Adventures in Obscure and Unknown Musicians, Number Eleventy:

[satan_s_onion]

By the way--the Bob Dylan albums I have now (since Highway 61 Revisited) are Blood on the Tracks, Desire, World Gone Wrong and his latest, Together Through Life. (Even got the nice nifty deluxe edition with extras and a poster 'n' stuff.) I gave in and listened to Blood on the Tracks, but which should I listen to next?

Poll Which of these should I listen to next?
More importantly: Where do I

Comments

[chickenbrutus]

Voted Desire, not because it's the best of three (though someone could certainly make an argument that it is), but because it's at its most interesting with Blood on the Tracks still fresh in your mind. They don't share the sort of fraternal symmetry that Rubber Soul and Revolver do, but I definitely do think that they comment on each other in less obvious ways

[satan_s_onion]

Incidentally: I'm gonna put on Desire right now.

>Also, Self-Portrait is approximately 20000000000000x less horrible than people give it credit for being. It's actually quite good (if intermittently silly).

How so? 'Cos if it's a good, having-a-good-time kind of silly I think that'd be awfully interesting. I like his more playful work on his other albums, like "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream", "Leopard-Skin Pill-box Hat" and "Obviously 5 Believers".

[chickenbrutus]

Self-Portrait consists of a few kinds of silly.

Some of it is "I'm just having a good time" silly.

Some of it is "This song isn't quite done but I like it anyway and have decided to release it" silly.

Some of it is "I got trash and double-tracked my vocals doing a Simon and Garfunkel song" silly.

And some of it is "I have a million live versions of this song I could release, but I'll release the one where I don't play it very well and forget the words" silly.

So there's definitely a handful of skippable tracks, but there are SO many tracks that it becomes a kind of spaghetti-to-the-wall experiment. A lot of it does stick, and what does is loads of fun.

The critics crucified it when it was released, but stripped of its place and time it's actually very enjoyable. And poor Bob...the bad reviews for that album seem to be the only ones he ever took to heart. :(

[satan_s_onion]

Oh, goody. Sometimes I think Bob Dylan could stand to do a bit more silly stuff (at least, in the first category of "silly").

On a barely-related side note, I don't think I've ever even seen more than one picture of him grinning. The rest of the time it seems he's all Serious-Faced Bob Dylan.