Expecting Rain

You may like them, because taste is subjective, and we all have some kind of bad music we like. But I think some of Bob's work is objectively bad to dreadful--that is, it suffers in comparison to his peers and influences and sources, as well in comparison to his own best work, and it sounds badly recorded, performed, conceived, etc.

1. Self-Portrait--meant to be a bad album, and it succeeds by offering feeble covers of genuine country/folk classics (Take A Message to Mary, Early Morning Rain, Belle Isle, I Forgot More), authorship rip-offs (It Hurts Me, Too, Little Sadie, Days of 49), sloppily played/overdubbed arrangements (In Search of Little Sadie--those bongos just don't work), undignified live recordings of great songs (Like a Rolling Stone, Love Minus Zero), and outright kitsch (Wigwam, The Boxer, many others). The album doesn't gel into any coherent statement, despite a few bright spots here and there. I liked it upon release, still listen to a few cuts now and then, but most listeners will quickly graduate to real country and folk music and tire of this mess. As Bob probably knew they would.
2. Street Legal--Bob's voice is pinched and without resonance or meaningful nuance, his first really bad vocal record. It's not the production's fault, either. The bloated band never sounds good, and didn't on tour (I've heard the major recordings and saw them in Providence, RI). The saxophone always sounds like a Springsteen rip-off, which it was. The writing is slap-dash and tends to self-parody (Journey Through The Dark Heat or whatever it's called most egregiously with those cheesey Motown lines). The female singers really intrude in unmusical and tasteless ways. New Pony Blues comes close but fails to find something new in this traditional blues and is sung awkwardly. Please Stop Crying is mawkish, narcissistic songwriting that doesn't convince the listener that a real relationship is at stake. Is Your Love In Vain desecrates one of Robert Johnson's greatest songs. No Time to Think--any memorable lines or melodic fragments, anyone can't stop humming it? Didn't think so. True Love Tends to Forget might be a better song that it sounds on this band.

The only bright moments on SL are We Better Talk This Over, which is not a strong song but has a slightly unusual structure, and when Bob played it in March 2000 (or maybe 2001) it sounded fresh, and Senor, which has sounded much much better in live version for the last 10 years or so than it ever did back then--sometimes a song is better than the artist, and the artist needs time to catch up.

2. Bob Dylan/Grateful Dead Live--a marriage made in musical hell. I can't think of a worse group to back Bob. Some of the rehearsal recordings show promise, especially the cover songs, but the Dead are the musical antithesis of Dylan's hits.

3. Knocked Out Loaded--so mediocre it hurts to listen. Too bad Bob never figured out how to use Petty & co. in the studio--some of their concerts are good, although sometimes it sounds like "Bob Dylan". But any album with Brownsville Girl on it will have to have mighty strong songs to make up for that aural sinkhole. This one just doesn't.

4. Under the Red Sky--badly recorded vocals, Born In Time ruined by lyric changes and pinched vocal, and if anyone can tell Slash from Stevie Ray Vaughan or explain why either guitarist is on this album, you can have my copy. Title song is one of Bob's very worst compositions, right up there with Man Gave Names To All the Animals. Handy Dandy parodies "Like A Rolling Stone" in sound, which ruins what might have actually been a decent oddball song. God Knows needed its live renditions to become a strong song--here it just fizzles along. TV Talking Song teeters on self-parody, but was worth the risk I think, even if it fails to be more than minor. Is that Elton John on piano? THE Elton John? Bring back Elston Gunn, puhleeze.

5. Down in the Groove--just not enough life on the disc, although better renditions of these songs might have yielded an okay album of covers. The originals aren't much--Silvio is the only one that rises to average, though it found some life in live versions.

