diller with a sinus infection slide through several dozen wordy, beatless excursions, accompanied by only a scritchy guitar mixed way low down and a swishy, random harmonica mixed way up high,  .but this is Bob Dylan, one of the best standup comedians of the second half of this decade.  And one of the best political singers.  And one of the best love-song writers.  And not a bad lay, if you ask Joan Baez (who makes an appearance here, right about the time I find some reason, any at all, to leave the room in which this album is playing). This third live issue from the Bootleg Series continues the inscrutable brilliance of the first two volumes, and though there's far less to these particular grooves than the band-as-orchestra 1975 issue or the chopped-and-blown Albert Hall volume of a year later, this is still required listening for a fan of early Dylan.  I understand there's folks out there for whom Dylan, and especially his 'folkie' period (I dunno, I may be cracked worse than Flava Flav on payday, but most of these sure don't sound like folksongs to me) don't exactly beat out a night watching Quincy reruns and trimming the cuticles on the ol' entertainment totem, but that ain't me, babe.  Listening to Live 1964 is like hearing a good jazz album...Dylan bobs and weaves through his lyrics like Cassius Clay, and punches in the gut when he's not buttering us up with songs so funny they make idiots like Ray Stevens look like they should go back to cleaning urinals.  It's made all the better when you consider that 1964 was the most fascinating year of Bob Dylan's career.  This was the year in which he began to 'blossom' from the rather strict didacticism of his Times protest-singer period to the pop poet iconoclasm that marked the next year's massive highs.  Dylan, unlike nearly anyone else, thrived during transition periods in the 60's. He'd already proved it a couple of years before as he moved from a hillbilly cover artist to a songwriting genius in the span of, like, 6 months, and would later prove it again as he stripped his approach down to herald in John Wesley Harding and the sweet, underrated Nashville Skyline.  If you scan the setlist of 1964, you'll see a motley mix of crusty old (more than a yer, anyway) glorious classics and iron-maiden protest warhammers, the fresh, quirky recent Another Side of material, and the as yet unreleased concoctions that would later comprise Bringing It All Back Home and damn near start rioting. Bob's shift towards pop stylings is hidden under a Martin-and-mouthharp smokescreen that keeps the puckered audience from catching on, though I seriously doubt this mass of over-polite early-60's bookworms would even have had a riot in 'em. They're so skittish they clap like a Japanese audience and titter like a girl's locker room whenever Dylan opens his yap.  Okay, so the man is funny in a sharp, obviously tweaked-up way, but the applause shuts off ridiculously like someone switches a lightswitch at a proscribed moment, as if Dylan would walk off the stage in a huff if they let out a 'woohoo!' or clapped longer than proper in modern society. They were damn good Communists back then in the Sixties, stood in line real stright and all that....then again they feel perfectly alright shouting out fucking requests like it's American Bandstand, so maybe they're just fucked. Compared with a live album from, say, three or four years later, the difference between audiences is a shock. 

Your Rating: A
Any Short Comments?: YOU're hard on Baez ."No personality" is hard to swallow when you know she was a committed artist who was with MLK and used to sing in front of the induction centers during the Vietnam War. Anyway,the best D/B duets were never released:they were part of the "Hard rain" film -but never made it on record or CD- :the flamenco rock of "poor immigrant" and the fiery rendering of "deportees" are mind-boggling and marvelous examples of their collaboration.
(Capn's Response: Just because she sang in front of induction centers doesn't mean I'd want to get caught in an elevator with the woman.  One listen to her intro to 'Drugstore Truck-Drivin' Man' on the Woodstock soundtrack and I'm halfway to writing a check to Pat Buchanan.)

Dylan Fan      Your Rating: B-
Any Short Comments?: I'd have given it an A if you had praised the amazing Joan Baez, but instead you opted to lampoon the legend who actually helped Dylan get acclaim.  I feel that this album should include their duets for the sake of history.  Joan introduced Dylan to the Newport Folk Festival and rightfully has her place on this album.  And her personality is very complex, her sense of humor brilliant. 

Some time in late 1964 or early 1965 Bob Dylan was heard to say the following phrase:

'Fuck It.'

He was frankly tired of trying to babysit a bunch of crusty old radicals who wanted Bob Dylan to be their new messiah and keep rewriting Times over and over again. He took himself a trusty Fender Stratocaster and plugged it into a whole new world of Beatles and Animals and Hawks and Eagles (okay, no Eagles yet, but it fit well, didn't it?) And while his songwriting hasn't exactly changed that much from when we last heard from Bob, his sound has. His new backing band is fresh, bright, an explosion in a bottle and is well-versed in how to play rock 'n' roll as raggedly and loosely as possible...in other words it's a perfect fit for Bob's giddy attic-clearing wack imagery. They can sound drunk like on 'Maggie's Farm', can bash it out garage style like 'Outlaw Blues', and they can imitate the best sort of folk-rock band on 'Love Minus Zero/No Limit', and have a good time all around. So Bob's not completely plugged in, but this was enough for the old crustybutts in his former audience. They were gone, and off to follow some twerp like Phil Ochs or Donovan or something like that. You know where that left Bob? Appealing to kids who'd spent the last few years growing up with the Beatles and were thirsting for something more chewable to wrap a lobe around. And as a result fell into being another sort of messiah to a new bunch of freaks who took much more shaking to finally get rid of, but that's a can of worms we'll talk about later on.

But this album is a blast, a roller-coaster on acid. Bob's humor is at his absolute peak on here: 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' not only invents rap music (sans funk beat, of course) but also prvides us with a no-seat belt fun ride through the more humid areas of Bob's imagination. His world is one of brightly lit city streets filled with hopped up pimps and clingy girlfriends who talk in headlines and biblical references, and when you could spin any one of these lines into a song (or concept album, if you're a progger) of it's own...you know you're in the presence of something bigger than life. The effect is exhilarating. 'Maggie's Farm' is probably some veiled reference to politics or the folk rock scene or something, but you could probably apply these characterizations to just about anyone if you wanted to. Or you could just sit back and follow the funny twists while your Dad tells you to turn this down like mine did (This has got to be one of my dad, Gerald Atkinson's least favorite songs of all time). 'Outlaw Blues' and 'On The Road Again' are just goofy rocking pointlessness, but 'Bob Dylan's 115th Dream' tells this story about Bob's adventures in America with Christopher Columbus that's so far out damn hilarious that Bob himself has to start it over again to get it out right. Yeah, musically it's the same as 'Motorpsycho Nightmare', but who gives a flip? This damn thing is funny.

