Bob Dylan’s 1974 Planet Waves was released between the album widely considered his worst (1973’s Dylan) and one widely considered his best (1975’s Blood on the Tracks).
Planet Waves definitely falls closer to the Blood on the Tracks side of that continuum, even if it doesn’t come close to the heights of that classic. Its songs are thoughtful meditations on love and death with rich backing music provided by The Band, and it fits nicely just below the top tier of Dylan albums.
Here’s a live version of Bob Dylan’s ‘Masters of War,’ recorded in 1963 at Town Hall in New York City. This song appears in Martin Scorsese’s 2005 documentary No Direction Home and later on the Bootleg Series release of that film’s soundtrack.
Those who read my criticism of Jackson Browne’s overtly political songs might wonder why I’m not similarly dismissive of this track. And it’s a fair question.
Three Dylan songs in four days. The Random iTunes Fairy is really giving old Bobby a workout this month.
Here’s another of Dylan’s early classics, the title cut from his 1965 album Highway 61 Revisited. This was Dylan’s first “rock” album, with only closer ‘Desolation Row’ recorded on acoustic instruments.
The Random iTunes Fairy has pulled this “two days, same artist” routine often enough on Random Weekends that I’m tempted to suspect foul play. As much as I know about the apparent patterns that show up within random distributions, sometimes it just seems fishy.
Today’s selection is one hop in the time machine away from yesterday’s. After hearing Bob Dylan croaking through a cut from the 2009 album Together Through Life, here we find him kicking off a famous concert in 1966.
Today’s Random Weekend selection is a by-the-numbers blues song from Bob Dylan’s 2009 album Together Through Life.
Dylan was 68 when he released this album, a rowdy boot-stomper of a record that came on the heels of his marvelous late-career trilogy of Time Out of Mind, Love and Theft and Modern Times. At the time, it wasn’t out of the question that this would be his last album.
Meet Me In Montauk 