Expecting Rain

The Basement Tapes is one of the all-time greats. Hilarious, deadpan stuff. Singular.

The rest... gee... Self-Portrait is particularly weak. About 1/10th of it is listenable (I like Early Morning Rain) but the bad stuff is worse than They Killed Him. Much worse. Silvio from DitG is really cool; it's like a great Dead song, which I am right partial to. Saved is Saved. I'm sort of immune because I recoil from all proselytizing.

New Morning is a top 10 Dylan record, in my estimation. Maybe top 11.

I would have thought kinetic feel was something belonging entirely to tightly-knit southwestern knitting circles. Maybe we are missing something possibly Nobel prize-winning here...

I defend Self Portrait, not as a great record, but one that's better than a whole pile of others.

Silvio is OK, I wish he and Hunter would colaborate again, Hunter is such a great writer of Americana songs. I think a bit of Jack Straw in the mix would be more interesting than the co-written stuff on Desire.

I think it's perfectly easy to listen to gospel and not feel proselytized. No different from the music of any other religious tradition. If it's good it's good.

(1) What's in the pile that Self-Portrait is better than? I seriously don't know of one. I say it's Dylan's worst album by a country mile. It's lifeless and humorless too. A stinker... and I just listened to it yesterday. There's 1 or 2 songs that don't suck, but they are of the "Early Morning Rain" variety -- not exactly top drawer stuff.

(2) I too admire Hunter as a great writer of American song.

(3) Not all gospel music is proselytizing, but Dylan's surely is, especially on STC and Saved. I recoil from music that shoves belief at me and threatens me with damnation nonsense if I disagree. I call that "obnoxious" and "hooey"... but I do love a good spiritual. I even love singing a good spiritual. I also love Every Grain of Sand, which is imbued with the spirit of the lord; it shows and doesn't tell, if you know what I mean... and that's the hallmark of any great message song.

I do like Gotta Serve Somebody, regardless, because it's so damned funky and his singing is unbelievable on that song. No so, for me, on the rest of those two Christian Albums. That's 100% opinion for you to discount with a wave of your hand.

No handwaving from me.

(1) Down in the Groove, Dylan & the Dead, Knocked Out Loaded, Empire Burlesque, Real Live, Infidels, Shot of Love, Saved, Street Legal, and Dylan are all records I enjoy less than I enjoy Self Portrait.

Most of those records, except the just plain horrible ones, are records where he was playing by the numbers or so far off course that he couldn't find his keys - seriously, what does ANYONE imagine he was thinking when he thought that the cover of "They Killed Him" was a good idea?

Self Portrait, which, if we were assigning letter grades to I'd give a C or C- to, has some tracks that just work for me in the context of the record.

All the Tired Horses, Alberta #1, I Forgot More Than You'll Ever Know, Days of 49, In Search of Little Sadie, Little Sadie, Belle Isle, Copper Kettle, Gotta Travel On, Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn), It Hurts Me Too, Wigwam, and Alberta #2 are all songs and performances I enjoy.

And that's the crux of the bisquit, I don't enjoy the other records I mentioned nearly as much and rarely play them (some I don't own anymore after I got over a 30 year need to own "everything").

(2) Helluva song writer, and he has two modes. His narratives like Jack Straw and Brown Eyed Women, and his haiku-like stuff like China Cat and Dark Star. Not crazy about him as a performer but as a writer, he's top notch.

(3) I think Slow Train is a great Dylan LP and I don't find it at all hard to ignore the religious content anymore than on John Wesley Harding (or in "Amazing Grace" for that matter). The pleasure of that record is in the sound, it sounds great.

Well, fair is fair. Here is 15 Dylan albumns which are generally considered to be his finest. They aren't necessarily mine but there seems to be some agreement about these.
In no particular order:

Freewheelin'
The Times they are a changing
Another side of Bob Dylan
Bringing it all back home
Highway 61
Blonde on Blonde
John Wesley Harding
The Basement Tapes
Blood on the Tracks
Desire
Oh Mercy
Good as I been to you
World Gone Wrong
Time out of Mind
Love and Theft

I left off Modern Times because it is a little early to judge(or maybe not). I also left off Nashville Skyline, Shot of Love, Slow Train Coming, Infidels, Street Legal because although these albumns have their many fans they also have many detractors. So never mind them but please tell me: Which five of the above list does New Morning beat out in your opinion. Cause I can't see it.

If you don't want to add to the list then I'd drop Times They Are A Changing and replace it with Bob Dylan (1st LP). I also like New Morning probably better than both the solo acoustic 90s LP though I think they're fine.

Keep up the good work.

You quoted the question but didn't answer it...

New Morning beats...

Oh Mercy
Good As I Been to You
Time Out of Mind
Love and Theft

Take out The Basement Tapes (because it really belongs in the Bootleg Series) and replace it with Planet Waves...

