Category Archives: Bob Dylan albums

Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan albums, Great albums

Bob Dylan: Planet Waves (January 17, 1974)

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Bob_Dylan-Planet_Waves-Frontal

“Planet Waves” marks Dylan’s return as a committed artist, the first time since “John Wesley Harding” that he has truly allowed an album-in-progress to be an open canvas for the expression of whatever he is seeing, thinking, and feeling as he works on it.
~Paul Williams (Bob Dylan: Performing Artist, Vol 2: The Middle Years 1974-1986)

I particularly like the song ‘Something There Is About You’,….. It completes a circle for me, about certain things running through my pattern.
~Bob Dylan (John Rockwell Interview, Jan 1974)

Something there is about you that strikes a match in me
Is it the way your body moves or is it the way your hair blows free?
Or is it because you remind me of something that used to be
Somethin’ that crossed over from another century?

Something There Is About You:

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Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan albums, Great albums

Jan 5: Bob Dylan released “Desire” in 1976 – 41 years ago

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Bob Dylan Desire

 The result is a sound and a set of songs unlike anything Dylan or anyone else has ever done before…. The lyrics of “Sara” and “Abandoned Love” (and, for that matter, of “Isis” and “Hurricane”) could not be more perfect, but overall the triumph of Desire is musical
~Paul Williams (Bob Dylan: Performing Artist, Vol 2: The Middle Years 1974-1986)

Recorded in the summer lull before the first Rolling Thunder tour and released soon after it, the stand-out tracks are ‘Isis’, ‘Romance in Durango’ and ‘Black Diamond Bay’, but ‘Hurricane’, ‘One More Cup of Coffee’ and ‘Oh Sister’ are breathing down their necks.
~Michael Gray (The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia)

Desire is considered by many Dylan fans to be among his best albums, It’s number 5 on my list – check out: Bob Dylan’s best albums

 

Let’s kick off with Dylan’s performance of Hurricane on Sept. 10 – 1975 (WTTW-TV Studio, Chicago for “The World of John Hammond”):

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Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan albums, Great albums, Music Calendar

Dec 27: Bob Dylan released John Wesley Harding in 1967

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john-wesley-harding

I heard the sound that Gordon Lightfoot was getting, with Charlie McCoy and Kenny Buttrey. I’d used Charlie and Kenny both before, and I figured if he could get that sound, I could…. but we couldn’t get it. (Laughs) It was an attempt to get it, but it didn’t come off. We got a different sound… I don’t know what you’d call that… It’s a muffled sound.
~Bob Dylan (to Jann Wenner November 29, 1969)

“I didn’t intentionally come out with some kind of mellow sound……. I would have liked … more steel guitar, more piano. More music … I didn’t sit down and plan that sound.”
~Bob Dylan 1971

This quiet masterpiece, which manages to sound both authoritative and tentative (a mix that gave it a highly contemporary feel), is neither a rock nor a folk album—and certainly isn’t folk-rock. It isn’t categorisable at all.
~Michael Gray (BD Encyclopedia)

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November 29: Bob Dylan: Real Live was released in 1984

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bob dylan real live

Martha Quinn: Will this tour help you reach a new generation?
Bob Dylan: I don’t reach anybody. They find me. They find me. It’s not for me to go out and reach
somebody. If they can find me, they find me, and if they don’t, they don’t. That’s the
way it’s always been. I don’t think it’s gonna change now just because I’m such an old
man and it’s nineteen-eighty… what is it?
– Martha Quinn interview for MTV, backstage Wembley Stadium, 7 July 1984

Highway 61 Revisited (video from Wembley, London – Real Live performance):

Wikipedia:

Released November 29, 1984
Recorded mid-1984
Genre Hard rock
Length 50:15
Label Columbia
Producer Glyn Johns

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Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan albums, Bob Dylan Concerts, Bob Dylan tours, Classic Concert, Live

November 26: The Bootleg Series Vol.5 Bob Dylan Live 1975 released 2002

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bootlegseries5

“I was just sitting outside my house one day thinking about a name for this tour, when all of a sudden, I looked into the sky and I heard a boom! Then, boom, boom, boom, boom, rolling from west to east. So I figured that should be the name.”
– Bob Dylan

This is my favorite of Bob Dylan’s bootleg series, and one of the best live albums ever released.

The Rolling Thunder Revue was a concert tour  Bob Dylan with a traveling caravan of notable musicians, including Joan Baez,Roger McGuinn, and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. Bob Neuwirth assembled the backing musicians, including T-Bone Burnett, Mick Ronson, David Mansfield, Steven Soles, and from the Desire sessions, violinist Scarlet Rivera, bassist Rob Stoner, and drummer Howie Wyeth. The tour included 57 concerts in two legs—the first in the American northeast and Canada in the fall of 1975, and the second in the American south and southwest in the spring of 1976.

rolling_TORONTO

Tangled up in Blue:

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