BOB DYLAN GENERAL

Starting things off with his best album

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youtube.com/watch?v=HbKZYhZ3L80
youtube.com/watch?v=P1vpdsEb_30
youtube.com/watch?v=8a54Nz6aYYY
youtube.com/watch?v=AJWjUqWulkM
vimeo.com/107308378
youtube.com/watch?v=GMeJHf05q-s
youtube.com/watch?v=BHQ8OXJfQnA
youtube.com/watch?v=bR9zAoOcJ0E
latimes.com/entertainment/music/posts/la-et-ms-grammys-2015-transcript-of-bob-dylans-musicares-person-of-year-speech-20150207-story.html#page=2
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>implying

with the exception of Saved, his gospel trilogy wasn't actually that bad. i enjoyed it a lot

currently listening to pic related

why does Sup Forums have so much trouble ranking albums? is it pure contrarianism?

I found the re-mastering done to the tracks on this release made them lose some of their warmth. I usually find myself listening to these bootleg versions instead, and going to the Bootleg Series versions for the few tracks not available elsewhere.

yeah, i feel you. i listened to A Tree With Roots a while back, and it was pretty good quality and probably the most expansive basement tapes release, save for the official release

I'll look that one up.

Favourite BT songs? I like Sign On The Cross, The Auld Triangle, The Bells Of Rhymney and All You Have To Do Is Dream.

Sign on the Cross, Odds and Ends I Don't Hurt Anymore, People Get Ready, I'm Not There, Rock Salt and Nails, and Waltzing With Sin all come to mind

Another Self-Portrait is easily my favorite Bootleg Series release.

Not only that, but the fact that they put recordings of the same songs back-to-back made it a tedious listen. I know that's the way they were recorded, but still.

All fantastic tracks. People Get Ready is like mana from heaven.

A lot of the bootlegs do that too. It's no sin to rejig the playlist to make for better listening.

I kind of like it when they do that, because it lets me see how the songs progressed and I can pick out certain version I like.

Does anyone else think the 66 tour is kind of overrated? For my money performance wise the Rolling Thunder Revue blows it out of the water.

not overrated, its genuinely iconic and his royal albert hall perfomance of Like A Rolling Stone is so vitriol it makes me shiver,

that being said, RTT is by and far better. Favorite song from it? I like The Water is Wide w/ Joan Baez and Romance in Durango

I heard bob Dylan was a asshole
I don't listen to assholes

It's so clear the toll the negative responses Dylan got had on his demeanor and energy. By 1966 the main pep his performances had were saying "fuck you" to 50% unhappy crowds.

Rolling Thunder on the other hand was less bogged down with pre-conceptions about what he should or shouldn't do. Plus I'm pretty sure he was on heroin by that time.

he was definitely on something

Nah to the second part, he was actually relatively clean by that point. Not sober mind you, but he'd done way more drugs during the original electric era than he did during the RTT. A lot of people (even biographers) think the crash was actually a cover for Dylan to get away from the public eye and sober up. Read On the Road with Bob Dylan if you want a semi-eye witness testimony of the RTT. The guy and Dylan had a falling out during the writing of the book too.
The divorce and all was the main thing.

i think he was a really bad alcoholic at the time, though

I think he was definitely using through Hard Rain and Rolling Thunder. He'd definitely been an alcoholic since the mid-sixties.

He started getting clean in the early eighties.

>Don't need a shot of heroin to kill my disease
>Don't need a shot of turpentine, only bring me to my knees
>Don't need a shot of codeine to help me to repent
>Don't need a shot of whiskey, help me be president

I like these albums, but you're fucking dumb.

I guess you could say you give them the silent (but deadly) treatment

>being a dirty heathen

Hattie Carroll

Trouble in Mind is probably one of his best song imho

Who's your favorite of the "next Dylans"?

(Whatever you consider to be a "next Dylan" is up to you)

Tallest Man on Earth, though I don't know if he'd qualify as a "next Dylan" since his music sometimes focuses more on instrumental beauty than the message of his lyrics. Also he's not very political as far as I've heard.