6. Live At Budokan--mush. So many excuses are offered--too early in the tour, you had to be there, other nights were better, blah blah blah, but the album just doesn't hold up, was painful to listen to on release. Bob strains to update songs that don't need it, can't really sing the ballads with plain piano/guitar backing, and the band sounds both bloated and thin, quite an achievment in live recording. Again with the saxophone. When they try to rock, like on Maggie's Farm, it's pathetic, like watching a fat man try to pole vault.

Most of Bob's other official releases I think can arguably be termed good to excellent. I don't like all of them, but they each make some kind of coherent statement of artistic interest and musicality, even the messes like Desire and Infidels (which I grant its outtakes, otherwise it would have made the list above).

Bob has a few albums that are truly great works. Bob Dylan and Freewheelin' from his folk period, the great trilogy of folk/rock from Bringing It All through Blonde on Blonde, John Wesley Harding, Blood on the Tracks, World Gone Wrong (I give it the edge over Good As I've Been), Time Out of Mind, and Love & Theft. All others I think fall short of greatness, although Oh Mercy comes close enough that I could be swayed.

Still, this is so much better a track record than anyone of his generation. I'll take his failures in stride, so long as he comes up with a Love & Theft every 10 years.

You are absolutely right, some of his work is not good even terrible.


I agree with you, Bob sounds a little bit “disinterestedâ€￾ for me.
And Slow Train Coming is also not his best; I would even say I can’t listen to it…

I agree with most of what we have here, but not this:



I don't know what Slash and SRV are doing on this record, but I can tell them apart and they both sound great. I thought 'God Knows' was superb before I ever heard it live. The idea that Dylan would say:



for the last recorded appearance of brothers SRV and Jimmie Vaughan together before Stevie died - now that's heavy. 'Born in Time' and 'Cat's in the Well' have both held up. '10,000 Men' is not as strong lyrically, but more great guitars from the guests.

I was disappointed that this wasn't as good as Oh Mercy, but I still think it's good Dylan. I listen to it regularly, which is more than I can say for any of the other outings mentioned in this list.

call me nutty but
i love street legal and down in the groove

If Nichole's nutty then I must be kooky because Self Portrait and Street Legal make my Dylan Top 10 List. Those two albums get a lot of air play in this household....especially Self Portrait. Why?? Because I love that album!!

street legal is ok...

But i hate hate HATE! infidels...ughhhh such an "80s" sounding album. *barf*

I recently drove across the country (MA to WA) and listened to all of Dylan's officially released albums in chronological order, 1962 to 2001. It was an interesting drive. I was dreading the 80's stretch (got to them in Iowa), but it wasn't bad at all. Each album seems to have at least one song that's good, and the biggest problems were the 80's production and a general lack of inspiration. It's true that if you put Knocked Out Loaded up against Blonde on Blonde, well, we all know what's going to happen. But albums like Street Legal and Self Portrait do have that inspiration; they're just so alive, somehow, that the more you listen to them the more you have to listen. So in conclusion.. yes, not all of Dylan's work is as genius as the rest, but on the other hand, some of the albums many people think are bad are, in fact, amazing.

While Self Portrait may have been him just "throwing stuff at the wall".... I, along with some other people here, find it to be a very fun and enjoyable album. A hanging out kind of thing.

i am really dissatisfied with the dylan/dead thing - expectations were much higher...slightly different to down in the groove: we did expect nothing big and got nothing big...

That's your opinion - Street legal and Under the red sky (My hangover CD) are among my favourite Dylan Albums.

I'm not really interested in what your personal favorites are, or why you like something, which is a subjective matter.

I'd be interested to know if anyone, in objective terms relating to music and musical history, can argue that Street Legal, Self-Portrait, or whatever, are at least good art. Taste is subjective. Art is not.

For example, is there something about Street Legal musically that redeems the awful lyric writing in a song like Where Are You Tonight? Does the constant resorting to other people's lyrics to finish a line or verse comprise something other than laziness and lack of inspiration? When the background singers jump in on these borrowings, does it simply amplify the laziness or something else. I cringe every Bob and those women sing those lines, more with every one. Not because I hate the songs referenced, but because reference in this context is a worn out device of post-modernism, a dead aesthetic, and Bob's attempt to borrow the "floating lines" of traditional music in a non-traditional context serve to make the song less personal, less detailed, more commonplace.

