Category Archives: dylan weekends

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Song of the Day #644: ‘Hazel’ – Bob Dylan

Planet Waves is the first album I’ve played of the five I bought in preparation for these Dylan Weekends and I hope its quality is indicative of what I can expect of the rest. It’s fun to hear “new” music from an artist I’ve been listening to for more than 20 years.

Planet Waves certainly doesn’t crack my top tier of Dylan albums, and it would probably struggle to find a spot in the tier just below that, but it already sits comfortably alongside a group of albums in the good-to-great category (assume the top tier are “classics” and the second tier are “great to excellent”… yes, I’ll eventually get around to ranking all of these albums in order… and yes, I’m a total nerd… let’s move on).

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Song of the Day #643: ‘Forever Young’ – Bob Dylan

When I started this Dylan Weekend series and decided to dedicate posts to each of Bob Dylan’s albums chronologically, I knew I was going in somewhat ill-prepared. I own more albums by Dylan than by any other single artist or band in my collection (Elvis Costello is a close second) but I don’t own them all.

Already I’ve covered three of the albums I don’t own — Self Portrait, Dylan and Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid. But one of those is a soundtrack and the other two are notoriously mediocre, and primarily cover albums besides. So I don’t feel all that bad glossing over them on the blog.

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Song of the Day #637: ‘Mr. Bojangles’ – Bob Dylan

Did I say Self Portrait was considered Bob Dylan’s worst album? Let me take that back. 1973’s Dylan is actually the album that would likely earn that title.

Self Portrait has the worse reputation because it came out of nowhere and flew in the face of high expectations. But Dylan is an album of outtakes from Self Portrait… so basically, these are the songs that weren’t good enough to be on Dylan’s worst album. You do the math.

Dylan wasn’t involved in the creation or release of this album. It was pushed out by Columbia after he briefly left the label, some say as a deliberate attempt at sabotage (an official album was due to be released just a few months later).

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Song of the Day #636: ‘Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door’ – Bob Dylan

This weekend I’ll highlight two albums that Bob Dylan released in 1973, three years after New Morning. The first is the soundtrack album for the film Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, in which Dylan appeared as an actor.

Both the film and soundtrack marked a difficult time for Dylan, creatively. His first foray into acting resulted in a sketchy role that was mostly left on the cutting room floor and the music has largely been forgotten over time.

With one exception.

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Song of the Day #630: ‘The Man in Me’ – Bob Dylan

“Sometimes, there’s a man, well, he’s the man for his time and place.”

Yes, I am in fact talking about The Dude, here. If anybody is qualified to steal the spotlight from Bob Dylan on a Dylan Weekend, it’s Jeffrey Lebowski.

Thanks to The Dude —and his creators, the Coen Brothers — the other best-known track on New Morning is ‘The Man in Me,’ which played over the opening credits of The Big Lebowski.

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