bob dylan - self portrait

mighty quinn is good on this, from the isle of wight show with the band. the rolling stone is pretty hilarious though, probably the worst performance from that show!
i'd love it if columbia put the whole wight show out though, there's some great stuff.

Still love this album. So good.

An ex-girlfriend's parents had this as their only Dylan CD. It keeps on popping into my mind. They were kind of into music without being really into music. We even went to a Dylan show together, the four of us. I hated seeing that one Dylan CD they owned. I felt like saying, "You know this is supposed to be really bad don't you?" but I didn't do it. Maybe I would've sounded like a dick. Maybe they didn't even play it anyway. Sometimes I am disproportionately afraid that I too have spoiled my record collection by having other artists' equivalents of Self Portrait as my only selection by them.

hah

hee hee that's great. dylan would probably be pleased that it was the only CD they had of his. it's presented so seriously, with that arty cover and the name "self portrait." i can kind of see someone who was a little clueless thinking it was like a greatest hits or something. and if they saw that "like a rolling stone" was included...

I like 'Copper Kettle' too, especially the vocal on the last verse & chorus, and the weird solemnity/archaism of some of the lyrics - 'and nevermore you'll toil', etc.

"it's presented so seriously, with that arty cover and the name "self portrait."'

my mom bought Cpowers "The Greatest" under the assumption that it was indeed a greatest hits. also, wondered why 'moonshiner' wasnt on it

my mom bought Cpowers "The Greatest" under the assumption that it was indeed a greatest hits.

good grief, i am so old!!

30 here

mama likes her records though

hers as in the ones in her house not nec chan marshall one

this is a great record to appreciate with a lot of distance from all the "meaning" dylan was weighted with at the time (and according to him, that's part of why he did the record, to try to shake off some of that meaning). Some of the covers hold up very nicely against the sort of country-folk-rock "rarities" of the era that have garnered attention since then, and some of the originals are good too. All the Tired Horses is cool as shit imo, and sounds 10-15 years ahead of its time.

here's that RSD self portrait outtake -- not mindblowing but pretty good! http://xzyoe.tumblr.com/post/48617452950/thirsty-boots-bob-dylan

i did that song!

excited for this upcoming bootleg series i want all kindsa mellowed out piano dylan stuff for summer day listening

goddamn i shoulda bought this on RSD

guess you can get it for kinda cheap here: http://www.amazon.com/Bob-Dylan-Thirsty-Exclusive-Release/dp/B00CF6XCW0
yeah, i feel like this is the dylan i actually want to listen to because now i am a mellowed out dude in my mid-30s in colorado.

it took me a while to accept New Morning as my personal favorite Dylan album, though i know many others are objectively better i haven't wanted to listen to them for a long time really, only other ones i pull out much besides new morning is desire and the rolling thunder bootleg series live one

i'm pretty much all about john wesley harding through planet waves these days. with some dips into street legal and the gospel years. i'm in deep!

nashville skyline has been my personal fave for a long time.

i sound intelligent upthread; that will probably never happen again.

i should listen to john wesley harding

i kinda stan for infidels for some reason even though i know it's not that great really

ppl always quote 'what is this shit?' as if it's the whole review, but it's just the first line! iirc marcus was much more nuanced in the rest of the review.

I really like this explanation (Rolling Stone as quoted in Wikipedia):

However, in a Rolling Stone interview taken in 1984, Dylan gave a different reason for the album's release:

“ At the time, I was in Woodstock, and I was getting a great degree of notoriety for doing nothing. Then I had that motorcycle accident [in 1966], which put me out of commission. Then, when I woke up and caught my senses, I realized that I was workin' for all these leeches. And I didn't wanna do that. Plus, I had a family, and I just wanted to see my kids.
I'd also seen that I was representing all these things that I didn't know anything about. Like I was supposed to be on acid. It was all storm-the-embassy kind of stuff—Abbie Hoffman in the streets—and they sorta figured me as the kingpin of all that. I said, 'Wait a minute, I'm just a musician. So my songs are about this and that. So what?' But people need a leader. People need a leader more than a leader needs people, really. I mean, anybody can step up and be a leader, if he's got the people there that want one. I didn't want that, though.

But then came the big news about Woodstock, about musicians goin' up there, and it was like a wave of insanity breakin' loose around the house day and night. You'd come in the house and find people there, people comin' through the woods, at all hours of the day and night, knockin' on your door. It was really dark and depressing. And there was no way to respond to all this, you know? It was as if they were suckin' your very blood out. I said, 'Now wait, these people can't be my fans. They just can't be.' And they kept comin'. We had to get out of there.

This was just about the time of that Woodstock festival, which was the sum total of all this bullshit. And it seemed to have something to do with me, this Woodstock Nation, and everything it represented. So we couldn't breathe. I couldn't get any space for myself and my family, and there was no help, nowhere. I got very resentful about the whole thing, and we got outta there.

