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[MENTION=19700]Lyedecker[/MENTION] [MENTION=4515]wolfy[/MENTION] [MENTION=7040]Forever_Jung[/MENTION]
What do you guys think of Blood On The Tracks?
What do you guys think of Blood On The Tracks?
What do you guys think of Blood On The Tracks?
Well, I know it's not the cool album to like, but it's in my top 3 Dylan albums.
The album is a stunner, from top to bottom. Except I've never much cared for "Meet Me in the Morning". It just seems like a filler song, to break things up, musically. A lot of the songs on BotT sound similar, so that would make sense. Song similarity is also likely the reason that he left the amazing "Up to Me" off the album (seriously, check that song out if you haven't heard it already).
I generally prefer his best acoustic stuff to his best electric stuff, and this is definitely among his best acoustic work. Historically, this album wasn't groundbreaking or as dazzling as Highway 61 Revisited or Blonde on Blonde. Make no mistake though, it's as rich an album as he ever made.
In the mid-60's Bob was like an extraterrestrial rock poet, it just didn't seem humanly possible to do what he was doing.
By 1975, he's just a different guy. Blood on the Tracks is more straightforward, mature, and human. He found a much more direct way to articulate emotional nuance. The singing on the album is amazing, not just the vocal quality, but his phrasing is impeccable. The line "Like a corkscrew to my heart" towards the end of "You're A Big Girl Now" hit ME like a corkscrew in my heart.
Or when he leans into these words in Idiot Wind:
The priest wore black on the seventh day and sat stone-faced while the building burned/I waited for you on the running boards, near the cypress trees, while the springtime turned/ Slooooooooooooowly into Autumn
The venom in his delivery knocks me right on my ass. The whole song is filled with great lines like that. I listen to Idiot Wind a lot when I'm feeling bitter and heartbroken.
I think he ends it on the appropriate note with Buckets of Rain. It's a good song on its own, but it is especially poignant in the context of the whole album. It's playful and wistful at the same time, hopeful yet resigned.
What do YOU think Night?
I always thought it was criminally underappreciated in his volume of work. It wouldn't crack my top 3, personally. My three favorites are "Another Side of Bob Dylan", and the two which followed that one.
My favorite song on the album is "Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts".
Thanks for sharing.
That's interesting that Another Side is your favourite, because I've always felt it was the Bob equivalent to "Beatles for Sale" (same year, self-aware title, a great album that never became as iconic as the ones it was sandwiched between, lots of lesser known gems contained therein).
And I feel like your signature recently claimed BfS was your favourite album? You also really like Muswell Hillbillies, right?
I'm definitely seeing a pattern of admiration for the overlooked gems!
Anyway, I quite like "Another Side" too. I tried putting Spanish harlem Incident on to set the mood with a girl one time, and she immediately stopped kissing and me and asked: Ugh! Who is that awful singer? I said: only the world's greatest singer of all-time! To which she replied: I don't believe you, and then she acted like we never had met.
I quickly skipped ahead to "It Ain't Me Babe", and told her to get out.