Are there even artists out today with a similar sound to Dylan that have the same influence or political relevance? I think Killer Mike's political involvement is comparable (campaigning with Bernie Sanders, speaking out against police brutality against black and brown people) even though he's a rapper

i dont really know of any next Dylans desu
rec some?

>Are there even artists out today with a similar sound to Dylan that have the same influence or political relevance? I think Killer Mike's political involvement is comparable (campaigning with Bernie Sanders, speaking out against police brutality against black and brown people) even though he's a rapper
Dylan's pandering to Marxists for a couple of years was purely a vehicle to recognition, he ditched it as soon as he could. The fact that you associate him with being a Marxist is the product of political propaganda.

Nah, that's a lie Dylan himself made up to distance himself from his old folk self. His love of Guthrie and related things has endured, he even donated his personal archives to the same place that's holding Guthrie's own personal archives.

He liked Guthrie as a musician and a pioneer of the American spirit, not as a political player (and Guthrie was hopelessly naïve in this respect). Listen to "Last Thoughts On Woody Guthrie" and you'll see how much Dylan was all about Woody's politics.

The fact that Dylan would denounce his political demagoguery in 1964 ("My Back Pages") and not make a leftist political statement for over 50 years makes you look stupid.

Yeah, that's why he made a song eulogizing a Black Panther in 1971 and also why he expressed support for Obama in two interviews and predicted he'd "win in a landslide victory". Ginsberg said Dylan was truly leftist for a time and he maintained friendship with Dylan for the rest of his life after he met Dylan. Was he too duped?

He also became an evangelical Christian and released "Neigborhood Bully" and "Union Sundown".

He's no leftist.

If Dylan's connection to the movement was completely superficial why would he have made appearances in documentaries about Seeger and Baez long after the fact? It's not like he couldn't have ignored said documentaries, it would've been expected from him.

Why to would maintain friendships with Tom Waits - an avid liberal, Patti Smith - an avid liberal, Willie Nelson - an avid liberal, tout John Prine - an avid liberal (who doesn't hide it in his songs) if his leftist leanings were completely falsehoods.

He's also since left that brand of Christianity and did decades ago.

These are all very public friendships Dylan's maintained too.

>trying to understand Dylan's methods
wew lads

The point is he isn't your "civil rights hero" Marxist cult of personality, nor will he ever fit a binary political cookie cutter:

I never said he was my "civil rights hero", and I'd actually agree with you that he doesn't hold those views currently. It's an indisputable fact that he held those views at one time - and the biographers, even the ones that question how legitimate the motorcycle crash was agree with this.

Hell, he even spoke about being inspired by King's I Have a Dream speech in the same interview he denounced people looking too much into his songs.

>not make a leftist political statement for over 50 years

youtube.com/watch?v=HbKZYhZ3L80

And I don't expect a Jewish boomer entertainer to be some kind of hardline rightwinger. I was just refuting the ridiculous framing of Dylan's legacy as a "civil rights singer" and nothing else.

I'm sure Joey Gallo was a real lefty hero too.

>I was just refuting the ridiculous framing of Dylan's legacy as a "civil rights singer" and nothing else.
No, you were very blatantly arguing it was a farce at the beginning of this discussion. See

It is a farce, I wasn't backtracking.

Sure, the girlfriends disagree, the friends disagree, the biographers (who wouldn't have a bias), everyone who would know disagrees but you know better than everybody else.

Makes sense.

My point is Dylan has held political positions across the spectrum, saying a rapper supporting a socialist is somehow "dylanesque" desptie no musical similarity is completely subversive and ridiculous.

I don't care about your confirmation bias.

It's not confirmation bias, it's just common sense.

Or what bit of study have you put into Dylan that Clinton Heylin, Greil Marcus, Robert Shelton or Christopher Ricks hasn't? Give me a reason to take your position more seriously than theirs.

