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Bobcats assemble.

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Acquired a copy of More Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits yesterday, which I suggested on another forum was one of two Dylan albums you really need. What’s the other one? Please show your working.

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  1. Greatest Hits I suppose, but you need about 15 to 20 at least.

    If I had to choose only 2 then one would be Blonde on Blonde, it’s a double and it is also his peak for me. Pretty astonishing from start to finish, beginning with a song about getting stoned and ending with a side long love letter to his wife.

    I would be tempted to get Blood on the Tracks as no. 2 but would instead maybe go for The Times They are a Changin’ I think it’s his best all acoustic album with remarkable consistency, running the gamut from protest songs, anti religious songs into love songs. Was also the first Dylan album I owned so some sentimental value there.

  2. Highway 61 Revisited (firstly for Like A Rolling Stone, and the rest is none too shabby).
    Or …
    Blood On The Tracks (Tangled Up In Blue and Shelter From The Storm being two good reasons).

    Never really “got” Blonde On Blonde … my loss

  3. I’m tempted to say The Complete Basement Tapes but the album I revisit most frequently is Bootleg Series Volume 3. It is the best outtake collection I’ve ever heard, reveals the many faces of Dylan and Israel to his many masterpieces.

  7. You need at least a dozen, but if I had to save one from a burning house it would be Highway 61 Revisited. That said I haven’t listened to any Bob for a while. I go through phases where I listen to almost nothing but for a few months, then almost forget about him for a year or more. A Bob phase is due.

  10. So much choice.

    I especially love the 1970s Dylan, especially Desire and Street Legal.

    But how about a later classic – Time Out of Mind. An album of wearily looking backing and mortality, when he was a whippersnapper of 56.

  11. My personal minimum Bob:

    Greatest Hits Volume II
    Blonde On Blonde
    New Morning
    Blood On The Tracks
    Desire
    Street Legal

    The ONE other one? Blood On The Tracks, without a doubt.

    But you might not agree – most likely you’ll go your way and I’ll go mine.

  12. If we want longer lists;

    Freewheelin’
    Times They Are a Changin’
    Bringing it All Back Home
    Highway 61 Revisited
    Blonde on Blonde
    Live 1966
    John Wesley Harding
    Blood on the Tracks
    Desire
    Slow Train Coming
    Oh Mercy
    World Gone Wrong
    Time Out of Mind
    Love and Theft

  14. Like many the favourite “classic” Bob would be Blood on The Tracks.

    But, if I could only keep one album, I would probably go with Oh Mercy. A combination of Daniel Lanois production and the fact his songwriting seemed to be revitalised after the Travelling Wilbury’s resulted in one of his best.

    • Odd – Chrisf – lots of people love Oh Mercy but I find it to be too self-conscious. Most of the Time , Man in a Long Black Coat are particularly so. For me, Disease of Conceit is so bad it could be from Down in the Groove and if it were then I doubt people would say that it was te standout track on that album.

  15. I’ve got through life without owning any and hearing one (the mid 60s one with the fish-eye lens cover), albeit decades ago. That’s *not a criticism at all* on Bob fans – my thinking has always been that there’s only so much time in the world and only so much headspace, and in my teens and 20s I was chasing down and discovering so much else in music from the past and Bob’s sound didn’t really appeal to me – though I liked a couple of his songs as recorded by others (Arlo Guthrie’s ‘Gates of Eden’ is a favourite). I’ve seen ‘Don’t Look Back’ a couple of times, though.

    So for me, making conscious decisions not to explore vast cupboards of musical history – Bob, Frank Zappa, Brooce, U2, Beatles (to an extent) etc. etc. – works. It leaves the time and space to explore much less known music and musicians. With a lot of culterally pervasive people, one sees and hears enough in passing – by osmosis – to know what it is and where it fits, as it were.

    • Interesting – I’m very much a part-time bobcat, but wouldn’t ever choose Blonde on Blonde. I still don’t really get why it’s usually top of the lists. I don’t own a copy and don’t miss it.

      • Everybody needs Visions of Johanna (my pick for his greatest song), One of Us Must Know, Memphis Blues Again, I Want You etc etc. An incredible record

          • Oh you really do if you want some of the greatest songs ever written. Just helping you to understand why it’s at the top of many lists which seemed to flummox you.

