iTunes packages Bob Dylan The Complete Album Collection V.1
into 4 volumes saving $20
iTunes download of Bob Dylan The Complete Album Collection in 4 volumes.
By Stephen Pate – I jam with a friend who thinks Bob Dylan did his best work before 1968. He can buy Bob Dylan’s collected works of The 60s for a mere $49.99 on iTunes, saving a cool $130 over people who feel compelled to shell out for the whole shebang.
Bob Dylan The Complete Collection The 60s
Bob Dylan The Complete Collection The 60s
For his $50 bucks, he would get the first 9 albums of Bob Dylan’s career: Bob Dylan, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A-Changin, Another Side of Bob Dylan, Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde, John Wesley Harding, and Nashville Skyline.
I have to admit that’s a pretty impressive body of work for a young singer who bounced out of the Midwest into New York City in 1961.
Within those 9 albums Dylan paid homage to blues, folk, re-wrote the protest song, re-wrote rock and roll as a literate form of music, moved us into the night world of Blonde on Blonde, through the mysticism of Woodstock and plunked us firmly in Nashville USA.
I auditioned the iTunes songs on studio monitors and Apple does a bang-up job of delivering great sound. If you go down to the bottom of the volume on the iTunes store, there is a “Preview All” button, which I am doing as I write this.
The Complete Album Collection: The 60’s – Bob Dylan
Workingman blues on Expecting Rain wrote there are remastered for iTunes, but that does not show on iTunes. “I compared it in waveform to a similar rip (256 M4A) from the Copyright Collection. Obviously, this is the exact same track but it does have a slight db boost of 1.2 dB in volume and the mastering looks …”
Bob Dylan The Complete Collection The 70s
iTunes Bob Dylan The Complete Collection The 70s
Happily, or otherwise, married for half the 1970s, Dylan started one of the most controversial but productive periods of his career.
Among the 13 albums, there are stellar albums here like the incomparable Blood on the Tracks, Slow Train Coming, The Basement Tapes (OK it’s 60s material), Hard Rain, and New Morning.
The rest of the 70s are all over the map for Dylan. We just finished shelling out for Another Self Portrait so that one isn’t like to get much play but it’s part of the oeuvre. I can’t get some of those songs out of my head like “Belle Isle.”
The Complete Album Collection: The 70’s – Bob Dylan
Of course, any of us mere mortals would be happy to have produced just one, anyone of Dylan’s 70’s albums.
Who owns Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid? No one but now you can with one of Dylan’s two most famous songs – “Knockin’ on Heavens Door.” Just for laughs watch Kris Kristofferson grin his way though a shoot out on YouTube. Columbia got even with Dylan by issuing out-takes on Dylan. The Asylum albums Planet Waves and Before The Flood prove you don’t get far dumping old friends, even over money.
Desire, Street-Legal, At Bukodan (OMG those outfits and backup singers!) – you gotta have them to be a completist.
Bob Dylan The Complete Collection The 80s
Bob Dylan The Complete Collection The 80s
The taped voice-over to Dylan’s Never Ending Tour says he hit rock bottom in the 1980s but he still produced some awesome, timeless material.
He started the decade with Jesus and Saved and ended with Oh Mercy his first classic collaboration with Canadian Daniel Lanois.
Top albums, if I may be allowed a bit of critical thinking, include Infidels, Real Live, and Shot of Love.
The Complete Album Collection: The 80’s – Bob Dylan
Even the lesser of the albums have Dylan gems like “Emotionally Yours” and “When the Night Comes Falling From the Sky” from Empire Burlesque, “Brownsville Girl” from Knocked Out Loaded, “Ninety Miles an Hour Down A Dead End Street” from Down in the Groove.
Dylan and The Dead (Live) is a total mystery to me. Some people like it, some don’t. Most people admit it was the bottom for Dylan. Still 9 CD’s when you are at your career ebb, that’s impressive.
Bob Dylan The Complete Collection The 90s and Beyond
Bob Dylan the Complete Collection The 90s’ – 00’s
The last 2 decades have been Dylan’s most productive since the 60s.
Let me go out on a limb – there’s not a bad album among the 10 of them.
OK I refused to buy Christmas in the Heart but still love to watch the “Must Be Christmas” video. If fact I watched it twice last night.
The Complete Album Collection: The 90’s-00’s – Bob Dylan
Under The Red Sky is an album that Dylan produced for his last child but the songs are amazing. “Wiggle Wiggle” and “Born in Time” are two of the classics. Dylan loves to play a driven blues version of “Cats in the Well” during his concerts.
Good as I’ve Been to You and World Gone Wrong have Dylan revisiting folk music. These 2 CDs are excellent and Dylan is in top guitar playing form.
MTV Unplugged highlights classic Dylan material. Just to annoy the completists, they left off a haunting “Desolation Row” to which I say, buy the DVD.
Dylan and Daniel Lanois team up again for the Grammy winning Time Out of Mind with the world-weary view of an old man. “Love Sick”, “Not Dark Yet” and the Adele hit “Make You Feel My Love” are some of the gems of Time Out of Mind.
The trilogy of Love and Theft, Modern Times and Together Through Life – all good – take us to last year’s Tempest. All 4 show Dylan is still a creative powerful artist.
Missing Side-Tracks
The iTunes collection does not give you the box set, the special book by Clinton Heylin. I also can’t see how you get the 2-CD collection of side-tracks that were never released before, “all the tracks from “Biograph” that are not duplicates of LP/CD tracks, the five tracks from Greatest Hits II, One track from Greatest Hits III and a couple of others” Amazon.com review.
Me, I sitting around the house waiting for Amazon.com to delivery The Complete Album Collection V.1
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