Music Fact #18: My favorite Dylan? Blood on the Tracks (1975). Wonderful voice & music. Very intimate lyrics. Absolute poetry.

BOB DYLAN AND JOAN BAEZ 1960s flower power….

http://pedrofeliz3b.wordpress.com/2009/01/25/bob-dylan-the-bootleg-series-rare-and-unreleased-1961-1991-columbia-47382-three-cd-set-review-from-april-1991/

Bob Dylan released the scathing, epic song “Idiot Wind” on his 1975 album Blood On The Tracks. The band Hootie and the Blowfish had a huge hit with the song “I Only Wanna Be With You,” which included lines verbatim from Dylan’s original track. The band was sued for copyright infringement.

He can't sing all that well, but somehow it's okay when he's doing his own material. Uploaded by indiehipster.com.

When we look back on a relationship, we don’t remember it in a linear, chronological manner. Our minds flash forward and back, calling up the joys and heartaches. That’s the breakthrough this Bob Dylan song achieved – it breaks the conventions of storytelling through what we’d now call “real-time” experience.

Uploaded by about.com.

There are lots of unusual things about this song, part of Dylan’s album “Blood on the Tracks,” released in 1975. For one thing, it has seven verses, and no chorus. And Dylan recorded several versions of the song, changing the lyrics each time and often changing the point of view from first to third person. (Psst, Bob: It’s ten times better and more immediate in the first person. Leave…it…alone.)

Dylan described the song’s narrative form this way: “What’s different about it is that there’s a code in the lyrics, and there’s also no sense of time. There’s no respect for it. You’ve got yesterday, today and tomorrow all in the same room, and there’s very little you can’t imagine not happening.” And he said, “It took ten years to live, and two years to write.”

Rolling Stone named “Tangled Up in Blue” number 68 on its list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. (For Rolling Stone, “all time” means the rock and roll era.) In any case, that’s way too low for this great song. One particularly special cover is by the Scottish singer KT Tunstall:

 Blood On The Tracks comes from a difficult part in Dylan’s life, with his marriage falling apart and the love-is-wonderful albums now over.

 The album begins with one of the most powerful songs Dylan has written, Tangled Up In Blue.  Before the album was even release this song already had different versions.  The first version was recorded in September 1974 in New York.  Dylan, at home for Christmas, showed the album to his brother and got mixed a mixed response, so he re-recorded it in December 1974 in Minniapolis, and the second version appeared on the album  (This all comes from Tangled Up In Blue Article by Eyolf Ostrem).  The album version is excellent, but it feels like it lacks much of the emotion that later versions of it have.  For example, here is the Rolling Thunder version that is mentioned in the article:

 The next song, a simple twist of fate, has also changed since the release of the album.  Although Dylan always changes up songs for live performances, this song went through a drastic change in lyrics as well. I put them side by side here and colored the changes he made to it in the re-written version on the right:

A Simple Twist Of Fate

 A lot of the changes he made to the lyrics after it was released on the album are him cleaning up phrases and such, but they also change the feeling of the song as well. He took out the feeling of emptiness and of not caring, replacing them with actions, and changed a lot of the pronouns. In the revised version the guy no longer has a feeling of disinterest and no longer blames himself. In the revised version she left him, rather then it just feeling like there was nothing but emptiness left between them. I’m not always good at analysing the lyrics though.

 The rest of the tracks on the album have strength in their own way as well, but I’m running out of time to write more (the computer lab I’m writing this in closes in 15 minutes).

The lyrics above and a lot of the information I have here came from www.dylanchords.info. It is an excellent site for looking at variations in lyrics and chords for Dylan songs.

I had an interesting conversation this morning with the owner of a local business that has been adversely affected by the Second Avenue subway construction project. He told me that he frequently worries about the structural integrity of the building his shop occupies. Basically, it’s messing with his head.

And then he dropped some Dylan on me:

The drilling in the wall kept up but no one seemed to pay it any mind

10/15/09 7:45AM

 …but they folded it up and moved to the north side of the street a little later.

