So, since Jeff has obviously spent a considerable amount of time cataloging his Dylan experiences for us, I feel a little obligated to add my two cents to the massive piggy bank that is Jeff's Dylan knowledge. (Advance apologies to my fiancee). As I commented on Jeff's recent post, I own the following Dylan albums:
*Best of Bob Dylan I
*Blonde on Blonde
*Blood on the Tracks
*Bringing It All Back Home
*Desire
*Highway 61 Revisited
*Love and Theft
*Nashville Skyline
*Rolling Thunder Revue (live album)
*Royal Albert Hall Concert (live album)
*Time Out of Mind
*assorted singles: My Back Pages (from "Dylan"), Girl From the North Country (from "The Freewheelin'"), Step It Up and Go (from "Good As I Been To You"), and Wigwam (from the Royal Tenenbaums Soundtrack).
As you can see, I have accumulated mostly his more popular albums. And rarely have I listened even to those thoroughly (mostly at the insistence of my aforementioned fiancee), so it is difficult for me to accurately assess any favorite albums. A perfunctory glance at my star ratings for individual songs on iTunes reveals that Blonde on Blonde, Nashville Skyline, Blood on The Tracks and Bringing It All Back Home would be at the top (not including "Best of"). I think my individual song ratings would be of more interest to you, so I'll take you down some of those I've "starred" at some point over the last several years. Caveat: I've really just gone along over the years at different times and starred things mostly based on wanting them to appear in my "Party Shuffle" playlist more often, so the following ratings were not determined on any kind of uniform scale or in a balanced state of mind.
Five Stars
*Don't Think Twice, It's All Right
*Stuck Inside of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again
*My Back Pages
*Like A Rolling Stone
Four Stars
*Mr. Tambourine Man
*Tangled Up In Blue
*Just Like A Woman
*Simple Twist Of Fate
*Shelter From The Storm
*Girl From The North Country (ft. Johnny Cash)
*Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You
Three Stars
*Blowin' In The Wind
*I Threw It All Away
Two Stars
*The Times Are a-Changin'
*Lay Lady Lay
*Knockin' on Heaven's Door
*Rainy Day Women #12 & 35
*Subterranean Homesick Blues
*It's All Over Now, Baby Blue
*Hurricane
In retrospect, it would appear that I prefer my Dylan acoustic, unadorned, mellow and ponderous. I also should note that three Dylan songs appear on my "Fall Mix" playlist, which is by far my most-listened to mix: Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You, The Times They Are a-Changin', and My Back Pages. I would also add, in sum, that My Back Pages, Like A Rolling Stone, Tangled Up In Blue and Simple Twist of Fate would be on my all-time best songs ever. They're just incredible.
*Image Credit goes to NARA via wikipedia.
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1 comment:
I would agree with your analysis of your own taste in Dylan. It's funny that he's like a genre, but I generally think of Claypool, Beefheart, Tom Waits, and maybe some others as genres, too. I would again recommend JWH, since it's his densest album, and acoustic all the way through, with the last two tracks almost acting as an introduction of sorts to the following album, Nashiville Skyline.
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