Bob Dylan's least regarded albums

The way he enunciates:

Never could learn to drink that blood
And call it wine,
Never could learn to hold you, love,
And call you mine.

is the essence of Dylan

Tight Connection is good, production reminds me of "Walk of Life" by Dire Straits

Ugh.

I mean you know that digital keyboard/gated snare heartland roots rock 80s vibe

As I said, ugh.

Far better song than "Walk of Life"

One would hope so!

I think "Emotionally Yours" is a good phrase, esp for him: alll the emotions babe...
On their album Emotionally Yours, O'Jays did two versions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cx5L2mWFwOk&list=OLAK5uy_kLEZ4qMNT6HjZw9foHuDcalVocA6sTB94
(R&B version)

I......
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...
....
....
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like Walk of Life

xpost Weird. Oh well, it's on youtube, with the gospel version. Not as good as The Persuasions' "The Man In Me," but Persuasions' voices were younger than EY-era O'Jays', and "The Man" is a better song, of course. Not bad for a faceless ballad tho (more vigorous than "To Feel My Love," although I certainly haven't heard every cover of that).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bsx9YBV9EnM

From 1972----much later, they did a whole album of Dylan.

Their 1972 LP Street Corner Symphony (Lenny Kaye wrote a beautiful little piece somewhere about the brief-lived a capella persuasion, from late-50s to early 60s)

Bettye LaVette did "EY" on her incredible BD collection, Things Have Changed---here she is live, atypically ravaged, but driving through it, as always---"It's like...my whole life never happened...shake me, hold me..."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJujOOFQV-c

Not so faceless there!

Wild to realize I’m the same age as Empire-era Dylan... I should get a suit like his.

Tight Connection has the tightest seven-inch art
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/19/Bob_Dylan_Tight_Connection_to_My_Heart_Single.jpg

think i prefer the infidels version though:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbhoo_gGkK8

Lou Reed gushed about Empire B in an interview

Wasn't it Down in the Groove? He liked "Rank Strangers to Me."

XP!...and Down In The Groove when talked to Rolling Stone in '89.

He oddly singled out two covers for praise, as if he thought Dylan wrote them.

It's the RS interview promoting New York, collected in a late nineties book of Reed interviews and essays.

Maybe. Reed talked about Dylan a lot in the 80s. It was something like "If a new artist had made (new Dylan album) it would be hailed as a masterpiece."

i think Dylan told Lou he loved "doin the things we want to" and suddenly Lou was a huge Dylan booster.

that's about right

Lou Reed said a lot over the years.

But he never said he was ept!

while they're beatin' the devil out of a guy
who's wearing a powder-blue weeeeeeeeeeeeeg

Best I recall, Reed did a good "Foot of Pride" on the Dylan trib 30th Anniversary Concert.

agree

Musically speaking, the 30th Anniversary Concert was a very uneven affair, but Reed's "Foot of Pride" was possibly the highlight of the whole thing. I think he was the only one to pick a song that was a 'bootleg' track. He's clearly reading off a teleprompter or something, so it could be better, but otherwise, he delivers it with a lot of authority. It has the makings of a great cover, it's just too bad he never tried it again in a recording studio.

Neil doing "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" absolutely destroyed

Neil Tennant?

Sedaka

Diamond

Hannon

Fred

Schon

Hamburger

Hagerty

https://66.media.tumblr.com/0c3ec4e792525b9a21c8a0dfcb679367/tumblr_n43u97VcvU1shl3p1o1_1280.jpg

I agree, Vince Neil really brought the heat

The few worthy songs on "Saved" are best heard in the live versions found on "The Bootleg Series Vol. 13: Trouble No More (1979–1981)

"Covenant Woman" and "Solid Rock" are better on "Saved" IMO (and are both great).

Hard rep for the Take 1 “Pressing On” on disc 3.

I'm actually not a fan of "Covenant Woman," but I prefer "Solid Rock" when it was performed early on in late 1979 - the groove was funkier. By the time they tried it in the studio, they were already streamlining the rhythm and speeding up the tempo, but the result sounds more generic and less interesting to me.

i haven’t been able to get into that bootleg set, for whatever reason... I love some of the songs on Saved — particularly “Covenant Woman.”

there is def not that much distance between the live and studio versions of “solid rock”

Not a huge difference, but enough to render "Saved" completely useless for me.

Listening to the "Minnesota Hotel Tape," a very popular bootleg among collectors and generally one of the first ones recommended to new fans. (It was taped soon after he recorded his very first album for Columbia.) Haven't heard it in a long time, but it still sounds pretty awesome. Even the very brief moments of tape overload/harmonica distortion are appealing - a great, raw recording. Sound quality aside, it blows the debut LP out of the water - like, THIS should have been the introduction to Bob Dylan. Great songs, great performances - the recording is over 70 minutes, and it would have been easy to make a great LP out of it, there's more than enough material: "Hard Times in New York Town," "Dink's Song," "I Was Young When I Left Home," "Baby Please Don't Go," "Stealin'," "Poor Lazarus," "Wade in the Water," etc..."Black Cross" especially but Columbia might've balked at something that bold.

This blog posted a two-disc bootleg that has the whole thing preceded by more recordings from that era:

https://100greatestbootlegs.blogspot.com/2016/09/90-bob-dylan-early-dylan-1961-flac.html

(Actually meant to post this in "Bob Dylan 1962-64: The pre-electric albums" thread but whatever.)