Audio CD review:
Bob Dylan - Biograph

Bob Dylan - Biograph

Band: Bob Dylan Title: Biograph Rating: Release Date: 1997-08-19 Media: Audio CD Tracks: 1: Lay Lady Lay 2: Baby, Let Me Follow You Down - Bob Dylan, Davis, Gary [1] 3: If Not for You 4: I'll Be Your Baby Tonight 5: I'll Keep It With Mine 6: The Times They Are A-Changin' 7: Blowin' in the Wind 8: Masters of War 9: Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll 10: Percy's Song 11: Mixed Up Confusion 12: Tombstone Blues 13: Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar 14: Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine) 15: Like a Rolling Stone 16: Lay Down Your Weary Tune 17: Subterranean Homesick Blues 18: I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met) 19: Visions of Johanna 20: Every Grain of Sand 21: The Mighty Quinn (Quinn the Eskimo) 22: Mr. Tambourine Man 23: Dear Landlord 24: It Ain't Me Babe 25: You Angel You 26: Million Dollar Bash 27: To Ramona 28: You're a Big Girl Now 29: Abandoned Love 30: Tangled Up in Blue 31: It's All over Now, Baby Blue 32: Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window? 33: Positively 4th Street 34: Isis 35: Jet Pilot 36: Caribbean Wind 37: Up to Me 38: Baby, I'm in the Mood for You 39: I Wanna Be Your Lover 40: I Want You 41: Heart of Mine 42: On a Night Like This 43: Just Like a Woman 44: Romance in Durango 45: Seņor (Tales of Yankee Power) 46: Gotta Serve Somebody 47: I Believe in You 48: Time Passes Slowly 49: I Shall Be Released 50: Knockin' on Heaven's Door 51: All Along the Watchtower 52: Solid Rock 53: Forever Young

All the great Dylan tunes are here I've been a casual fan for many years (since the 60s) and I've seen him in concert. I have a dozen or so regular Bob Dylan albums, my favorite being "Nashville Skyline". 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 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. Over the years a lot of Bob Dylan's studio work got left behind for one reason or another. 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. 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. This is an excellent three CD retrospective of Bob Dylan's career (up to 1981). Enough talk, just get it, already. Nobody better than Dylan This 3-disc set offers Outtakes, Live recordings and Unreleased tracks, mixed with some of the best known Dylan songs of all time. A great way to go beyond the typical "Greatest Hits" collection. 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... 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. This really got me into Dylan. 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. . . . . You can see a complete list of all Bob Dylan discography, or go back to the Bob Dylan tabs