When Bob gets serious (or at least less obviously funny, because I wouldn't go and say 'Tambourine Man' is serious.) His songs get a little more weighty and melodic. 'Tambourine Man' is a wonderful little romantic ditty to a drug trip, and probably made more people get misty eyed when remembering their youthful chemical innocence than you could shake a sugar cube at. It's performed mostly solo Bob with acoustic and lip harp, but with just enough quiet electric lead to remind you we're not returning to Folk World, thanks. His 'love' songs ('Love Minus Zero/No Limit', 'It's All Over Now, Baby Blue', etc.) foreshadow what is to come on Blonde On Blonde, and are just as great. When Bob goes completely solo, like on 'It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)', he takes pains to sound as far from expectations as possible. This is another rap tune, but set to a devil-dog chord procession and featuring Bob Dylan at his absolute most serious. As serious as 'Masters Of War', but here he takes on just about everything on the face of the planet and it's absolutely breathtaking. The lines just spin off of one another for seven and a half minutes, and, as I said above, each one holds a song (or book or play or whatever) of its own. It's as if he wanted to write the Song of Songs, and did so in such a massive thought-purge that when he finally ends up with a kind 'if my thought dreams....could be seen, they'd put my head...in a guillotine, but it's all right, ma, it's life and life only' you feel as if you've come to some place in this world where, despite all the bullshit, it's still worth going on. 

Capn's Final Word: Spectacular album. A breakthrough adventure, especially if you like some witty silliness as well as the heartbreaking stuff.

Essentially the same vision as Bringing It All Back Home, focused and cranked to the eyeballs and all the screws tightened down. No acoustic vestiges like 'Tambourine Man' hanging around drinking all the free beer, either. Just one crazy raucous word tornado after another...it seems that Bob was a big speed freak here at these times, and it shows. He would just spit out these songs one after another while the musicians were sitting around the studio waiting for him to finish writing. He'd disappear into another room for an hour or so, come back and they'd bash it out. That's the way to make records, I say. None of this 6 months in the studio fixing each and every different snare crack. I still have never heard the benefit of doing record that way, except for freaks like Dark Side Of The Moon or maybe Minor Threat's Complete Discography.

Now, about the songs themselves: If he was in full comedy mode on Home, here he's gone from that to being just a little bit nuts, and just about every song excepting the first ('Like A Rolling Stone') and the last ('Desolation Row') is a variation on the spitting acid tongued humor we first met on 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' and 'Maggie's Farm' and the like. Musically it's about the same as last time, too, if maybe a little more controlled and as such, a bit less interesting. Hey, what else you gonna do with basic mid-60's blues rock? And each song is either straight from Lesson 1 from Blues Rockn' 101 ('Stay fast and use a lot of cool piano or organ') or Lesson 2 from the same course ('Except when playing slow and using a lot of cool piano or organ'). So if you're against the idea of basic rock 'n' roll you could raise your hackles after one boogie progression too many. Guitarist Mike Bloomfield keeps the solos interesting and sounds more like Robbie Robertson on here than that wonky Injun himself. (Note to those who don't know who Mike Bloomfield is, don't worry. I didn't for a long time either, and every time I read anything about this record I used to feel really dumb. He was a white American blues guitarist in the Paul Butterfield Blues Band who, at least for those pre-Clapton and pre-Hendrix days, was a big deal. After that he was pretty much forgotten about. So now you know. The PBBB album East-West is their big one.) (Oh, and the organ player guy you're supposed to know is Al Kooper who later formed the first incarnation of Blood, Sweat, and Tears, but quit before that big fat-sounding guy took over on vocals.)

Oh, so I'm supposed to talk about individual songs? How'd that become my job? (*looks at name tag that says 'Ryan Atkinson - Web Music Reviewer'*) Crap.

Okay, so 'Like A Rolling Stone' is everything you've heard it is, the condemnation of the formerly posh rich bitch who at some time got ol' Bob down, but now gets her own back after being conned by the wizened street folks. But what makes it special is the fact that Bob is smart enough not to make this lady sound inhuman...in fact, one could easily fit onesself in her shoes. Plus the organ riff and vocal delivery is superb. A deserving classic. Not quite so with 'Ballad Of A Thin Man', which is sorta just mean, and probably was used to incorrectly jam all of the squares who ever dared to criticize the Baby Boom Counterculture Selfish Idiot Generation. Hey, man...sumpin's a-happenin' here butcha don-no what it is, dy'a, Mister Jonez? (or Dad, or Senator Goldwater, or lower-class simp who was dumb enough to get drafted, or whoever dares not to smoke pot and act like a hedonistic loser). It's funny, but I go for the hell-on-earth described by God and Dylan on 'Highway 61 Revisited' better...that's funny stuff and it moves, too, and that counts a lot with me. And as for the finishing monstrous goddess of gloom 'Desolation Row', all I can say is that it's taken me a long time to get into this song, but I am now one of it's fans. 11 minutes of Bob intoning about the saddest town on earth and some Jerry Garcia-esque lead acoustic guitar is all it is, but the close listeners will be rewarded with some of Dylan's most heartbreaking-ever lyrics.

This is probably Bob Dylan's best ever lyric album, but I'll still choose Bringing It All Back Home   as his best record, because it's a little more hard-hitting and varied, or better yet, Bob Dylan because it's one of the most entertaining and fun records in my collection and I'm a complete fraud. But it's hard to choose 'bests' from this prime-period Bob Die-lan (as I used to pronounce his name when I was 10 years old, always wondering who this Dillon character was) because he's such a maniac with the pen. His bands are good, his music is fun and rocking, and he's always got some wacky lyrics turn up his sleeve. What can you say?

Capn's Final Word: A successful repeat of the same thing that worked last time, a great collection of great songs. You don't find this stuff any more.

Tom     Your Rating: A+
Any Short Comments?: On my top 10 favourite albums of all time list for sure....its definately dylans best
 

ddickson@rice.edu

'None of this 6 months in the studio fixing each and every different snare crack. I still have never heard the benefit of doing record that way.' YOU know which record I'm thinking of, Mr. Anti-Lange. :)

Still, you've got a point.  In general, an artist has two options: a.) Bash out a record as the muse hits him, hoping for gold, or b.) Work on it to the point where it doesn't SOUND worked over.  Both approaches result in great records--occasionally.  Anything in between usually results in mediocrity or disaster.  Prime examples of the utility of option a.) include Dylan, the Beatles, and (to a lesser extent) the Stones.  Prime examples of option b.) include Prince, Beck, the Smashing Pumpkins, and a good amount of Led Zeppelin.  You can tell Genesis' Calling all Stations is a prime example of option c.): Not Enough Either Way.

Now--the album.  What can I say.  Mega-classic of the '60's.  Like you said, bashed out in 3 days, but these songs are so musically brilliant and well-played that they sound labored-over for months.  And the lyrics!  The record would be amazing if Dylan was singing about electric manhole covers in Greenwich, but this is his peak as a lyricist, at least in the '60's.  Some people don't like the overall grunginess, and neither did I when I first listened to it.  It takes about seven listens before this sinks in as a work of genius.  But it sinks in, my friend.  Believe the hype.
 

