|
When that tracklisting stares out at you, as it does above, it really rams home both what an incredible album it is, and how damn near impossible it would be to isolate one track from all the others. I guess the only 'filler' track is the speedy/ bluesy From a Buick 6, but that's great, too. Like a Rolling Stone still has the power to make the hairs stand up on the back of my neck, all these years later, whenever I hear the gunfire crack of that opening drum beat's report. Even ol' Greil Marcus got it right when he observed that hearing it kick in, in a hotel bar, somewhere on his travels, made him realise how it has the power to grab the collective attention of completely unconnected people that are exposed to it together, for as long as its 6' duration. But it's almost too obvious a pick, and I also remember it as a single, so I'd need to pick a track that I only associate with the album. Desolation Row is the second-most famous track, and one that allows me to listen to it two ways: concentrating on the lyrics, or just letting them wash around the bedrock of Charlie McCoy's sublime start-to-finish guitar part. If you've never tried listening to it that way, do it. With Ballad of a Thin Man, I probably prefer the live '66 outings to the studio version, mainly because of Garth Hudson's fairground gothic Hammond support, and Dylan's impassioned, totally committed vocal. I love Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues and Queen Jane, but I'd still have to place them down the pecking order. As I would the title track, even though it sounds as fresh, knowing, witty, acerbic and polished, as ever it did. Tombstone Blues rarely gets talked about on this forum, but here is Dylan at his most assured, yet out there on his own, light years ahead of the game. I kind of think of it as a long playing Subterranean Homesick Blues. It also races along at a similarly frantic yet controlled pace, but at twice SHB's length, the dextrous marriage that exists between the 'this is what life is like around here', namechecking, disparate, cultural rollcalling stew of the lyrics and Mike Bloomfield's foot-to-the-floor guitar part, make for a 700mph jet fighter, certainly and assuredly navigating social history's subway tunnel. It's really a toss-up between this and It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes a Train To Cry, for me. These are the two tracks that I look forward to hearing most, whenever I play the album. The piano part seals Train, defines the whole mood of the song. 'I been up all night, leaning on the window sill'. There's a complete life in that line. I can't really choose between them. They're both so different, but I guess I have to go for the slower, fatalistic- 'If I don't make it, you know my baby will'- latter, because it speaks to us all, and clearly reminds us of moments we've all separately shared.
|
Login
FAQ
Well, thinking about it that way helped me make this difficult decision! 
Just always have had a special fondness for QJ