14:14| Dagens skivtips kommer direkt från min höstpromenad. Tänkte börja med ännu en ny kategori här på IKAROS 3.0 genom att börja tipsa skivor, för er som är sugna på att hänga på så är det bara att börja posta. För er som inte är med i författarsällskapet, kontakta mig!

2004 blev detta album utsett till det 16 bästa albumet genom tiderna av tidningen Rolling Stone. Det säger väl ganska mycket om hur svårt det är att skriva någonting dåligt om denna skiva.

BOB DYLANS, blood on the tracks, är en klassiker släppt året 1975. Albumet handlar om Dylans egna skilsmässa, rubriken för detta inlägg är ett citat av Dylan själv som lämnat en lite bitterljuv kommentar om sina egna lyssnare. Gött citat enligt mig då jag har svårt att se någon artist som kan matcha Dylans höga grad av ÄRLIGHET.

PERSONLIGEN gillar även jag detta albumet skarpt, oväntat nog. Jag tog en lång promenad idag genom hösten här i Gävle. Musiken passade perfekt med höstens färger och bitande kyla. Jag rekommenderar att lyssna igenom detta album i höstens grå-vackra tider.

Mina favoritlåtar är Simple Twist of Fate, Lily, Rosemary and the Jack och Buckets of Rain självklart tycker jag att alla de andra låtarna är minst lika inspirerande. Men just dessa tre fastnade jag lite extra för, därför att jag gillar stämningen i låtarna det tilltalar mig. Mitt betyg är helt klart 4,2 av 5,0 och jag rekommenderar denna skiva varmt till alla höst och Dylan älskare.

HOCKEYBLOGG inför OMG.9
Det kanske blir lite okänsligt att köra HOCKEY direkt efter ett skivtips. Men jag ser detta som det mest naturliga att göra. LIVET är inte alltid vackert som den där BOB en gång berättade för mig.

INFÖR kvällens omgång vill jag se SÖDERTÄLJE vinna och jag hoppas på vinst för bottenlaget. DOCK tror jag inte att de har kapaciteten för att vinna borta mot Frölunda. Som har varit dåliga på senaste men jag tror ändå inte att de släpper helt och hållet. Och jag tror att det kommer att blixtra om Frölunda som kommer vilja visa för HOCKEY SVERIGE att de är ett toppen lag. Jag tippar följande…

Förlunda – Södertälje 5-1

People tell you it’s a sin.
To know and feel too much within.
I still believe she was my twin,

But I lost the ring.

She was born in spring,

but I was born too late.
Blame it on a simple twist of fate.

…

Bob Dylan. Simple Twist of Fate

Blood on The Tracks. 1975

En 1975 Bob Dylan ya llevaba muchos años dando buenas canciones al mundo. No obstante, tras una serie de discos con no demasiado éxito ni de crítica ni de público, volvió a encandilar a la gente con su decimoquinto álbum, Blood on the Tracks. Tanto es así que la mayoría de sus discos posteriores se anuncian con la frase “el major disco de Dylan desde Blood on the Tracks”. En 2003, la revista Rolling Stone le puso el número 16 en la lista de los mejores discos de la historia.

Las canciones del disco estaban, al parecer inspiradas por el caos que estaba atravesando, separándose de su mujer, Sara Dylan, aunque en sus memorias, publicadas en 2004 con el título Chronicles, Vol. 1, asegura que no es cierto, y que se basó en Chéjov. Evidentemente, no se lo creyó nadie.

Además, en el ultimo minuto antes de publicar el disco, Bob se fue a Minniapolis, juntó, con ayuda de su hermano, una banda de músicos de allí, y regrabó 5 de las 10 canciones, incluida ésta. Las originales aparecieron en The Bootleg Series, Vol. 1-3 en 1991.

