Yeah, Tom Wilson and Bob Johnston deserve a lot of credit because Dylan would rarely give them more than a few takes of a song to work with. Dylan never wanted them to sound perfect, which wasn't something that professional producers back then really understood.

I hope we do these after the main albums. Could make some really interesting commentary.

Yeah, we'll do the bootlegs after the studio albums.

Great, then I'll have to admit that I prefer things like The Rolling Thunder Revue and Live At Buddokan to Dylan's so-called peak years.

Not counting his Band-heavy period, Rolling Thunder is my favourite.

The one time I saw Dylan live was during the Rolling Thunder tour at The Swamp in Gainesville. Probably 20,000 crazy motherfuckers in the audience on a hot summer afternoon, and it seemed nearly that many on the bill. Show went on for what seemed like hours. Sitting out in the sun all afternoon with a steady flow of mushroom kool ade will leave lasting effects- my eyes have been hypersensitive to sunlight ever since.

There are so many great things about this paragraph, I don't know where to begin.

I've been gone for 3 straight days but I want to say a few things:

1) Harry, if you think Yail Bloor and I are not Serious Students of American Culture, and understand as much or more about rock and roll, civil rights, The Southern Thing, and ay-cid as you do, then he is perfectly correct in feeling sorry for you, dude. I know you are an awesome, smart, semi-crazy gentleman of a certain age, but dude we didn't just read this shit in books, we're both pretty hip cats who went and did our damn thing for many, many years. I love you and your commentary, but don't dismiss anything we say as ill-informed. Wrong headed? Possibly, but most of even the truly outlandish provocative BS I personally spout comes from a knowing and learned center in my head. Keep that in mind next time you drop a flippant comment about The Declaration of Independence being the equivalent of what for all effects was turned into a Z-Grade hippy anthem by our modern culture machine, k?

2) Early Dylan, like the early Stones, or early Beatles is part of the legend, and you can't separate the early stuff from the later electric stuff. A song like My Back Pages is an epic fucking masterpiece, and Bloor is correct again when says stuff like Masters of War and The Times They Are A-Changin not only ring out from a musical and sonic perspective, but as a comment on our society as a whole.

3) There was a time in my life when I was a little obsessed with the effect of acid on Dylan's music and lyrics much moreso than say "trippy albums" by The Beatles or The Dead, so I am damned glad to be getting that time period -- and during the time I was obsessed with this connection and getting into the dark depths of my own soul, my favorite Dylan record to throw on was At Budokan.

Content: A- Form: B

Work on the parallel construction.

"Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools,
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to."

Pretty succinct summary of a career, both past and yet to come. Also, Love Minus Zero/ No Limit is in the top five of my favorite Dylan songs. I wore out at least 3 copies of this album.

sometimes i think that Bringing it all Back Home is my absolute favorite. I'll listen to it tonight after work.

Once upon a time, this song blew my fragile little mind into a million pieces and then reassembled it into a different and finer form.

Just a King Hell Bastard of a song, and something you cannot ignore. Also contains Maggie's Farm, Tambourine Man, and It's All Over Now Baby Blue.

Much of this album seems to be a massive fuck you to every construct, stricture, and expectation that society puts on us. I am going to play this at TOP VOLUME today - every now and then even Ol Gar needs a reminder of these things.

It was the first Dylan album I ever owned and I feel this way as well sometimes.

Also I can't ever listen to Maggie's Farm without thinking about the first time I saw Dylan back in '91 or so. He closed the show out with a fucking insane version that clocked at least 10-12 min.

It wasn't just the acid, Dylan was reading Rimbaud and Mallarmé and truly began a career as a great neo-Symbolist poet with this album. I like that we've started to post words (Dylan of this period was at least as much about words as melody and production) ... this period was a watershed of great poetry, truly. I think I'll post my favorite lyrics at least until the abomination that is New Morning.

The bridge at midnight trembles
The country doctor rambles
Bankers’ nieces seek perfection
Expecting all the gifts that wise men bring
The wind howls like a hammer
The night blows cold and rainy
My love she’s like some raven
At my window with a broken wing

Or alternatively, all the Gates of Eden.

This album alone made him one of the most important artists of the century (IMHO), and there were 3-4 better albums still to come. And the cover was graphically representative of a world many of (us kids at the time) wanted to live in,not unlike Godard's Breathless.

I know it's getting ahead of the game, but the Dump talking about the first Dylan concert... I am pretty sure the first time I saw him was at the Universal Amphitheatre in 1978. The setlist:

1. A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall
2. Love Her With A Feeling (Tampa Red)
3. Baby Stop Crying
4. Mr. Tambourine Man
5. Shelter From The Storm
6. Love Minus Zero/No Limit
7. Tangled Up In Blue
8. Ballad Of A Thin Man
9. Maggie's Farm
10. I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)
11. Like A Rolling Stone
12. I Shall Be Released
13. Going, Going, Gone
14. Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35
15. One Of Us Must Know (Sooner Or Later)
16. You're A Big Girl Now
17. One More Cup Of Coffee (Valley Below)
18. Blowin' In The Wind
19. I Want You
20. Senor (Tales Of Yankee Power)
21. Masters Of War
22. Just Like A Woman
23. To Ramona
24. The Man In Me
25. It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)
26. Forever Young
27. The Times They Are A-Changin'

As long as we're quoting lyrics, my favorite of It's Alright is "If my dreams could be seen, they'd probably put my head in a guillotine"

And of course, to my ears, Maggie's Farm always had a tinge of the south/slavery etc. But all interpretation is necessarily subjective, EH HARRY?

