Dylan's shit albums

[MK]

Do you like anything particular about it? (Musically or lyrically?)

[lukpac]

Musically I suppose. I guess I've never paid a whole lot of attention to the lyrics.

[MK]

Anyone know why Dylan started singing in that nasally, mush mouth voice in the late 70's/early 80's? He sounds worse than some of the late period Brian Wilson live performances..

I've heard some theories about that. I think he's aiming for higher registers. That, or he's trying to hit the high notes a lot more. At the same time, his vocal range was shrinking and his timber was deteriorating. On top of that, his enunciation went to shit. During the '66 acoustic sets, it was amazing to hear him sing these long, verbose songs with perfect memory and enunciation.

But during the 80's, he started mushing up words and slurring over phrases. By his own admission, that was a bad time for him, he thought he lost it as a performer, but even when (IHO) he regained those abilities, he was still doing it. It's possible his memory just isn't sharp anymore, partially because he's written so many songs. With a few notable exceptions, he usually changes his setlist...In terms of original songs, it's got to be several hundred by now, and on top of that, he's performed dozens maybe hundreds of different folk songs.

[CitizenDan]

I'll admit that I really love All the Tired Horses.

I do, too. The fact that he chose to start the album with a song where he doesn't sing a note must've meant something.

I also love "Minstrel Boy"; The Band really does swing on that tune, and the catcalls at the beginning are great.

[MK]

BTW, for those who are curious, here's alternate versions of "Oh Mercy" and "Infidels." AAC format, packaged in a zip file, roughly 42 MB each.

"Infidels" http://download.yousendit.com/D0FBC19D7C8ADA39
"Oh Mercy" http://download.yousendit.com/473103671D8F51DD

I compiled both based on published comments and recommendations made by Daniel Lanois (producer on "Oh Mercy"), Mark Knopfler (co-producer on "Infidels"), and Clinton Heylin (curmudgeonly Dylan biographer).

[Jelly]

New Morning - Bob's got a flu. Not crappy album but kind of lame.

Street-Legal - many Bobcats (sorry couldn't resist ) consider it a masterpiece. Count me in.

Hard Rain - I ADORE this, easily his best live album before the Bootleg Series started.

Real Live - Bob's shittiest band ever

Dylan & the Dead - actually this is Bob's shittiest band ever.

[JohnS]

My 2p-worth:
'Self Portrait' - serves a useful function as an outtakes compendium rather than a cohesive album to listen to, a la 'Dylan', and later on 'Biograph' and 'Bootleg Series 1-3'. If it hadn't been released people would still jump through hoops to track down its material. And then file 99% of it without listening to them again.
'Budokan' - never heard it, and, like 'Dylan & the Dead' I don't feel any curiosity to do so. I borrowed 'Hard Rain' to try it out a year or two ago and thought it was ok, but only after reading the background to it- (post-divorce Dylan hits the bottle, plays his heart out in a rain-lashed open-air stage while the lightning crashes etc etc) I didn't buy/copy any of it.
'Down In the Groove' - I've gone on record many a time saying I LIKE this! I don't know why, I understand all the criticism entirely, I know it's another 'Self portrait' mish-mash of half-baked stuff from a variety of sessions, but I just enjoy a lot of these songs. I think it was the first 'modern' Dylan album I tried out after getting into him (the 1960s stuff) in the 1980s, so I had no reference points other than knowing the odd 1970s track. Maybe that explains it.

[CitizenDan]

I also love 'Hard Rain.' There's sloppy-good and sloppy-bad, and it's sloppy-good. I listen to it more than the 1975 'Bootleg Series' discs.

[MK]

Add 1985's Empire Burlesque to the list. Much better than Down in the Groove and Knocked Out Loaded, but to quote Anthony Lane's Revenge of the Sith review, "only in the same way that dying from natural causes is preferable to crucifixtion."

Better songs, better outtakes (I'll get to that in a second), but everything has poorly dated 80's gloss. Arthur Baker is part of the blame, slapping on the occasional slick horn overdub, but check out the bootlegs: even the rough mixes are marred by Dylan's poor production.

My recommendations:
Drop the two syrupy ballads ("I'll Remember You," "Emotionally Yours"....yeeeesh, what an awful song title), and "Never Gonna Be the Same Again."

Replace "When the Night Comes Falling from the Sky" with the Bootleg Series, Vol. 1-3 version. Find "New Danville Girl" and reinstate it - it's an earlier, superior version of "Brownsville Girl" without the crappy overdubs.

Change the track order a bit, and you can probably make a fairly decent album. You'd only have 8 cuts, but it's a shade under 45 minutes.

BTW, what they did to "Someone's Got a Hold of My Heart" is a travesty - it's retitled here as "Tight Connection To My Heart".

Yeah, both titles suck, especially "Someone's Got a Hold of My Heart," but don't let that throw you. At least three versions circulate, and at least two came from the Infidels sessions from 1983.

Listen to the version I've got in my Infidels zip file. That's some fine singing, not to mention some fine guitar work (I think it's Mick Taylor doing the lead on that one). MUCH better than a second version released on Bootleg Series, Vol. 1-3, which sounds neutered in comparison.

The Empire Burlesque version sounds like someone puked all over it. It's layered with synths and echo. Still pretty tuneful and still one of the better tracks on the album. Even though the bootleg version of "Someone's Got A Hold of My Heart" is better, it doesn't fit sonically with Empire Burlesque, so I'd grudgingly stick with "Tight Connection."