If You See Her, Say Hello habla de un amor perdido “Our separation, It pierced me to the heart“. Así de simple. Bob le dice a un colega invisible lo que tiene que hacer si se encuentra con ella, seguramente en Tánger, o en cualquier otra parte que esté muy lejos. Bob se hace el duro (“She might think that I’ve forgotten her, don’t tell her it isn’t so”) pero al final está claro que lo quiere es verla otra vez (“Tell her she can look me up if she’s got the time”). Venga, a todos nos ha pasado, ¿no? Pues en esos momentos es cuando más apetece escuchar un disco como éste, oscuro, minimalista, triste, melancólico, y sobre todo buenísimo. Lo malo es que no te va a alegrar el día…

If you see her, say hello, she might be in Tangier
She left here last early spring, is livin’ there, I hear
Say for me that I’m all right though things get kind of slow
She might think that I’ve forgotten her, don’t tell her it isn’t so.

We had a falling-out, like lovers often will
And to think of how she left that night, it still brings me a chill
And though our separation, it pierced me to the heart
She still lives inside of me, we’ve never been apart.

If you get close to her, kiss her once for me
I always have respected her for busting out and gettin’ free
Oh, whatever makes her happy, I won’t stand in the way
Though the bitter taste still lingers on from the night I tried to make her stay.

I see a lot of people as I make the rounds
And I hear her name here and there as I go from town to town
And I’ve never gotten used to it, I’ve just learned to turn it off
Either I’m too sensitive or else I’m gettin’ soft.

Sundown, yellow moon, I replay the past
I know every scene by heart, they all went by so fast
If she’s passin’ back this way, I’m not that hard to find
Tell her she can look me up if she’s got the time.

So as I round out the inaugural feature of O&T history, I’m proud to announce that my #1 recording artist of all time is the one and only Bob Dylan.

The young Bob contemplates the world over a cigarette.

The man himself needs very little introduction. Born Robert Allen Zimmerman in Duluth, Minnesota, the young Dylan left his small hometown some years before his 20th birthday to ply his musical trade in the bright lights of New York City. After several years playing the folk circuit, he released his first studio album, 1962’s eponymous Bob Dylan, aged just 21. 32 studio albums and 47 years later, Bob is regarded as probably the greatest lyricist of all time, a stoic defender of racial equality and an enigmatic figure whose genius could hardly have been guessed from his ramshackle exterior.

During the 1960s, Dylan was a huge supporter of the civil rights movement and his music reflected his protestory spirit: songs like ‘Masters of War’ (from 1963’s The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan) and ‘The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll’ (from 1964’s The Times They Are A-Changin’). The ’60s produced some of Dylan’s best work with the seminal trio of albums Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde released back-to-back-to-back from 1965-66. This is doubtlessly the greatest trio of albums ever released one after the other, and Blonde on Blonde is regarded by many as his finest album.

'Electric' Dylan handling a bass.

Dylan famously ‘went electric’ at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival and alienated some of his folk-y fanbase. Not many artists could recover from the critical shellacking that he underwent after this event, but Bob rode the storm and embraced his new fanbase while appeasing his folkier admirers: 1965’s amazing Bringing It All Back Home boasted a first side (this is in the vinyl era, obviously) featuring electric stunners like ‘Maggie’s Farm’ and ‘Love Minus Zero/No Limit’, whilst the second side had a trimmed-down sound with just Dylan, his guitar and harmonica singing classics like ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ and ‘It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)’. This album, itself an undeniable classic, would be the best album in most careers, but Dylan’s talent is so unique that it may not have even been the best album he released that year, as Highway 61 Revisited arrived later on and blew people away.

Of course, I could harp on about every single Dylan album (both the good and the bad, there’s been more than a little of both), but it would take too long and my fingers may actually fall off, so I’ll just inform you, the fine people, of my favourite Bob album and discuss it a little.