We moved to New York. Lookin' back, it really was a stupid thing to do. But there was a house available on MacDougal Street, and I always remembered that as a nice place. So I just bought this house, sight unseen. But it wasn't the same when we got back. The Woodstock Nation had overtaken MacDougal Street also. There'd be crowds outside my house. And I said, 'Well, fuck it. I wish these people would just forget about me. I wanna do something they can't possibly like, they can't relate to. They'll see it, and they'll listen, and they'll say, 'Well, let's get on to the next person. He ain't sayin' it no more. He ain't given' us what we want,' you know? They'll go on to somebody else. But the whole idea backfired. Because the album went out there, and the people said, 'This ain't what we want,' and they got more resentful. And then I did this portrait for the cover. I mean, there was no title for that album. I knew somebody who had some paints and a square canvas, and I did the cover up in about five minutes. And I said, 'Well, I'm gonna call this album Self Portrait.'
”

As to why he chose to release a double album, Dylan replied, "Well, it wouldn't have held up as a single album—then it really would've been bad, you know. I mean, if you're gonna put a lot of crap on it, you might as well load it up!"

yeah it's true, marcus spends the next 10,000 words trying to figure out what this shit is! and i think he decides it's pretty good shit.
& yeah, infidels is pretty solid except for a couple songs.

80s bob dylan is ruined by recording/production/mastering for me

also it's not really that great to begin with so it's not like a battle with my conscience or something

even blind willie mctell isn't very good. sry.

actually time out of mind is ruined by production for me too.

i love this album. "all the tired horses" is hilarious.

Here's the infamous original Greil Marcus review of Self Portrait: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/self-portrait-19700608

Holy fuck, and I thought the liner notes to Blood on the Tracks were pretentious...

I can understand the reaction against Self Portrait at the time, to the extent that I can understand that time at all, everything was so fraught and freighted. But 40 years on, in the broader context of his career, it fits nicely. I take at face value that these are songs he liked, and they're all things -- trad folk, blues, Tin Pan Alley, Nashville pop -- that he's come back to at different times. And how has "Wigwam" not turned up in a Tarantino movie?

it has turned up in a wes anderson movie, the royal tenenbaums

Well, there you go.

Being Bob Dylan at that time sounds pretty crazy. People were literally breaking into his house and hanging out there. I'd want to do a fuck off album too.

And like so many things Dylan, it's sort of simultaneously ingenuous and disingenuous. You can see it as both an intentional find-another-guru move, and also a sincere gesture of, "this is who I really am, a guy who likes music and sings songs, and here's some good tunes."

So, where does that leave the 'Dylan' album?

even blind willie mctell isn't very good. sry.

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Monday, April 29, 2013 12:43 AM (4 days ago)

rongest thing ever posted about dylan anywhere

lol. i was psyched when he played that one in concert. also, xpost where can i read the liner notes to blood on the tracks. i have a vinyl copy but there are no liner notes.

even blind willie mctell isn't very good. sry.
― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Monday, April 29, 2013 12:43 AM (4 days ago)

rongest thing ever posted about dylan anywhere

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Friday, May 3, 2013 4:46 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

production is dull and lanoisy, lyrics r dumb, what can i say?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wbWPyhW7fE

lanois' work with dylan wasn't bad at all... oh mercy is the best-sounding album from that era in his career. i don't want to enter into an involved discussion of the lyrics of that song, but i think dylans move from the abstract/elegiac to the specific/banal in the final verse -- "i'm starin out the window of the st james hotel" -- is masterful. that's my favorite thing he does, when he strategically drops the mask of metaphorical conceit and acknowledges, almost, that his song has run away from him. another good example of this is the end of desolation row "right now i don't read too good...etc."

treeship: http://www.bobsboots.com/CDs/cd-b28_Hamilltext.html

found it by googling "it was not confined to the oran of camus" lol

lol thanks.

can't think of a set of lyrics in all of dylan's oeurve as perfectly formed as the lyrics to BWM. like i'd happily concede that every other great dylan song, even 'like a rolling stone,' even 'visions of johanna,' has some silly meaningless shit that dylan's just throwing out because it sounds good to him at the moment, but not that one. so i guess we disagree.

production is dull and lanoisy, lyrics r dumb, what can i say?

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Saturday, May 4, 2013 7:23 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

man if those lyrics are dumb, what can i say? this land really is condemned. one of his best lyrics

My favorite 80s Dylan song could be Dark Eyes from Empire Burlesque. That is not a good album by any stretch but he stuck that one at the end and it's a stunner.

I also have a soft spot for Caribbean Wind.

ha -- we disagree. "Dark Eyes" sounds like a sop to fans who want the acoustic track on an album whose songs sport all kinds of electronic filigrees. Several songs better than "Dark Eyes": "Something's Burning, Baby" (my favorite), "Trust Yourself," "Clean Cut Kid." He clearly likes "I'll Remember You" -- he still performs it. I don't get what "Emotionally Yours" is about, but it's creepy as fuck.

actually time out of mind is ruined by production for me too.

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist),

TOOM is ruined by half the album being unfinished or boring dreck.

no way. highlands is great.

It doesn't undermine my point. "Highlands," "Not Dark Yet," "Tryin' to Get to Heaven" -- dat's dat. The album is a parody of a Lanois production.

ha knew you couldn't resist that trash toom/defend empire burlesque twofer

no question EB has more songs I care about, "Miami Vice" drapery notwithstanding.