Biograph

The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3 : Rare And Unreleased, 1961-1991 Bob Dylan has always been incredibly prolific, only releasing a fraction of what he records. Such a policy has made him a prime target for bootleggers over the years, finally prompting this sanctioned 1991 triple-disc dive into the Dylan vaults. It consists of rare tracks, unrele...	The Basement Tapes The Basement Tapes can be heard as a manifesto for the '90s' underlying Americana agenda or as the greatest album never intended for commercial release. Homegrown 1967 recordings taped in the Band's fabled Big Pink hermitage in Saugerties, New York, many of the 24 songs resonated...	The Bootleg Series, Vol. 6: Bob Dylan Live 1964 - Concert at Philharmonic Hall The brooding Bob Dylan of the 1966 live collection in the Dylan bootleg series gave way to an even more hooded character on the second live bootleg album from 1974. Which makes the jump back to a younger Dylan in this set all the more jarring. Here is Dylan as an eager-to-please ...	Before The Flood [Live With The Band, 1974] Dylan has issued a large number of live albums in his day, but 1974's Before the Flood deserves special mention because of the presence of the Band behind him. Dylan had recently brought the Band into the studio to record the chart-topping (yet still somehow underappreciated) Pla...	The Bootleg Series, Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live, 1966: The "Royal Albert Hall Concert" Nineteen ninety-eight: The same year he dances with Soy Bomb at the Grammys, his record label finally issues Bob Dylan's ultimate live document. A classic case of not giving the audience what they want but what they need, Mr. Dylan's oft-bootlegged 1966 gig begins with lovely and...
New Morning By 1970, after his infamous motorcycle accident and a mess of an album called Self-Portrait, Dylan had lost his remarkable consistency, but not his talent. New Morning, a collection of songs that lacks the urgency of the singer's '60s material or the country cohesiveness of Nashv...	Shot of Love Out of print tin the U.S.! 1981 album from Mr. Dylan featuring musical backing from Ron Wood, Danny Kortchmar, Steve Douglas, Benmont Tench, Jim Keltner, Donald 'Duck' Dunn and others. 11 tracks. Sony.	Bob Dylan Live 1975 (The Bootleg Series Volume 5) One of the many oddities of Bob Dylan's long and unruly career has been the rather cursory recording treatment given his stint as ringleader of the Rolling Thunder Revue. It's a shortcoming that's rectified with the release of Live 1975. Prior to the appearance of this two-disc c...	Under The Red Sky	Knocked Out Loaded

All the great Dylan tunes are here
I have a dozen or so regular Bob Dylan albums, my favorite being "Nashville Skyline". I've been a casual fan for many years (since the 60s) and I've seen him in concert. But this three-CD set is the gold. Compare it, on a larger scale, to Eric Clapton's "Crossroads" and you'll grasp the idea of the set. Rather than to sit here in praise of Bob Dylan songs, I'll just tell you what my favorites are, all found in this package: Lay Lady Lay Like a Rolling Stone Mr. Tambourine Man It Ain't Me Babe It's All Over Now, Baby Blue Positively 4th Street Gotta Serve Somebody I Shall be Released Knockin' on Heaven's Door All Along the Watchtower That last entry (having been written by Dylan) is an interesting alternative to the Jimi Hendrix version which I also like, but the two have very different tempos. With the set comes a nice little 63-page biographical booklet about Dylan, punctuated with lots of photos -- it's small but still readable. I give it my highest recommendation.

Worth the Price for the Extra Songs Alone
Over the years a lot of Bob Dylan's studio work got left behind for one reason or another. Sometimes because you can only fit so much on a record and sometimes because Dylan didn't think the song was right for the particular record he was recording at the time. So, to celebrate his 24th year with Columbia, they released "Biograph" which aimed to plug a few holes in his career, or rather to release some of the good stuff that got left by the wayside. It's nice that they did this, but it would have been better if all of the fifty-three tracks would have been new or different recordings. Still there were nine unreleased songs and four very hard to get singles included on the set and that was good. The rest of the set (five records when it originally came out) was a compilation of what they (Bob Dylan and/or Columbia) decided was representative of his career, not necessarily greatest hits. So this is really a good place for someone brand new to Dylan to start. I might have preferred it if they put the stuff on in chronological order like they did with the Bootleg Series, Vol. 1 - 3, but that's just me. My good friend Sophie likes the album the way it is, with a different sounding Bob Dylan on song after song. Anyway, the extra songs alonE make this set a must own and as I said, if you're new to Bob Dylan, you won't be throwing money away here, because you will be playing these CDs over and over again, till you wear them out. Wait, I don't think you can wear out CDs, so you'll be playing this set for a long, long time and enjoying every minute of it.

Everybody's gonna jump for joy.
This is an excellent three CD retrospective of Bob Dylan's career (up to 1981). It features most of his most popular material, with enough rarities to make it interesting for die hard fans who already have all his albums. Enough talk, just get it, already.

Nobody better than Dylan
A great way to go beyond the typical "Greatest Hits" collection. This 3-disc set offers Outtakes, Live recordings and Unreleased tracks, mixed with some of the best known Dylan songs of all time. In the past few years many of the Unrealeased and Live tracks have become available but this is still a nice and slick way to go beyond the casual/novice Dylan fan in a very easily accesable package. Of course there is no substitute for owning the full LP releases if you really want to enjoy the artistry of Bob Dylan. If you want to get a snapshot of the music this is a good place to start.

One of the first, and greatest, box sets ever...
This really got me into Dylan. I had 4 of his albums up to this point (Shot of Love, Infidels, Slow Train Coming, and Empire Burlesque), but this one was the jackpot. I bought everything I could get my hands on after this. This is a magnificent set, with beautifully remastered versions of his great songs, great outtakes (some better than the song he left on the album), and great alternate versions (I like the quieter version of You're a Big Girl Now here...it's so lovely, and not as angry as the studio version on Blood). Caribbean Wind, an outtake from the Shot of Love sessions, is here, and it's better than most of the songs on that album. Ditto with Up to Me, from the Blood sessions. Up to Me is a majestic song, and it's a shame it couldn't make in on Blood. Positively 4th Street makes it on this album, along with the magnificent Percy's Song. The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar appears here. It was an outtake from the Shot of Love sessions, but garnered some airplay as a B-side. Eventually, Shot of Love would be reissued with the song. And, of course, the great Dylan songs are here in abundance. The album came out in 1985, and it covered only up until the Shot of Love sessions. No tracks from Infidels or Empire made it here. The booklet and liner notes are really revealing, and Dylan shares his incredible intelligence with us all. I'd like to see a reissue of this with material from Infidels and beyond. The 80's was a terrible decade for Bob, but this fantastic set ALMOST compensates for bad albums he put out during that decade like Knocked Out Loaded, Dylan and the Dead, and Down in the Groove. This is the best Dylan compliation out there....