Bob Dylan - Dylan (3CD) (Deluxe Edition)
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Free Music Notes for Dylan (3CD) (Deluxe Edition)
Free Music Review: A solid introduction to the work of Dylan, but lacking in depth.
Hit: 3 Stars
Other reviewers who have described this collection as a good introductory collection are correct. Bob Dylan fans won't purchase this; this is for the young musician who understands Dylan's profound impact on American music, and wants to get his feet wet; it is for the older folks who avoided Dylan's music for the last forty years because it was associated with all things 'rock 'n' roll'; it is for the person who wants a handful of Dylan's most well-known songs in an easy-to-access form.
Having said that, it's not a bad collection; the value of the songs here is self-evident. But it's a shame that nobody has yet endeavored to put together a collection of Dylan's lesser-known (and arguably better) songs for those who already have a cursory acquaintance with his music, and want something deeper. If you're new to Dylan, this isn't a bad place to start, but for the sake of understanding his artistic magnanimity, please don't let this be as far as you go in exploring his legacy!
Free Music Review: Good for going digital, if you're already there then leave it behind
Hit: 3 Stars
I had Dylan on vinyl. This is a decent collection if you haven't "gone digital" yet. For the price, perhaps you're better off buying separate CDs, but I chose this for 1 song I couldn't find elsewhere: Dylan's version of Blind Willie McTell. Sure, that song is on 'The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961-1991' but the Series is pricey.
I was gambling because I hadn't even heard Dylan's original Blind Willie McTell: just covers by The Band and the Stone's Throw guy. Anyway, it's worth it, perhaps his best song ever. According to Wikipedia, he didn't/doesn't think it's a "finished work." Shows how Dylan is a true genius, because he doesn't know when he's good and doesn't know when he's bad, he just has a compulsion to write and perform. Gotta give Mark Knopfler due credit for his accompaniment here.
Yes, this is a rambling review but if you can put up with Dylan's ups and downs, you can handle it.
Free Music Review: Dylan's greatest songs won't fit on 3 CD's
Hit: 3 Stars
Yes, these are some of Dylan's greatest songs but there are so many missing - Desolation Row, Visions of Johanna, Shelter from the Storm, Isis, One More Cup of Coffee, Where Are You Tonight?, and from the later years how could they leave off Mississippi which has to be one of the greatest songs by anyone period. Sadly, I think other reviewers are right. This is all about money. I didn't buy this because I have all this stuff. If they had put a couple of songs on here that were previously unreleased I would have happily laid out the money, but this is ridiculous. I've heard that Dylan has recorded every performance he's ever given. Come on, Sony! Give us some of that live stuff.Free Music Review: Georgia Sam's favorite compilation
Hit: 3 Stars
The songs were written in America, not Tin Pan Alley; the marketing, however, was planned in the bleachers along Highway 61. Bob still unrolls the bedroll with Beethoven, but Columbia's trying to sell us 40 red, white, and blue shoe strings. If you're a new fan, start with Blonde on Blonde, not this. Buy the great albums and buy the singles from the iffy periods (the 80's were not kind to Bob.Free Music Review: Good intro for new listeners, absolutely pointless for everyone else
Hit: 2 Stars
Dylan is cropping up all over the place in the last few years, whether it's his (panned) 2003 flick MASKED AND ANONYMOUS, the Scorsese PBS documentary from 2005 NO DIRECTION HOME, his first number one album in 30 years, MODERN TIMES, the Mirror dvd chronicling his Newport concerts from 1964, and now this release. And that's not all. There are already some very heavy rumours Dylan is going to be recording MODERN TIMES's followup with producer Rick Ruben (!!!!) in early 2008. A lot of stuff going on for the Dylan community.
When we found out about this set, the Dylan fanbase met the news with trepidation. A lot of us thought ultimately it would be of little interest to us who already know his music. Then we found out Mark Ronson would be remixing "Most Likely You Go Your Way and I Go Mine", which was interesting, if little more than a novelty. Disappointingly enough, [that] this remix appears only on the single disc compilation issued in conjunction with the triple disc set. What a marketing ripoff. So how does the Dylan set came hold up? Depends on whose asking.
The problem with any Dylan anthology Columbia will put out is there are two primary audiences who will consider buying it.
The first audience are those [There are the] hardcore Dylan fans who have been listening to him (perhaps obsessively) for years, who read the bios, who haunt fan websites, and who collect as many boots as possible. I belong to this group, and have for the last several years.
