Bob Dylan - Blood on the Tracks poll

'i can't even touch the books you've read' -- for some reason this line always hits me in the gut.

Tbh. Idiot wind feels like you are eavesdropping on some abusive asshole. I would probably take that with more of a grain of salt if he didn't have so many songs that seem to relish putting down a lover or ex lover.

B-b-but doesn't he turn it all on its head by the end like in one of those Randy Newman songs?

do u see?

Re. "Idiot Wind," I get all the objections, but the way he sings

I can't help it if I'm lucky

just knocks me out every single time--absolutely love it....

Yes, that is the best part

'Idiot Wind' easily.

No hesitation.

tangled up in blue is one of the only examples of a song that i would call "cinematic" or "widescreen," the line breaks are like edits, it really feels like a montage in a movie

I mostly prefer the NY Sessions presented on the bootleg called "Blood on the Tapes" for all these tracks (and its better sequencing). "Idiot Wind" and "Meet Me in the Morning" are exquisite on either version, and i'll have to refer back to both sets of those recordings to make a choice.

Yes, I must admit that my love of 'Idiot Wind' stems from the initial demo from 1974.

NY Sessions is better than the released album. Voting "If You See Her Say Hello", but "Lily, Rosemary And The Jack Of Hearts" is the only one I don't adore.

the imagery in tangled is so crazily potent. hard not to vote for it. 'some are mathematicians, some are carpenter's wives' is the line that runs through my head all the time for some reason

the band on this is really good

either tangled or say hello or lonesome or ugh. "i can't help it if i'm lucky" def a vocal highlight but my favorite such thing on the album is either "and i've never! gotten! UUUUUUSED to it! i've just LARNED to turn it OFF" or

i'm going OUT
OF
MY
MIND
WHOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWITHAPAINTHATSTOPSANDSTARTS
LIKE A CORKSCREW TO THE HEART

Don't quite get the dislike of "Idiot Wind." I mean the title refrain and its environs are pretty nasty but there are also other elements that point away from this, all kinds of classic Dylan wordplay that isn't part of the put-down as well as the self-recrimination at the end. It's not nearly as relentless in its attack as, say, "Positively 4th Street."

"Idiot Wind" is my favorite. Agreed that it has more going on to it than "Positively 4th Street" - it's a Dylan put-down track, sure, but the kind of put-down of a drunken sad sack who knows the whole time that he's the real asshole in this situation, he shows you the blusteryness rather than just let you relish the bluster. Yeah maybe it's a bit DO YOU SEE but it works, for me.

Voting "Jack of Hearts" since no one else will and I have to somehow atone for unwittingly creating a redundant retread of possibly the most unlikely and narrowly-defined ILM poll ever.

love idiot wind. didnt even really feel the song until i gave it another listen a few years ago and suddenly i was like, damn u crazy for this one bob. and plus yeah, we're idiots babe

wait a second... what the fuck... what the fuck. he says "split up on a dark sad night"? i thought it was THE DOCKS THAT NIGHT, holy shit

37

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.

xxp whoa so did i

always picture her turning around to look at him as he walks away down the dock

Got to be Tangled for me. Back in my teens Tangled felt impossibly full of the mysteries of life. Like, why is this woman in a topless place bending down to tie the laces of his shoe?? And what's up with guy who started into dealing in slaves?

Probably one of my favourite Dylan albums.

Shelter from the Storm

xxxp I always heard it as "docks that night." With all the fishing boats etc later in the song, docks is way better than non-specific "dark sad night". You're killing me.

xxxxp It has always been docks that night. Mind blown.

is there an easy way to get ahold of the original version?

A toughie. Went with Shelter from the Storm, but it's pretty much tied with Simple Twist of Fate. Buckets of Rain and Meet Me in the Morning are second.

Close call with Idiot Wind, but I voted for the big girl. "Like a corkscrew to my heart..."

Meet Me in the Morning.

Pete Hamill's original liner notes, removed at some point:

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

Haven't read them--supposedly wildly pretentious.

"Neighborhood Bully" and "Is Your Love in Vain," to name two, are far more hateful and unpleasant and hysterical than "Idiot Wind."

also ballad in plain d

Shelter from the Storm is nearly as ascerbic as Idiot Wind, but I'm going for You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome as the bitterest and most lyrically deft: dragon clouds so high above / I've only known careless love is imprinted on my adolescent soul.

wow great thread - and pretty much everybody OTM (except Mr. I don't like BOTT).
Apart from Lonesome, Rosemary or Meet me in the Morning - I could vote for any of these songs.

