Tag Archives: Bob Dylan

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Song of the Day #1,458: ‘It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry’ – Bob Dylan

Best Albums of the 60s – #5
Highway 61 Revisited – Bob Dylan (1965)

It never ceases to amaze me that Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited was released just five months after Bringing it all Back Home. And to top that off, The Beatles released Help! and Rubber Soul in the four following months.

How amazing must it have been to be a music fan in the mid-60s? Not just every year but seemingly every month brought some new masterwork by a rotating cast of artists who were in the process of defining popular music.

Kids today get what? Justin Bieber and Katy Perry?

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Song of the Day #1,454: ‘She Belongs to Me’ – Bob Dylan

Best Albums of the 60s – #7
Bringing It All Back Home – Bob Dylan (1965)

I discovered Bob Dylan during my sophomore year of high school. I’d heard of him before, and was familiar with his greatest hits through my parents (when I was a kid, they’d played that album on a reel-to-reel player — the iPod of its day), but I’d never listened to any of his albums in full.

I started my collection on vinyl, buying whichever records I could find for a good price at the Tower Records in nearby Washington, D.C. And of those records, it was Bringing it all Back Home that truly opened my mind to Dylan’s genius.

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Song of the Day #1,442: ‘Black Diamond Bay’ – Bob Dylan

When I recently counted down my list of favorite 70s albums, Blood on the Tracks was the only Bob Dylan album to make the cut. I considered adding The Basement Tapes and especially Desire to that list but ultimately decided to make room for other artists.

Listening to ‘Black Diamond Bay,’ today’s Random Weekend selection, I find myself rethinking that decision. Desire is a fabulous collection, as lyrically rich and sonically beautiful as anything Dylan has recorded.

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Song of the Day #1,436: ‘Desolation Row [Alternate Take]’ – Bob Dylan

Exactly one week ago, I predicted a flood of Bob Dylan tracks on Random Weekends to match the onslaught of Elvis Costello. The two artists most represented in my music collection should, over time, be the two artists most represented in this series, no?

Well, here we go. And while it doesn’t seem fair that two songwriters who have had their own dedicated weekends (lasting close to a year in total) should dominate this one, I can’t feign disappointment over the selection of this alternate take of ‘Desolation Row’ culled from the No Direction Home soundtrack.

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Song of the Day #1,434: ‘Idiot Wind’ – Bob Dylan

Best Albums of the 70s – #1
Blood On the Tracks – Bob Dylan (1975)

I doubt this pick will come as a surprise to anybody, particularly given that Bob Dylan hasn’t placed another album on this list. The 70s wasn’t his most successful decade, but it produced what may well be his best album.

Blood On the Tracks is the quintessential break-up album, a poetic chronicle of a dissolving marriage that simultaneously feels deeply personal and profoundly universal.

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