POLLING THUNDER REVUE: The Bob Dylan Poll Results Thread (He Acts Like We Never Have Met)

AKA, When I was down, you just stood there POLLING

http://www.contactmusic.com/pics/la/celebrity_wine_300508/bob_dylan_47341.jpg

So here's how this will go: Because it took so long to get everything figgered, I'm on a compressed posting schedule. I'm going to Bonnaroo starting early Thursday, so the whole rollout will happen in the next three days. THREE DAYS! A lot to get through, so get yrselves ready.

SIDE POLLS:

There will be 10 "worst of" songs, 25 covers and 20 albums.

TRACKS:

There will be 100 tracks, except there's a tie at 100 so it will actually be 101.

Today I'll post the side polls and #s 100-80 in the tracks poll, followed by 40 tracks each on Tues and Weds.

Posting will probably come in clusters, depending on my schedule. It may carry on into the Eastern Standard Time evening, but I'll try not to post past 7 p.m. so as not to unreasonably exclude those on GMT.

And with that said, let's get going with the first side poll.

BOB DYLAN: THE WORST, I MEAN THE WORST

Only 14 people submitted most-hated lists, so I'm limiting the rollout to songs that got at least 3 votes. Here they go, from bad to worse.

10. "Union Sundown" Infidels (1983)
88 points, 3 votes

Well, the job that you used to have
They gave it to somebody down in El Salvador
The unions are big business, friend
And they’re goin’ out like a dinosaur

Going to post one more for now, then I'll let everyone wake up and catch up.

9. "Wiggle Wiggle" Under the Red Sky (1990)
96 points, 3 votes

Wiggle ’til you’re high, wiggle ’til you’re higher
Wiggle ’til you vomit fire
Wiggle ’til it whispers, wiggle ’til it hums
Wiggle ’til it answers, wiggle ’til it comes

Hooray for results! 155 results in 3 days is a heavy touring schedule. "Union Sundown" definitely would have made my worsts if I'd done that part.

If people would prefer a more elongated rollout, I can do part this week and pick up next week. But there would be radio silence from Thurs thru Mon.

radio silence from Thurs to Mon = no big deal (and as it happens I won't be near a computer then either)

Well the alternative schedule would be side polls today, 100-81 tomorrow, 80-61 Weds, and the top 60 next Tues-Thurs. I'm fine with that, not sure what it would do to Outkast rollout (or if that matters -- people can probably follow two polls at once).

Fast would be fine with me, but I guess slow would be ok too.

[b]8. "Is Your Love in Vain?" Street-Legal (1978)[/b ]
99 points, 3 votes

Can you cook and sew, make flowers grow
Do you understand my pain?

Oops, extra space in the bold tag.

8. "Is Your Love in Vain?" Street-Legal(1978)
99 points, 3 votes

Can you cook and sew, make flowers grow
Do you understand my pain?

woohooo rollout!

Union Sundown and Neighborhood Bully make respectively side a and b of Infidels hard listens.

Also terrible photo, looks like a photoshopped mashup of Dylan and one of the 1Direction singers (love it, tipsy!)

Union Sundown somewhat similar to that terrible superbowl ad

Danish musician Peter Viskinde named his band Big Fat Snake quoting "Wiggle Wiggle" and recently released a "Is Your Love in Vain" cover http://youtu.be/uHCPDiIHQW8 lol.

7. "Man Gave Names to All the Animals" Slow Train Coming (1979)
(3 votes, 1 worst-place vote, 100 points)

He saw an animal up on a hill
Chewing up so much grass until she was filled
He saw milk comin’ out but he didn’t know how
“Ah, think I’ll call it a cow”

"Wiggle Wiggle" is lots of fun.

hi, tipsy!

truly a silly song...

only doesn't seem as if it's supposed to be funny

"Man Gave Names", that is...

Here they go, from bad to worse to the sublime--"Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" at #1.

man gave names is great! no qualms about the others so far though, they are terrible

So far, with the exception of "Is Your Love in Vain?" everything that's shown up are ones I voted for. Not defending "Vain," btw, I just wasn't about to relisten to Street Legal again for this poll to pick out individual duds.

Man Gave Names is awesome fuiud

Challops?