For the longest time my favorite was Say Hello - which, if you're lovelorn like I was when I was obsessed with this album, perfectly captures that specific type of narcistic melancholy: back-patting your heartbroken self with bogus lines like "whatever makes her happy, I won't stand in the way"

This album is such a big long slog Jesus. Voted Simple Twist of Fate cos it's got a nice chord sequence but fuck was Dylan getting good at out-staying his welcome at this time in his career. Same as Desire (albeit my favourite of his that I've heard) - 9 or 10 good songs that go on about 6x too long.

you go on about 6x too long

How is Desire a better album despite being 6 time too long

they both suffer from songs that go on too long is what i'm saying. i don't dislike any of these songs, but fuck listening to the whole of Hurricane again.

I think I get the same vibe from this album as Neil Young's On The Beach, which also has that long-song rainy day feeling but doesn't seem as boring.

you're boring and go on too long

i get the same vibe from you as i do from a lamppost

Nothing rainy about Tangled up in Blue - I always put it on a sunny day

also, how is Shelter from the Storm acerbic? WTF???

I like Desire better, personally, because I like fun stupid rambling story songs like "Isis," "Romance In Durango," and "Black Diamond Bay." There's some dreary filler on that record but it's way better for singalong fun times while you're doing the dishes, while this album really only has "Tangled Up In Blue," "Idiot Wind" and "Jack Of Hearts" for that.

like somebody thread, I pretty often have the "'some are mathematicians, some are carpenter's wives" line stuck in my head. Actually if this is an album about being in your 30's, that last verse of Tangled is a pretty good summary of it.

you go on about 6x too long

― zero dark (s1ocki), Thursday, 18 April 2013 14:59 (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you're boring and go on too long

― beef richards (Mr. Que), Thursday, 18 April 2013 15:04 (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

LOL

also, how is Shelter from the Storm acerbic? WTF???

― beef richards (Mr. Que), Thursday, April 18, 2013 10:06 AM (21 minutes ago)

I guess that depends on your reading of the title phrase? I don't trust it as genuine or hopeful – which would, to my mind, be out of sync with the album's general gist – but instead as sarcastic, regretful, self-pitying.

Also, the penultimate line If I could only turn back the clock to when God and her were born seems to me to shunt the woman/relationship back into a once-pleasant, now-embittered past, as the architect of the narrator's misery.

This album is such a big long slog Jesus

Hence the carpenter's wives and the woman bending down to tie the laces of his shoes

I think this album has some of his best-ever singing. It takes a lot to sell a line like "nothing really matters much/it's doom alone that counts" as something other than undergrad poesy. But he makes it sparkle, almost funny.

TRY IMAGINING A PLACE WHERE IT'S ALWAYS SAFE AND WARM

"she might think i've forgotten her/ don't tell her, it isn't so."

i def prefer the minneapolis "if you see her"

Aw I find his delivery more touching and emotional on take1. Same for « Idiot Wind » for instance.

Similar to the "Up to Me"/"Shelter..." tip -- I find "Call Letter Blues" to be much more direct/affecting than "Meet Me in the Morning," but he could clearly only include one of those songs -- and maybe "Call Letter Blues" felt too "on-the-nose" or something? (I feel like someone made a similar comment on another thread, but it occurred to me now as I revisit some of these tracks.)

Another example of how the NY sessions are mostly superior to the final album imo is how fantastic "Lily, Rosemary..." (take 2) is compared to the awful album version.
It was revelatory to me. This "acoustic" take reminds of "Desolation Row" : a long, piece with complex stories and images.

I can relate to this, but I've always appreciated the weird, dense nature of the album version (and still do). It may be Dylan's most "difficult"/challenging album track?

"If You See Her" is the dog of the album, IMO -- at least lyrically. I've always disliked this verse:

We had a falling-out, like lovers often will
And to think of how she left that night, it still brings me a chill
And though our separation, it pierced me to the heart
She still lives inside of me, we've never been apart

Yeah these are not his greatest lyrics... but to me the worst is :

Time is a jet plane, it moves too fast

It's horrible imo... and it's from one of my favourite songs of his !
The musical intro alone kills me everytime.