From this preamble you would be smart to assert that it’s 1966’s superb Blonde on Blonde – I just talked about its two predecessors and seemed to be gearing you up for it. However, despite the fact that it’s one of the best albums ever, it’s not my favourite by Bob. That title goes to 1975’s perfect record Blood on the Tracks. After Blonde was released, Dylan entered a less-commercially friendly phase, with albums like the universally slammed Self Portrait (Rolling Stone’s review of which started with the line “What is this shit?”) and bluesier records like Nashville Skyline.

Blood on the Tracks

Blood on the Tracks, however, marked an emergence from these sounds, and it’s for me the best work in the career of a genius. Songs like ‘Simple Twist of Fate’ and ‘Idiot Wind’ are poignant, beautiful and funny, offering up both comic lines (“They say I shot a man named Gray and took his wife to Italy,/ She inherited a million bucks and when she died it came to me/I can’t help it if I’m lucky” – ‘Idiot Wind’) and moving ones, like the scintitllating verse below from ‘Simple Twist of Fate’. Dylan’s talent has always been to tell a story through songs, and he’s never done it better than on this album:

He woke up, the room was bare
He didn’t see her anywhere.
He told himself he didn’t care, pushed the window open wide,
Felt an emptiness inside to which he just could not relate
Brought on by a simple twist of fate.

Dylan once said “I consider myself a poet first and a musician second”, and that’s a pretty accurate assertion from the man himself. His lyrics are poetry of the highest calibre at times, and his unorthodox voice lends them gravity, poignance and significance as his characters undergo the tribulations of life to which we can all relate. Songs on Tracks like ‘You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go’ and ‘Buckets of Rain’ are among his best, and there’s really no better record I’ve ever heard. Best album of all time, you heard it here first.

Dylan has many critics, and it’s easy to slag him off: not a good singer, not a great guitarist, released nearly as many bad albums as good ones, pretentious and a bizarre character.

Dylan in his current incarnation.

I would agree with some of the above, but it’s not Dylan’s voice or his guitar playing that make him the greatest artist of all time, it’s his incomparably beautiful lyrics and the unbelievably complex concepts he handles in songs that no-one else could write. He’s got his bad records, sure, but Dylan at his best cannot be touched by any other musician (or arguably, poet) alive or dead. When you can produce as much astounding music as Bob has over a period of half a century, you deserve to be at the top of any list. The greatest songwriter who’s ever lived, the most gifted poet and lyricist who’s ever set foot on the musical scene and possibly the most influential artist of all time, Bob Dylan is for me, without doubt, the greatest recording artist who’s ever lived, and probably ever will.

Sickest tracks: Genuinely impossible to compile. Listen to these albums: Blonde on Blonde, Highway 61 Revisited, Bringing It All Back Home, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, Blood on the Tracks, Desire, The Times They Are A-Changin’, Modern Times. Oh, and ‘Most of the Time’ from Oh Mercy, amazing song.

If you like this, you’ll also like: Any quality lyrical music really, but these are a few heavily Dylan-influenced albums: Bruce Springsteen – Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., Ryan Adams – Heartbreaker, Belle & Sebastian – If You’re Feeling Sinister, Elton John – Madman Across the Water.

It wasn’t such a hot time in many other ways, but 1975 was a great year to become a Bob Dylan fan. 

After a couple of years of being aware of Dylan’s somewhat forbidding artistic standing — I’d been reading Rolling Stone regularly for a couple of years, and his name was intoned with a reverence that God and Eric Clapton could only have envied – my teenaged self decided to buy the new Dylan, Blood on the Tracks, shortly after its January release.

Short of having 2001: A Space Odyssey be my first Stanley Kubrick film, I can’t think of a more overpowering introduction to a major artist. I won’t pretend that a suburban high school kid could relate to every aspect of an album composed by a mature man, a wealthy and fabulously successful performer mourning the collapse of a marriage, but I could certainly relate to the craftsmanship of the songs, the vividness of the imagery, and above all the glimpse into the mind of someone learning to stand tall with heartbreak. Those are good things to think about at any age.     