6. "Just Like A Woman" Blonde on Blonde 1966

(3 votes, 1 worst-place vote, 101 points)

...just like a little guurrl

5. "Lenny Bruce" Shot of Love (1981)
(4 votes, 1 worst-place vote, 113 points)

They stamped him and they labeled him like they do with pants and shirts
He fought a war on a battlefield where every victory hurts

Annie Hall, dismissal of Dylan in The chorus
of ‘Just Like a Woman’ ends with ‘. . . she aches
just like a woman / But she breaks just like a little
girl.’ This non-statement doesn’t describe an individual
characteristic, doesn’t say anything fresh
about a universal one yet pretends to do both.
What parades as reflective wisdom (‘. . . woman
but . . . girl’) is really maudlin platitude. It hasn’t
even engaged Dylan’s skill in minimising the badness.
It would be less bad if the ‘But’ of the payoff
line was an ‘And’—for at least we would then
be spared so blatantly lame and predictable a
‘paradox’.
This is exactly the ‘lameness’ honed in on in
Woody Allen’s 1977 film Annie Hall, in which a vacuous
hippie character played by the wonderful
Shelley Duvall recites the lines just quoted as if
they’re far-out and profound, and the character
played by Allen (the usual character played by
Allen), pulls a face that means he fails to see in
them anything less empty-headed than their
admirer.
In Chronicles Volume One, 2004, Dylan recalls
(without comment) that Woody Allen was one of
the comedians performing at the Cafe´ Wha at the
start of the 1960s.

But the sound of Just Like a Woman, thin mercury, is too enjoyable for me to hate.

4. "Disease of Conceit" Oh Mercy (1989)
(4 votes, 1 worst-place vote, 115 points)

Conceit is a disease
That the doctors got no cure
They’ve done a lot of research on it
But what it is, they’re still not sure

Haha, I seem to remember him being really happy with that one in Chronicles? The lyrics may be dumb, but it sounds really good too imo.

lol yes disease of conceit is very very bad

So is there a consensus or anything on extending the rollout? I'm OK either way, but will need to pace myself accordingly.

The options, to recap:

-- Do it all in 3 days, with side polls and first 20 tracks today, then 40 track each the next two days

-- Do sides today, first 20 tomorrow, next 20 on Wednesday, then pick up the top 60 next Tues/Weds/Thurs.

NOW NOW NOW

All this week plz!

Go for it. We want you exhausted and dehydrated for Bonnaroo.

yea whatever works for you tipsy but a brisk pace is fine.

Like, nowsville, daddy-o.

OK! In the absence of objection, I will plow ahead as planned.

3. "Joey" Desire (1975)
(4 votes, 128 points)

He did ten years in Attica, reading Nietzsche and Wilhelm Reich
They threw him in the hole one time for tryin’ to stop a strike
His closest friends were black men ’cause they seemed to understand
What it’s like to be in society with a shackle on your hand

a shackle ON your hand eh

Several of these songs on my worst list but what makes them terrible is Dylan's singing.

Hmm I like the vibe of Joey too, if only the lyrics weren't so bad. Emmylou Harris does great backing.

2. "Ballad in Plain D" Another Side of Bob Dylan (1964)
(5 votes, 2 worst-place votes, 173 points)

From silhouetted anger to manufactured peace
Answers of emptiness, voice vacancies
Till the tombstones of damage read me no questions but, “Please
What’s wrong and what’s exactly the matter?”

lol

tipsy these little lyric excerpts are wonderful

Thx! Of course, even a lot of his great songs have lines that you could excerpt to make them seem awful.

true, very nice excerpting!

awful lyrics on that one :(

And as Clemenza predicted -- every person who voted for this song awarded it the maximum number of possible points, so it wins, or loses. I don't really mind it (I like the trombone), but having heard it bellowed at frat parties, I understand the antipathy.

1. "Rainy Day Women #12 and 35" Blonde on Blonde (1966)
(5 votes, 5 worst-place votes, 200 points)

They’ll stone ya when you’re at the breakfast table
They’ll stone ya when you are young and able
They’ll stone ya when you’re tryin’ to make a buck
They’ll stone ya and then they’ll say, “good luck”

http://coolalbumreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/dylan_bob_idiot_wind.jpg

i can't remember but i feel like ballad in plain d completely blew my mind at 15, it was some serious profound shit

(It was the most popular Dylan album in the freshman dorm environment, for reasons I'm not quite clear on.)

i just listened to Desire recently, it's great. later live performances might surpass the studio versions, but the LP itself has its own rambly charm.

I agree w those rankings w the exception of Street Legal because gtfo w that shit

xp I'm not big on the Rolling Thunder tour recordings either! Guess the whole era just ain't my cup of coffee.

(Actually, I love Hard Rain -- so I guess it's the first leg of the tour I'm not big on, or w/e)

((also, fwiw, Hard Rain contains only one (1) song from Desire))

joe-ee
joe-eee

i disagree w/ some of the rankings but who cares, the writing is great

i loved desire as a teenager, listening to hurricane specially felt exhilarating, i don't really care for it now though. i find the violin and some of dylan's singing grating

but emmylou is wonderful throughout

Scarlet Rivera saws away at her violin as emptily as any cock rocker on guitar.