Agreed with AlexTC that the "Lily, Rosemary" is a revelation in its bare-bone version (although it still lacks musicality to make it a favorite).
"If You See Her" has always been one of my very faves, although - yes, seeing those lyrics printed is a bit embarrassing. For a 20 year old, however, they seemed very direct and powerful . These days, as a 40 something, "Tangled up in Blue" is probably my favorite lyrics of his entire career.

About "Lily, Rosemary" I like this story :

Dylan called up folk singer, Joan Baez, about this track. Baez told The Huffington Post: "He read me the entire lyrics to 'Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts' that he'd just finished from a phone booth in the Midwest." The phone call prompted Baez to write "Diamonds & Rust," which is about the relationship she had with Dylan in the '60s. Baez said she later lied to Dylan that "Diamonds and Rust" was about her husband, David Harris.

lol how "Diamonds and Rust" can ONLY be about Dylan !

Yeah atm "Tangled up in Blue" (but the More Blood version) is my favourite Dylan song.

what do y'all think about the new york versions of "tangled up in blue" starting off in third person? it's v interesting to me that he shifted it all to first person for the minneapolis recording

It’s ok but musically I prefer the bright rolling sound of the final version. Lyrically the switch between first and third person works too (hints of Lynch-ian time/person blurring) but the more straightforward final lyric still gets the essence of the story. I’m sure there are tons of academic papers on all this.

i agree!

With the possible exception of Tangled, I find the NY versions so much better: more raw, more conflicted between anger and sadness, or at least some of that anger is self-directed. A lot of that emotion seems drained on the MN versions, which are still good, just more one-dimensional, or the performance aspect veils the emotional core of the songs. Idiot Wind especially pales in MN.

Nah the NY version of TUIB is great (and better imo) !

I think the pov switch is kinda awkward; but having lived with the album version for so long before hearing the alt. version for the first time (on the first Bootleg Series set), it's hard to say how I'd feel if it were the other way around.

the way he delivers "and i'm just like that bird" on the ny sessions version of "you're a big girl now"... god, it's so bottomlessly sad. this gets lost in the minneapolis version (which has a gorgeous arrangement, so i like that we have both now)

Tangled is the one song that perhaps benefits from the bright MN sound, fitting for what is in essence a travelogue of a relationship. I sometimes prefer the ambiguity of the NY version, which fits into the long tradition of Dylan third-person shifting narratives.

i think this will always be my favorite dylan album

it just gets better as i get older and life starts sucking in new ways that blood on the tracks addresses

the way he delivers "and i'm just like that bird" on the ny sessions version of "you're a big girl now"... god, it's so bottomlessly sad.

^^^^The way he moans just after that line it’s like his heart is going to burst. One of my favorite moments in his entire career.

going to buy MBMT rn, don't know why i' waited so long

i've always found both "lily" and "idiot wind" to be such unbearable slogs and rather unfortunate tarnishes on a record that was otherwise deeply beautiful. the stripped-down versions are indeed a revelation; i'm hearing them as if for the first time and it's a punch in the gut for sure, these songs now feel like shimmering expanses rather than clumsy elephantine obstructions.

found a decent vinyl rip of the test pressing that they released for record store day this year. mostly sought it out bc, iirc, tylerw said the official ny sessions takes on the box set are remixed (which is fine, they sound lovely) and i wanted to hear the burble of the organ in "idiot wind" as it was originally intended i guess, lol. and... yeah, now i'm really in love with this version of the record, but it's so fuckin weird to me that dylan nearly released a drumless album after planet waves

(drumless aside from "meet me in the morning," the only song with a full band arrangement, which is ALSO very weird to me)

I've been meek
and hard as an oak

i've seen pretty people disappear like smoke
friends will arrive
friends will disappear

if you want me, honey baby i'll be here

Big Jim was no one’s fool, he owned the town’s only diamond mine

Always imagine that refers to Jim Thompson’s dad.

Idiot Wind is so good. I love that contrast of cosmic storytelling in the verses ("shot a man called Gray", "ran into the fortune teller") with the scathing frankness of the chorus. the attempt to weave a story that actually goes anywhere is reined in each time by Dylan's helpless anger. he acknowledges it himself when he concedes "the wheels have stopped".

there's also (of course) a gradual sense as the song goes on of Dylan being complicit in feeding the mindless emotional turmoil. I like it how it ends on "we're idiots, babe..." rather than "I'm an idiot, babe...". Seems more organic that he's only willing to go in for a half-compromise after so artfully -- and artlessly -- making others the subject of his vitriol.

there really aren't many albums better than this one.

^^^