"They Killed Him" sounds like it would have stolen the show at Live Aid.

oh yes. What did you think on your first listen? It's not a great album by any stretch, but I like the opening and closing tracks a lot, plus 'Brownsville Girl'. Fucking bizarre that he co-wrote that with Sam Shepard.

• Graceland - Paul Simon

Runners Up

• So - Peter Gabriel
• Bruce Springsteen And The E Street Band Live/1975-85 - Bruce Springsteen And The E Street Band
• True Stories - Talking Heads
• Strong Persuader - The Robert Cray Band
• Raising Hell - Run DMC/Life's Rich Pageant - R.E.M. (Tie)

Just for fun I looked up what the Rolling Stone top albums were in '86...



I mean, there's a couple of good albums in there but one of them is a live comp. I think I probably would have played "Brownsville Girl" a lot if I had been into this in '86. There wasn't a whole lot of stiff competition in the mainstream rock arena.

Or an album put together by a friend of ours, Little Steven called Artists Against Apatheid

Yeah, but you and i would certainly have played Sun City

Yeah, we would have. Us and Ronnie Raygun. Big stars. Headliners.

If the diffuseness of Knocked Out Loaded was excusable due to its collaborators and various recording sessions, Down in the Groove has less of an excuse, since it's relatively from the same time period, even if it's culled from several different sessions with several different backing band. Nevertheless, the main difference is that, while Knocked Out Loaded was ambitious, this is positively unassuming, at best hoping to capture the mellow roots rock of the Grateful Dead (which it does, on Dylan's irresistible collaborations with Robert Hunter, "Ugliest Girl in the World" and "Silvio"). The rest of the record strolls through covers with amiable ease, whether he's backed by ex-punks or lifetime pros. That may not make for a great record by any stretch, but it's a rather ingratiating one, a little more focused than Knocked Out Loaded and a little looser and funkier than Empire Burlesque. Actually, not as heavy on great moments as either (especially Burlesque), but it's still rather nice in its low-key way

Another one I've never heard but I have always liked "Silvio" (an underrated star of BDGH Vol. 3) so there's that. (I was going to say that I was cautiously optimistic but that would be a lie)

I've never even heard of this album, much less heard it.

Granted this is some serious grading on a curve, but I'm actually ok with all of the odd numbered songs here.

The even's I'm going to pretend I never heard.

I'm surprised there isn't more of a Jeff Lynne vibe on here. I wonder if he could have turned some of these shitty songs from the last few albums into some kind of Full Moon Fever.

Oh Mercy was hailed as a comeback, not just because it had songs noticeably more meaningful than anything Bob Dylan had recently released, but because Daniel Lanois' production gave it cohesion. There was cohesion on Empire Burlesque, of course, but that cohesion was a little too slick, a little too commercial, whereas this record was filled with atmospheric, hazy production -- a sound as arty as most assumed the songs to be. And Dylan followed suit, giving Lanois significant songs -- palpably social works, love songs, and poems -- that seemed to connect with his past. And, at the time, this production made it seem like the equivalent of his '60s records, meaning that its artiness was cutting edge, not portentous. Over the years, Oh Mercy hasn't aged particularly well, seeming as self-conscious as such other gauzy Lanois productions as So and The Joshua Tree, even though it makes more sense than the ersatz pizzazz of Burlesque. Still, the songs make Oh Mercy noteworthy; they find Dylan quietly raging against the materialism of President Reagan and accepting maturity, albeit with a slight reluctance. So, Oh Mercy is finally more interesting for what it tries to achieve than for what it actually does achieve. At its best, this is a collection of small, shining moments, with the best songs shining brighter than their production or the album's overall effect.