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Title: Bob Dylan – Bringing It All Back Home (1965) [Monoural – MFSL 2017]
Genre: Rock
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

With Another Side of Bob Dylan, Dylan had begun pushing past folk, and with Bringing It All Back Home, he exploded the boundaries, producing an album of boundless imagination and skill. And it’s not just that he went electric, either, rocking hard on “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” “Maggie’s Farm,” and “Outlaw Blues”; it’s that he’s exploding with imagination throughout the record. After all, the music on its second side – the nominal folk songs – derive from the same vantage point as the rockers, leaving traditional folk concerns behind and delving deep into the personal. And this isn’t just introspection, either, since the surreal paranoia on “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” and the whimsical poetry of “Mr. Tambourine Man” are individual, yet not personal. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, really, as he writes uncommonly beautiful love songs (“She Belongs to Me,” “Love Minus Zero/No Limit”) that sit alongside uncommonly funny fantasias (“On the Road Again,” “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream”). This is the point where Dylan eclipses any conventional sense of folk and rewrites the rules of rock, making it safe for personal expression and poetry, not only making words mean as much as the music, but making the music an extension of the words. A truly remarkable album.

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Title: Bob Dylan – Blonde On Blonde (1966) [MFSL 2013]
Genre: Rock
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

If Highway 61 Revisited played as a garage rock record, the double album Blonde on Blonde inverted that sound, blending blues, country, rock, and folk into a wild, careening, and dense sound. Replacing the fiery Michael Bloomfield with the intense, weaving guitar of Robbie Robertson, Bob Dylan led a group comprised of his touring band the Hawks and session musicians through his richest set of songs. Blonde on Blonde is an album of enormous depth, providing endless lyrical and musical revelations on each play. Leavening the edginess of Highway 61 with a sense of the absurd, Blonde on Blonde is comprised entirely of songs driven by inventive, surreal, and witty wordplay, not only on the rockers but also on winding, moving ballads like “Visions of Johanna,” “Just Like a Woman,” and “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.” Throughout the record, the music matches the inventiveness of the songs, filled with cutting guitar riffs, liquid organ riffs, crisp pianos, and even woozy brass bands (“Rainy Day Women #12 & 35”). It’s the culmination of Dylan’s electric rock & roll period — he would never release a studio record that rocked this hard, or had such bizarre imagery, ever again.

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Title: Bob Dylan – Blood On The Tracks (1975) [MFSL 2012]
Genre: Rock
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Following on the heels of an album where he repudiated his past with his greatest backing band, Blood on the Tracks finds Bob Dylan, in a way, retreating to the past, recording a largely quiet, acoustic-based album. But this is hardly nostalgia — this is the sound of an artist returning to his strengths, what feels most familiar, as he accepts a traumatic situation, namely the breakdown of his marriage. This is an album alternately bitter, sorrowful, regretful, and peaceful, easily the closest he ever came to wearing his emotions on his sleeve. That’s not to say that it’s an explicitly confessional record, since many songs are riddles or allegories, yet the warmth of the music makes it feel that way. The original version of the album was even quieter — first takes of “Idiot Wind” and “Tangled Up in Blue,” available on The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3, are hushed and quiet (excised verses are quoted in the liner notes, but not heard on the record) — but Blood on the Tracks remains an intimate, revealing affair since these harsher takes let his anger surface the way his sadness does elsewhere. As such, it’s an affecting, unbearably poignant record, not because it’s a glimpse into his soul, but because the songs are remarkably clear-eyed and sentimental, lovely and melancholy at once. And, in a way, it’s best that he was backed with studio musicians here, since the professional, understated backing lets the songs and emotion stand at the forefront. Dylan made albums more influential than this, but he never made one better.