Now this here double banana split is Bob at his most demanding. Meaning, if you're not already well into the guy, this album may well put you off quite sharply because he's pulling back into himself and cutting back on the entertainment value. Wait! Wait! I'm not saying this album isn't entertaining, not at all...it's just that the statements tend to be more personal and the level of humor has definitely gone down from Home and Highway. And the music? Tempered as well, this time settling mostly for 'romantic mid tempo' than 'balls out 50's rock'. What I'm trying and failing to say in any short manner is that, if before you had at least some signs of cool songs or performance energy or quite so much obvious hardy har or whatever, more or less all you've got  is Bob and his feelings, and that's gotta sustain you through four sides.

Luckily, I think it does. This is a warm and fuzzy album that girls will probably love the heck out of, and I find to be pretty darned good when I'm not in a mood to hear Bob kicking ass all over the place. For one, everything on here, more or less, is kind, like Dylan is attempting to reform on his ol' hating 'Positively 4th St.' ways. Sometimes he even sounds sincere, like on 'Sooner Or Later (One Of Us Must Know)', but man, a lot of these songs sorta sound alike and I have a really bad time telling them apart. I guess I can, but I prefer to listen to this as one big long fluffy song. Some parts stick out a bit for some reason or another, like the opening drug/criticism double entendre extraordinaire 'Rainy Day Women #12 and 35'. Funny that some folks think this is a pro-drug song, and probably more than one of us is guilty of putting this on while smoking some of the seedy stuff, but it's quite obvious that silly ol' Dylan was trying to provoke that sort of reaction, when what he really meant was 'Everybody must get stoned' as 'everybody must take their knocks'. Stupid people. 'Stuck Inside Of Mobile' is waaaay too repetitive at over 7 minutes, and I've been stuck inside of Mobile, Alabama before. Actually it was Biloxi, Mississippi, but what are we doing, splitting hairs here? People also usually particularly love 'Just Like A Woman' with it's revisitation of the rich chick Bob used to screw formula we've seen more than once or thrice from the man. Here, too, is Bob being kinder than he usually ends up being with his women. Eh, just you wait until 1975....that's when he gets real ugly again. Oh, and the side-long closer 'Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands' is the true test of Bob's career...it's much less interesting or universally themed than 'Desolation Row' from last time, but you might just find a crack in your armor that lets this one in and makes you think that maybe Bob was some sort of melodic genius after all. Or you'll quickly tire of Bob's best pre-cycle crash attempt at crooning (he tries to sing, or at least use his voice as an instrument, a lot more on Blonde on Blonde than before) and endless descriptions of said weepy valley woman.

That applies to the entire record, in fact. The songs are too superficially similar and too concerned with their warm themes to kick your butt around, but when the mood gets you it's perfect. And rest assured that the Bob Dylan genius is still fully functioning here as well, once you get over the fact that he's forgotten about protest/psychedelia/comedy completely.

Capn's Final Word: Very, very pretty and very, very samey. But when it's genius, samey is good, right? Bob as a living, feeling human being.

Nathan Harper nator9999@comcast.net     Your Rating: A
Any Short Comments?: Ok, first off, what's up with the title? Blonde on Blonde? That sounds like the title some late-night adult feature they'd play on HBO. Second, are you freakin' nuts? This is definitely one of Bob's most accessible albums if not THE most accessible. As far as I'm concerned, 'I Want You' and 'Just Like a Woman' alone blow away 85% percent of everything else he ever did. Why, you ask? BECAUSE THEY HAVE MELODIES!!!! Good lyrics are never a bad thing, and can definitely ruin a song if they are really bad, but lyrics are alway always ALWAYS second priority to good music. Dylan's lyrics just aren't good enough to justify all the droning, overlong, unmelodic clunkers he usually forces down our throats. If I were rating him on George Starostin's scale, I would be happy to give him a big, fat ONE for diversity, because he really deserves it. He's been writing the same song over and over againfor the past four decades!!!!! (takes deep breath) Whew. Well that felt good. Sorry if my rant offended anybody, but I just really don't get Dylan....

Matthew Byrd  matthewbyrd@hotmail.com  Your Rating: A+
Any Short Comments?: I think this is possibly.... well, no, I think this is Bob Dylan's best album.  It is, quite simply, a great collection of short, pithy pop songs (with a few longer breath-takers like the one a-'boot the weepy woman of the valley and, of course, visions of johanna) that, once they dig in, are incredibly enjoyable.  There's the problem with Blonde On Blonde, it's the fact that most people(myself included) hate the bloody hell out of the album the first few times around, or even still hate it after that.  I don't blame them, I'm lucky that one night I was just in the mood to listen to it, I think that if I didn't listen to it then I would still hate it now.  I still have to wait for that to happen with Blood On The Tracks, by the way.  I really can't say much that hasn't been said... I just really enjoy this album.  4th Time Around definetely sounds like a bit of a snap at John Lennon (listen to Norwegian Wood).  I even heard that John Lennon was a bit par!
anoid about Bob Dylan insulting him in his songs.  But, anyway, if you want a hazy and melancholic love-oriented album, this might be for you(uless you hate bob dylan and screeching harmonicas).  I say this is the greatest album ever made... Born To Run being second.... speaking of that, why in the bloody hell does everyone belittle Bruce Springsteen and Born To Run and well, every Bruce album?  It doesn't seem like they have legitimate reasons, he IS talented, if you hate him, you still got to admit that.  I guess you just have to say you like Bob Dylan before anybody gives you respect enough before you can say you like Born To Run, of all things, without being considered a qualified retard.  I'm sorry, I'm just tired of the blasting of a truly magnificant album.  The same goes for Paul McCartney.... I mean, yeah, he made some nonesensical stuff, who cares?  Many think that his stuff is basically nonesense and that John Lennon was the power behind the Beatles... what is tha!t?  Paul has written some of the most memorable melodies I have EVER heard, oh, yeah, he's SO superficial, like your smirky and smug indie rockers(I'm not saying they're bad, just not gods) are so deep and they know the secrets of the universe and can tell you what hey are with a phrase that may be only superficially well thought out but rarely as good as anything Elvis Costello, Randy Newman, Bruce Springsteen or Bob Dylan himself could have thought up.  I'm sorry for that rant but some review sites(not yours) can really bug me.  Yeah, of course old doesn't mean good but it doesn't mean bad.  I don't know, I've just finally come to a decent site after seeing a bunch of comments all night that bug the be-jeezers out of me... phew.  Thank you, goodnight.  

ddickson@rice.edu

Basically Highway 61 on steroids. Call me Crazy McGee, but he NEVER rocked (or squealed) as hard during the '60's as on "Passing the Time", "Most Likely You Go Your Insanely Long Song Title Etc." and "4th Time Around." But screw it--this is as classic as it gets. Sprawl, mess, and absolute genius. "Absolutely Sweet Marie," "I Want You," "Positively 4th"--he was never as relentlessly catchy as he was here. Gah, I can't rave enough about this album. It's like a sea of candy for the Dylan fan. Everything you could want spread over 73 minutes. Hell, I'm not even much of a fan of the lyrics. Mostly about women anyway. Or about buildings, maybe. Who can decipher the man's maniacal metaphors, anyway? Hell, his singing sucks, too. He doesn't hit a SINGLE note during "Mobile." Not a SINGLE! But this is still some of the best music ever made. And not even his best album? What a guy. Oh, yeah, and "Visions of Johanna" is one of the all-time ultimate make-out songs, if you ignore the lyrics. Supposedly about ghosts 'n shit.

