Expecting Rain

No. I think all of those songs are appropriate to him now. What songs that he recorded in the 1960s-1970s do you find not credible for him to perform live now? I assume there were such songs on BIABH, HWY 61 and BOB, since you mentioned them in the opening post.

Funnily enough, I also saw him in 1980, at the Royal Albert Hall. It was great to just be there and see him, and although he didn't deliver the greatest performance, he still had plenty enough to give, at 64 (he was born in 1915). It was right before the Carter-Reagan election, and the line I vividly remember, as put in a plug for ex-showbiz buddy Reagan, between songs, was his "We got a tooth fairy in the White House" jibe at Carter.

@rev:
They are credible, I think they stand up very well. My opening post, far as we drifted from that by now, refers to the albums as written in vinyl. I don't think they define everything he is, I don't think they are more relevant than the strongest of his later work.

Monkey Mim, if you think Dylan's overrated, why?, what do you think of the Beatles? John Lennon? The Stones?

that was fcking awesome. i'm sober and can't stop laughing. if i saw this when high i would lose it.

and apologies for being 26 pages behind.

Those mid-sixties albums are the only essential ones in his catalogue in terms of his subsequent career. Add Blood on the Tracks and John Wesley Harding, and that's what he'll be remembered for. Without those essential albums, he'd never have had the commercial credibility or critical attention that allowed him to waste huge amounts of time on so much lesser music, nor would he have had the trademark sounds and lyrics to parody and recycle in his dotage. They established the Bob Dylan brand.

He will be remembered for Freewheelin', The Times They Are A-Changin', and Time Out Of Mind as well.

I agree with this assessment. I would add "The Times They Are-a Changing" to those three albums + JWH + BOTT and that's really his catalogue. 6 albums. It's not that there aren't any other good albums ("Freewheelin" is good, "Love & Theft" is good) but only those 6 seem essential and will eventually be the touchstones for anyone in the future who wonders "who was Bob Dylan?" and I think his admirers in the future will concentrate on those albums.

And "Love and Theft"



And other brilliant works in between. Every Grain of Sand, Blind Willie Mctell to name a couple.

In a nutshell, that's it. Quite why people get so worked up about his post-TOOM output is one of life's mysteries.

he ll be remembered for all his material which is brilliant.

Can't remember which interview Dylan did where he admitted he couldn't imagine how he wrote the mid-sixties stuff, maybe specifically Desolation Row. Overrated my ear! He's killed too many brain cells, plus you have to be able to take fresh shocks to write something like that. Shakespeare could have improved it perhaps with a few felicitous phrases but I'm not sure Shakespeare would have scoped that much material in eleven minutes.

I don't have time to read all 40 pages of this thread, so if this has already been said or has nothing to do with what anybody's talking about, apologies in advance, but here's my take:

There's no way on Earth that Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, or Blonde On Blonde can be overrated. They influenced music forever, just as much as Sgt. Pepper or Are You Experienced?

Before the 3 mid-'60's Dylan albums, pop songs were 2- or 3-minute long affairs about your girlfriend leaving you, rockin' around the clock, or drivin' down the highway with the top down & the radio on. Dylan gave us longer songs & different subject matter, & did so with a singing voice that was unlike any heard in the mainstream previously---probably paving the way for Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, et. al.

If anything, these 3 albums can never be praised enough.

wot he said

mid sixties bob (can we include another side and john wesley harding?) is just brilliant and insanely important

you know that saying about the sex pistols concert in manchester in the seventies? "not many people went, but everybody that did started a band" (or something like it)

well bob is exactly like that; except his records made their way into the hands of so, so many more people because they were something completely new

The thread finds sanity at last.

I don't hate it. I think that was for his former folkie friends, plus the record's about highways.

true, there aren't any Floaters on the big 3; he hadn't discovered Japanese novels yet

That was the 60 Minutes interview, he expressed awe at how he wrote songs like It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding), specifically those opening lines "darkness at the break of noon/shadows even the silver spoon/the handmade blade, the child's balloon/eclipses both the sun and moon"

Take me on a trip upon that magic drunken boat alright....

do not ever knock mr tabourine man! why would you do that

What does that mean? Are you saying those lyrics are drunken ramblings?

@tellme: I didn't knock it, I cited an influence. He did a bunch of great T-Men in my tourgoin' time.

@r_g: I was referring to Rimbaud's poem, The Drunken Boat.

Yes, but why did you bring that up after Ivan's post about the sixty minutes quote and add a 'lil sarcasm?

the boat and the ship seem to go very different ways so it's not a real big influence in this example

Did I say it was big? I said it was an influence. It's well known he read Rimbaud at the time.