I don't care about your list of biographers either. My point is, again, Dylan has held political positions across the spectrum and calling a rapper "next Dylan" purely because he supported a staunch socialist for president is perverse and stupid.

Or better yet, during the beginning of the electric years Dylan called out the folk music as has been and for old people. If he was willing to call out the movement why wasn't he willing to call out his former beliefs? He did when he was a Christian and he did again when he went away from that sect of Christianity.

>The Auld Triangle
That's the most relaxing piece of music that I've ever heard, it flows so smoothly for me, even though it's rugged and sloppy as fuck

I'm not the one who called the rapper the next Dylan, I'm just refuting the idea that his political viewpoints was a farce. Give me evidence of it. If you're not going to then you've just wasted everybody's time.

>I'm sure Joey Gallo was a real lefty hero too.

I don't know who the fuck that is but Hurricane *is* a protest song that criticizes racial profiling in a general sense which is inarguably a liberal stance. And Dylan actually did care about Robin Carter. He visited him in prison and did a benefit concert for him too.

i think Dylan just read his book and was moved by his story, not so much that he was doing as some sort of politcal statement

The song makes a pretty blatant statement about the way black people are treated (and treat themselves) in america.

The fact that he dissociated from his political-singer stance in the 60s and went on to do a full u-turn in the 80s isn't enough to show he was more than just your left-wing idol? I've said I don't think he's a right-winger either. Ultimately Dylan is not a political figure.

The mobster the song "Joey" is based from. My point was he was more interested in idolising "tough guys" who he felt had been wronged than making a political statement.

That's the beauty of those sessions. Check this song out: youtube.com/watch?v=P1vpdsEb_30

It's an incredibly strong and beautiful melody: youtube.com/watch?v=P1vpdsEb_30

your a dorable

Oops, didn't mean to post it twice.

youtube.com/watch?v=8a54Nz6aYYY

youtube.com/watch?v=AJWjUqWulkM

>not available
I'll try and track it down though, don't think I remember hearing this before.

Jesus. What a boring fucking thread. Let's lighten it up with some memes.

I always come back to Clothesline Saga - Dylan at maybe his most elliptical (and that's saying a lot)
leaving out the songs the Band covered, Apple Suckling Tree, Crash on the Levee, Don't Ya Tell Henry, Goin' to Acapulco, I'm Not There, Lo and Behold, Million Dollar Bash, Odds and Ends, Please Mrs. Henry, See You Later Allen Ginsburg, Tiny Montgomery, Try Me Little Girl, Yea Heavy and a Bottle of Bread, and You Ain't Goin' Nowhere
the whole thing is amazing as a document

i'll try to find it for you
go the fuck away, this is legitimate discussion

vimeo.com/107308378

does this work?

Again, I never said he wasn't more than just a left-winger. I'm saying he was genuine about his political beliefs during the early 60s.

He's also friends with Jimmy Carter and asked Carter to make a speech about him at one of the few awards Dylan seemed to care about as recently as last year, so yeah, he probably still is liberal at this point in his life, or at least lean's far more to the left currently than he does to the right. He filled the concert for said speech/award with not-so-secretly left leaning artists of his choosing as well.

I agree with you that Dylan's not as simple as being only a leftist/Marxist. I don't agree that it was a farce and his recent actions seem to show he has liberal thoughts. The AARP interview, which to my knowledge is his most recent interview paints this picture as well.

>go the fuck away, this is legitimate discussion
Did you mean to quote ? lmao

I was going to mention those more upbeat off-the-cuff type things earlier. I love "Open The Door, Homer" particularly. youtube.com/watch?v=GMeJHf05q-s

>HEY, DICK!

Yeah, that does. Very nice tune. I find it hard to believe Dylan ever fully gave up on Christ.

I once had a dream where I was arguing with my friend about what album was better, Blood On The Tracks or Desire. I got annoyed when they insisted that the boring Blood on the Tracks was superior, and I pointed out how fake and tame it was compared to the epics of Hurricane and Joey.