The first four songs on this album are not only a declaration of war on folk music, pop music, tin pan alley, the blues, the beatles and whatever other invisible enemies Dylan had constructed in his head, but four fucking amazing songs, each one of them far out enough to be hip, well written enough to make you strain to hear the speakers and yet somehow concise and containing enough nuanced production to be played as hit singles on the radio.

I understand the importance of "Outlaw Blues", "On The Road Again" and "115th Dream" as part of Bob's ongoing fuck off war with virtually everyone, but no one is going to confuse them with his best work.

The Byrds and the aforementioned Baby Boomer establishment media ruined "Mr. Tambourine Man" man for me over twenty years ago and really, even Bob's version isn't all that great and may well be responsible for some of the worst and most excessive Acid lyrics to come out of San Fran later on.

The last three songs read like a last, venom laced kiss goodbye to the folk community and sort of run parallel to Bob's humiliation of Donovan in Don't Look Back: Like, "I can do your genre better than all of you fucking purists. Now go fuck off and leave me alone" And all three of the songs are amazing, especially "Baby Blue" which always be one of my personal favs.

"Maggie's Farm" seems to be a song that Dylan really enjoyed messing around with and playing a bunch of different ways.

I'm a fan of the Solomon Burke cover of "Maggie's Farm"

Sloppy essentialist nun cents. Otherwise a very, very good take on the album. Clearly Bringing was a clarion call that no one owned Bob... his selling his music to Victoria's Secret was almost a similar statement... in the Taoist surreal sense, or cents.

bloor, great post.

BTW, my first Bob show (5-5-96), had a nice bit of Garcia tribute-age...

# Drifter's Escape
# If You See Her, Say Hello
# All Along The Watchtower
# Positively 4th Street
# Watching The River Flow
# Silvio
# Tangled Up In Blue (acoustic)
# A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall (acoustic)
# Friend Of The Devil (acoustic)
# Maggie's Farm
# When I Paint My Masterpiece
# Highway 61 Revisited

(encore)
# Alabama Getaway
# Rainy Day Women #12 & 35

i need more dylan bootlegs

Yes, pretty much sums it up.

I don't really have anything to add about Bringing It All Back Home except that it took me WAY too long to buy it as I acquired Dylan records. What blows me away with this one is that it feels like it should be the peak of Dylan's 60's output but there are at least two better albums coming.

As I already almost stated, I feel as though I have some personal connection to this album moreso than with the rest of his great 60s output. Not necessarily even memories, because I pretty much only listen to Dylan alone, but there is just something about this record that has always drawn me to it probably more than any other Dylan record save "Blood on the Tracks"

I have this vague recollection of "Subterranean Homesick Alien" (with the Don't Look Back clip of course) as being the first time I ever heard Bob Dylan, rather than his name and thinking he was the dude with the annoying voice. This is as a pretty young kid of course. I didn't really get "into" Bob Dylan until I watched his MTV Unplugged special in high school - but this may very well be the the song that got me to notice him.

"She Belongs to Me" is one of the most underrated Dylan songs, I guess. I don't know - maybe overlooked is the proper wording. Even by me. It's one of those songs where you don't think you would necessarily put it on a list of your favorite songs by an artist, yet simultaneously it feels like a song you could hear every day for the rest of your life and look forward to that time of day. I think the guitar in this track is great. Also "She's a hypnotist collector, you're a walking antique." love that.

"Maggie's Farm" at some point in my teenage years was my absolute favorite Dylan song. Nowhere near that anymore and at many points it actually annoys me. Much of this is due to the amount of terrible (eg. RATM) covers. Fun instrumentally and a great look towards Highway 61

"Love Minus Zero" has some of my favorite lines, and musically is a pleasant listen (which is what i usually gravitate towards), but I usually forget about the track.

I've never been a big fan of "Outlaw Blues" though I can understand those that are.

"On the Road Again" is the perfect snapshot of where Dylan was headed. A blast.

Lots of people slag "115th Dream" but I love it. Have always loved the story. Not his best, but I do like it as the end of the 1st side.

I will unabashedly always love "Mr. Tambourine Man" both Dylan and Byrds.

The last 3 songs are among his very best. Love the album as a whole.

In a lot of ways this is the album. It's start with the title which is a complete fuck you to the british invasion. From the opening notes of Subterranean Homesick Blues, you know this is an album not to trifle with. But Bloor mostly nailed it. So I'll just add - Love Minus Zero/ No Limit is up there as one of my favorite songs ever. Even the title is fucking cooler than half the shit around these days. The production on it is downright gorgeous.