Melanie     Your Rating: A
Any Short Comments?: The album's great,it's my second favorite Dylan.

Err...he was stuck In Biloxi MS? Thus partially inspiring "Stuck Inside Of Mobile..."-and he didn't like Biloxi? Yep,he's weird alright.

Appenidix-Oh it was YOU who was stuck in Biloxi and didn't like it. Ok,then YOU'RE weird.
 

Bobby Bouchei      Your Rating: B
Any Short Comments?: I must say that a third of this album is crap, and the rest is marvelous. I especially like Stuck Inside Of Mobile, but there are many songs here that don't cut the line for me. My advice to the reader is this: Listen to the album, and then download all the good songs, because it's not worth your mullah.
(Capn's Response: Yeah, I've got my Mullah right here, and though he smells like Falafel and sheep, and keeps babbling about Allah in Persian all the time, I'm not gonna let him go for anything less than Bringing it All Back Home)

For a little background for those who the words 'Royal Albert Hall 1966' mean nothing, here goes, edited for style: Bob's on European Tour with Hawks (nee Band). Limeys come see show. Limeys know Bob plays musical variety 'rock' from last three albums and year of press, etc., but want to hear one musical variety 'folk', sans electric current. Bob plays 'folk' and 'rock' sections. Limeys clap slowly for 'rock' section. Limeys yell 'Judas'. Bob grumbles (audibly) 'I don't belieeeeeve you.' Bob yells (inaudibly) 'Play fucking loud!' Limeys go home unhappy with Bob but feeling full of musical wisdom. Bob goes home pissed and wrecks motorcycle. Bob takes long break and changes style. Bootlegger goes home with tape, makes millions of copies. Copies make millions of dollars.

So that's whacha get, eh? I'll put it like this: for historical value this gets an A plus plus. For actual entertainment it's not flying much higher than a B+. The acoustic folkie part is performed and sung well (let's just say he likes his newer songs better, to be sure), but it doesn't add too much to the recorded legacy of Mr. Bob Dylan at all. I'll go on record and say that listening to live solo acoustic versions of songs that you've already heard and know is about as lame as tongue kissing your sister. But just as some folks have really hot sisters, this album has some surprises on the acoustic disc. For one, Bob can make even the most obviously aimless fucking around on the harmonica sound meaningful ('She Belongs To Me'), and that the melodies on his electric material sound just as powerful when strummed on a single guitar. 'Just Like A Woman' sounds very different, sadder, soberer, more like one of those gritty suicide anthems on Times They Are A-Changin' than a cute put down of a rich gril. What else? Ummmm....I really miss the hockey rink organ on 'Visions Of Johanna' and 'Desolation Row' certainly doesn't improve much here...it in fact feels even more boring and endless than in the original version, in fact reaches new plateaus of endlessness for Bob, which is a pretty lofty accomplishment.

But who cares? I bet you you'll be waiting the entire first disc through sitting on your hands (except for periodic glances at the CD timer) waiting to see just how bad it gets on disc 2. Don't get me wrong...the performance is great. Bob and the Hawks were a lot closer to sounding like some hotshot honky tonk roots band than the languid country rockers the Band turned out to be (and you can hear on '74's live Before The Flood). Some critics have described it as being nearly punky in execution, but they're all smoking crack. Just because Robbie Robertson is genetically incapable of playing a guitar solo smoothly doesn't make him Darby Crash, okay? Everyone sounded this fast and ragged on stage back in 1966...it was rock 'n' roll, baby! And this set has Bob waking up as well, to hear him wail on the opening 'Tell Me, Momma' is to hear the young man like you've never heard him before, because this was the only time you ever get to hear him perform live as a young man. And boy is this young man ever hacked off by his audiences' reaction. He not only redoes songs from his latest albums acoustically so the pointy-headed liberal wussballs in his audience don't get to hear the ol' favorites done the old way, he redoes those old songs ('Baby Let Me Follow You Down') in their hard, fast, loud-as-raped-by-an-elephant rootsy rock trappings. Pure. Balls.

See, lots of you young kids get to hear this album in it's proper place, get to skip his later live albums if you want to, don't have to sit around reading old accounts of how fantastic this gig was and how everyone should hear this, but you can't because it's just available on some really expensive bootleg you never can find. Nope. You got it easy. If you have been exposed to some of the hype and haven't come around to actually hearing it yet, you're probably going to be disappointed by the amount of actual 'audience sparring' going on unless you listen through about 15 times real hard on headphones, then you'll catch Bob's funny story and some of the things those goons in the audience were shouting. (What? It's not like they didn't know he did this kind of music at this point in time. He'd only released 3 albums of the stuff! Or had they saved up all their painful private tears of betrayal for over a year and jumped at the chance to run to the concert hall and spew out all their frustration at the man himself? Whatever. I bet they feel really stupid now.) But mostly it's your opportunity to shake your head at how narrow-minded these supposedly intellectual music fans can be. Watch out, 'cos they're still like that.

Capn's Final Word: So if I've piqued your interest enough to go out and pick this up, but not enough to puff you up as high as what the old rock writers did to me before this was released, I've done my job. It is Bob's best live record though.

Bob returns from his neck-snapping hiatus with a record that really confused the freaks when it came out. Back to folk? Back to country? Back to bearded black and white songs about outlaw heroes? Remaking Times They Are A-Changin' the way it should've been done the first time, with a beating heart replete with pulse, taking out all the ear-pricking preachy stuff and injecting it full of human feeling? And all this directly after Well, Bob, if you insist...but you better make it good. And well he does, as well as one could do with this sort of thing. In fact, I'd go and say that while JWH (with Sweetheart Of The Rodeo and Beggar's Banquet, probably) kicked off the 'back to the country' thang in the late 60's that soon blossomed into CSN&Y, the country Dead, the Band, then onward to the outlaw Texas C&W movement and bullshit Eagles piffle in the 70's, no one, including Dylan, ever topped the mood captured on this disc. It's like one of those late 60's Clint Eastwood spaghetti Westerns (you know, Fistful of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More, etc. etc.) captured on an LP and giftwrapped for us in black and brown and white.