No. You responded to your stupid ass.

lol yeah i did, sorry

anyway, my guess is that he either was never really christian (unlikely)
or he just wasn't interested in that part of his life anymore (same with political activism)

He tows the line for what's expected of him. Why would he want to stir controversy in the overwhelmingly liberal press in his twilight years?

>i'll try to find it for you
Are you sure? Can you explain what you meant? haha

Stupid fuck.

Gayiohead/Grimes/Death Grips/Kanye West >>>>> Bub Dillon

how old are you?

anyone else think this album is criminally underrated? its one of my favorites. plus I think this album marks a big change in his lyrics.

Say that to my FACE FAGGOT >:+))))))

Here's the last verse of Red River Shore, a more recent Dylan song:

>Now I heard of a guy who lived a long time ago
>A man full of sorrow and strife
>That if someone around him died and was dead
>He knew how to bring 'em on back to life
>Well, I don't know what kind of language he used
>Or if they do that kind of thing anymore
Sometimes I think nobody saw me here at all
>Except the girl from the Red River Shore

This doesn't sound like someone who's abondoned Christ.

Mine too, superior to anything that came before. Wouldn't have got into Dylan were it not for this.

my favorite pre-electric Dylan album tbqh
Chimes of Freedom is one of the greatest songs Dylan ever wrote

Why Jimmy Carter though? He could've picked anyone - Neil Young, Tom Waits, Jack Nicholson (who he's asked to speak for him a few times and not so coincidentally has pretty damn liberal leanings) - why a president? That's as political as you can get without being political.

maybe not completely abandoned, but just abandoned being overtly public about it (maybe something to do with the universal panning of Saved and Shot of Love?)

I prefer it to about half the electric songs on BIABH desu.

Stupid fuck.

>album
i totally agree, one of his epics. Ballad in D, is a super underrated song too

Older than you.

yeah! i see a lot of hate for it but i just don't understand, its the only Dylan song that can be directly associated with a personal aspect of Dylan's life and its absolute heartbreaking

If interviews count as public then Dylan's been public about his Christian beliefs well into the current century. It's only been less pronounced in his songs.

please leave, you are ruining what has otherwise been a decent thread about Dylan which i've not really seen before.

I think not professionally making exclusively Christian music is not the same as denouncing your religion. Dylan is still a Christian and that is a continued inspiration to me at least.

I'll slice you.

He had a lot of regret about that song, which shows it's every bit as raw and confessional as it sounds.

I really don't know much about this incident, nor do I care to research it just to argue with you, but why get Dylan-inspired people when you can get the man himself? Sure he was payed enough.

>a decent thread about Dylan which i've not really seen before.
If we make more of these will people post in them?

hey, I've heard that song before by Louis Jordan:
youtube.com/watch?v=BHQ8OXJfQnA
Quit Kickin' My Dog Around is another one of those hilarious off-the-cuff songs I haven't heard in a while - really fun stuff
now and forever the black sheep of the early Dylan catalog - only his debut gets even less attention. it makes the ones that came before it feel way too stiff - The Times They Are A-Changin' is a stark contrast of songs that feel like they're all trying to make some kind of Statement, while this one feels like it's deliberately trying to avoid that impression (except about the persona he was trying to craft). the first song says it all, really: looser and more intimate

>Quit Kickin' My Dog Around
That's another old 1920's cover! The original is gold: youtube.com/watch?v=bR9zAoOcJ0E

Perfect with some Buell Kazee and Harry Smith for a good whisky drunk (like I'm on now).

i beleive so, or at least i hope so. Dylan threads tend to be either b8 or comparison threads, and neither of those really serve to do the man any justice.

Saw him in concert just two days ago. Tempest was always a guilty-pleasure album, partly because it was the album released when I first started getting into him. Since a lot of the songs he sang in concert were from Tempest I like it even more now,

Dylan did speak at the event, he made the longest speech of his career in fact. I misspoke slightly, actually. Carter did speak for him but he was more of a person presenting the award to Dylan than someone who was speaking for him. Dylan and Carter have been friends for years and Carter has gone to dozens of music events. He's not a paid politician.