Just saying you like something is not interesting or meaningful. I like mayonaise on my turkey and mustard on my cheese. So what.

I'm being serious and respectful here, not criticizing anyone's taste except mine. Enough people (not just here) have said they think Street Legal is good that I'm trying to open my ears and mind and figure out why. Same for any other song or album.

Thanks to all. And thanks for the guitar remarks on Red Sky. I'll listen again tonight.

"Taste is subjective. Art is not." -harmonica albert
This comment is about as valid as any of the above poster's innocent reflections as to which Dylan album they personally enjoyed. Your own opinion is subjective, and "I'm really not interested" in having you feebly attempt to impress it upon me. If anything in this crazy, screwed up world is subjective..... it just might be art. It can be taken OUT of hsitorical context and placed within someone's own personal timeline. Art is slippery as a freshly snagged trout.

"Taste is subjective. Art is not" (quote)
- for example: the lyrics of street legal are tremendous!
dear harmonica man you are right that if we discuss this universe of taste and art seriously we have to deliver arguments, have to explain etc..
b u t: don't come up with something like awfully lyrics, uninspired or other childish behaviour, otherwise you have to take some of the same..
just to inform you: i am really not interested what dylan thought about writing a certain line neither do i want to know what women or whom else he is talking about - i am interested in the art: as the man himself said: don't trust the artist trust the art...
no offense - peace!

This is an interesting topic. Here's my two cents.


Taste is subjective, it's a matter of your personal opinion. As far as art goes, like every "thing" in the world, anything that someone would call art is an "objective thing". But to call something art is subjective, it's a subjective judgement. One person's art, to another person might be crap.


To decide whether that redeems that in that work is a subjective judgement. To say that some particular lyric writing is awful is a subjective judgement.


THAT actually seems like a bonafide objective question.


Subjective judgement.


TOTALLY subjective judgements.

Don't get me wrong HA, there's nothing wrong with these questions, they're good questions and interesting. It's just that they're mostly subjective questions.

The only album on your list I agree with is 'Knocked Out Loaded'. Budokan is my favorite Dylan live album, really great stuff.

You are right to note that my own views have subjective elements. That is why I'm challenging myself, and anyone interested, to try to discuss this music in more objective terms. It's not necessarily easy or neat or as absolute as the terms subjective/objective imply. And I'm not trying to impress anyone or make anyone think like me or be like me. I really want to know something here, and I'm challenging my own biases most of all.

Anyway, I don't think my evaluation of the badly written lyrics on Street Legal represents a subjective view. That's not to say one should not personally enjoy the lyrics. And perhaps there is some irony I'm not realizing, that the bad writing actually communicates something that better writing would miss.

Let's look at a concrete example representative of Bob's bad writing. I think Where Are You Tonight will serve well, because it exemplifies the pitfall of self-parody in a lyricist as distinctive as Dylan at his best. The song attempts an epic scope, but the writing lurches from unrealized narrative to surrealism to pastiche to litany to just plain confusion without making the "you" of the title any more real or substantial a character by the last line than she is in the first line.

The internal rhymes of the lines are for the most part hackneyed and sonically dull--train/rain, touch/much, tone/stone in the first stanza alone. These dull rhymes are relieved now and then by something more sonically interesting like dawn/St. John, or that provokes some idea that enlivens the ambigous narrative like obscure/pure (not a real strong rhetorical move, but at least a variation on the strategy).