That makes New Morning a top 11 Dylan album in my world. Please note that I kept World Gone Wrong in there too. Yeah, I dig Planet Waves and New Morning a whole lot more than those four albums and I'm probably not the only one who does, but maybe I am.

I don't know of any New Morning or Planet Waves detractors. Did I miss something? My favorite Dylan period is New Morning - Planet Waves - Blood on the Tracks - Desire... so that explains my perspective a bit.

That's some list. Take out Infidels, replace Street Legal with Self-Portrait and it reads like someone's CRIMINAL record.

I like Street Legal and and handful of songs on each of those studio albums except for Saved. Self-Portrait sounds phoned in to me... Greil Marcus wrote in Rolling Stone about SP...

"I once said I'd buy an album of Dylan breathing hard. But I'd never said I'd buy an album of Dylan breathing softly."

... I agree.

I know the Marcus quote, his actual review started: "What is this shit!?"

But clearly contaxt is an element involved and the two contextual elements that had a great effect on the universal bad reviews SP received are (1) It came out, not immediately after but close enough to 4 museum quality masterworks (BIABH, HW61R, BOB, JWH). Any of the records on my "I like these less" list, had it come out at that time, would have been comparably reviled.

(2) Nashville Skyline confused everybody (and, for that matter, so did John Wesley Harding as it was, in effect, Dylan's dour response to Sgt Pepper and the Summer of Electric Paisley Love) as Bob was ahead of the curve in the whole post-psychedelic move toward country-inflected rock (American Beauty, Workingman's Dead, Sweetheart of the Rodeo, etc. are other early examples) .

The confusion was followed by a record called "Self Portrait" (and a DOUBLE RECORD at that) put out by the guy who held his cards closer to his chest than anyone this side of JD Salinger. Dylan was the "spokesman of the generation" and the generation was ready for him to speak. The idea of 4 sides of an album called "Here's who I am and what I want to tell you all!" was thrilling!

Imagine Salinger publishing an autobiography that had "Blue Moon" and "The Boxer" in it.

Understand that I'm not making any claims for Self Portrait above and beyond the claim that it is far from his worst LP and deserves to be heard in a new context.

And I don't care if you like it - though I don't mean that in a hostile way, simply in a "it doesn't detract from my fun with the LP" way.

I just think that Dylan sounds like he's not trying on Self-Portrait. Context be damned... it's not what's important. I think he was trying to put people off of his scent. He sounds like he's on the lam, to my ear. Faking it.

I don't mean to be hostile either -- just expressing my opinion -- my warning to those that would plunk down for an expensive album.

I think what people didn't get was that it WAS his scent. As far as it goes, the album title was accurate. The Isle of Wright tracks - especially the inclusion of LARS - adds to the accuracy of the portrait. To me, he sounds like a "song & dance man" on most of the record. People wanted another Blonde On Blonde but... how's that go? Oh yeah, "it used to go like that, now it goes like this."

personally, IMO, I like: You Wanna Ramble, Driftin' Too Far From Shore, Got My Mind Made Up, and Under Your Spell better than Someday Baby & Levee's Gonna Break.

Scandalous!

Damn. I'm going to have to listen to Empire Burlesque now.

Well I agree with you on Under Your Spell but replacing the three others with Someday Baby and Levees Gonna Break (if such a time warp was possible) would have made Knocked Out Loaded a tremendously better album.

You Wanna Ramble
They Killed Him
Driftin' Too Far from Shore
Precious Memories
Under Your Spell

There aren't five good songs on the album.
Just Brownsville Girl.

more like....

Driftin' Too Far from Shore
Maybe Someday
Brownsville Girl
Under Your Spell
Got My Mind Made Up

i like this album, no matter what anyone says!

Brownsville Girl
Driftin Too Far from Shore
You Wanna Ramble
They Killed Him
Maybe Someday

Driftin' Too Far From Shore
Driftin' Too Far From Shore
Driftin' Too Far From Shore
Driftin' Too Far From Shore
Driftin' Too Far From Shore

Now there's an oxymoronic conundrum hiding inside a paradox.

Brownsville Girl
Driftin` too far...
Got my mind made up
You wanna ramble

I can`t stretch to a fifth one, but it would`ve been "Precious memories" if it wasn`t for those horrible steel drums which I think spoil the song

You mean it has other songs besides Brownsville Girl?!?!
This is actually one of the few I've never gotten around to buying on CD ( I have it on tape), and since I've got Brownsville elsewhere I haven't felt the need to buy Knocked out. Probably should give the whole tape another listen again since it's been a good 10 years or so.

tangled up, you should know the wikipedia calls the album a "kinetic southwestern masterpiece". need i say more?