And yet there was more to come. The Basement Tapes, which Rolling Stone critics referred to the way Biblical scholars cited the Dead Sea Scrolls, appeared unheralded on a humid afternoon, and I could hardly get it home fast enough for the first listen. With fall came word of the Rolling Thunder Revue, and then in January Desire appeared. Is it any wonder Dylan remains the gold standard for songwriting, in my eyes and ears?

These posts by William T. Vogt Jr. about his encounters with the original Bob Dylan bootlegs — notably the legendary Great White Wonder – really take me back. Specifically, they take me back to the northern New Jersey burg of Fair Lawn, and a tiny no-name record store on Route 4 that was nothing more than a large walnut-paneled room with indoor-outdoor carpeting, a cash register, and a long bin of vinyl record albums that included — shhhhhh! — a pretty impressive selection of white-jacketed bootlegs.

There I did purchase my first boot, an acceptable Led Zeppelin concert recording called Bonzo’s Birthday Party that had a mimeographed picture of a pig popping out of a birthday cake. (It didn’t sound so hot, but it was hardly worse than The Song Remains the Same, which Zep for some reason was content to let stand as its only official live album for too long.) There also did I purchase my second boot, a fairly classy looking item called Joaquin Antique (walking antique, get it?) that contained, akong with an assortment of oddments, the original versions of five key songs from the original version of Blood on the Tracks. All of a sudden I was a music scholar, critically listening through clicks and pops to discover new — that is to say, old — incarnations of songs on their way to immortality. 

This was Bergen County, N.J. The only two movie theaters within walking distance were the Century Plaza, a twin theater next door to the Garden State Plaza in Paramus (where I had the magical experience of seeing my first James Bond movie, You Only Live Twice), and the Hyway Theater in Fair Lawn (where I had the equally magical experience of seeing Jaws on a night when literally every seat was occupied and the audience was completely in the palm of the director’s hand). So believe me when I tell you that a hole-in-the-wall record store along Route 4 that sold bootlegs was the next best thing to a portal into an alternate universe — a much more interesting one.

One day I walked into the hole-in-the-wall to buy some more boots, only to have the proprietor look away and say distantly that he couldn’t stock them anymore. So that was that, for the time being. There were other stores selling boots, and then CDs and the Internet and eBay and all the other avenues for distributing the things diehard fans want. Joaquin Antique resurfaced as Blood on the Tracks: New York Sessions, which set the original versions of the five songs in with the original release. I don’t doubt for a second that a double-disc Bootleg Series release is in the cards, either before or after Dylan shuffles off this mortal coil, and I’ll buy it the second it comes out. Right now, I’m just happy to have study material for exploring one of the landmarks of American popular music.    

As I’ve written elsewhere, most of the arguments against bootlegs simply don’t wash, particularly as applied to concert recordings. I also think that for all of the Eighties and most of the Nineties, Dylan has been better served artistically by bootleggers than by his own record company — or his own instincts, which caused him to hold back songs like “Blind Willie McTell” while releasing Down in the Groove. And while I don’t much like Dylan’s gospel period, I think if Columbia had granted his wishes and released Solid Rock as a live album, it would have won quite a few more converts.   

All I know is that when I heard there was another version of Blood on the Tracks in existence, I had to hear it, just as when I learned that there were actually scores of Basement Tapes recordings, I had to hear all of them. I’d prefer to hear them in authorized form, without a bunch of Band outtakes thrown in to foster the idea that those sessions were some kind of mutual give-and-take between Dylan and The Band, but for the moment Columbia and Dylan seem content to toss out collections of stray songs from movie soundtracks and other ephemera. 

I mean, put Tell-Tale Signs up against A Tree With Roots and tell me which collection does more justice to Dylan’s artistry.

Listening to Blood on the Tracks after a rough break up makes me contemplate how friendly the curtains of death can be during times of loneliness and despair.

All we have is each other.

All in the name of peace. All in the name of desire. All in the name of personal fulfillment.

Make tiger like gestures to the person sitting next to you.
Collapse your tent and look to the stars.