            But you don’t like it that’s fine

              • You said you didn’t understand why it was rated so high, you didn’t just say you didn’t like it. I may well be wrong but I would think most hardcore Bob fans think it’s one of his best, many believing his peak was the 65-66 era

    • Strange view. I doubt many would be interested in the outtakes if the original stuff that was released was not stellar. I would say he left about half a dozen absolute classics off his main albums. On the main albums you have dozens and dozens of great songs and those would be the ones I would recommend first especially as the original poster is only looking for a couple

  20. Highway 61 Revisited is like the first record ever by a fully realised rockstar which is pretty exciting and what everyone kind of follows and is influenced by, and therefore you really need it to get it. Otherwise another side of him which is the rockstar part 2, full of pain, trying to come to terms with things falling apart. It really is that simple, or difficult.

    • I have this (on CD): The Songs Of Bob Dylan, Various Artists, 1989

      The tracks are:

      Bryan Ferry – A Hard Rain’s A Gonna Fall (1973)
      Bobby Bare – Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright (1965)
      Elvis Presley – Tomorrow’s A Long Time (1966)
      Johnny Cash – It Ain’t Me Babe (1967)
      The Byrds – Mr. Tambourine Man (1965)
      Them – It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue (1973)
      Stills-Kooper-Bloomfield – It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry (1968)
      Gary U.S. Bonds – From A Buick 6 (1981)
      Jason And The Scorchers – Absolutely Sweet Marie (1984)
      Siouxsie And The Banshees – This Wheel’s On Fire (1987)
      Jimi Hendrix – All Along The Watchtower (1968)
      Hoyt Axton – Lay Lady Lay (1976)
      Tina Turner – Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You (1974)
      The Band – When I Paint My Masterpiece (1971)
      Joe Cocker – Watching The River Flow (1978)
      Eric Clapton – Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door (1975)
      Joan Baez – Simple Twist Of Fate (1975)
      Jerry Lee Lewis – Rita Mae (1979)
      The Everly Brothers – Abandoned Love (1985)
      Ry Cooder – Need A Woman (1982)

      I stand to be corrected but I think that More Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits is the only place that you’ll find Dylan’s recordings of Tomorrow’s A Long Time and Watching The River Flow, although there’s a demo of the former on the Witmark Sessions in the Bootleg series.

      I’d never heard Tomorrow’s A Long Time before I found this CD (at a car boot sale, I think) and I love Elvis Presley’s version (as did Dylan). I am not a big Joe Cocker fan, but had a album once with Watching The River Flow on it and liked the song.

      Always happy to hear Jason And The Scorchers too.

      • Yeah Watching the River flow had just come out as a single and side 4 contains a further 5 unreleased songs at the time including Tomorrow is a Long Time

      • I think that any compilation of Dylan songs by other people must include the ethereal, swirling magic of ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ as covered by Spirit on their live album ‘Spirit of ’76’ because of its magisterial beauty.

  22. I’ve got a shoe box of Bob – quite a lot right? – I mean, it hasn’t still got the shoes in it.

    Tempted to go for 3… no, 4… Another Side, JWH, Nashville Skyline and the Bootleg one that did JWH and Nashville Skyline.
    Erm, shall we just say Another Side and Nashville Skyline. They’re kinda the only fun ones, and crucially they don’t have size 10s walking all over them.

    Why do people like pop stars when they get old and ugly?
    I don’t mind my plumber being old and ugly, but I prefer my pop stars of choice not to be.

  23. Instead of Greatest Hits Vol II I’d go for Biograph, and as the second choice, my most essential single album would Blood on the Tracks every time (but only just ahead of of Highway 61 Revisited). I just think Blood on the Tracks packs an emotional punch ahead of anything else he’s done.

    • I got Side Tracks (£7.99), the version of Biograph that appeared in that mammoth box a few years ago. The record shop simply divided the whole thing up, and sold each CD individually.

      Voila! You can hear all the 60s stuff without gospel and/or dire in between.
      Never listen to it, but at least I know it’s there.

    • I’d definitely go for a British As and Bs 65-69.
      Quirky, all over the place, perfect length for a CD.

      Cue me in for that, and a 60s Sainted Dave equivalent. And Marc Bolan.
      Ace? Ace? Where are you, Ace?

  26. I would automatically go for Freewheelin’
    But if you have a penchant for his earlier years, then my best of may help

    A lot from the early albums & then some of the standouts from Bootleg, including my all time favourite Bob (Farewell, Angelina) & the track I stubbornly show people when they trot out the ‘but he can’t sing’ line (Moonshiner).

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