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Bob Dylan “Bringing It All Back Home”

sfilzen — Mon, 24 May 2021 19:04:21 +0000

Bob Dylan “Bringing It All Back Home” 1965. Today, May 24th, is Bob Dylan’s 80th birthday (b. Robert Zimmerman, 1941). This record was my mom’s (she wrote her name on the back cover and the label in Sharpie) that she bought as a teenager, about 19 years old if I did my math right, and I heard the record a lot growing up. I’m not a big Dylan fan but Bringing It All Back Home, his fifth album, is pretty good – and apparently the rest of the world agrees. It’s considered one of the best rock albums of all-time and is credited with changing the face of folk rock and, to a large extent, ushering in the sound of the 60′s (though not without controversy; his hardcore folky fans were NOT pleased when Dylan plugged in). The album hit #6 in the US and went to #1 in the UK. Dylan released three singles from the LP: “Subterranean Homesick Blues” (one of my favorite Dylan tracks; #39 US, top 10 in the UK), “Maggie’s Farm” (another fave, #22 UK) and “Gates of Eden” which was the B-side for his iconic single “Like a Rolling Stone” (July ‘65. #2 US, #4 UK). I also like “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream,” “Mr. Tambourine Man” – The Byrds’ jangly cover version went to #1 in both the US and the UK in ‘65 – and “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” with its famous lyric “He not busy being born is busy dying.”

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Bob Dylan “Highway 61 Revisited”

sfilzen — Fri, 24 May 2019 19:53:15 +0000

Bob Dylan “Highway 61 Revisited” 1965. Today, May 24th, is Bob Dylan’s birthday (b. 1941). Highway 61 Revisited is Dylan’s 6th studio album and one of his most acclaimed, credited by some as the record that really kicked off the 60′s. It went to #3 in the US and #4 in the UK with its combination of folk, blues rock-n-roll and expansive poetry. It’s probably heresy, but I am not a fan of Dylan in general. (Though I should be – as my dad pointed out to me a month or so back as I went through my parents’ record collection, “If it wasn’t for Dylan, you probably wouldn’t exist.” My folks are huge Dylan fans and I think he was one of their first and main bonding moments.) I don’t care for his voice, his rock isn’t quite hard enough for me and I’m a music-first girl – lyrics are always secondary. That all said, I do like some of this record. It’s named for an old highway that stretched from Duluth, Minnesota (where Dylan grew up and a city we visit almost every summer) to New Orleans. The first track, “Like a Rolling Stone” (released as a single, hitting #2 in the US and #4 in the UK, ranked consistently in the top 10 greatest songs of all time) is really awesome – Dylan famously was booed during its performance at the Newport Folk Festival in ‘65 for “plugging in” – and while not a lyric girl, it’s hard to deny the lines “You used to ride on the chrome horse with your diplomat/ Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat/ Ain’t it hard when you discover that/ He really wasn’t where it’s at?/ After he’s taken everything he could steal.” I also really like “Tombstone Blues,” “From a Buick 6” and the title track “Highway 61 Revisited,” all upbeat blues rockers. On other songs that most people fall over themselves loving, though, I just can’t get past Dylan’s voice (most especially “Queen Jane Approximately” which I recall liking when the Grateful Dead performed it but I’m sincerely questioning that now). I realize and appreciate that Highway 61 Revisited is an important note in music history and popular culture and it paved the way for a generation of blues-rockers and aspiring poets but Dylan will never be on heavy rotation on my turntable.

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Traveling Wilburys “Vol. 1″

sfilzen — Thu, 25 Oct 2018 19:30:38 +0000

Traveling Wilburys “Vol. 1″ released 30 years ago, 1988, probably last week on Oct. 17th or 18th (my usual reliable source for such things kinda dropped the ball and listed its release date as today, Oct. 25th which is most likely incorrect. Oh well). One of the most charming super-groups ever formed, the Traveling Wilburys evolved with a visit by George Harrison to Los Angeles – Jeff Lynne was around, working on albums for Roy Orbison and Tom Petty and they asked Bob Dylan if they could use his home studio. One thing led to another and after Dylan threw some BBQ on the grill, “Handle with Care” emerged and then the rest of the album, which made it to #3 on the US album charts and won a Grammy for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group. (I remember reading or hearing somewhere that Dylan’s inspiration for the lyrics/title of “Handle with Care” was some USPS packaging.)

Traveling Wilburys was one of my secret guilty pleasures in ‘88. I listened almost exclusively to punk and new wave back then but grew up on a steady diet of 60′s-era rock (my parents are huge Bob Dylan fans and listened to a lot of Beatles as well) so the guitar-folk-pop blend of Vol. I was familiar and beautiful. The guitar and vocal harmonies are amazing. My favorite tracks include the hit “Handle With Care” which went to #45 on the US Hot 100 chart (#2 on the Album Rock Tracks chart) and to #21 in the UK, the Tom Petty-forward “Last Night,” the Beatles-esque “Heading for the Light” (not surprisingly written by George Harrison, along with Jeff Lynne), the Petty guitar twang of “Margarita” and “End of the Line,” which always made me sad as the video for the single was filmed just after Roy Orbison’s death in December ‘88 and shows an empty rocking chair holding a guitar during his vocals. Even though Dylan usually drives me a bit nuts, I really do like “Rattled” on which he’s heavily featured, though it was written by Lynne, Petty, Harrison and Orbison.

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Bob Dylan “Bob Dylan”

sfilzen — Thu, 13 Oct 2016 17:02:26 +0000

Bob Dylan “Bob Dylan” 1962. The big news today is that Dylan has been awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, the first American to win the prize in literature since ‘93 (which went to novelist Toni Morrison), “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition” so it seems fitting to spin his first album release. My favorite song on this record is “Highway 51″ – a rockin’ acoustic folk tune which also name-checks Wisconsin.

I am not a regular Dylan listener but spent a great deal of my 1970′s childhood hearing his albums, going to folk festivals around the Midwest and sitting around on various living room floors* listening to my dad play Dylan songs on guitar with my mom accompanying on autoharp, along with other hippie-ish folk music freaks. My parents are HUGE Dylan fans, in fact they were in Indio, California last weekend at Desert Trip on the Coachella grounds seeing Dylan along with Paul McCartney, The Who, Roger Waters, Neil Young and the Rolling Stones. Dubbed “Oldchella,” they joined hundreds of thousands other baby boomers, 20-something hippie wannabes and celebrities to see these rock legends perform. My folks reported that Dylan spent most of his time with his back to the audience, refused to let his face be shown on the gigantic screens and that his voice sounded a lot worse for wear, but that they loved it anyway. (Their only negative comment about the entire experience was that “The Who were too loud.”)

*Various living room floors, the lower two photos of me with my dad, probably in 1972.

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