The rhythm of the lines shows Bob's characteristic overpacking of syllables and misplacement of stresses, and while this can charm in some of his earlier numbers, by 1978 this was his own cliche, and his best songs from John Wesly Harding onward have rarely exhibited this prolixity. "I COULDn't tell HER what my PRIvate thoughts WERE but she HAD some way of FINDing them OUT" accents two particularly weak rhyme words to no good effect. Of the four accented verbs, only one represents a concret action, the others are axuilary verbs or passive.
The final word has some sonic punch with the end consonant, but doesn't extend or amplify the literal meaning or poetic power, it simply finishes off the colloquialism "finding out." This is weak writing, leading to weak singing, and has been judged as such for hundreds of years in American music. Ben Franklin wrote about misplaced accents in lyrics in American hymns around 1765. It's a common enough practice in traditional lyrics arising from the unlettered masses, but in a composer who is ostensibly the greatest songsmith of his generation, in this song it is simply a weak and ineffective strategy leading to a harshly sung line that adds to the confusion of the narrative in this verse below.

The truth was obscure, too profound and too pure, to live it you have to explode.
In that last hour of need, we entirely agreed, sacrifice was the code of the road.
I left town at dawn, with Marcel and St. John, strong men belittled by doubt.
I couldn't tell her what my private thoughts were but she had some way of finding
them out. He took dead-center aim but he missed just the same, she was waiting,
putting flowers on the shelf.
She could feel my despair as I climbed up her hair and discovered her invisible self.

Line 1 is a philosophical aphorism. Line 2 is a narrative event, but too abstract to be effective--need of what, sacrafice of what? Line 3 is a sharper event with two specific characters, who are then compressed into a common characterization employing two more abstractions. Line 4 disrupts the emerging narrative to return to the unnamed woman and some vague conflict which must have preceded the leaving of town. Line 5 swings back to either Marcel or St. John but just which one is hard to tell, although technically it ought to be the last cited masculine subject, St. John. This line is also narrative, but if you don't know what he aimed at, whether or not he missed isn't all that compelling a revelation. Mid-line, the narrator swings back to the woman waiting somewhere, presumably in the town just left by the three men, but if they left town, how does the narrator know she is waiting with those flowers on the shelf? This is just badly constructed narrative writing, whether in prose, poem or song. Line 6 is the most exciting line, but in context the surrealism of climbing her hair just confuses matters. Did he return to town without Marcel & St. John? Where did those two guys go? They never reappear in the song, though they were important enough to cite by name.

This is what I mean by bad writing, bad objectively. Now, if there is an effective aesthetic use of bad writing--like in Jack Kerouac's better work, for instance--on Street Legal in this song, I need that explained to me, because all I hear is self-parody and sloppy writing.

The song has a promising structure of six lines in ballad meter, then three tetrameter and a trimeter line before the refrain line. The song is at odds with itself, though, as the lines are sometimes litanies of images and ideas, other times narrative. The litanies retard the narrative, and the narrative inhibits the power that a good litany (like Hard Rain's Gonna Fall) can achieve.

So these are the some examples of problems, weaknesses, contradictions that have an objective basis in grammar, in song traditions, and in Bob's own work and words. If you like this song and simply want to like it and not ponder why, that's fine with me. If you can help me understand something about the aesthetic impact of bad writing, or how something in the song lyrics or music that I'm missing redeems the bad writing.

It's interesting, at least to me, to compare a song like this to Frankie Lee and Judas Priest, which is brilliant narrative lyric writing, or I Shall Be Released which has aphorism and terse narrative mixed to profoundly moving effect.

Many thanks.

so dear harmonica: you tell me your point in two lines - and i will give you a katharsis of your challenge.

as far as jwh is concerned: not only the bible influenced the man then - read some brecht, and some kafka would help too!

I made the point I wished to make in the lines I already wrote. I'm pessimistic that two lines would be adequate. But maybe this is close:

What is it about listening to Bob Dylan, even his very worst writings/recordings, that seems to encourage uncritical adulation and acceptance?

Or maybe this is closer:

Is there something in the recording Street Legal (as opposed to the minds of the listeners) that justifies the awkward and inept lyric writing?

