The Kolog

Dylan’s Renaissance Years

On November 10th, Bob Dylan and his band will make an appearance in Charlottesville, Virginia for another leg on his Never-Ending Tour.  It will be the tenth or eleventh time I’ve seen him live but the first time in over five years (thank you Adam for taking me to that show back in Tucson!).

My buddy has a ticket too for the show at John Paul Jones Arena, and while he’s a fan–we went to a screening of Don’t Look Back at the Paramount last month not to mention a Dylan concert at George Mason University nearly ten years ago now–Andy is not all that familiar with Dylan’s recent albums.  In the past, I have noticed that concert-goers familiar only with the best known Dylan recordings (from The Times They Are A-Changin’ through Desire) are met with a rude awakening when listening to the Dylan of the twenty-first century.  Even the seemingly hard-to-miss classics on today’s setlist–from “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carrol” and “Like a Rolling Stone” to “All Along the Watchtower” and “Tangled Up in Blue”–are nearly unrecognizable unless the audience is familiar with the latest sounds and style Dylan and his band have conjured of late.  So, in order to help Andy better recognize the new tracks and innovative sounds we are more than likely to encounter at the show, I have offered to burn him a cd of Dylan’s latest greatests, all recorded in the past decade or so.

I mention it here only to point out, again, that someone has to release another Greatest Hits in order to do justice to this latest renaissance of Dylan’s career.  Let me know if I’m overlooking anything with this playlist:

Things Have Changed
High Water (For Charley Patton)
Huck’s Tune
Tell Ol’ Bill
Red River Shore
Mississippi
Dixie
Po’ Boy
The Levee’s Gonna Break
I Fell a Change Comin’ On
Shake Shake Mama
Nettie Moore
Not Dark Yet
Diamond Joe
Working Man’s Blues #2
Jolene
Trying to Get to Heaven
Someday Baby
Lonesome Day Blues
If You Ever Go to Houston
Summer Days
Standing in the Doorway
Rollin’ and Tumblin’
My Wife’s Hometown
Spirit on the Water
Dirt Road Blues
The Girl on the Greenbriar Shore
Cocaine Blues
Ring Them Bells
Can’t Escape from You
32-20 Blues
Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum
Thunder on the Mountain
Must Be Santa

As those of you for whom I have made Dylan mixes in the past know, I get quite a thrill out of piecing together the best of Dylan.  Needless to say, I hope those who listen to my collections experience nothing less than half the joy I get from listening to these tracks.  Indeed, I have found Dylan’s songs to be the perfect panacea for whatever ails me.  As he was considered a protest singer for civil rights back in the day, so shall Dylan in this latest part of his career be defined as nothing short of a protest singer for the soul.

1 Comment so far
Leave a comment