But you really can't get your point across as a pious, buttoned down, rural bard while slinging out the same sort of wacko couplets and turns of phrase that Dylan was famous for. You have to tone it down, make it plaintive, pious, and straightforward, like a prayer or a wanted poster. So what Dylan does is return to telling stories, with a beginning, middle, and end, just like normal people tell. Luckily his stories are pretty snazzy, what with the whipcrack outlaw Robin Hood of the title track or the fable of 'The Ballad Of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest'. And when Bob feels like being hardcore, he pulls out something like the nightmarish 'All Along The Watchtower', full of more of those gathering thunderstorms and outriders on skittish black horses. It's not like you have much choice but to listen to the words anyway, because there sure ain't much in the way of music going on here. Take 'Frankie Lee', for example, it's simply Bob strumming the same three chords over and over again (doncha know, there ain't a chorus to be found), no fills, no frills, no nothing, while the trap player tippy taps and the bassist dwonks in a similarly rudimentary manner. Sometimes it picks up some, and Bob's harmonica makes some welcome appearances now and then, but this is for sure Bob's most intellectually demanding record. If before you could get all tied up in chains trying to pick your way through a lyric phrase, now you have to follow a story while attempting to keep your attention alert on top of the repetitive folk backing...damn. But, again, these stories are worth hearing, and stimulate the daydream muscle in a most rewarding manner...it's just that compared to Blonde on Blonde (or especially Highway 61 and Bringing), this sounds grown up, like an album a 60 year old would make. I'll also say something here about Bob's voice, which started to clear up about now (due to either quitting cigarettes and speed, or starting a diet of road asphalt and breaking a neck...you takes your pick) and get less rough...only to turn out more doughy and croony. I love his nearly Irish yodely delivery on 'Drifter's Escape', hate his pinched-nose whine on 'I Pity The Poor Immigrant' (which belongs, from stem to stern, on Times...it's really a loser on here) and his new timbre fits this music well...you couldn't go and quack out country music sounding like a hoarse speed freak, now can you?

And thank the good thing for 'I'll Be Your Baby Tonight'. A perfect little country love song to finish us off with a smile. Yes.

Capn's Final Word: So Bob gives us some hardcore Old Testament country and makes it stick. I say huzzah, but don't listen to it all that often.

Matt Wilson lwilso5@lausd.k12.ca.us    Your Rating: B
Any Short Comments?: You don't listen to it very often and yet you still give it an 'A.' The reason why you don't listen all that much is because the songs don't mean a whole lot to the average, non-Dylan fanatic. I mean what's he talking about here anyway? I know how it's supposed to be a classic, a "return to roots" or some such gibberish, but couldn't he have made these songs a little more easy to understand? I know "All Along the Watchtower" is apocalyptic (it's taken from the Bible), "John Wesley Harding' is about the outlaw (without the "g"), and 'Tonight I'll be staying here with You" is self explanatory but the rest? Try as I may I can't really figure out what he's on about in "The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judus Priest." There's a moral here somewhere, but...

"Dear Landlord" could be about God (as has been supposed) or it could be about skipping out on that month's rent. Ya just never know. Zimmie was supposed to have spent a long time on the lyrics to this album too. It just goes to show you... Some people probably like the abstractness of it all I dunno, but as for me I like to understand what a songwriter's  getting at before I go ahead and throw an "A" rating out. Still, everyone in the known universe rates this highly, so I suppose the failing's mine.
(Capn's Response: No, no....don't be too hard on yourself. John Denver needs fans, too.)

ddickson@rice.edu 

Sorry, Atkinson, I'm going to have to agree with the John Denver fanatic above.  This album is monotonous and minimal as poo, and about as diverse.  And who thought it was a good idea to end the album on a lightweight country
love ballad?  It wasn't Robbie Robertson, I'll tell you THAT much.

Still, it's DYLAN, for Carst's sake, and has that ol' vibe we all know and love, so it's got something going for it.  "JWH", "Geddy Lee and Judas Priest", "I Pity the Foo' Immigrant", and "Down Along the Cove" are all classics, and "Dear Landlord" and "Drifter's Escape" aren't far behind.  Oh, and the lyrics.  Good lyrics.  Nice lyrics.  Different from anything he'd done before.  Still, MUSIC is where it counts, and Blonde on Blonde, Highway 61, and Blood on the Tracks, musically, make this look like overrated hackwork by comparison.  Massively, gargantuanly revolutionary hackwork, but hackwork nonetheless.  If you want a definitive document of what Dylan was doing post-'66, pick up the Basement Tapes.  A lost classic, that is, and proof positive that Dylan doesn't have to be penning mind-blowing sentences to rule mercilessly

Alan Brooks  kerry_prez@yahoo.com   Your Rating: A+
Any Short Comments?: John Wesley Hardin is eerily understated; more than a (supposedly the first) back-to-the-roots album. Listen to this  album on a dreary, cloudy day and you will understand right away what the lyrics mean.


Clubbeaux     Your Rating: B-
Any Short Comments?: The reason this record has a different sound than all other Dylan studio records is that his usual way to do a song is to start with a progression, then mumble a melody using dummy lyrics (as you can see on Under The Red Sky when he didn't bother rewriting the dummy lyrics into real ones) then write the final lyrics, but on JWH he started with lyrics and set music to them.  Only album he's ever done that on
 

Well, Christ, if you're going to make a throwaway album, you may as well make it this goshdarn fun, and good. And don't be denied, this is one album that has 'rushed hackwork' written all over it, plus it's not even 30 damned minutes long. And almost 4 minutes is a live version of 'Girl From The North Country' with Johnny Cash (and some unbelievably awful duet singing between Mr. Growlin' Man In Black and Mr. Nasal Croon). I mean, Cash is one of my idols, and so is Dylan, but maybe it would've been better just to leave it for Johnny to sing all by himself, eh?

Okay, so that's the nails-on-the-blackboard track for me on Nashville Skyline, but the rest is all right, baby. Take Harding's 'Ill Be Your Baby Tonight', as sweet and authentically Nashville 1953 as that song sounded, and push it up 15 years. This is the light to John Wesley Harding's relative shade, the goofy grin to it's stern handshake. Tell you for one, you sure aren't meeting any poor immigrants or murderers on here, durn it. Okay, maybe an immigrant or two, but these are the kind that squaredance barefoot on the straw-lined floor, not the ones that shiver all huddled up beneath a cholera-infested government blanket. You see? If Bob was trying to appeal to our hearts and consciences last time, here he's (for the first time? the last?) appealing to our booties. Get up and boogie to the pleasant country music, already!

And he's a-sangin' sweet 'take your baby to the juke-joint and get yerse'f a kiss' songs as well, just like you'd find on a Waffle House jukebox, where you might actually still find the supergood radio hit 'Lay Lady Lay'. The blues get a little bluesier ('To Be Alone With You'), the ballads sound like pure Nashville tearjerker circa-1969 ('I Threw It All Away'). In fact, the whole thing sounds mod C&W, and goes for the same effects as your George Jones or ol' Tammy Wynette or whoever you care to name. The band is ultra-professional and a joy to hear, especially the liberal amounts of pedal steel (the instrument of the Gods). Nothing on here would be out of place on the Grand Ol' Opry, and nothing would shock your parents. Of course, nothing could particularly say to justify Bob Dylan's status as God of 20th Century Popular Music, either, but then again that was the entire point. He didn't want to be a huge Jesus-figure for a bunch of clinging freaks any longer. He simply wanted to play country music like he liked to hear on the radio, and while you may not be listening to this album over and over to find the meaning of life, if you like country at all, its hard to deny that this stuff is as high quality and entertaining as it gets. Which is enough for me. And you know what else? I'm so obscene that one of my favorite ever Bob songs is the silly throwaway 'Country Pie'. Fantastic song.

