Expecting Rain

I recognise that facial expression:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/b ... 470075.stm

Have a care, my good man, and be not a stranger to the selfless, lonely, unrecognised and oftentimes abused devotions of the pure truth-seeking avant garde expressionist.

Yes.

I say no.

What about PianoBob ?

too Billy Joel

ModBob sticks.

Reminds me of the '91 Grammy's show.

The world needs a lot of more grand pianos and a lot fewer keyboards with crappy-sounding 'piano' functions. So I'm all for GrandBob!! Just surprised he didn't do it years ago.

As for Stuttgart 91: one of the great losses to the Youtube universe was the removal of clips from that show. Side-splittingly hilarious

Dylan is long past the age where anything matters on stage--not the band, not his instrument, not the set list. He can't play any instrument all that well, and acoustic piano is a very unforgiving instrument. In his younger days, it was his best instrument--there's no guitar equivalent of Black Crow Blues in his recorded work. But all his significant piano songs are either solo performances, fortuitous demos, or carefully controlled studio efforts. Up until a few years ago, I really hoped he'd do an acoustic tour with just a few select musicians on board. I don't see any cause for such hope at this point. He's just going to ride the boogie wagon to the graveyard, croaking and wheezing and cashing the checks.

There were two clips on Rolling Stone's site, from Hop Farm I think. Dylan played piano on Lovesick, not very well but not horribly. His "solo" was not "amazing" or "jazzy" as the RS writer claimed, just fumbling and aimless. The other clip had him standing at a mike and destroying one of his best songs, Tangled Up In Blue, with one of his very worst vocals displaying all his musical ineptitude with apparent glee. I feel sorry for his band.

Good post HA. Here's a man whose opinion I respect. And as he's a musician himself AND in a band he knows of what he speaks. I wonder myself why Dylan can't self-evaluate. It makes me sad that imho he's hurting his legacy. Having said that, and I haven't seen him live for a decade, but from what I read here from the undeluded, he can still cut an occasional good performance. I hope to see him again and cross my fingers.

If it's the clip I'm thinking of, I enjoyed it very much.



I respect his opinions too, but I, along with Al and Bob Dylan, am also a musician who plays in a band, and I can tell you his 60's anthems do NOT automatically mean he has a successful career 50 years later. His string of #1 albums and world tours seems too easily dismissed by those who feel they know better than him what he should be doing.

+1

At the risk of getting in this arguement for the 900th time, what streak of #1 albums?? In fact I'm not aware of Dylan EVER having a #1 album. But that's neither here nor there. And as I've said before I love some of his current stuff(you always have to say that when you dare to criticize Bob) but the sound in the studio and the sound live(of his voice) are miles apart on most nights. They just are. How they achieve that you'd have to ask a record producer. If you can't hear that I'm sorry. If you could just be objective for a second and tell me that if someone who WASN'T Dylan came to you with THAT voice you'd hire them immediately for your own band you're bullshitting yourself and me.

Why is it that everybody who dislikes Dylan's recent work says they're being objective . It's very naive to think that everybody who has a different opinion is ....ahhh never mind i'm tired of this never ending arguing .

I'm not going to get into the arguments either, it's pretty pointless. I would say Dylan was nearly as unlikely a candidate for a wedding band singer in 1966 as he would be today. That isn't what he does, and I know lots of people who can't stand him singing at any time. I'll make up my own mind, and there are plenty of concert performances I don't care for-that's been the case for most of his career, and most definitely since about 1984.

Summary of the embarrassing devastation done by Bob Dylan to his career & legacy since turning 60 years old:
2001 Love and Theft
#5 on Billboard, Gold record.
Grammy: Best Contemporary Folk/Americana Album.

Review scores :
PopMatters (favorable)
The A.V. Club (favorable)
Spin (favorable) November 2001, p.127
The Village Voice (favorable)
Allmusic 4 1/2 stars
Q (favorable) October 2001, p.122
Blender (favorable) October 2001, p.102
Music Box 4 stars
Robert Christgau (A+)
Rolling Stone 5 stars
George Starostin 12 stars

The Village Voice conducted its Pazz & Jop Critics Poll for 2001, "Love and Theft" topped the list.
In 2003, the album was ranked #467 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, while Newsweek magazine pronounced it the second best album of its decade. In 2009, Glide Magazine ranked it as the #1 Album of the Decade. Entertainment Weekly put it on its end-of-the-decade, "best-of" list...


2006 Modern Times
Australian ARIA Albums Chart 1
Austria Albums Chart 2
Canadian Albums Chart 1
Danish Albums Chart 1
Finnish Albums Chart 3
French Albums Chart 17
Germany Albums Chart 2
Irish Albums Chart 1
New Zealand Albums Chart 1
Norway Albums Chart 1
Sweden Albums Chart 2
Switzerland Albums Chart 1
The Netherlands Albums Chart 3
UK Albums Chart 3
US Billboard 200 1

Grammy: Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance for the song, "Someday Baby".
Grammy: Best Contemporary Folk/Americana Album.

