Another Dylan day (and a little Hip)

I followed through with my plan to play Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home on the way to work--another Bob album I hadn't listened to in a long time. I just hadn't been in a Dylan mood for a while. I can't explain it--it's just the way it goes with my music listening habits. Outside of Blonde On Blonde and Self Portrait (I picked it up cheap and had to see if it is as bad as its reputation--I don't think it is, but it's still not that good), my Dylan albums have been idle. That said, Bob Dylan is and will always be an artist I enjoy, for the most part. (There are some albums and periods of his career that don't interest me much, such as the "born again" phase, most of the '80s (except Infidels, Empire Burlesque, and Oh Mercy) and the stuff he's done since Love and Theft. (I think the post-Love and Theft era indifference has more to do with me than it does Bob. It sounds like some of that stuff might be worth investigating).

Bringing It All Back Home was the first Dylan album I bought, way back (you may have already guessed) in 1986. The purchase was mainly due to "Subterranean Homesick Blues," and the fact I'd already absconded with my parents' copy of Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits, so I didn't need that. 

I have a confession to make, I still don't like side two of the album nearly as much as side one. The electric blues rock of "Subterranean Homesick Blues," "She Belongs to Me," "Maggie's Farm," "Bob Dylans's 115th Dream" (side one) are where it's at for me. "Mr. Tambourine Man" overstays its welcome and "Gates of Eden" just doesn't hold my attention. Feel free to throw rotten fruit at me and call me a troglodyte, knuckle-dragging, dipshit moron. (I know that criticizing Dylan is like shaking a hornets' nest) . I'm not saying side two is bad, I just dig side one more. I mean, who the hell am I to ever call Bob Dylan "bad," anyway? The raucous electric blues that constitutes half of Bringing It All Back Home is the sound Dylan would carry into Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde, two of my all-time favorites.

On the way home, I switched over to the new Tragically Hip Up to Here 35th anniversary box set, and that was suitable Friday evening music, rocking and bloozy barroom jams, perfect for getting the fuck out of work for the weekend.