Bob Dylan - Blood on the Tracks poll

Idiot Wind w/o a second thought, though. All-time sneer moments at the ends of the verses ("can't heeeelp it if I'm lucky" / "sweeeeeeeet lady" / "blooooooood on your saddle" / "YOU'RE ON THE BOTTOM") + the slow bleed from unbridled hate parade -> sad vulnerability/complicity is perfect.

Love Tony Brown's work all over the album, too.

yes i love "sweeeeeeeet lady"

I haven't listened to this album in years. Thanks, thread.

this is difficult tbqh

Dylan at the peak of his powers imo. miracles of vocal phrasing abound.

"tangled" is the obvious frontrunner and 100% worthy but "shelter" and "idiot wind" are close and "jack" deserves votes for the melodic turn on "lily had already taken all of the dye out of her hair" alone.

the "I'm complicit" stuff in Idiot Wind feels very unconvincing and cover-my-ass imo. I guess you could argue that that's just who the character of the speaker of the song is though, and that it's effective in that regard.

I’ll look for you in old Honolulu, San Francisco, Ashtabula

HONAHLULAH

this is a great record, i think Shelter from the Storm is my fave, but they're all great (even the lesser tracks like lily and meet me in the morning).

Ashtabula

every time I hear this I think "that's not a real place, is it?"

or is he just saying ras tabula

I used to think it was wordplay on tabula rasa, still not sure it isn't.

Wiki facts I never knew:

Prior to recording, and while details regarding his return to Columbia Records were being fleshed out, Dylan previewed the songs that would make up Blood on the Tracks to a number of friends and peers in the music world. According to biographer Jimmy McDonough, Dylan visited Neil Young in his home in Florida to showcase the songs on the album and seek out Young's opinion, and even run through some of the songs with Young's group Crazy Horse.[14] Dylan also previewed the songs to David Crosby, Graham Nash, Stephen Stills, Tim Drummond, and Peter Rowan.[15] Notably, Graham Nash recalled that Stephen Stills disliked Dylan's private performance of his new songs: immediately after Dylan left the room, Stills remarked to Nash, "He's a good songwriter...but he's no musician."

Would LOVE to hear these songs with Crazy Horse

haha that Stills nugget preserved in Shakey.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashtabula,_Ohio

think even Dylan would agree

i did always like the way he delivered "but I used a little too much force"

― charlie 4chan, internet detective (Hurting 2), Thursday, April 18, 2013 11:51 AM (59 minutes ago) Bookmark

same, he says it like its one word

The name Ashtabula comes from ashtepihəle, which means 'always enough fish to be shared around' in the Lenape language.

key source for "buckets of rain"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVbRh2p1sbA

haha yeah poor stills he comes off as the most pathetic aggro hippie salieri in a full length fur coat in Shakey

I never even got as far as objecting to mean Dylan with Idiot Wind -- something about the cadence and the shoutyness and look I'm queen of IA is anyone really that surprised that I find it annoying lol

also I've had this line in my head all morning

Kinda like VERLAINES and RimBAUD

anniNEVerDOgetYEWSt'it

isn't it RAM-BOH

well yeah

Would love to know what Tim Drummond thought.

would love to introduce a non-English speaker to this album to help with pronunciation

This and Murmur

lol Alfred

"Love is so simple"
To quote a phRAAASE

People talking about the singing being top-notch are otm. It's if during his vocal experiments with various types of bellowing and crooning he accidentally circled back to a version of his singing style on Highway 61/Blonde on Blonde, so you are getting overlapping Dylans, like an episode of Star Trek in which they go through an ion storm or The Gate on the Edge of Forever and end up interacting with their younger selves.

whereas Street-Legal is his nadir as a vocalist.

I really like the Rolling Thunder Revue version of Shelter From The Storm with the yelling and slide guitar etc., and the full-band, more country arrangement from the 90s that I think was posted here. I didn't like the album much, but that has to do with what a contrarian Dylan fan I am.
Same here. That's one of my favorite Dylan vocals.

I ran into the fortune-teller, she said be-WARE of lightning that might STRYYYYAAIK
I haven't known peace and quiet for so long I can't remember what it's LIYEEEEK

Maclaine and Rambo

lol

While we're doing phonetic spelling, I challenge anyone to render all the different pronunciations of "idiot."

ee-YEAAAH-dee-UH
ee-EEEEE-dee-yot
yaaaAAAYYYyy-deee-at

you're an eeeeeeeH-DEE-yut babe

I'd like that song better if he weren't idiot enough to make it go on so long.

rong it should never end

something about the line "every time you move your teeth" is so terrifying to me--such a savage way to describe talking

the 10min version of idiot wind on hard rain isn't as good as the bott version because it's more of a vicious cartoon and more like what the people itt who don't like the song hear in it, but it does have an incredible sarcastic intonation of AND IT MAKES ME FEEL SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO SORRY which would prob be the definitive interpretation if it didn't flatten out all the emotional space. like, i prefer it when he is actually sorry. but sometimes.

you guys are a lot nicer than I and maybe I am a psychopath is what this thread is teaching me. I love mean Dylan

at the height of my mixtape days I never put any Dylan on the love song ones. He shows more solicitude, patience, and look-you-in-the-eye honesty when he's hating a woman.

I really like his singing on 'Nashville Skyline'.

i think the sarcasm and meanness is present in the bott version too; it's just that amping them up crowds out what else is there. fun as it is. sara's supposed to be sitting in the front row at that concert too!

along the lines of breaking up on the docks that night: is the one-eyed undertaker blowing a futile horn or a feudal one, and does it make any difference

it's more of a vicious cartoon

this IS the best kind of cartoon tho

i can't really think of a not-mean dylan love song that really works for me -- maybe 'all i really wanna do,' but that one seems more like a joke than anything. come to think of it, he doesn't really have many not-mean love songs. maybe 'i want you,' but i suspect there's some hate buried somewhere in those garbled images.

'Lay lady lay' doesn't work for you?

i can't really think of a not-mean dylan love song that really works for me -- maybe 'all i really wanna do,' but that one seems more like a joke than anything. come to think of it, he doesn't really have many not-mean love songs. maybe 'i want you,' but i suspect there's some hate buried somewhere in those garbled images.

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Thursday, April 18, 2013 4:22 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I can't either, but that's why I don't like Dylan more than I otherwise would, he just seems so mired in resentment throughout his career and it gets tiresome.

"Don't Think Twice It's Alright" is a great, beautiful, bitter breakup song that somehow lacks the cruelty of idiot wind, even though some of its lines are pretty mean -- they just sound more in line with the expected anger of the fed-up lover, whereas there's something much more terrible and terrifying in idiot wind (which, tbf, I guess is the difference between the breakup of a relatively short relationship between two young people and the breakup of a tumultuous marriage).