Last week, my father asked me a seemingly simple question:
“Do you have any Bob Dylan?”
Is the Pope Catholic? Um.. you know what I mean.
“Sure,” I said. “What do you want?”
“Well, could you burn me a ‘best of’?” Of course I COULD. At least, I THOUGHT I could burn just one disc of Bob Dylan’s finest. It was soon that I discovered this was no easy task.
Two years ago, I was bequeathed a trove of music from my uncle. This set included, among many others, copies of the complete Simon and Garfunkel oeuvre, a significant portion of the Stones collection, and the brand new remasters of the Dylan catalogue. I already owned several Dylan albums on CD, but sonically speaking, these new remasters just left my versions in the dust. I had gone through a slight Dylan phase in college, recognizing “Blood on the Tracks,” “Highway 61” and “Oh Mercy” for the masterpieces they were, yet hadn’t delved deep into many of his other albums, restricting myself to strictly “Greatest Hits” fare. And for a long time, that was all right by me.
I’m not sure whether it was Greil Marcus’ “Invisible Republic” or the Basement Tapes themselves made me realize just how much I was missing. Marcus’ book, a critical study of Bob and The Band’s Woodstock sessions and the influence of Harry Smith’s “Anthology of American Folk Music,” made mention of all the lost recordings of Bob Dylan. Could it be that the best, the most interesting, possibly the most curious recordings from a major artist such as Dylan were never officially released?
His catalogue became an onion of sorts, the outer peels representing the officially released Greatest Hits, moving inward to the most popular “H61”, “Blonde on Blonde” and “Blood on the Tracks” albums. Next would be the fan favorites, “Desire”, “Oh Mercy” and “Freewheelin’.” Peel away enough layers and you’re be pondering the biblical references in “John Wesley Harding,” noting how amazing an album “Infidels” would have been had it included “Blind Willie McTell” and wondering why his singing voice sounds so strange on “Nashville Skyline” (this is saying a lot, considering many people assume the voice they normally hear on Dylan’s songs is his singing voice. It’s not. Listen to ‘Nashville Skyline.’).
Through all this listening, I discovered my own “secret history” of Bob Dylan’s recorded output. Sure, there were the great songs and albums. But hidden within some of the “lesser” albums were great songs that, while they didn’t constitute Greatest Hits in the usual sense, certainly deserved to be placed right along side those that did. By the time I could identify “Senor (Tales of Yankee Power)” by sound, I knew I’d gone as far as I was willing to go. I wasn’t going to argue the merits of “Saved” or “Down in the Groove,” nor was I going to try to convince myself that “Under the Red Sky” was MEANT to be that simplistic. The Greatest Hits CD I burned for my dad went from one disc to three. To four. To five. To six.
I had amassed my own Bob Dylan Chronicles, and had gone way beyond the original request. The onion was beginning to look less like an onion and more like a smelly ball of organic material that used to resemble an onion. It was time to turn around.
I think my dad will be happy with Disc One. Maybe I’ll give him a copy of Disc Two as well. Just in case.
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from reuters:
LOS ANGELES (Billboard) – Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson are coming together for their second co-headlining tour of minor league baseball parks.
The 27-date tour, which also will feature opening act the Greencards, kicks off May 25 at the William H. Hammond Stadium in Fort Myers, Fla. It will conclude July 12 at Midway Stadium in St. Paul, Minn.
Most tickets go on sale Saturday (April 23) and are expected to be $50 on average. The majority of seats will be general admission.
Toward the end of the Dylan/Nelson trek, Dylan will make an appearance at Nelson’s 4th of July Picnic event at the Stockyards in Fort Worth, Texas.
The pair introduced the minor league concept last summer. This year, Bryan Adams and Def Leppard also are touring minor league ballparks with their 26-date “Rock ‘N Roll Double-Header.”
Dylan’s current tour with Merle Haggard and Amos Lee runs through April 30 in New York. Nelson has 15 solo dates on tap in late April/early May.
By Jill Kipnis
