Collecting Bob Dylan and His 10 of Swords

Here's sacrilege: I'm going to tell you which Bob Dylan albums/songs I recommend, and then you can complain that I'm banal.  For good measure, here's my previous post on Dylan vinyl.

I have to admit: I'm just looking for good music!  I'm not interested in which bootleg contains the version of "Wildwood Flower" that was recorded the day Allen Ginsberg visited.  Or how best to enjoy "Visions of Johanna."

SO, here's the albums and tunes I've compiled onto an odd-sounding mp3 CD to play in my 15-year-old car...

Dylan's "classic"/"electric" period is my favorite, so you'll need the original studio albums, "Bringing It All Back Home" and "Highway 61 Revisited" (1965), "Blonde On Blonde" (1966), "John Wesley Harding" (1967) and, for good measure, 1969's "Nashville Skyline," which is too pop/country for most "serious" fans.  Again, my banality shines through.  I like the domesticity and contentment he's singing about here!  A few outtakes from "Nashville Skyline" are on an easy to find Dylan/Johnny Cash bootleg, including enjoyable songs like "Mountain Dew" and "Matchbox."

The original "Basement Tapes" release from 1975 includes 16 recordings with The Band from the period between "Blonde" and "Wesley."  The double LP also includes eight songs from The Band.  In 2000, when The Band began reissuing their albums, a number of these were revealed to be outtakes from The Band's first few albums.  Ever since, know-it-all critics have complained that this makes the original '75 album "illegitimate," rolling their eyes at Robbie Robertson's justification that the songs (if not the recordings) were from the Dylan sessions.  I agree with Robertson: the whole 1975 package works, even if it's missing great songs like the Dylan+Band 1967 recordings of "I Shall Be Released," "The Mighty Quinn" and "If You Gotta Go, Go Now" (all available on later Bootleg Series releases).  There's more good stuff on the "complete" Basement Tapes (Bootleg Series #11).  Some of it is also on the excellent 1986 boot, "Ten of Swords," which seems to be the set that Columbia/Sony has been playing catch-up to for 30 years.

Other interesting Bootleg Sets are #1-3 (with a lot of great 1965-66 material), #4 (Live at the "Royal Albert Hall" with four-fifths of The Band) and #12 (the '65-'55 era).

Foe even more Dylan with The Band (probably his best collaborators), there's the live New Year's 1971 concert on The Band's "Rock of Ages" (2001 deluxe edition, or the 2013 boxed set), the fast version of "Forever Young" from their 1973 "Planet Waves" compilation, the Bootleg Series #10 (Isle of Wight 1970) and most of 1974's double-live "Before the Flood."

Two other Dylan releases to get are "Blood On the Tracks" (1975) and the 1985 boxed set Biograph (with songs that are tough to find elsewhere -- even the Bootleg Series -- including "I'll Keep It With Mine," "Mixed Up Confusion," "Jet Pilot," "I Wanna Be Your Lover," "Solid Rock," "Positively 4th Street," "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?").

Also tough to find are the songs "Watching the River Flow" (Greatest Hits, Vol. 2... why buy a whole double album for one song?!), and the singles "George Jackson" and "Rita May."

The terrible, slapped-together contractual obligation LP "Dylan" from 1973 actually has two nice outtakes: "Sara Jane" and "A Fool Such As I."

Greatest Hits Vol. 3 is a good way to get the best of Dylan's later work.

And two TV appearances offer much better takes on studio songs: "Jokerman" from Bob's 1984 appearance on "Late Night with David Letterman," and "When You Gonna Wake Up" from his 1979 appearance on SNL.

Finally, if you're interested in Dylan COVERS, there's the obvious hits among the thousands out there... "If Not For You" (George Harrison), "All Along the Watchtower" (Jimi Hendrix), "This Wheel's On Fire" (Julie Driscoll with Brian Auger and The Trinity), "Tomorrow Is a Long Time" (Elvis), "Million Dollar Bash" (Fairport Convention), "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" (The Byrds), "It's All Over Now" (Joan Baez), "Mr. Tambourine Man" (The Byrds).

#KBNOMS