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(Columbia, 1980)
The studio sheen, backing singers, and Godtalk are back for another round of bloated blandness, but at least this time there’s some slightly muscular rhythmic chug that gives “Solid Rock” a life-support-level pulse. In fact, the arrangement is, overall, quite like a flaccid attempt at The Concert for Bangladesh’s big-band Harrisonisms; a failed attempt, certainly, and yet fascinating in its grotesque overkill. “Covenant Woman” is a dull karaoke exercise as wretched as the worst of Slow Train Coming, and makes it clear that no matter how many expensive session pros he surrounded himself with at this point, Dylan really just didn’t seem to give a shit anymore. Offensively boring tripe that’s both lazy and soulless – an insult to anyone stupid enough to listen.
(Columbia, 1979)
Sleazy wheeze, Bobert! What happened to that forceful singing from just a few years back, my newly-mellow friend? GOD HAPPENED! And there’s nuthin wrong with that; I don’t react with much more than a shrug to Dylan’s religious phase from a general philosophical or political or even lyrical standpoint – whatever floats the guy’s thingy is AOK with me – but this glossy Vegas act does bug me. Horns and fancy gee-tar and backup ladies can be deployed with taste and grace, and this sure nuff ain’t it. “Slow Train” (edited by a minute here!) is a passable bore, yes, but “Do Right to Me Baby” is a disco-mega-lite horrorshow that sounds like the worst of George Harrison’s late-’70s creative death whimpers. Awful. They can’t possibly dig this stuff in heaven, can they??
(Columbia, 1975)
The promo release of “Hurricane,” which features 33rpm full-length versions of the song on each side, one in dead-sounding mono and one in godly stereo. The lyrics remain well-written, but as I listen I can’t help but think of an even better Dylan story, also set in New Jersey: “Tweeter and the Monkey Man.” Dang, that song has it all! Including Jeff Lynne. And naked Springsteen mockery. And, thankfully, no congas. Did you know I suffer this weekend from mild food poisoning?
(Columbia 1975)Dylan’s back into storytelling mode, laying out over two sides of a 7” single the story (or a Dylanized version of it, at least) of Rubin Carter’s arrest and conviction. The lyrics are as direct and cutting as anything else he’d done in some time, but his sympathy for a coulda-been “champion of the world” ends up less affecting than earlier songs about nameless hobos and working stiffs. Beyond the celeb aspect, part of that is due to the damn violin-and-conga backing that places the song firmly in mid-’70s sleeksville – it’s easy to imagine a Mellencamp recording such a song ten years later. Old Bob’s in good voice, though, and the brisk tempo keeps things moving along nicely. So I dunno… call it socially-conscious wallpaper. Sure.
(Columbia, 1973)
A Self-Portrait outtake on the A and a New Morning outtake on the B, so you know it’s gonna be good – no shittin’! That handful of post-Blonde, pre-Geffen records might’ve peeved self-described brainiacs aplenty by refusing to offer Grand And Obscure Statements, but I prefer the entertaining cheeziness-breeziness of this stuff a lot more than I do the serious-minded hackery that makes up most of Dylan’s ’70s work. “A Fool Such as I” is funky lounge-soul that struts nimbly where similar-sounding late-period Elvis material would have lumbered, and “Lily of the West” races along on some fine guitar strummin’ and layered instrumentation. Production values rule the day: Female backing vocals! Strings! Session musicians! You betcha it’s gooey. Better believe it. AND IT WORKS! So what if both songs on here are covers? So what if they’re more about THE SONGS THEMSELVES than about DYLAN? Songs as songs, rather than missives from on-high to be ripped apart and studied. In other words: simple musical kicks. It’s a gas.
(Columbia, 1970)
Yes, I am one of those people who unapologetically enjoys the much-hated Self-Portrait, but I can’t and won’t engage in a passionate defense of it; I’m neither a Dylan mind-reader nor a Dylan garbage-picker, so I refuse to concern myself too much with the mobius-strip mindgames that the record might or might not play. I just like the thing… it’s a bizarro, tossed-off, living-room relaxathon that is at the same time carefully and lavishly arranged, somehow pulling off what the Beatles wanted to do with the “warts and all” Get Back concept while still retaining Let it Be’s Phil Spector overkill. A lazy musical raspberry, perhaps, but an utterly charming one. “Wigwam,” the only single lifted from the album, is a syrupy – yet evocative – brass-laden piece that features a “la-da-da-da” semi-vocal crooned in Dylan’s froggy Nashville Skyline voice. Coming across less like a pop single than a musical link track, it prefigures his soundtrack work on Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid and ably proves his aptitude for stirring schmaltz. Tear-jerk strings come to the fore on “Copper Kettle,” an old-timey booze ballad that walks a fine line between delicate and over the top; a strong vocal grounds it. Both songs rather bravely abandon any rock or progressive trappings and manage to sound – even now – oddly detached from any easily identifiable time period. While the album from which these tracks come has enough overt jokiness to make one conscious of some larger artistic artifice behind the whole thing, this single is simply a strange, compelling coupling of two examples of free-floating, era-condensing, pure American sap. If it’s a joke, it’s a good one.
(Columbia, 1965)This is Dylan gone pop. Bye-bye to the instrumental heaviness, vocal fire, and numbing length of preceding “sell-out” single “Like a Rolling Stone,” hello to cheerful organ-burble and a deceptively soothing croon spread over a sprightly 3:50 clock-time. There’s no proper chorus here, true, but the repeating musical phrases and warm midtempo mellowness leave plenty for radio listeners to latch onto – hence its deserved top-10 charting. And yet, the lyrics manage to out-nasty even “Rolling Stone,” climaxing with the rarely-topped knife-twist punchline of “I wish that for just one time / You could stand inside my shoes / You’d know what a drag it is to see you.” Ouch! So “Positively 4th Street” is a definite success as a single, both in terms of its commercial performance and Dylan’s demonstration of his popsmanship, but as a total package it can’t quite stand up next to the better album tracks from Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde, its comparatively squishy band performance being inferior to the lean, tough playing on those records. This is all vinegar, no piss. Now, would the song’s contemptuous words be as jarring if the music had more of that edge to it? Perhaps not. Still… while I’d never trade the dead-perfect lyrics, gimme the instro bite of “From a Buick 6” (this single’s B-side) or any of Blonde on Blonde’s ragged, uptempo rockers if I want to hear Dylan actually fronting a rock ’n’ roll group.
(Columbia, 1980)