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Title: Bob Dylan – Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits (1967) [MFSL 2016]
Genre: Rock
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Arriving in 1967, Greatest Hits does an excellent job of summarizing Dylan’s best-known songs from his first seven albums. At just ten songs, it’s a little brief, and the song selection may be a little predictable, but that’s actually not a bad thing, since this provides a nice sampler for the curious and casual listener, as it boasts standards from “Blowin’ in the Wind” to “Like a Rolling Stone.” And, for collectors, the brilliant non-LP single “Positively Fourth Street” was added, which provided reason enough for anybody that already owned the original records to pick this up. This has since been supplanted by more exhaustive collections, but as a sampler of Dylan at his absolute peak, this is first-rate.

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Title: Bob Dylan – Bob Dylan (1962) [MFSL 2015]
Genre: Rock
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Bob Dylan is the debut studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. Produced by Columbia’s legendary talent scout John H. Hammond, who signed Dylan to the label, the album features folk standards, plus two original compositions, “Talkin’ New York” and “Song to Woody”.
Bob Dylan’s first album is a lot like the debut albums by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones – a sterling effort, outclassing most, if not all, of what came before it in the genre, but similarly eclipsed by the artist’s own subsequent efforts. The difference was that not very many people heard Bob Dylan on its original release (originals on the early-’60s Columbia label are choice collectibles) because it was recorded with a much smaller audience and musical arena in mind. At the time of Bob Dylan’s release, the folk revival was rolling, and interpretation was considered more important than original composition by most of that audience. A significant portion of the record is possessed by the style and spirit of Woody Guthrie, whose influence as a singer and guitarist hovers over “Man of Constant Sorrow” and “Pretty Peggy-O,” as well as the two originals here, the savagely witty “Talkin’ New York” and the poignant “Song to Woody”; and it’s also hard to believe that he wasn’t aware of Jimmie Rodgers and Roy Acuff when he cut “Freight Train Blues.” But on other songs, one can also hear the influences of Bukka White, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Willie Johnson, and Furry Lewis, in the playing and singing, and this is where Dylan departed significantly from most of his contemporaries. Other white folksingers of the era, including his older contemporaries Eric Von Schmidt and Dave Van Ronk, had incorporated blues in their work, but Dylan’s presentation was more in your face, resembling in some respects (albeit in a more self-conscious way) the work of John Hammond, Jr., the son of the man who signed Dylan to Columbia Records and produced this album, who was just starting out in his own career at the time this record was made. There’s a punk-like aggressiveness to the singing and playing here. His raspy-voiced delivery and guitar style were modeled largely on Guthrie’s classic ’40s and early-’50s recordings, but the assertiveness of the bluesmen he admires also comes out, making this one of the most powerful records to come out of the folk revival of which it was a part. Within a year of its release, Dylan, initially in tandem with young folk/protest singers like Peter, Paul & Mary and Phil Ochs, would alter the boundaries of that revival beyond recognition, but this album marked the pinnacle of that earlier phase, before it was overshadowed by this artist’s more ambitious subsequent work. In that regard, the two original songs here serve as the bridge between Dylan’s stylistic roots, as delineated on this album, and the more powerful and daringly original work that followed. One myth surrounding this album should also be dispelled here – his version of “House of the Rising Sun” here is worthwhile, but the version that was the inspiration for the Animals’ recording was the one by Josh White.