The second audience are the casual fans, those who may have heard of Dylan but never really listened to him other than the few stray tracks they may have heard on the radio (and trust me, most of Dylan's work is NOT played on the radio). They have a vague notion of what he wrote, may know an album or two, but for whatever reason never really got into him, whether it be to lack of interest or a hard time adjusting to his voice. (As far as Dylan singing, he's a great singer, though not in a technical sense. I love Tom Waits, but for my money his voice is much harder getting adjusted too than Dylan's.).
Now, when doing a retrospective, these are the two primary audiences to keep in mind. Well, obviously Columbia has decided to forgo thinking about the first audience and focus on the second audience, because quite frankly this set is of little interest to the Dylan faithful. Despite Columbia's hype that the track selection was heavily influenced by fan input on the dylan07.com website, there are very few surprises here (oh look, we got "Dark Eyes". Woohoo). On the fansites I go to there was talk of flooding the ballot box with requests for rare and alternate takes, unreleased studio outtakes, and live material. Obviously, that didn't happen.
Looking at the set list, for those who are new to Dylan's work, this is an overall fair representation of his work. While there's much more than this (and I can think of several songs, namely "That's Alright Ma, I'm Only Bleeding" and "Desolation Row", that are missing), I already know Dylan is simply too prolific to fully capture his genius in a mere three discs, so I'm more forgiving in that regard that I have been in previous years. I've made my own "Essential Bob Dylan" CD-Rs before. There were two volumes, each double-disc, the first covering 1962-1975, the second covering 1975-2003 (this was just before MODERN TIMES came out), and I found myself cutting quite a bit of material I felt should belong there. To do a true retrospective, the best route would be to do two three discs set, each covering the first part, the second part, and the last part of his recording career. But that is neither here nor there.
While DYLAN may contain little surprises, what makes it all the more disappointing for the Dylan faithful is Bob Dylan's first boxset (and one of the first major boxsets by a major rock artist ever), BIOGRAPH manages to satisfy both audiences, and sets up the template that most bands and solo artists would use when constructing their own box sets. BIOGRAPH managers to capture Dylan's strength as a songwriter and paint an accurate and telling portrait of what makes Dylan so highly regarded by so many people.
While there's a large proportion of previously released work on BIOGRAPH, the genius of that box set is it incorporates a large number of studio outtakes and a handful of live tracks, weaving them seamlessly into the portrait of Dylan the songwriter that the set is weaving. The outtakes they released on BIOGRAPH is good as anything he's released, and some I count as among his best songs ("I'll Keep It With Mine", a particular favorite I wish they had seen fit to include here, "Lay Down Your Weary Tune," "Percy's Song", and "Up To Me", the BLOOD outtake that should have been on the album, to name but four.) BIOGRAPH, released in 1985 was the first major boxset to be commercially successful, with Clapton's CROSSROADS following in 1988, and most boxsets have followed Dylan's template of mixing previously released work with previously unreleased work.
The main problem with BIOGRAPH is it came out in 1985, so it only takes you so far into Dylan. While a second boxset was obviously called for to update that set, DYLAN is simply not [that set] BIOGRAPH's spiritual successor. Columbia played it like a simple retrospective, and a very predictable retrospective at that, despite the couple of curve balls they managed to throw in there. There's plenty of stuff in the vaults that hasn't been released, so where is it? Where's "To Fall In Love With You", one of Dylan's best unreleased songs from the 1980s (found on the Genuine Bootleg Series Vol 2).? Or "Freedom for the Stallion"? Or "Sidewalks, Fences, and Walls"? Or "Old Five and Dimer"? Or the awesome b-sides "Trouble in Mind" and "Band of the Hand"? Or the John Hiatt cover "The Usual", or "Night After Night", or the Infidel outtakes, or any number of other material?
Ultimately, DYLAN is simply nothing more than another retrospective on Dylan, which is sad as BIOGRAPH managed to do so much more than that. If you look at the three previous Greatest Hits albums, and the Essential Bob Dylan album, it is obvious this release is little more than an update of those releases, and ultimately rather redundant. For the newcomers, a good way to get into Dylan, approx 4 star intro. For ever one else, 1 star.
Overall, DYLAN serves as a fair introduction for newcomers. Unfortunately for everyone else who count themselves Dylan fans, this set is pretty much useless. Dylan has such active fanbase this release would be much more successful if Columbia tried to address both audiences, like they did so successfully in 1985. At the end of the day, this is more of a missed opportunity to update BIOGRAPH than anything else.