The speech Dylan gave is actually fairly interesting. It's the most "sensitive" he's ever come across as an artist in any public appearance.

>guilty pleasure
but thats one of his best records?

Well, it's fair enough. I'll look up the speech. I think I've made the point I was trying to make about Dylan not being a political analogue.

What do you think of the ballad stuff? I've had it panned to me but I think his Sinatra-type balladry is strikingly original in sound and beautiful.

People who don't get it seem the type that wouldn't get Sinatra or vocal jazz either.

For people just getting into Dylan, the more recent records are taboo.

Fuck it, here's the transcript:
latimes.com/entertainment/music/posts/la-et-ms-grammys-2015-transcript-of-bob-dylans-musicares-person-of-year-speech-20150207-story.html#page=2
>I'm glad for my songs to be honored like this. But you know, they didn't get here by themselves. It's been a long road and it's taken a lot of doing. These songs of mine, they're like mystery stories, the kind that Shakespeare saw when he was growing up. I think you could trace what I do back that far. They were on the fringes then, and I think they're on the fringes now. And they sound like they've been on the hard ground.

>I should mention a few people along the way who brought this about. I know I should mention John Hammond, great talent scout for Columbia Records. He signed me to that label when I was nobody. It took a lot of faith to do that, and he took a lot of ridicule, but he was his own man and he was courageous. And for that, I'm eternally grateful. The last person he discovered before me was Aretha Franklin, and before that Count Basie, Billie Holiday and a whole lot of other artists. All noncommercial artists.

The point I've been making the entire time is that I agree he wasn't a political analogue, I just don't think he was telling an untruth and nothing but an untruth in the early days.

>Trends did not interest John, and I was very noncommercial but he stayed with me. He believed in my talent and that's all that mattered. I can't thank him enough for that.

>Lou Levy runs Leeds Music, and they published my earliest songs, but I didn't stay there too long. Levy himself, he went back a long ways. He signed me to that company and recorded my songs and I sang them into a tape recorder. He told me outright, there was no precedent for what I was doing, that I was either before my time or behind it. And if I brought him a song like "Stardust," he'd turn it down because it would be too late.

>He told me that if I was before my time -- and he didn't really know that for sure -- but if it was happening and if it was true, the public would usually take three to five years to catch up -- so be prepared. And that did happen. The trouble was, when the public did catch up I was already three to five years beyond that, so it kind of complicated it. But he was encouraging, and he didn't judge me, and I'll always remember him for that.

>Artie Mogull at Witmark Music signed me next to his company, and he told me to just keep writing songs no matter what, that I might be on to something. Well, he too stood behind me, and he could never wait to see what I'd give him next. I didn't even think of myself as a songwriter before then. I'll always be grateful for him also for that attitude.

>I also have to mention some of the early artists who recorded my songs very, very early, without having to be asked. Just something they felt about them that was right for them. I've got to say thank you to Peter, Paul and Mary, who I knew all separately before they ever became a group. I didn't even think of myself as writing songs for others to sing but it was starting to happen and it couldn't have happened to, or with, a better group.

>They took a song of mine that had been recorded before that was buried on one of my records and turned it into a hit song. Not the way I would have done it -- they straightened it out. But since then hundreds of people have recorded it and I don't think that would have happened if it wasn't for them. They definitely started something for me.

>The Byrds, the Turtles, Sonny & Cher -- they made some of my songs Top 10 hits but I wasn't a pop songwriter and I really didn't want to be that, but it was good that it happened. Their versions of songs were like commercials, but I didn't really mind that because 50 years later my songs were being used in the commercials. So that was good too. I was glad it happened, and I was glad they'd done it.

>Pervis Staples and the Staple Singers -- long before they were on Stax they were on Epic and they were one of my favorite groups of all time. I met them all in '62 or '63. They heard my songs live and Pervis wanted to record three or four of them and he did with the Staples Singers. They were the type of artists that I wanted recording my songs.