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Title: Bob Dylan – Bob Dylan (1962) [Monoural – MFSL 2017]
Genre: Rock
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Bob Dylan’s first album is a lot like the debut albums by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones – a sterling effort, outclassing most, if not all, of what came before it in the genre, but similarly eclipsed by the artist’s own subsequent efforts. The difference was that not very many people heard Bob Dylan on its original release (originals on the early-’60s Columbia label are choice collectibles) because it was recorded with a much smaller audience and musical arena in mind. At the time of Bob Dylan’s release, the folk revival was rolling, and interpretation was considered more important than original composition by most of that audience. A significant portion of the record is possessed by the style and spirit of Woody Guthrie, whose influence as a singer and guitarist hovers over “Man of Constant Sorrow” and “Pretty Peggy-O,” as well as the two originals here, the savagely witty “Talkin’ New York” and the poignant “Song to Woody”; and it’s also hard to believe that he wasn’t aware of Jimmie Rodgers and Roy Acuff when he cut “Freight Train Blues.” But on other songs, one can also hear the influences of Bukka White, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Willie Johnson, and Furry Lewis, in the playing and singing, and this is where Dylan departed significantly from most of his contemporaries. Other white folksingers of the era, including his older contemporaries Eric Von Schmidt and Dave Van Ronk, had incorporated blues in their work, but Dylan’s presentation was more in your face, resembling in some respects (albeit in a more self-conscious way) the work of John Hammond, Jr., the son of the man who signed Dylan to Columbia Records and produced this album, who was just starting out in his own career at the time this record was made. There’s a punk-like aggressiveness to the singing and playing here. His raspy-voiced delivery and guitar style were modeled largely on Guthrie’s classic ’40s and early-’50s recordings, but the assertiveness of the bluesmen he admires also comes out, making this one of the most powerful records to come out of the folk revival of which it was a part. Within a year of its release, Dylan, initially in tandem with young folk/protest singers like Peter, Paul & Mary and Phil Ochs, would alter the boundaries of that revival beyond recognition, but this album marked the pinnacle of that earlier phase, before it was overshadowed by this artist’s more ambitious subsequent work. In that regard, the two original songs here serve as the bridge between Dylan’s stylistic roots, as delineated on this album, and the more powerful and daringly original work that followed. One myth surrounding this album should also be dispelled here – his version of “House of the Rising Sun” here is worthwhile, but the version that was the inspiration for the Animals’ recording was the one by Josh White.

hraudio | allmusic | discogs

(more…)

Title: Bob Dylan – Bootleg Series Vol. 6: Live 1964 (2004) [Audio Fidelity 2016]
Genre: Rock
Format: MCH SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

It does seem strange, very strange indeed, to be hearing an official release of this historic concert, which has been available as a bootleg for decades. The Halloween gig at Philharmonic Hall in New York was a special part of the tour for Another Side of Bob Dylan, arguably his greatest acoustic recording. What’s more poignant, however, is how it previews the material on Bringing It All Back Home. While the songs on Another Side hinted at things to come, nothing could have prepared audiences for the dreamy surrealism of “Mr. Tambourine Man,” or the nightmarish abstract poetry of “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding),” and “Gates of Eden” – all of which appear on Disc One. The remainder of the material comes from Dylan’s preceding catalog; there are stirring protest and topical songs, folk songs, humorous narratives, love songs, great wisecracks, and talking blues – “Talking John Birch Paranoid Blues!”), most of them classics – “With God on Our Side,” “Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall,” “Times They Are A-Changin’,” “Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,” “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright,” “Mama You’ve Been on My Mind,” “All I Really Want to Do,” “It Ain’t Me Babe” – all of these songs and many others (there are 17 in all) are delivered with the confidence of the seasoned performer; a man who knows his audience and how to handle them. It’s not cynical, not detached, just masterful. For those unfamiliar with this set, Joan Baez makes an appearance near the end of the show, and duets with Dylan on four cuts including an amazing read of “Silver Dagger.” It is true that if you possess the boot, you have all the music here, and chances are, it has some pretty good sound. But you’ll need this version, too. For starters, the sound is spectacular, wonderfully warm and immediate, and the transfer is extremely clean with wonderful dynamics. Secondly, the package is deluxe. In addition to a fine essay by Princeton historian and author Sean Wilentz (he made the gig when he was 13), there are a truckload of killer photos from the show and the period, along with complete discographical information that puts the bootleg packages to shame. For those interested in the acoustic Bob Dylan, this concert is like the grail; his voice is in impeccable shape, and his delivery is revelatory. For those interested in the transition from acoustic to electric, this show is the seam, and for those who are die-hard fans, this is another welcome item in the official catalog.

