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What do you think of Bob Dylan

Dylan - how do you rate him

  • Excellent

    Votes: 57 44.2%

  • Good

    Votes: 28 21.7%

  • Average

    Votes: 12 9.3%

  • Poor

    Votes: 8 6.2%

  • Shite

    Votes: 24 18.6%
  • Total voters
    129
And now the ret of my household are singing along to Self Portrait.

Somewhat more tunefully than Bob, it must be said.
 
redsquirrel said:
Yeah, though I think the version without the overdubs on Another Self Portrait is better. All the Tired Horses is one of the few tracks I listen to of that album.
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I get a bit lost with all the alt versions these days. There are better versions of probably most of his 'initial' output (iyswim), but most of them just can't match the original pleasure in hearing a track. Granted that doesn't really work with SP.

Listening to the rest of SP, from Copper Kettle on, I really have no particular desire (boom tish) to listen to it again for another five years. Actually, It Hurts Me Too, which is on now, is perfectly okay.
 
belboid said:
I get a bit lost with all the alt versions these days. There are better versions of probably most of his 'initial' output (iyswim), but most of them just can't match the original pleasure in hearing a track. Granted that doesn't really work with SP.
Click to expand...
Yeah there are so many it's a bit of pain in some ways. But Another Self Portrait really is excellent, I actually think it's better than the Basement Tapes (Vol 11_ one that came after it. The quality of songs is probably higher in Vol 11 but as an collection I think Another Self Portrait is better put together.
 
Last edited:
isvicthere? said:
Bob Dylan pretty much single-handedly turned popular music from a trivial distraction for teenagers into a serious art form.

So: excellent.
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"Single-handedly".

Joni-Mitchell-si-Leonard-Cohen.jpg


;)
 
redsquirrel said:
Christ Idris it is shit, just terrible. What is worth listening to is Another Self Portrait: Bootleg Series Vol. 10, which is a bunch on unreleased stuff he recorded around that same time which is just great. I actually buy the theory that he purposely released something shit, nobody could pick the Self Portrait shit over the unreleased work.

Anyone heard the latest?
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I'd never heard it before, even though I had it on Russian pirate MP3 for ages. And I'm sorry, it is good, or at least better than its reputation implies. I will look out for Another Self Portrait, though.
 
Idris2002 said:
I'm listening to Self-Portrait now, for the first time ever, and it's a lot better than I expected. It's definitely very different from what made him famous, but it's still Dylan.
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Yes, I did actually find it to be under-rated too. I guess it was hated at the time for defying fans' expectations, but it really isn't so bad.

My attempt to listen to every single Bob Dylan album consecutively faltered somewhere around the late 80s/early 90s. Apparently it gets better again from the mid 90s but just too much crap to wade through for too long. Self-Portrait was better than a lot of his output from this period. His first Christian album was actually much better than I thought too, but it feels like he has already gotten bored of God bothering by the second and third Christian album and is just doing it to prove some kind of point. That is the point where he really loses direction for a decade or so.
 
he could never really match, apart from many exceptions, that earlier sound. He knew this better than anyone and he'd given up as a true creative by the 90s Imo.
 
i repeat what i said earlier, he is a songwriting genius

but to quote a friend of mine (who is a fucking formidable writer. 'He is a liar and a thief. A goofball with a squeezebox')
I also agree with that.
 
I think his biggest mistake, both personally and creatively, was splitting up with Joan Baez. She would have kept him on the straight narrow artistically, and would have kept him connected to a world of music, and to a folk tradition, that would have been a much better fit for him than the rock star life. She would probably have been more tolerant of him 'playing away' as well.
 
Idris2002 said:
I think his biggest mistake, both personally and creatively, was splitting up with Joan Baez. She would have kept him on the straight narrow artistically, and would have kept him connected to a world of music, and to a folk tradition, that would have been a much better fit for him than the rock star life. She would probably have been more tolerant of him 'playing away' as well.
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so has your dylan journey revelled his "genius" or do you lean towards teh over rated camp?
 
take this for example. The lyrics are great. But that's not why, in my opinion, it's so good. He is singing about his life, but he's impersonating someone else. It's not Dylan that is in the phrasing, it's someone else. So it's about his life, but the way he is singing it creates a new character. The phrasing leads to the invention of someone else. He is an impersonator, an actor. But he's also in the songs as well. :) this technique is at the heart of his genius imo.

#dylanpseudes corner.

 
Too "cool" to collect his Nobel prize. Perhaps one day he will emerge from up his own arse but I doubt it.
 
I think he's brilliant up there with Van and Gil, a bit short of Townes & Leonard and shorter still of the God like genius of Scott.
You can't give higher praise than that.
 
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