>Nina Simone. I used to cross paths with her in New York City in the Village Gate nightclub. These were the artists I looked up to. She recorded some of my songs that she [inaudible] to me. She was an overwhelming artist, piano player and singer. Very strong woman, very outspoken. That she was recording my songs validated everything that I was about.

>Oh, and can't forget Jimi Hendrix. I actually saw Jimi Hendrix perform when he was in a band called Jimmy James and the Blue Flames -- something like that. And Jimi didn't even sing. He was just the guitar player. He took some small songs of mine that nobody paid any attention to and pumped them up into the outer limits of the stratosphere and turned them all into classics. I have to thank Jimi, too. I wish he was here.

>Johnny Cash recorded some of my songs early on, too, up in about '63, when he was all skin and bones. He traveled long, he traveled hard, but he was a hero of mine. I heard many of his songs growing up. I knew them better than I knew my own. "Big River," "I Walk the Line."

>"How high's the water, Mama?" I wrote "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" with that song reverberating inside my head. I still ask, "How high is the water, mama?" Johnny was an intense character. And he saw that people were putting me down playing electric music, and he posted letters to magazines scolding people, telling them to shut up and let him sing.

>In Johnny Cash's world -- hardcore Southern drama -- that kind of thing didn't exist. Nobody told anybody what to sing or what not to sing. They just didn't do that kind of thing. I'm always going to thank him for that. Johnny Cash was a giant of a man, the man in black. And I'll always cherish the friendship we had until the day there is no more days.

>Oh, and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Joan Baez. She was the queen of folk music then and now. She took a liking to my songs and brought me with her to play concerts, where she had crowds of thousands of people enthralled with her beauty and voice.

that guy really knows how to bark and howl! fun song. looking up what these guys did, I saw they did Bully of the Town, which I first heard covered by The Holy Modal Rounders - who covered another great song you probably have heard before, but what the hey, it's still one of the best singles I've ever heard: Charlie Poole's If the River was Whisky and Moving Day
youtube.com/watch?v=rL4J-XIAKvw
youtube.com/watch?v=Sb-6A4IGRrw

>People would say, "What are you doing with that ragtag scrubby little waif?" And she'd tell everybody in no uncertain terms, "Now you better be quiet and listen to the songs." We even played a few of them together. Joan Baez is as tough-minded as they come. Love. And she's a free, independent spirit. Nobody can tell her what to do if she doesn't want to do it. I learned a lot of things from her. A woman with devastating honesty. And for her kind of love and devotion, I could never pay that back.

>These songs didn't come out of thin air. I didn't just make them up out of whole cloth. Contrary to what Lou Levy said, there was a precedent. It all came out of traditional music: traditional folk music, traditional rock 'n' roll and traditional big-band swing orchestra music.

>I learned lyrics and how to write them from listening to folk songs. And I played them, and I met other people that played them back when nobody was doing it. Sang nothing but these folk songs, and they gave me the code for everything that's fair game, that everything belongs to everyone.

>For three or four years all I listened to were folk standards. I went to sleep singing folk songs. I sang them everywhere, clubs, parties, bars, coffeehouses, fields, festivals. And I met other singers along the way who did the same thing and we just learned songs from each other. I could learn one song and sing it next in an hour if I'd heard it just once.

I'll read that when I'm less drunk. But seems like a fair debate, you have your side and I've mine. We've reached some kind of consensus.

>And if I brought him a song like "Stardust,"
I love this jazz sensibility he's coming out with more and more. His "Autumn Leaves" blew me away as a jazz fan.

As far as I can see he's making this as much about music as he can. I read an interview I loved around just before pic related came out, he was so appreciative of being treated and interviewed purely as a musician!

Wew, I'll end up listening to this stuff for days if you start me off. Thanks for the links.

did dylan help introduce anybody else to folk, roots, and blues music on a wide spectrum?