Bob Dylan Band • Page 12

for me it'll always be "It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Bleeding". he spits out about 7 books worth of truth on that song.

 

Boots of Spanish Leather
It's All Over Now, Baby Blue
One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)
Like a Rolling Stone
Don't Think Twice, It's Alright
Positively Fourth Street
The Times They Are a Changin'
Blowin' in the Wind
Sara
It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)
Tombstone Blues

It's 11. Whatever. Fight me.

 

Not Dark Yet
Visions of Johanna
Simple Twist of Fate
Like a Rolling Stone
Don't Think Twice, It's Alright
Just Like a Woman
Shelter from the Storm
Girl from the North Country
When the Ship Comes In
Desolation Row
Buckets of Rain

Also 11.

 

10) One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)
9) Walkin' Down the Line
8) It Ain't Me
7) Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again
6) Up to Me
5) Positively 4th Street
4) Boots of Spanish Leather
3) Don't Think Twice, It's Alright
2) Queen Jane Approximately
1) Mama, You Been on my Mind

 

Yeah nope don't think I can do that sorry

 

yeah this is impossible. I started making a list and I have no idea what to do. kudos to y'all

 

Figure I'll add to this as I go and rank them when I get to around 15.

It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)
Buckets of Rain
Tangled Up In Blue
Don't Fall Apart on Me Tonight
Shelter from the Storm
It's All Over Now, Baby Blue
One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)

 

Maggie's Farm
Shelter From the Storm
Who Killed Davey Moore
Girl From North Country
Isis

 

HYLI Vol. XXXVI - Ulcerate and Bob Dylan

wrote about blonde on blonde, my second favorite album ever

 

Great read- thanks for sharing. I loved how you started with

“I’m just not going to be normal about this. It fucking is perfect.”

 

Wow, impressive to see some of these lists. I couldn’t imagine narrowing it down to 10 songs. 20 might be hard. “Idiot Wind” is #1 for me

 

The first Dylan record I ever listened to was The Freewheeling' Bob Dylan, so while it's not his best work it will always be my favorite. Blonde on Blonde has some phenomenal song writing. Could just be an album of singles.

 

thanks for checking it out!

 

Just spun Freewheelin on Monday night and at this point it might be underrated!

 

Almost any other artist puts an album out with Blowin in the Wind, Girl from North Country, A Hard Rain, Don't Think Twice, and it's their masterpiece never to be topped. With Dylan, it's just another album.

 

And you didn’t even mention “Masters of War”!!

 

Listened to Empire Burlesque, Knocked Out Loaded, and Down In the Groove tonight. I didn't hate them but it was mostly pretty forgettable. Ugliest Girl In the World is a leading contender for worst song I've heard from him.

 

Posting this here as well (OP was in the prestigious forum) because I thought some folks might find it interesting.

This is in response to a request from @OhTheWater to create a 10-song chronological survey of an artist's career for his class. Here's my take on Bob Dylan but I'm sure some other folks could build better on it or perhaps suggest an alternate pick for some of the songs. It's intentionally not all his greatest hits but I think it does a decent job of tracing the journey of his career in a student-friendly way.

Bob Dylan in 10 Songs

1. "Blowin' In The Wind - Witmark Demo 1962"
Dylan came up in the New York folk scene of the early 60s, crashing on people's couches and playing covers of traditional folk music in bars for tips. Eventually he started to write his own songs that were indebted to those melodies and traditions, and gained acclaim for his lyricism. Here's one of the earliest demos of one of his first big breakout songs.

2. "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)"
For the next few years, Dylan became famous for writing what he called "finger pointin' songs" that talked about what was wrong with the world. His style was known as "talking blues", which is characterized by rhythmic speech where the cadence is flatter and closer to speaking voice. For me, that whole run climaxes with this song, which is about 6 minutes of straight #bars that still ring true today. Great wordplay and perspective, and a lot of rap MCs in the 70s found elements of their cadence in what he did. (For what it's worth, Dylan has always found a kinship with the way rappers deploy language and just shouted out Wutang Clan in a rare interview this week.)

3. "Like A Rolling Stone (Live At Free Trade Hall, Manchester, UK)"
Dylan's 1966 tour famously switched between acoustic and electric guitars mid-set, incorporating more elements of rock music. That might not sound like a big deal, but to the insular folk music scene of the 60s it was considered a betrayal and his audience would literally boo him for not giving them what they wanted. Dylan likes to do what he wants though, and he would taunt them and double down, creating an antagonistic relationship for the whole tour. This version of his classic "Like A Rolling Stone" is one of the most famous live tour recordings in history. Someone in the crowd calls him "Judas" after they switched into the electric part of the set and he tells the band to "play it fucking loud." They do!