Been sent the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs album this morning.

Sure I’m excited. No less an authority than Q Magazine has given it 5 stars and the zingy epithet ‘Spectacular’. (How do I know this? Because it’s right there on the cover.) Wow. Five stars out of five. That means that not only it’s the most perfect album ever made but that there was also a perfect conflagration of events happening while the critic was evaluating it. It will be flawless! It will be Blonde On Blonde (um, conventionally speaking). It will be a Daydream Nation (thank you, Pitchfork) for this year’s generation who enjoy watching dorky girls wearing glittery tights bounce around, while making like Chrissie Hynde and rocking the good rock.

Five stars! Wow. I’m scared to even put it into my CD-player, in case my ability to appreciate music and the random collection of factors around me (wind chill factor, ants crawling into my computer keyboard, aesthetic qualities of envelopes balanced on top of printer) don’t match up to Q Magazine’s ideals. I mean, five! That’s like Bo Derek in 10 (um, conventionally speaking). That’s like my latest written assignment in KKP601. That’s like 2+3=5. It’s perfection, right?

How grand that 40 years of a proud and noble art-form can be boiled down to a sole signifier, a numerical value. The editors at Q Magazine (and Uncut and NME and Pitchfork and JMag) must be so proud of themselves, the way they can do away with all those unnecessary words and descriptions and allusions and boil criticism down to its essence: a number. And then they can get quoted on all those lovely advertising posters! Wow. Respect due.

They’ll be able to start doing league tables next. Oh wait…they have.

They have.

Bob Dylan’s newest album Together Through Life debuted at #1 on the Billboard charts, his fifth album to do so in the U.S. Dylan’s other number ones include: Planet Waves in 1974, Blood on the Tracks in 1975, Desire in 1976 and Modern Times in 2006.

By ALEXANDER LAWRIE

ROCK legend Bob Dylan’s first chart-topping album for almost 40-years has seen him rewrite the history books – and spark a huge surge in sales for his back catalogue.

His new disc means he becomes the artist with the longest gap between chart number ones – an incredible 38 years and five months.

The crown was previously held by Tom Jones - whose 1999 comeback Reload topped the UK charts in October of that year – just over 31 years after his career-defining Delilah reached the top of the charts in August 1968.

And sales of Dylan’s back catalogue have also rocketed with purchases of his most notable recordings almost trebling their sales over the past month.

Music retailer HMV have reported sales of Dylan’s 1975 album Blood On The Tracks have rocketed by an amazing 188 per cent in the last six weeks, while his 60’s recordings Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde have increased by 145 and 176 per cent respectively.

Number One spot

HMV’s Gennaro Castaldo said: “Dylan is arguably our greatest cultural icon, and his words and music remain as relevant and as powerful today as they did five decades ago.

“His albums always sell consistently well, but with demand for his catalogue of recordings up significantly in recent months, it’s evident that Dylan is going through one of his zeitgeist moments, as a new generation of fans join his more-established followers in appreciating his musical legacy.”

The 60’s icon, who has just completed two successful concerts in Scotland, last hit the album chart number one spot in 1970 with his country album New Morning.

The Like A Rolling Stone star, now 67, performed two sell-out shows at Glasgow’s SECC and Edinburgh’s Playhouse over the weekend.

Fans were treated to a two hour performance in which Dylan thrilled them with a set-list that, unusually, contained many of his past hits.

Tracks from new album Together Through Life were also aired during his Scottish dates and received an enthusiastic response from his devoted fans.

Dylan still relevant

Dylan fan Fraser Wood, 42, from Musselburgh, was at the Edinburgh gig and says he is not surprised to hear of the increased sales.

He said: “The Edinburgh concert was terrific and the new songs really stand up well against his classics. There were a lot of young people at the Playhouse on Sunday night and I’m sure they will all be out buying his older material.

“It’s great to see because it shows how relevant Dylan still is to the music industry, even though he’s almost 70 now.”