Capn's Final Word:  An extra packet of cheesy goodness crammed into your box of 25c Macaroni & Cheese. Cheap, not very filling or nutritious, but mmm mmmm.

Vladimir Mihajlovic     Your Rating: A
Any Short Comments?: A beautiful album,it may be short but every minute of it is filled with pure joy.Dylan's newly adopted voice suits the music perfectly well.
Get this one if you love country-rock.
 

It seems a bit provocative that Bob would create a low-key, lightweight ripoff double record full of country-rock ditties (roughly half of them covers, two originals repeated in two different versions, two awful live tracks, and two instrumentals), slap a fingerpaint portrait of himself on the cover and name it Self Portrait unless he was intending to con a few of his more gullible fans into believing this was going to be the Truth, about to come Straight From The Mouth Of The Prophet, his Final Comment on All This Weird Shit That Has Happened In The World. 'Sidelined' indeed…Dylan fans were always waiting for the next fucking Times Are A Changin' to come out and tell them exactly how to feel and what to think, being unsatisfied with the parables and obscure poetry of pretty much everything he'd been releasing. This was especially true after his motorcycle accident, when everyone was wondering 'Ooh! Me! My! Whatever does Dylan think about Sergeant fucking Pepper? I mean, they put him on the cover! Why doesn't he 'go psychedelic' and blow our minds with some Big Protest Songs about Vietnam and Lyndon Johnson, huh? WHERE'S DYLAN?!?!?!'

Well, Dylan was watching, no doubt bemused as to how he'd been deified by a bunch of airhead longhairs singing 'Blowing In The Wind' for weed money out in Golden Gate Park. Simple fact is, Dylan didn't give a fuck about psychedelia (he'd already 'done' psychedelia back on Bringing It All Back Home, anyway…wrote the fucking book on it with 'Mr Tambourine Man'), and upon his return put out John Wesley Harding, which was brilliant but confused everyone by comprising nothing but folk and country songs. Then came Nashville Skyline, which at least everyone understood, but still…FUCK!!! WHAT DOES DYLAN REALLY THINK ABOUT THE WORLD? The REVOLUTION!?!? WOODSTOCK! What does he think about me? I've got long hair and wear beads and joined a commune and am currently starving to death and have a bad case of the clap I picked up on the Haight, DOES DYLAN APPROVE??!?!?

 Whether Bob Dylan intended Self Portrait to be a widely-hated record that resulted in a notable decline in his popularity and myth is not my call to make. It sure seems that way from here, but regardless, it was the proverbial Final Straw for most of the hippies, the same way his appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1965 had been the final straw for the bleeding heart folkie purists. Now, the only people who really recovered from Self Portrait were the ones who A) got the joke, intentional or not, and realized that possibly there was more to Bob Dylan than people assumed, and that the main thing you could expect of him is to do whatever the fuck he wants to do or B) didn't find this simplistic loads of covers and half-songs to be too awful. Now, I'll be the first to admit that Dylan was never quite the same after the release of this record (or was it that he was never quite the same after the release of John Wesley Harding?), only releasing great albums in fits and starts, some dry spells lasting decades. But, well, he always seemed to do whatever the fuck it was he wanted to do, from Christianity to Budokan to 80's pop. And while he seemed to scramble to 'make up' for Self Portrait with the rush release of New Morning the same year, thus indicating that Self Portrait was actually an honest mistake, he never once apologised for it. It seems to me that this record was exactly what Dylan wanted to release in 1970.

 Then again, Dylan nearly confesses to being dry of ideas right here on Track 1: 'All the tired horses in the sun, how'm I supposed to get any writing done?'. Why doesn't he come right out and say 'Fuck it...I've given you almost a decade's worth of great music. I'm tired of writing good songs...I think I'll just dash off some shit and see how you take it, fools!' It takes a better man than me to really get to the bottom of this mess, so let's just agree it's a mess and discuss the music, huh?

 I'm just not sure it's exactly what I want to listen to, ever…what Self Portrait does is take the lightness of Nashville Skyline and combine it with the easygoing, no-heavy-messages songwriting style that he later employed on New Morning and was taken to its extreme on Planet Waves. Pretty much every song is backed by banal country-rock lite, running the gamut from the string-fractured 'All the Tired Horses' and 'Take A Message To Mary' to the drunken garage-boogie slop of 'Mighty Quinn'. This isn't the accomplished country professionalism of Nashville Skyline, though it comes close a time or two…it's more like Nashville Muzak - faceless and dull. The instrumentals 'Woogie Boogie' and the showtuney 'Wigwam' indicate Vegas more than Nashville, as does 'Let It Be Me'…Dylan doing an embarrassing Elvis impression. Of course, he does a great Elvis impression on 'I Forgot More Than You'll Ever Know', one of the few songs on here that actually resembles country music of a sort I'm familiar with, rather than limp dogshit like 'In Search of Little Sadie' and especially the 'Alberta' tunes, failed attempts at effortless songwriting that end up sounding simply inept. I'll step bravely out of character here and make a blanket generality about this record (I see you snickering! Blanket generalities have kept my family fed for three years now!) and say that Dylan seems to be consciously attempting to write in a lightweight manner (ala Willie Nelson and other great country songwriters), but never realized how difficult it really is….maybe there's really something to Britney Spears's statement regarding how anyone can write serious rock songs, but it takes a lot more genius to write catchy, lightweight pop tunes.

What was that? I guess I was just staring at your tanned, juicy, melon-sized love blimps. Could you repeat that? And make sure you lick your lips a lot when you do…

Not like Dylan did really fucking good on the covers, either. Now these sound like they were done as a joke. When Dylan can't even stay in tune with himself (on Simon and Garfunkel's 'The Boxer', actually a pretty good song in more careful hands), you know he can't be serious. Double for 'Blue Moon' and 'Copper Kettle' which are covered in so much cheese you might begin to think your trapped between Renee Zellwiger's thighs. 'Days of '49' is just kinda ugly and macho, a bad choice. Oh, there's also inexplicably bad live tracks of 'Like A Rolling Stone' and 'She Belongs To Me' from his Isle Of Wight performance, one of just a couple shows he performed between 1966 and 1974…so you just KNOW how the faithful longhairs were out in force for that one. Anyway, these two tracks have the dubious distinction of being so bad that they make 'the average, unbrilliant Self Portrait tune' ('Minstrel Boy', the 'Alberta's and 'Little Sadies') sound good.

