Bob Dylan - Dylan (3CD) (Deluxe Edition)
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Free Music Notes for Dylan (3CD) (Deluxe Edition)
Free Music Review: Thinking about the compilation concept
Hit: 4 Stars
I'm an old Dylan fan and own all his albums.
Bob is the best and of course the music of this compilation is good and the choice of tracks is correct. But I won't give this box 5 stars because of his concept.
The choice made is to have all the obvious tracks in chronoligical order.
I understand that. But still I would have prefered some more diversity and risks (what about Farewell Angelina ; Senor ; Desolation Row ; Idiot Wind ; When The Ship Comes In ; Tears Of Rage ; I and I ; Shot Of Love ; I Pity The Poor Immigrant ; Percy's Song ? ) and the inclusion of some great live performances ( Visions Of Johanna 66 ; It's all over now baby blue 66 ; One too many morning 76).
I would also have prefered a non chronoligical tracking order : think of Greatest hits Vol 2 and 3 or Biograph, they work !
Talking about Biograph, maybe my only problem is that I was waiting for a Biograph 2. Well, let's hope we'll have it some days...
Free Music Review: If you want a Starter Kit - This is the one
Hit: 4 Stars
Yes there is nothing new in this set for the fan who already owns everything to do with Dylan. However this is a fantastic set for those fans wanting a really decent Dylan collection.
I dont know why but there seems to be something special about listening to this set in order through the 3 disks. The song order just flows really well. I actually love it.
I do have all the Dylan releases so this offerred nothing new to me either but its on high rotation in my MP3 player now.
Highly recommended as a starter kit for the person who wants a great taste of all things Dylan musically.
Free Music Review: Timeless
Hit: 4 Stars
A good compilation for a new Dylan fan - it already looks like a Christmas present.
I would have preferred another Bootleg Series set - how about a new Basement Tapes collection?
I'd welcome a box set of Dylan's tour with Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers.
Or a Theme Time Radio box featuring the best of his largely unheard XM series.
Anyway, the music is timeless and rates 5 stars. Hopefully this will be the last word on the
greatest hits for a while.
Free Music Review: NOTHING IS REVEALED
Hit: 3 Stars
Hi. In case anyone out there is curious (as I was) about the sound reproduction of these "digitally remastered" discs, you need not be. Nothing has been newly digitally remastered.
I ran a series of A/B listening tests with half-decent ears and a fairly decent system and the results were quite puzzling. In all cases, nothing has been remastered anew, in fact on a few tracks there seemed to be less weight in the bass compared to earlier compilation and album editions.
I compared this box with all the previous "Greatest Hits" volumes (1-3), 1997's "Best Of", and 2000's "Essential". Every time it is exactly the same mastering; I cannot discern any improvements and I usually can if there are any. As well as concluding "You cheapskate b***ards Sony/Columbia" I wonder why there are so many different "Mastering Engineers" credited across those releases - Vic Anesini, Mark Wilder, Greg Calibi, Bob Irwin. Are they actually all the same person? Or is someone taking the mickey out of Columbia/Sony? Or maybe just out of us? What are they all being paid for?
So far my range of tests was between 1997 editions and this 2007 release. Imagine my surprise then when I pulled out 1985's Biograph and compared Quinn The Eskimo there with this 2007 release; exactly the same! This all smells a funny color.
There was however a very minor improvement in presence and lower end strength I felt between these discs and 1991's The Bootleg Series Vols. 1-3 box set. But I think these finite variations are the result of the pressings. The weird but unavoidable conclusion is that Columbia/Sony have remastered each of these songs once - starting as early as 1985 - and they have never bothered to touch them again since. Then they flog a new box set with the sticker "Digitally Remastered"...and forget to add "...since 1985". (That's twenty-two years before this release, you miserable cloth-eared scumbags!)
One other curious discovery: the Brownsville Girl version here is a different mix from every earlier version I have. Not a different remaster, just a different mix; there is an extra element of Spanish/classical guitar playing away quite noticably (in the first couple of miuntes alone you will notice it) which has appeared without any mention in the booklet. It's not worth getting excited about even for the fiercest of completists; it's just more dumb record company imbeciles playing little mind games with the people who pay their salaries. Either that or just good ol' fashioned incompetence.
Thankfully I am wary of Sony as a record label - very untrustworthy in my experience - so I only bought this box when my local store dropped the price w-a-y down in their New Year Sale. The booklet is all pictures and big font size, worth about three minutes of your time, and the postcards are spoilt by being numbered for some unfathomable reason. The first thing you notice is how spacious the inside of the box is for the volume of the contents. I was able to ditch the plastic jewel cases for several other Dylan discs and store the CD's and booklets inside this vacuuous box. So some good came from this purchase. Ha.
Free Music Review: I actually purchased it before writing this
Hit: 3 Stars
Most of the reviews here make it clear there are better ways of getting this collection of Dylan's work but I have to ask: Did any of you actually purchase this collection before "reviewing" it here? Like most collectors I already have enough material on my iPod to surpass this collection, so what I really was hoping for was a review that covered what makes this a collectors item worth more than the other three disk set released at the same time. Was it the vinyl look disks? Nah, the illusion would have been more convincing if they had used the same dark tinted polycarb Playstation disks are pressed on. Was it the "Perfect Binding" on the 40 page (including the covers)booklet? Nah, who in marketing decided that a glue back booklet needed a fancy name like "perfect" to make it seem better than a booklet with Smythe Sewn pages like a true collectors book would have. Was it because this collection had pictures waiting to see the light of day that had never been published before? Nah, I've pretty much seen all of the included materials in one form or another before. Would knowing what I know now have stopped me from buying it? Probably not because I collect things like this, but I would have waited until the price came down instead of rushing out to buy it. What would it take to make a real fan happy? How about getting the rights to the recordings of Joan Baez too so a true version of the "Hard Rain" concert they did together in Fort Collins back in the seventies can be released on DVD. When the Hard Rain record was released as a Dylan record all of the duets Bob performed with Joan Baez were missing because she was signed to Vanguard and not Columbia. After all the years that have passed there are whole new generations of fans that have never seen or heard this concert and the duets with Joan and Bob are the heart and soul of the concert. I still have an original video tape of it but I don't know of anybody else that has seen it except my friends.