!!

a+

Anyone else here read “Ratso” Sloman’s book on the tour? A former boss had it on his shelf, and I read it, LOL

yeah, equal parts entertaining and insufferable

Good list, Alfred.

Nice to see New Morning get some love. That's such a comforting record.

And you're all crazy: Desire is awesome.

one dylan lyric from new morning that is always in my head is "i had a sweetheart she was fine and good looking/we sat in the kitchen while her momma was cooking"

Btw, Alfred -- you also neglected to include this gem (in a age of fiberglass): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dylan_(1973_album)

Worth a thousand words alone

"How are you?" he said to me
I said it back to him

classic bars fucking love New Morning

what bars do YOU visit?

one dylan lyric from new morning that is always in my head is "i had a sweetheart she was fine and good looking/we sat in the kitchen while her momma was cooking"

― Heez

yes! otm

Interesting list. I am not a fan of Street Legal either, but it has Changing Of The Guards which is immortal, and Where Are You Tonight which is close.

Picking anything other than BoTT feels a bit challopsy to me, but ok. I'd probably do BoTT #1 and then Another Self-Portrait at #2 if that's not cheating.

That’s cheating, dude. LOL

Sometimes I do think about how you could create an entire “alternative Dylan canon” solely out of the Bootleg Series releases, and how it would dominate almost as (or even more?) strongly as his “official” canon.

If I had to choose to only listen to one for the rest of my life I would 100% choose the Bootleg series

Telltale Signs!

Honestly, just the Vol. 1-3 set alone is like the #1 Dylan thing to own.

Those are both great

Bob had really terrible judgment about what he left off records

can you understand his pain?

No

I love Desire. It's Dylan's 'turn' west, a sure sign that a writer is running out of ideas, and it's hokey as hell but that's fine. The rhythm section is fucking great.

It’s a short step from the limo to the gutter

Bob had really terrible judgment about what he left off records

Nah, it’s an embarrassment of riches.

I mean you couldn't drop Neighborhood Bully or Union Sundown off Infidels for, oh I don't know, maybe Blind Willie McTell

Infidels is sort of a special case; I imagine most Dylan fans would indeed have liked to see “Willie” and “Foot of Pride” remain on the album. (Wikipedia quotes someone writing that Dylan cut “Willie” because “he didn't feel his tribute lived up to its sources”... I dunno.)

Dylan cut “Willie” and added “Union Sundown,” which was also the lead single; guess he was in a political mood, or someone thought it’d be a hit.

lol at "union sundown" being the lead single. Dylan's back, baby!

Hmm... just did a little digging, and Wikipedia's list of singles may be misleading -- looks like "Union Sundown" may have been a UK single only, and "Sweetheart Like You" was the first U.S. single (w/"Union Sundown" on the B side).

(Honestly, that's even weirder -- why would UK listeners care about "Union Sundown"?)

yes "Sweetheart Like You" was the single -- got a video too iirc.

It reached #55 on the Hot 100 (not... bad?)

his last top sixty single

Blind Willie would have towered weirdly over the rest of Infidels, threatening to dwarf Jokerman

I like the sound of that record and the outtakes but man there are some embarrassing songs

in a way Brownsville Girl would've been better on a bootleg collection

I'm actually ok with "Blind Willie" being a bootleg thing, but probably would prefer "Foot of Pride" on the LP.

(And yet, that song's obscurity made it all the more awesome when Lou Reed performed it on that TV concert.)

^^^ exactly

foot of pride has so many outrageous lines:

Well they'll choose a man for you to meet tonight
You'll play the fool and learn how to walk through doors
How to enter into the gates of paradise
How to carry a burden too heavy to be yours
Yeah, from the stage they'll be tryin' to get water outta rocks
A whore will pass the hat, collect a hundred grand and say thanks
They like to take all this money from sin, build big universities to study in
Sing "Amazing Grace" all the way to the Swiss banks

I love paranoid/post-Christian, crypto-political Bob.

They used to grow food in Kansas
Now they want to grow it on the moon and eat it raw
I can see the day coming when even your home garden
Is gonna be against the law

How to carry a burden too heavy to be yours

The sneer at the end of the verse

Wow for someone who thinks No Direction Home is literally the best rock documentary ever made, this is pretty tasty news

https://variety.com/2019/music/news/bob-dylan-martin-scorsese-rolling-thunder-film-netflix-1203104499/amp/