 Anyway, I'll sum up Self Portrait like this: lower your expectations a lot and you may find some minor Nashville Skyline joys among this lengthy record. Just imagine these are outtakes (which should be easy…they sure sound that way to me) and you'll probably be satisfied with what this record has to offer, especially if you're already inclined to like country rock. Otherwise, it's probably wise to just take it as a joke and move on to the Seventies records. It's really not worth getting all riled up and writing 1240 words about.

Capn's Final Word:  Maddening, mostly because if you look at it empirically, Bob spent less time making this album than the time everyone spends arguing over it.

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Dylan is probably one of the most totally ridiculous items in the whole Bob discography outside the horse turd minefield we call his '79-'88 period, an album of Self-Portrait outtakes of sloppy cover versions released out of spite by Columbia after a bit of a contract spat.  It's not been available on CD as far as I know, and the records never sold anything anyway so you'll probably never encounter it in a dark alley asking for your wallet. Believe me, that's a good thing...the less said about this rotten fish landmine the better.  Suffice it to say, Dylan sings versions of such shopworn Crooning for Complete Goddamn Shit For Brains standards as 'I Can't Help Falling In Love With You', that one ugly bitch's hit 'Big Yellow Taxi' (and no, I'm not talking about Joni Mitchell), and that broke-dick, vomitessent proof of a spiteful, petty God called 'Mr. Bojangles'.  I'm assuming you've heard those well enough to imagine what Bob Dylan tweening his way through them in his patented olive oil-slippery Holiday Inn 10:45 P.M. Wednesday Nite Nashville Skyline voice with those bizarre Hammond organ tinkles and 'Walk on the Wild Side' background whores. I've never heard the traditional numbers, but I'm willing to bet that 'Ballad of Ira Hayes' (about a drunken Injun like Robbie Robertson or that guy who used to do those AAMCO transmission service ads about fifteen years ago) isn't gonna win any awards with the ever-so-understanding Native American community, and that Dylan himself isn't too happy to remember all the flat-ass notes he sings on 'Mary Ann'. His croon is taken to an otherworldly extreme on the closing torch song 'Spanish is the Loving Tongue', right before it becomes a waltz (yeah, yeah I know, but I'm really not kidding). Would you understand it if I said that while no one should have to sit through this album, everyone needs to hear Dylan sing these buttery extreme Poppin' Fresh ass-inflater dinner rolls once, just to realize he was capable of it? I mean, Self Portrait was bad enough, but at least it was kinda cute. Whether Dylan really intended for release or not, (and, I wonder, how could these not have been, considering all the orchestras and background singers and big reverby production? All that studio shit don't get bought with wooden nickels and free donuts, y'know...) this stuff simply makes the mind demand explanation as to why he felt the need to become Liberace for several months in 1970. Was this stuff really that much fun to sing? I guess if you discover that you have a voice that sounds like the fill-in vocalist for the Champagne Time Orchestra at the Airport Best Western in Decatur, Illinois, you feel like taking it around the track to see how she handles. But can't you do that while standing in the shower and soaping your nutsack like everybody else?

As a side note, there is one Dylan original - it's called Sarah Jane, and it substitutes a crap-ass heap of 'La la la la's for real lyrics, indicating to me that Dylan wasn't finished with it when he recorded this version.  Not that finishing it would've improved it much.

Capn's Final Word: So, you now know what happens when you fuck with Columbia Records.

After Self Portrait stunk up the public real good, the record company pressured Bob to come up with something a little less, you know, controversial this time, and since I haven't myself heard that double disc ode to killing your fanbase, I'm going to refrain from commenting. At any rate, New Morning is widely regarded as a big comeback and even more widely regarded as...well, I guess you can't regard something you forget exists, can you? What I'm saying is that early 70's Dylan is about as popular as herpes, and a lot fewer people have it. But c'mon, one acknowledged fuckup and we're going to ignore nearly 10 years of groundbreaking output? Ach!

Fuck it, I never heard this album until just a few months ago either. But if you can stomach the idea of yet another Dylan tossoff half-effort (started with Nashville Skyline, tossed off and simple but still great, and continued with Portrait, and continues here, be assured of that) filled with songs that, instead of each line being a gem you could go and run around the stadium with for an hour or so, you get about half an idea a song. Now, this isn't necessarily a bad thing if you're expectations aren't too terribly lofty, just ignore the fact that it says Bob Dylan on the cover. Cover it with masking tape, get yourself a Sharpie, put the words 'Bob Seger' and BANG! The best goddamn Bob Seger record you never heard in your life. One dude said 'not every goddamn album Bob Dylan releases can be Highway 61!' and he's spot on. Some Bob Dylan albums have to be New Morning, but there's room for all of them (not for Street Legal, though, but read on) Come in with normal expectations and you'll do fine. Goofy drunken stuff like 'One More Weekend' and the song the Coen brothers saved, 'The Man In Me', are the sort of relaxed, back porch sorts of pleasures that await you just beyond this beaded curtain in the champagne room. 'If Not For You' is the same simplistic song that sounded so right in the middle of All Things Must Pass, but here it's just another inebriated overaged stripper grinding a worn g-string into your crotch. And, well, I don't get 'Three Angels' or the strangely pious wank (again? geez!) 'Father Of Night', and 'Sign On The Window' is horrid junk not fit for my dental work. Oh, and lots of piano, but everyone says that. Not everyone says this, though:

Favorite song on the record? 'Went To See The Gypsy'

Capn's Final Word: Just 'cos it doesn't sound like your Bob Dylan doesn't mean it ain't Bob Dylan. And a distracted Bob Dylan tossoff in 1970 is still better than anyone else's distracted tossoffs, darn sure. Can't give it an A, though...too many fuckups.

But it's still only a 3/4 instrumental soundtrack album!

Okay, got that off my chest early so I can proceed to praise this album to the rafters. Bob's only foray into film acting (I think, anyway...oh, there's Renaldo and Clara, I suppose, but isn't that just endless onscreen cinema masturbation? I'm only reporting what I've heard, I've never seen it...hear hear! Hearsay!) and his only foray into soundtracking was for this Sam Peckinpah movie Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid (Bob played a man named 'Alias'...*chuckle chuckle*, oh, those dippy 70's filmakers). If only all soundtracks were this good. Since even the word 'sound track' doesn't necessarily conjure up images of enjoyable musical listening most of the time (and here I'm talking more about 'musical score' ala Yellow Submarine, not 'collection of songs applied to a movie rather than made into a regular album ala Saturday Night Fever), but I can report I had a more than simply okay experience listening to this album with headphones on waiting for my baby to wake up and start yelling while laying in bed last night. It's firmly country music, and most of that being instrumental excursions with lots of 12 string and pretty violin. The only real 'song' on here is the fantastic 'Knockin' On Heaven's Door' which beats the snot out of any of it's cover versions...it's a true inheritor of 'All Along The Watchtower's shiver-inducing nightmarism. But don't think the other stuff is any worse, really, it's just that only the 'Billy' songs have words, and those words are pretty dumb narration-sorta things telling about how the cops are across the river and how they want to send Billy the Kid to Boot Hill and all this stuff over and over again. I guess I really don't need to see the movie now, thanks. But I don't care what's on the film anyway as long as I've got this thing called imagination in my head, and I sure liked what I saw when I heard stuff like 'Final Theme' and 'Cantina Theme'. It all just goes to show that both a) Bob Dylan is an underrated musician as well as being a genius lyricist and b) most of these songs, with words, would've ruled just as well as 'Heaven's Door'...they're melodically strong, and prettier than the preacher's daughter on Fundraiser Car Wash day. I recommend this record for all the reasons not listed in the introduction.

