Expecting Rain

I still recall the excitement when Desire came out.Everything was great about it, the band the songs his voice. Top of the world. It was everywhere around my extended family, friends. I learned to play 'hurricane' and i was only 12 at the time. It simply couldn't be bettered. Funny, no such excitement around BOTT at the time.
But over the years i have to say i rarely go back to it and listen. It just doesn't excite me anymore. I decided to examine it again. First: the songs. 'hurricane' and 'joey', drawn out affairs, who cares? 'Mozambique' and 'Romance in Durango', one snapshot, one movietheme song that goes nowhere. 'Black diamond bay', novelette, mildly interesting. That leaves the three heartfelt and effective songs 'one more cup' 'oh sister' and 'sara', all very good, and my favourite 'isis'.
Sound: very transparant, but that violin starts to bug me. i like the bass/drums. His voice quite remarkable, simply fantastic, great projection, dynamic, open, powerful. Never been better. Great harmonies from Emmylou (of course)
Still, there's something lacking, something that BOTT has, that 'Street Legal' has. Can anyone tell me why i have that feeling? Do i, instead, want to hear 'hard Rain'?

Are you referring to the beautiful quad mix or the massively inferior standard stereo mix?

Don't think the sound and mix are in question here, bb. I think he's discussing the album's content, message, mood, etc.

To which I reply - Desire is a wonderful album from start to finish.

It's not an album I personally rank highly, but that's only because the ones I do rank highly are rather untouchable (Blood On The Tracks, John Wesley Harding).

But if you didn't compare Desire to any other of Dylan's albums, you'd still have quite an adventurous, exotic album.

Ah but I would respond that the sonic mix of the quad actually signifcantly changes the album...

The album has two decent songs, Black Diamond Bay and Isis. The rest is either embarrassingly bad (Hurricane, Joey, Mozambique) or just average. This puts it light years better than Street Legal, but there is just no comparison with Blood On The Tracks which is superb from start to finish. I think the appeal of Desire is more about myth than music (which is true for much of Dylan's work), and about marketing a business plan. On these two matters, the album is a resounding success, however cringeworthy the music gets.

Can't stand Hurricane for a number of reasons, not all of them musical. Sorry that it's somehow reached 'Greatest Hit' status in Bobland.

Sara, juvenile, Abandoned Love should have gone in it's place. Mozambique, middling.

Joey, I'm on the fence about, Dylan succeeds in conveying the dramatic effect, and certain lines throughout are good, but spare me the repetitious moaning chorus, and elements of his character portrayal that don't seem very truthful.

About half of the album, I like a lot. Isis, Coffee, Sister, Diamond Bay and especially the wonderful Romance In Durango


Never heard the quad mix, but any stereo version, on the Columbia LP, SACD, or (old) standard CD, leaves something to be desired soundwise. The sound is frequently congested and occasionally distorted. A long way from the clean sound of BOTT.

Desire is a masterpiece in any form.... I LOVE the quad mix, but I could listen to that album through a tin can on a string and still be blown away.

Hurricane is a GREAT song. Because in the end it may not hold up to be "true" doesn't take away the fact that it is a killer song and killer performance by the band on the album. Stoner's bass line, Scarlett's violin Breaks, the great percussion.... Dylan in his best voice.

The rest of the album holds up too! The worst of Desire holds up to the pretty much anything but the best of the best in Dylans canon.

Hey Benny! Dont suppose you would be able to send a copy of the quad mix my way? It would be greatly appreciated...

Also, does the quad mix require a four speaker system to be heard properly?

Wouldn't it be funny if the quad needle drop was missing 2 channels?

Desire is flawed although very good. I do wish we had 20 more albums of Dylan singing like this, but I listen to Love and Theft more often and probably always will.

Tell me more about this quad mix? Commercially available? Is it vinyl only? Been meaning to upgrade my bog standard CD of Desire. Talking of which, is the remastered CD any kind of improvement? And the SACD?

[quote="smoke"]Wouldn't it be funny if the quad needle drop was missing 2 channels?quote]

Thats exactly what im thinking... Haha. Perhaps its the radical difference!