4. "One Of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)"
In just a 16 month period from March 1965 to June 1966, Dylan released three of the most acclaimed albums of all time and in a lot of ways helped change the sound of rock music. He wrote more frequently about his life and relationships, but covered it in metaphors and obfuscatory language. He was also pushing back against how popular he was getting. Just a month after the release of this song and the album it's on, Blonde on Blonde, he got into a motorcycle accident in upstate New York and retreated from the spotlight, cancelling all of his engagements while he was at the height of his creative and commercial powers. It turned into a big conspiracy theory, as he wouldn't play live again for nearly a decade.

5. "Lay Lady Lay"
Dylan returned to recording music again a year or two later, turning up in Nashville with a collection of simple country rock songs. Strangely, his voice sounded completely different than it used to sound -- higher and thinner and reedier. No one knew what to make of it, or of the 24-song record called Self Portrait that followed it in 1970. The title of that album was a joke made to end the "spokesman of a generation" label that critics had put on him, as almost none of the songs were original and he crooned softly in his new voice. One of the most famous music critics of the time opened their review with the line, "What is this shit?"

6. "Simple Twist Of Fate"
Dylan and his wife Sara were having marital problems in 1975 (they'd divorce a few years later) and during that time he released Blood On The Tracks, generally acknowledged as one of the greatest heartbreak albums of all time. It's perhaps the most personal he's ever gotten on a full record, though he continues to hide it behind colorful stories, as on this song which talks about the feeling of meeting and losing someone without being specific about his own life. The arrangements on this album sound like spring rainfall to me.

7. "Saved"
Dylan's next act was called his "gospel era", where he converted to Christianity (his original non-stage name is Robert Zimmerman) and released three straight albums of original worship music, fusing gospel rock with electric blues and soul. At first people were interested in what he was doing, but he gradually lost a lot fans when his music went in this direction. You might think he'd realize that no one would want him to literally start changing the words to his classic songs during live sets so that they were referencing Bible verses instead, but as a general guideline Bob Dylan he does what he wants. Despite the religious bent, there are some really interesting songs and great arrangements in this collection that tie into his journey across the landscape of rock and roll music. It speaks to his curiosity and openness as an artist, and when asked about the time today he would say that God has always been in his music.

8. "Jokerman (Live On Letterman in 1984)" link
After three albums of born-again Christian music, Dylan's next release was a reggae-inflected project called Infidels. (Of course!) The original version of this song is basically an 80s jam you'd hear at some out-of-time beach bar in the Caribbean, but when he went to do a rare TV appearance on Letterman to promote the album, he invited some locally known punk musicians that he had no previous relationship with to back him up and turned it into a punk banger with a harmonica solo for seemingly no reason. Always surprising people.

9. "Not Dark Yet"
While the late 80s and early 90s weren't generally regarded as a good decade for Dylan fans, his 1997 album Time Out Of Mind shot out of a cannon for people waiting for a major statement from him. It's a series of songs that are thoughtful about mortality, and this highlight "Not Dark Yet" showed he had a lot left in the tank for a generation of fans who grew up with him. He proved he could still write standards on that album too... Adele covered "Make You Feel My Love" on her breakout album 21 and it's quoted at a lot of weddings.

10. "I Contain Multitudes"
After taking a decade or so to follow his muse in some truly random directions, out of nowhere Dylan dropped a dense and extremely referential collection of new music in 2020. Some of the music he made during that "down period" -- including a straightforward Christmas album and 5 full albums of Frank Sinatra covers -- circles back to where he began his career, celebrating some of his favorite compositions from the Great American Songbook. His latest album Rough and Rowdy Ways confidently takes its time to deliver interesting rock and blues music, filled with a lot of scattered pop culture references as on this Walt Whitman-nodding opening track. More and more often, he seems to think of himself in his old age as a chronicler of American life and culture, fitting an 81-year-old who has had such a mercurial and audience-defying career.

Suggested class assignments:
- track Dylan's voice over time and talk about how he uses it to augment the music he's making
- analyze some of his "finger pointing" from his early career and apply it to a situation in news and culture today
- follow his use of references and imagery over his career (does he get more/less descriptive in different moments? does the type of writing change?)

 

Blonde on Blonde is so good

 

its true

 

i mean, where's the lie?

 

Every time I think he's dragging too much, it snaps into place. Fantastic innate sense of timing. Band sounds great.

 

HYLI Vol. LLXXI - Bob Dylan (again) and Insomnium (again)

time out of mind on the newsletter this week, what a record lol