Capn's Final Word: Some darn pretty country instrumentals, plus one of Bob's strongest ever tunes. What's not to enjoy here?

Bob must've been one tired-out sonofabitch in the early 70's, because his first real album since late 1970 sounds like the product of about 5 drunken days in the studio following 5 drunken days writing and rehearsing with the drunken Band. Hey, you know what the Band sound like? They sound like Willie Nelson's late 70's live band, but replace the fiddle with a weak organ and you've got it. It's like rootsy and as loose as your sister, but there's all these totally out of place sci-fi sounding chorus effects all the time, making everything sound like it belongs in the soundtrack to a 70's cop TV show like Rockford Files, or...no, wait! I got it! Vegas!! Starring newly inducted member of the Underground Country Club Robert Urich! Yeahhh! I mean Garth Hudson has to be the most critically ass-kissed keyboard player ever...but the man sucks balls without exception, except for those twoingy sounds on 'Up On Cripple Creek'. So with exception, then. Fuck you, intellectuals. Didn't Stalin and the Khmer Rouge finish all of you off already?

But anyway, Planet Waves is yet another tossoff job for Dyl and his favorite backing band, just a little somethin' to tour behind while dragging Bob back out for his first tour since '66. It's a fun and snappy listen, especially as background music with your brain trying to follow Robbie Robertson's 10 million ideas-a-second guitar playing. (The man is so not smooth, he's the anti-Santana...2 seconds and he's playing something that sounds completely different than what came before, in the same solo. Interesting, but jarring, and I tire of it quicker than even watching televised golf. Or Vegas reruns. Yeahhhh!) And some of these songs are just really bad, like the useless 'Dirge' or the closing 'Wedding Song', which is so bad I really have to force myself to pay attention while Bob pulls yet another cliché love song line out of his nether regions to present to our potluck picnic. But most of the other stuff is at least passable, if for sure nothing special. I was all set to hate 'You Angel You', but there's something about Bob's bubbly delivery which wins me over. And I really like the bouncy songs like 'Tough Mama', or 'On A Night Like This' which is what the Band is really useful for. Of the two versions of 'Forever Young' (yeah, the late 80's Rod Stewart hit he forgot to credit Dylan for, the fag), the slower first one sends me to a really pretty dream filled sleepyland and the second, snappy one is sorta dumb. In fact, much of this record is pretty dumb, but it's dumb fun. Sort of like pillow fights or lawn darts or firecracker fishing. Destroy your neighbor's decorative goldfish pond today! And watch some Vegas! Yeahhhh!

Capn's Final Word: Hackwork that almost doesn't make me nauseous...skip that last song and I don't feel awful at all.

My second ever Bob purchase back when I used to have this theory that it was better to get a live album with all the artists best songs on it than actually get a hits collection (yes, I was pretty stupid when I was 15, but at least I was looking at Bob Dylan records instead of, you know, White Lion or Shostakovitch or something like that). And, yes, this has plenty of Bob's Greatest Hits as well as ones by the Band, who were the backers on here, just like 8 years prior. But very much not like 8 years prior, because while the Hawks were a bashing, thrashing rock combo, this Band sounds big and bloated and more concerned with covering everything in stupid 70's synth horns than actually playing interesting music. I already spoke about Robbie Robertson's strange psychotic guitar playing (he controls himself on here and mostly plays quite well), but the key players are very much in the same bloat. Here's a Hammond, there's a piano, then a electric piano twoink, then some hockey game Zamboni background music, then some synth setting Styx made popular...on through the entire range of possible keyed instruments and back again...not a fun experience for those of us who actually care about listening to the instruments, and it's often so distracting as to actually ruin the experience outright ('Ballad Of A Thin Man'!). In short, lots of it sounds like 1980-era Grateful Dead, but without Jerry Garcia, if that helps. But probably it doesn't.

Boy if Bob weren't doing such a fly job of having a blast there just wouldn't be much to care about, would there? He's oversinging just about everything on here (try 'It Ain't Me' for an example), but I'd much prefer that to the alternative of him croaking along and looking at his watch the entire time. The watchword is that the man is having a lot of fun up on stage. That makes me happy, and it's possible to get wrapped up in what he's doing and the energy he's putting out. The Band's own songs are okay, and I'm as much a fan of 'Cripple Creek' and 'The Night They Drove Ol' Dixie Down' as the next redneck, but the same organ ruination continues in force even on their own songs. 'I Shall Be Released' is sung really weird by, who is that, Richard Manuel? Let Bob do it! Agh! Just knowing he was hanging around while you get to hear this crackhead piano player give it his worst castrato-with-nictotine-damage ought to piss you off. 'Stage Fright' and 'Endless Highway' are sung by the mealy-mouthed tempo retard Rick Danko (I used to actually think the guy was half retarded by the way he sung, but it turns out he was just really into cocaine), and are both just really bad songs. The redneck loser anthem 'Dixie' is sung by a real Arkansan, and is just fahn, though. I mean, the Band have some decent songs, but even taking into account their long history and Dylan connection, why are they continually referred to as 'legendary'? Some things in this world are just beyond comprehension. Like Stonehenge. Or Marshmallow Fluff. Or Jackson Browne.

Bob's solo acoustic set sounds like it's being done as an obligation ('Don't Think Twice', 'Just Like A Woman', which is hard to listen to, how he goes 'butshe BREAKKKKSSSS justlikalittle GIIIIIIRRRRLLLL'...narf! And a rushed-through 'It's Alright Ma'.) Then three more Band songs (bad: 'The Shape I'm In' and 'When you Awake', okay: 'The Weight') and human jukebox of songs you don't really need to hear done this way to finish us off (you know which ones, so don't make me list). Hey, other than all the Band songs, this is as close to meeting audience expectations as a Bob Dylan live album has ever done. The songs are played straight (no weird reggae/hard rock/Vegas rearrangements, if that stuff bothers you), the energy is there, they're having a good time, and...I guess that's it. Oh yeah, Bob sounds really strong most of the time, too. But a lot of this is screwed up bad enough that it could ruin your naptime when you think about it.

Capn's Final Word: Hey, if you like the Band's brand of slop-rock, you should really grab this today. If not, you're better off holding out and just buying some weed.