I look forward to your karthatic response. Good rec on Brecht and Kafka in relation to JWH. I just composed arrangements for five Brecht songs and performed them in a theater piece, now negotiating for a tv spot. Bob is way better, although Brecht has his moments.

first of all i don't think my english is enaugh for that, but okay:
a) two lines are NOT adequate - that was irony: between all your lines, you thought that were necassary you simply lost your point - your problem is that you have no point which is based on real argumentation.
b) the respect for street legal has nothing to do with uncritical adulation; i would be with you in this point discussing bob dylan playing so called lead guitar or the philosophy of m&a, but street legal: no.
c) street legal was recorded live in rundown studios (as bd said 78 in the melody maker), production level is the one of school beginners or worse ( i am really not uncritical here), so nothing special in the recording BUT
d) the lyrics are typical dylan - maybe that's what you feel is awkward or inept - but they are as he does it - and
e) i am sharing bob dylans point of view concerning the nobel prize or lyrical dylan discussions: he is a singer/songwriter - simply the best, the most important artist of the last hundred years okay, but as a poet of a written poem brecht is a whole other world, as are all the big ones keats, yeats, goethe, verlaine and so on - brechts has his moments - aw come on! though he would like the thought of being in tv...
sincerly...

HA: I took part of your one piece, that part about Where Are You Tonight.

And I proceeded to discuss your analysis of it in a reply, point by point. Was goin' real good too, typing away like mad. Then when I was done and I looked at what I had written, it dawned on me. I didn't really do much more than agree with what you had said, and that was after you had said it first.

Like you, I don't care for that song either. You helped make it more clear to me why I don't like it.

There's one thing though. You were wondering whether some people might like it or might like it uncritically. I kinda doubt that there are very many people who do like it.

Your second question is different from the first. You are not bringing it closer.

For instance, I would answer your first question by saying "the minds of the listeners". The second question, however, rules out that probablity. Why are you so hard pressed to deny the worth of the audience's minds? That's what it is all about. I, for one, actually really love "Where Are You Tonight?" Its mood, execution... all those things.
I wasn't going to respond again. I understood your first reponse, in which you said that you were really just searching for an objective place in art. I respected that and figured I'd just step back. But it was these above questions that made me have to speak again. The answer IS the audience's minds, that's what it is. That is why people, maybe just me, like songs such as "Where Are You Tonight?" Even if Dylan himself hates it! I just don't care. Now I know this does not help your search for the objective place in art, and that it will probably just seem pointless to you. But it really is the answer.

How about this. To follow on with what Grainpulp was saying about the first question.

There's nothing about listening to the "bad" songs all by themselves that encourages uncritical adulation and acceptance. It's the "good" songs which do that. If Dylan had only done the "bad" ones he would not have become so popular (duh). But that when you listen to the "good" ones a lot you can get into a frame of mind that gives him the benefit of the doubt about the "bad" ones.

Sometimes it's good to once in a while step back and ponder one's likes and dislikes.

Anyway, I thought HA did a really good job of critically analyzing Where Are You Tonight.

You can't expect anyone to always write as good as they did on their best best pieces. For an artist to once in a while do work that is not up to they're other work is to be expected.

It always seemed to me that Oh Mercy was exactly the sort of record we could expect from Dylan at that stage in his career. And all that 'Lanoisery' is just plain irritating. Bob always allies himself with lesser talents when he's in an artistic slough. Under The Red Sky which seemed to capture the sinister essence of many a folk/fairy tales, was a much braver and more unexpected effort. My only gripe is Bob's re-write of TV Talkin' Song. The original lyric had so much more to say than the anti-TV rant we ended up with and the public hanging of the speaker at the end of the song fits in with the sinister mood that pervades the record.

By the way, I believe Elton John's contribution was limited to the piano overdub on 2X2 ... it's very distinctly him.

You forgot Street Legal

Under The Red Sky is one of my favorites.