Bob Dylan

The Times They Are A-Changin' One of the darkest of Dylan albums, Times is the work of a 22-year-old who sounds no less sick of it all than the ailing 55-year-old who made Time out of Mind. There's a place here for rousing protests such as the title track and "When the Ship Comes In," but those songs are outn...	Another Side of Bob Dylan This set captures a still-growing Dylan on the edge, just before he makes the jump to rock & roll, continuing to expand the notion of folk music with openhearted, unprecedented compositions and performances like "All I Really Want to Do," "Chimes of Freedom," "My Back Pages," and...	The Times They Are A-Changin'	John Wesley Harding Bob Dylan's remarkable first album after his debilitating 1966 motorcycle accident isn't as urgent as the ambitious folk and rock songs he wrote earlier in the decade. Even considering the rocking "All Along the Watchtower" (covered famously by Jimi Hendrix), the album's overall ...	Blonde on Blonde Considered an unprecedented magnum opus when it arrived on two records in May of 1966 (1997's Time out of Mind is actually only about a minute shorter), Blonde on Blonde featured Dylan continuing to demonstrate remarkable powers over the course of 14 new numbers. Working in Nashv...
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...	Self Portrait Self Portrait stands as a truly perverse collection. Released in 1970 at a time when those on the radical left were hungering for their then-unimpeachable hero to reclaim his role as the conscience of his generation, Bob Dylan instead delivered a pop-inflected collection largely ...	Nashville Skyline While Dylan is one of the prime creators of "country rock," Nashville Skyline is as close to a real country album as any he's ever made. Unfortunately, Dylan's decision to sing it in an un-nasal, un-Dylanesque style leaves one of rock's greatest singers seriously handicapped, as...	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...	Bringing It All Back Home "You sound like you're having a good old time," a purist Dylan fan is spotted telling the artist in the documentary Don't Look Back just after the release of this, his first (half-)electric album. He certainly does. Updating Chicago blues forms with hilarious, tough lyrics--in fa...

My first taste of Dylan
In my opinion, his best record. It was my first exposure to Dylan, and has been my most played since I bought it. I am a huge fan and own all of his albums, and many bootlegs, but this remains my favorite. The raw talent you hear on this album is incredible, and indicative of the bounty of music to come from this musical genius.

Lots of people need to own this...
1. Any real Dylan fan should have his debut release, just to know that Bob did not spring from the earth singing "Like a Rollin' Stone." 2. Any true fan of traditional folk should have a copy, to hear what the 20-year-old found interesting way back in 1962. 3. Anyone interested in the history of American recorded music in the second half of the 20th century should shelve this CD, in order to appreciate that once upon a time, Columbia Records paid smart people to find unique talents and produce records by them, even if they had no audience at the moment, and were not likely to win a big one with their first effort. 4. Bob's original "Song to Woody" is of historic significance, since at this early stage of Dylan's professional career, he was visiting Guthrie in the hospital, meeting Cisco Houston, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Pete Seeger and other friends of the tragic genius. 5. It grows on you, even if you don't like blues and Dylan's early voice so much. His guitar and harmonica playing are also strong on this one.

not as good as his other stuff but still quite good
well this album is good as are all bob dylan-musical geniuses.the stand out songs are "i am a man of constanr sorrow".yes its the same one on the movie "oh brother where art thou?"im not a real big fan of the song "house of the rising sun".but i know a lot of people are so i mentioned it for you.theres a real old timey,pure folk tune called the frieght train blues"i really liked also.then he does a song for his idol in his pre-christian days who is woodie guthrie.its his 1st album.good but theres better out there.

A good start
Bob Dylan's first album, released in 1962, has only two Bob Dylan songs on it, and they're markedly different from the rest of the material on the album. The two songs, "Talkin' New York" and "Song to Woody" hold together well, both marked by an easy pace, conversational tone, and an attitude. A sort of bewildered, amused at the world mood, a shake your head and laugh at the absurdity of it all kind of attitude. In "Talkin' New York he mispronounces "Greenwich Village" and writes verses like I get up on the stage sing and play man there say come back some other day you sound like a hillbilly-- we want folksingers here punctuated by the harmonica after the punchline, where the laugh track would go if this were a sitcom. The rest of the songs on the album are traditional folk songs. Funny, though, the songs he chooses; I've been listening to Joan Baez's self-titled 1960 release alongside this one, and all those songs are also labelled traditional folk songs. Baez's songs, however, often show their European roots: they sound like Irish jigs, Scottish folk songs, and so on. Bob's songs sound wholly, thoroughly American. I wonder if he chose them for that reason. My favorite song is "Baby Let me Follow You Down," a real simple song that sounds so Dylan-ish I can hardly believe he didn't write it. After that are a series of hard, fast blues, the best of which is Highway 51 Blues, others being Fixin' to Die Blues, Freight Train Blues (which hiccups and yelps rockabilly style) and Gospel Plow. Gospel's prominent here, as is death. There are two slower blues ballads, See That my Grave is Kept Clean and In My Time of Dyin', which features a slide guitar, the only song on the album to stray away from the guitar, harmonica, voice formula. Bob's version of "Man of Constant Sorrow" seems awfully pale compared to the version made popular by "O Brother Where Art Thou." And I just don't think his blue collar, undeniably masculine voice does much for "House of the Rising Sun--" a song about a woman of hard luck in New Orleans. I'll take Joan Baez's version. Such a tale needs a feminine voice.

Up Tempo and Slow, Sad and Promising
For me "House of the Rising Son" is the stand out song on this record, though they are all good. Bob Dylan without backup, just his guitar and harmonica. I particularly liked the up tempo "Talkin' New York." He nails that city, cold and promising, big, but with coffeehouses too. "Song to Woody" is a tearjerker if you know what it's about, sad even if you don't. Gotta love Bob Dylan's sound on this record, gotta be glad that he got a job in New York town. It's been an awful long time since I've played this record. I don't know why, because it's so good. I'm glad I came back to it for this short review. I'll be playing it more often, that's for sure.