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Title: Bob Dylan And The Band – The Basement Tapes (1975) [MFSL 2012]
Genre: Rock
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

The official release of The Basement Tapes — which were first heard on a 1968 bootleg called The Great White Wonder — plays with history somewhat, as Robbie Robertson overemphasizes the Band’s status in the sessions, making them out to be equally active to Dylan, adding in demos not cut at the sessions and overdubbing their recordings to flesh them out. As many bootlegs (most notably the complete five-disc series) reveal, this isn’t entirely true and the Band were nowhere near as active as Dylan, but that ultimately is a bit like nitpicking, since the music here (including the Band’s) is astonishingly good. The party line on The Basement Tapes is that it is Americana, as Dylan and the Band pick up the weirdness inherent in old folk, country, and blues tunes, but it transcends mere historical arcana through its lively, humorous, full-bodied performances. Dylan never sounded as loose, nor was he ever as funny as he is here, and this positively revels in its weird, wild character. For all the apparent antecedents — and the allusions are sly and obvious in equal measure — this is truly Dylan’s show, as he majestically evokes old myths and creates new ones, resulting in a crazy quilt of blues, humor, folk, tall tales, inside jokes, and rock. The Band pretty much pick up where Dylan left off, even singing a couple of his tunes, but they play it a little straight, on both their rockers and ballads. Not a bad thing at all, since this actually winds up providing context for the wild, mercurial brilliance of Dylan’s work — and, taken together, the results (especially in this judiciously compiled form with its expert song selection, even if there’s a bit too much Band) rank among the greatest American music ever made.

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Title: Bob Dylan – Another Side Of Bob Dylan (1964) [Monoural – MFSL 2018]
Genre: Rock
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

This mono hybrid SACD reissue of Bob Dylan’s Another Side of Bob Dylan (1964), limited to 3,000 copies and mastered from original tapes by Mobile Fidelity, captures Dylan’s raw emotional state with stunning clarity. The mono mix, preferred during the 1964 recording, places Dylan’s vocals at the heart of the music, free of artificial panning, as originally intended. It reveals Dylan’s unpolished delivery—laughs, false starts, and occasional off-key moments—evoking a candid, pub-staggering vibe that prioritizes authenticity over perfection. Compared to the stereo version’s less distinct separation, this mono edition offers a direct, immersive soundscape, historically significant as the format most listeners first experienced. Another Side of Bob Dylan showcases a departure from the protest-heavy The Times They Are a-Changin’, embracing a romantic, whimsical, and absurdist style. The album is more varied and successful, with Dylan expanding his musical and poetic scope beyond strict folk. Classics like “All I Really Want to Do,” “Chimes of Freedom,” “My Back Pages,” “I Don’t Believe You,” and “It Ain’t Me Babe” anchor the record. Lesser-known tracks shine with graceful, layered poetry and deeper musical complexity. The SACD’s DSD mastering enhances the intimate, warm sound, ideal for audiophiles and Dylan fans. This reissue, cataloged as MOFI SACD 0023, is a definitive presentation of one of Dylan’s finest, most versatile albums.

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Title: Bob Dylan – Another Side Of Bob Dylan (1964) [MFSL 2012]
Genre: Rock
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

The other side of Bob Dylan referred to in the title is presumably his romantic, absurdist, and whimsical one — anything that wasn’t featured on the staunchly folky, protest-heavy Times They Are a-Changin’, really. Because of this, Another Side of Bob Dylan is a more varied record and it’s more successful, too, since it captures Dylan expanding his music, turning in imaginative, poetic performances on love songs and protest tunes alike. This has an equal number of classics to its predecessor, actually, with “All I Really Want to Do,” “Chimes of Freedom,” “My Back Pages,” “I Don’t’ Believe You,” and “It Ain’t Me Babe” standing among his standards, but the key to the record’s success is the album tracks, which are graceful, poetic, and layered. Both the lyrics and music have gotten deeper and Dylan’s trying more things — this, in its construction and attitude, is hardly strictly folk, as it encompasses far more than that. The result is one of his very best records, a lovely intimate affair.

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