I think Abandoned Love, Golden Loom and Catfish would all fit into the time allocated for Joey. As is common with Bob, strong track selection over a sense of album cohesion is an issue. The violin is, to me, a bit like Hildago's accordion on TTL: sounds good, but it's so ubiquitous that it loses a lot of its power. I don't think Desire as a whole is very well-realized, but I also think the unevenness actually helps make for a fun and interesting ride. I can't think of any other that's so weird and diverse. With Dylan you sometimes have to look at the era over the album itself. 1983, for instance, was very creative time, but you wouldn't necessarily draw that conclusion listening to Infidels. Desire, its strong outtakes and the Rolling Thunder Revue's early shows make 1975 one of Dylan's most dynamic years, even if the album only hits the mark sporadically.

Whatever one thinks about Catfish as an individual song, it wouldn't have lent to a sense of cohesion on an album like Desire. Maybe New Morning, had of course he had wroted it at the time.

With Desire we have an album with large themes and geographic panorama for the most part, and then comes this ditty about a ball player...

Weaknesses: Hurricane, Joey, the absence of Abandoned Love (probably my all-time favorite Dylan track).

Strengths: Black Diamond Bay, the violins, Dylan's voice, One More Cup of Coffee, Isis, Sara, the cohesive feeling of the album.

That one song that I kind of like but almost always skip: Oh, Sister.

strong points;

hurricane
isis
Mozambique
one more cup of coffee (valley below)
oh sister
joey
romance in durango
black diamond bay
sara

weak points;

no abandoned love on the record!

Weak Points: Joey being chosen for the album over Abandoned Love

Strong Points: EVERYTHING ELSE...IT'S GOLD!!!!!!

I'm a little burnt out on Hurricane only because I heard it several times before I ever owned the album, and it doesn't feel like it has the same thematic feel as the rest of the songs...still a solid track though. Benny...it's my favorite Dylan album as it is and I haven't even had the oppurtunity to hear the Quad mix yet... even the "massively inferior studio mix" is still the best Dylan studio album to my ears.

It's a great album.

No, it's second-tier. Which doesn't make it 'still great'.

hmm any one have the quad mix? I used to have it a long long time ago.

I've seen the vinyl for 30 bucks nearby, should I pick it up? I was always disappointed with my regular copy.

I've gone through several vinyl versions, because I've looked for a really good sounding copy of this album, and they all sound pretty much the same. Which should be as it goes if they're drawn from the original 2 channel mix.

1 Go here viewtopic.php?f=9&t=69511&p=1143504&hilit=abandoned+desire#p1143504
2 Download
3 Put in ears
4 Stop fucking talking crap and start typing sense

I've actually had this all along and was just looking forward to Bennyboy's nasty comments.

I think I've held off on pick up the vinyl because of the vocal mistakes on Joey and Romance in Durango, they mixed them out for the regular releases.

You poor bastard

Good album. "Romance in Durango," "One More Cup of Coffee," & "Oh, Sister" are top-notch. Only "Mozambique" strikes me as a bit weak. I don't reach for it as often as I should coz I think there are better versions of some of the songs on Live 1975 & Hard Rain.

I remember at the time how weird it was to have so much violin on a pop album. Just a few short years later, it seemed like violins were everywhere. Maybe you don't have Mellencamp or Jackson Browne, to name just 2, without Desire. I dunno enough about their careers to know whether they were influenced by Desire, but it's a thought....

So what? You also get to hear Emmylou hilariously say 'I fucked it up' at the end of 'Oh Sister'. You wont get that with the overblown CD mix.

You dont listen to Dylan for studio polish - thats one of the (many) reasons Modern Times is so crap. No, you listen for the ragged spirit and the intangible soul. And those run through Desire like the creek that used to run through the meadow where Isis does her thing.

Desire is a self-contained world where myth meets reality, where storytelling gives us the refracted and reflected truth, where perspective is skewed to reveal the hidden secrets of the heart. These songs exist out the corner of eyes, in half-dreamt fantasies, in adult fairy tales. Cinema in song.

You can't listen to the album as an academic exercise - you must abandon yourself to feeling it. It's not meant to be taken literally, and I think some of you epically fail to understand that. Dylan's whole career is based on distortion and lies in the name of entertaining and fleshing out a wider agenda than narrow documentary. Once you switch off your need for the fact he presents to actually be historical fact and just, you know, kick back with the album - and the quad mix, played loud is my recommended format - you can wallow in its uniqueness. It a swirling shifting multi-faceted jewel, upholding the notion that communal music and voice can come from somewhere simultaneously both strange and ancient, yet more real and modern than the sordid humdrum present. The primal beat we all carry inside us.

Embrace the album and you step through a door into something really quite special - for my money the absolute pinnacle of Dylan's art. He never got quite to that realisation of vision again.