Ghosts of Electricity (Summer of Dylan part three)

Dylan's electric transformation remains legendary, and to understand why just go listen to what was on the radio in the summer of 1965 when "Like A Rolling Stone" came out. This six minute song full of metaphors and imagery, twice the length of the typical pop number, went all the way to number two on the charts. It was the definitive sign that popular music could be so much more than greasy kids stuff. It should also be noted that this happened two years before Sgt Pepper, which is often falsely given that credit. 

Within a year of "Like a Rolling Stone" Dylan would release two all time great albums, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde, and face down "fans" angry over his electric turn with face-meltingly rocking live performances backed by the Hawks (soon to be Band.) Like a meteor screaming across the sky he burned bright but looked to be coming apart in the process. Dylan's famous motorcycle crash in the summer of 1966, which forced/helped him take a step beck before he burned out, could very well have saved his life. 

Listening to this music again I have to say that it still sounds amazing and the songs keep generating new revelations. 

Highway 61 Revisited (1965)

I had dabbled in Dylan in high school, but did not become a totally craven Bob-head until my senior year of college when I bought this album. For sentimental reasons it's probably still my favorite. The hints of electric mayhem on Bringing It All Back Home are out in full force here. Mike Bloomfield's searing Chicago blues guitar like Albert Collins' sounds like "a bee struck by lightning." On his next album Dylan would soften this sound somewhat and bring it to more baroque territory, I prefer the gritty blues of this album. 

Every single song is memorable and some are among Dylan's finest. It's been said that 1965 is the year that "the Sixties" truly began, but "Desolation Row" seems to prophesy its end just as the metephorical "Sixties" are beginning. There isn't enough space for me to list all the superlatives, so I am not even going to bother. 

Rating: Five Bobs

Blonde on Blonde (1966)

Well how do you follow that up? With a double album, of course! Dylan is infamously loose and undisciplined in the studio, but here is one of his more crafted works, courtesy of Nashville session musicians. Pairing their chops with some of Dylan's least inhibited songs is quite the combo. Like all double albums it has some less than stellar tracks, but the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts. This album is more romantic and poetic, ending with "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands," an epic love song. Romantic melancholy seeps into other songs as well, such as "Just Like A Woman." I still wish Bob got less baroque on this and stuck more the rootsier sound of his last record, but there's no arguing with the results when you listen to something like "Visions of Johanna." "The ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face" is maybe my favorite lyric of all time.

Rating: Five Bobs

Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966

If I was only allowed to have one Dylan album, this would be it. The live recording of Dylan's 1966 concert at Manchester Free Trade Hall (mistakenly labelled "Royal Albert Hall") has the evidence that folkies indeed shouted "Judas!" at him during his electric set. As the band is about to go into a brash version of "Like A Rolling Stone" you can also hear Dylan turn to them and say "Play fucking loud!" 

The concert had two parts, Dylan solo acoustic with harp and guitar, and then backed by the glorious Hawks (soon to be The Band.) In the acoustic side, which the folkies claimed to prefer, Dylan is still performing recent material and shies away from his old topical songs. He also plays the songs unconventionally, almost deliberately pushing his audience. The electric part is just amazing, and the fact that so many people saw this and then bitched about it because Dylan dared to evolve just proves how stupid human beings can be. I feel like I encounter this type on Twitter every damn day.

Rating: Five Bobs

Bootleg Series Vol. 12: The Cutting Edge

I have listened to all the other stuff on this list innumerable times, but for some reason I didn't get around to this Bootleg Series entry until I embarked on this project. I realized I made a mistake by not including it in my last post, since it follows the traditional periodization starting this part of Dylan's career with Bringing It All Back Home. (See my last post for my reasons for my own periodization.) Listening to all of these studio outtakes I was really struck by how different many of the songs sound in their released form. Above all I saw how a lot of Blonde on Blonde got smoothed out in the recording process. It certain challenged my assumptions about Dylan's haphazard approach in the studio. I feel like I was barely able to take it all in, and I will have to go back for some more listens.

Rating: Five Bobs

Bootleg Series Odds and Ends

A lot of the tracks from volume seven, the soundtrack to Scorsese's No Direction Home, are included here. There is a lot of overlap from The Cutting Edge but when this came out the alternate versions really blew me away. There's also an especially sneering live take on "Ballad of a Thin Man." There's a few good nuggets that also get repeated later from volume 2, with "She's Your Lover Now" being my favorite. 

And speaking of sneering, Dylan put out a non-album single "Positively 4th Street" in this period that sounds like a pretty direct rebuke to the purists in his audience.