Reviews
Allmusic 4 1/2 stars
ARTISTdirect 4 1/2 stars
Blender 5 stars
Robert Christgau (A+)
Entertainment.ie 3 stars
Entertainment Weekly A
The Guardian 4 stars
Kevchino 10 stars
Los Angeles Times 4 1/2 stars
The Observer (favorable) link
Pitchfork Media (8.3/10) link
Rolling Stone 5 stars 9/7/06, p.99
Stylus Magazine B-
Tiny Mix Tapes 5 stars
Uncut 5 stars Sep 2006, p.72

According to Metacritic, a site that tracks prominent critical opinion, Modern Times' approval rating hovers around 89%, indicating universal acclaim and earning it the honor of 30th most-liked-by-critics album (on Metacritic) of all time.

The album also became Dylan's third successive album to top the Village Voice's 'Pazz & Jop' poll.

By the end of 2007, Bob Dylan's Modern Times Album had sold over 6.3 million units worldwide.



2009 Together Through Life
Argentina Albums Chart 1
Australian Albums Chart 5
Austria Albums Chart 1
Belgian Albums Chart 2
Canadian Albums Chart 1
Denmark Albums Chart 1
Dutch Albums Chart 3
Finnish Albums Chart 6
French Albums Chart 9
Germany Albums Chart 2
Irish Albums Chart 2
Italy Albums Chart 6
Japan Oricon Western Albums Chart 2
New Zealand Albums Chart 3
Spanish Albums Chart 4
Swedish Albums Chart 1
Swiss Albums Chart 2
UK Albums Chart 1
U.S. Billboard 200 1
Reviews
Allmusic 4 stars
Blender 5 stars
Drowned in Sound (7/10) link
The Guardian 3 stars
Mojo 4 stars
Music Box 4 stars
Pitchfork Media (5.4/10)
Robert Christgau (B+)
Rolling Stone 4 stars
Spin 3 stars
The Times 4 stars
Tiny Mix Tapes 4 stars
Uncut 5 stars

The record maintains a score of 76/100 at critic aggregator MetaCritic ("Generally favorable reviews").




2009 Christmas in the Heart
Austria Albums Chart 63
Belgian (Flanders) Albums Chart 22
Belgian (Wallony) Albums Chart 89
Canada Albums Chart 33
Denmark Albums Chart 15
Dutch Albums Chart 34
French Albums Chart 119
Germany Albums Chart 37
Norway Albums Chart 5
Irish Albums Chart 34
Italy Albums Chart 27
Spain Albums Chart 54
Sweden Albums Chart 6
Switzerland Albums Chart 80
UK Albums Chart 40
US Billboard 200 Albums Chart 23
US Billboard Holiday Albums Chart 1
US Billboard Folk Albums Chart 1
US Billboard Rock Albums Chart 9

Professional reviews
Allmusic 3 stars
A.V. Club (B-) link
The Chicago Tribune 2 stars
Robert Christgau 1 star
Drowned In Sound (5/10)
The Guardian 4 stars
Rolling Stone 3 stars
Slant Magazine 4 stars
Sputnikmusic 2 1/2 stars
Uncut 2 stars

Its collective score at Metacritic stands at 62 out of 100 based on 17 reviews, indicating generally favorable reviews...Slant Magazine's critic Jesse Cataldo said "This enjoyable sense of exploration, which prizes levity in a genre that usually amounts to an artistic wasteland, is invaluable. It also proves how much life is left in the songs, and how much other artists have succeeded at butchering them."

Bob Dylan on the idea that his treatment of the songs was ironic: "Critics like that are on the outside looking in. They are definitely not fans or the audience that I play to. They would have no gut level understanding of me and my work, what I can and can’t do - the scope of it all. Even at this point in time they still don’t know what to make of me."

Smoke we're essentially saying the same thing. I said I haven't seen him personally in quite awhile(2002). But I hear all the complaining and the youtube vids. And someone made a good point that alot of those are recorded on cheap cell phones, but still.
I know he's never been a "wedding singer" I mean I am a long time fan I know how non-fans feel about the voice. But I love it. Always have. But it's damaged now........you know what I'm sayin'

And Tragos, if your post was to me I said I like much of his current work and some not so much. I love TOOM, L&T, some of Modern Times.

ANYWAY, we'll just leave it there. You're just stating your views. Me mine.

Well I was typing this when your post came up^^

Are you even READING my posts?? I said he sounds good in the studio hence the accolades you took all the trouble to list above(though you say you don't want to get into another debate on this). Funny, I don't see any comments on his live performing in all that.

Hmmmmmm...........

^
you asked him about the streak of #1 albums.

There wasn't a streak- unless you count Desire and Modern Times, separated by 42 years, as a streak. I wouldn't, unless I was 2839 years old.

I think Smoke was responding to this bit.

I know that. Desire and Modern Times were his last two US #1's. Unless they weren't.

Check the end of the Berlin show. They look pretty sorry for themselves, too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khFSKA5mVzo

TTL was #1, too.
obviously one his best decades commercially speaking.

Well there you go, there's his streak. Modern Times and TTL, #1, Highway 61 Revisted and Blonde on Blonde, not #1. That's modern times for you.

Love and Theft
#5 on Billboard


2006 Modern Times
US Billboard 200 1


2009 Together Through Life
U.S. Billboard 200 1


2009 Christmas in the Heart
US Billboard Holiday Albums Chart 1
US Billboard Folk Albums Chart 1