Expecting Rain

"Going Vegas" they cried (take a look at your profile photo from '78)?

The Moonlight comparison totally doesn't work. Moonlight's a murder ballad, not a "harmless old love song."

Is it "deep" though? Is it? I know we shouldnt define "commercial" as anything that sounds good, or is easy to listen to, but the Frank songs provoke nothing besides "oh, that kinda sounds nice". There is nothing that makes you think or is innovative...
The Frank songs were never meant as anything besides glorified greeting cards. Even in Bobs voice. They all consist of clichees about love and loneliness.




Oh, snap! You got me. But at least they were slick versions of his own songs. And not that far off 75/76... The words were still there. And they had great rythm.

*mic drop*

Moonlight is very dreamlike; but not necessarily a murder ballad. There's some ominous imagery, for sure, but as Bob sings on another song from the same album "what looks good in the day, at night is another thing".

Kind of like in Man In The Long Black Coat. For all of it's inference, there's no point where it actually states he's a villain, or the girl has suffered by going with him. Reminds me of one of those films where the character you think is a villain might turn out to be a good guy, rather than vice versa.

I agree though that Moonlight is quite different to many of the more conventional and straightforward songs on Triplicate.

Simply because this kind of music bores me to death. Yaaaawn.....
It's sad, I've lost interest in his recent work AND live shows.
This sluggish shit is going on for much too long now and time is running away...

Bye and Bye then?

Bob isn't always doing Frank. Sometimes he does Dick Haymes. I don't understand why he went Louis Prima on Old Black Magic, id prefer if he did it Frank style.

Frank was more than a crooner, everyone always misunderstands that. Watch the documentary All or Nothing at all. Old Blue Eyes comes through as the artist he was. I never knew how much of the man he was.

He played a mostly, if not all, African American prison in DC in 1962/63 just to show the president he was in town and didn't say hello.

I Could Have Told You was sung a few days if not the day after he tried to kill himself after Ava Gardner left him.

If you've not seen The Man With The Golden Arm, that's a great Frank film that very much fits the mood of Triplicate or Fallen Angels.

For sure. I can perfectly well understand that some people don´t like the standards albums, but what I don´t get is the anger of some fans. What´s wrong with doing this? If you don´t like it, well, that´s sad, but there´s nothing wrong with doing this sort of records, in my opinion. I mean, if he was doing a "duets" greatest hits record, collaborating with Kanye West, Adele and the likes (like so many of his peers do), I´d be the first one to beat him up, but what he´s doing now is totally respectable, IMHO

Inference indeed... that's why they call him a poet, not a journalist or a novelist. Just because it's subtle doesn't mean it's not there.

Boils down to "cool?"
Nah. How about this? It's just downright boring.

I'm actually jealous of all you out there that love this phase. I want to.
I'm still really trying, but after wasting effort on the Xmas album & Fallen Shadows & portions of various shows over the past few years, I just can't bring myself to bother with Triplets.

And, yes, please throw Spirit, Bye & Moonlight and other show-momentum-killers into that same boring mix. I know, I know, "better lyrics," but such an excruciatingly tiring, monotonous delivery, IMHO, pains me.

Dammit, I want to love ALL Bob's music & phases, I really do.
But, gotta be honest with myself on this one. (Yawn...)
First-ever Dylan release I did not buy. Ouch.

Totally ready for the "next phase" if it comes around though!

I don't know how Braggin can be boring. I listen to that over and over again!

I'm still on disc two. Only because I've been listening to the first two discs repeatedly. Disc three I will get around to after I've fully absorbed the first two. I'm also sort of saving disc three, because I don't want to get to the end of this music.

Yeah. And of course, not all bible-quoting men in long black coats are villains (hopefully Bob isn't, anyway!). That the girl in the song didn't even leave a note isn't necessarily anything untoward: maybe the real horror was what she left behind. The song doesn't even state that the man lurking around the dance hall with a "face like a mask" is even the same guy as the title character.

As with so many of Bob's songs, he builds up an illusion of imagery, giving us just enough to let our imagination run with it, similar to a psychological thriller. I feel that Scarlet Town self-consciously acknowledges this ("it's all right there for ya, in Scarlet Town"), giving a glimpse of the man behind the curtain.

Give it time.

Many of these are about the passage of time and loss of youth's vigor, even some of the love songs scan that way when Dylan is singing them.

I have Triplicate now. I bought it yesterday. Not on the first day but a few days later. If it was an album of new songs written by Bob I probably would have rushed out and bought it on the first day.

All is well that ends well.

To answer the question, with a question.
Am I the only one who thinks these are being released as a simple way of fulfilling contractual obligations?
One release was fair enough I suppose, the second being highly questionable.
The news of this 3rd release left me totally disheartened.
I haven't bought it, as I don't feel the need to listen to more of the same.
Simple as that.

All is good with myself and Bob though.
JWH is currently on a loop.

There is nothing that makes you think, you mean. Not everyone is made to think by the same things - but in this matter, in part because you mischaracterize the material. In many cases, if the songs appear to consist only of cliches, it's because the songs made them cliches. (Though, no, it's not innovative. When was the last innovative thing Dylan did?)

Look, not liking this stuff is totally legit - as I've said, so far I'm lukewarm on it - but what gets me is the wholesale misunderstanding of what these songs are, and the related statements that they are anathema to Dylan's body of work, an assertion that simply does not square with the facts.

Not to judge merit, but I like some of the songs and don't especially like others. For that matter, I'm hypercritical and dislike versions of some of the songs by performers regarded as past masters of standards singing. I'm not very fond of pedal steel on the old standards and the occasional country drawl that Dylan resorts to seems out of place, kind of startling. I admit I was impressed with how he tackled Stardust. Eventually I am sure I will hear the Triplicate tunes but I'll need to be in a certain mood. And I won't torrent them; it will be that grey area of used or remaindered CD's. I picked up the first two standards albums from a used rack and admit to having listened all the way through Shadows. I've yet to play Fallen Angels straight through but I'll try it someday. I have no objection to Dylan trying these out; I think it's cool. Better than "box wrote it" bilge.

Mentally going through the post BoTT catalog I'm reminded of how many disappointing records I bought. Seemed important at the time.

Good post.

Is there anything dylan has put out that you dont like good sir? You must understand that dylan cant please everyone all of the time?, and lecturing people on what they 'should' like is absurd.

Good point Steve.

Jazz is good. But Jazz is not easy. It take some keen taste refinement to really like it properly.
Trad Pop is also good and Trad Pop is easy to like.

I would say Trad Pop is right up there at the top along with Cajun and Flamenco and Classical Guitar. They are good and they are easy to like.

How so? Let's have your explication. I just re-read the lyric and it's much vaguer than you say.

If blob can turn any of the covers on triplicate into the tour de force version of moonlight he performed in chicago 04, i would be very intrested

I seem to be getting a lecture on why I shouldn't like it.

Given Bob's past you shouldn't be surprised or baffled by these releases. You have every right to dislike it, but can you listen to the endless Spirit in the Water before one of these harmless tracks on Triplicate?

Yes, you can, but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. If Dylan wrote these songs you'd probably have less to complain about.