Filthy Sanchez did take time to post a card forty years ago requesting Bob Dylan. Any response yet?

  • Thread starter Radio No one listens to the requests umberg
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Radio No one listens to the requests umberg

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If all else fails, do we play it at the funeral?
 
Re: Filthy Sanchez did take time to post a card forty years ago requesting Bob Dylan. Any response y

> If all else fails, do we play it at the funeral?

Well, I have "Time Out of Mind" (+ Australian Tour bonus disc) on my pc. "Love & Theft" (bleech!) and "Blood on the Tracks" as well as the Halloween '64 bootleg (released officially as The Bootleg Series, Vol. 6) and "Blood on the Tapes" (to "...Tracks" what the Troy Tate Sessions were to "The Smiths") I have on disc. The rest of my Dylan Albums are on vinyl or cassette.
 
Re: Filthy Sanchez did take time to post a card forty years ago requesting Bob Dylan. Any response y

> Well, I have "Time Out of Mind" (+ Australian Tour bonus disc)
> on my pc. "Love & Theft" (bleech!) and "Blood on the
> Tracks" as well as the Halloween '64 bootleg (released officially as
> The Bootleg Series, Vol. 6) and "Blood on the Tapes" (to
> "...Tracks" what the Troy Tate Sessions were to "The
> Smiths") I have on disc. The rest of my Dylan Albums are on vinyl or
> cassette.

All those mentions of "blood" wouldn't go down too well at the funeral though Cod, neither the mention of "out of mind".
 
Bob Dylan - "Time Out of Mind"

01. Love Sick
http://s40.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=0C1552NDK3R611WGFHRXP2O9LE

02. Dirt Road Blues
http://s40.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=0LVFLUUEFI8ZO35HCJCVPKVVV0

03. Standing In The Doorway
http://s40.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=0301NH0GFR2JF1BEA49EUJLKLM

04. Million Miles
http://s40.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=3K7F5X8JPMKEA04MDHIUK6ZS4Z

05. Tryin' To Get To Heaven
http://s40.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=1XXTKG62HRFAI09UJGN04FO9T3

06. 'Til I Fell In Love With You
http://s40.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=1XXTKG62HRFAI09UJGN04FO9T3

07. Not Dark Yet
http://s54.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=0DMZAI2MW5CE007PB9HCLSBBUU

08. Cold Irons Bound
http://s44.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=1WS7L1XOVXXKF0LH45FYJITINZ

09. Make You Feel My Love
http://s58.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=10XJKAWHE993K1RZ4K4O7YM8SD

10. Can't Wait
http://s58.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=3A6Q4BMF04E9S2L5JDLBGGSYOI

11. Highlands
http://s58.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=2ZS5PERS5ROSZ3DJW0ZD3THIRQ

A haunting, lonely Dylan on "Time Out of Mind"

by Seth Rogovoy

(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., Sept. 25, 1997) -- This much is known: next Tuesday, Sept. 30, Columbia Records plans to release "Time Out of Mind," the first album of new songs released by Bob Dylan since 1990's "Under the Red Sky."

This much is likely: "Time Out of Mind" will be greeted by fans and general listeners alike as Dylan's best work since 1989's "Oh Mercy," and his most personal testament since 1975's "Blood on the Tracks."

If an unofficial cassette recording of the album that has been in circulation recently is indicative of the final product available for sale next week, "Time Out of Mind" will mark the creative apex of Dylan in the '90s.

If not quite on a par with such decade-defining works as "Blonde on Blonde" in the '60s, "Blood on the Tracks" in the '70s and "Oh Mercy" in the '80s, "Time Out of Mind" stands as a searing, haunted, arresting statement by an artist whose powerful work is easy to misunderstand but impossible to overlook.

Brimming with pain, heartache and regret, "Time Out of Mind" is so profoundly moving it is almost impossible to listen to in one sitting. It captures the singer in an intensely reflective mood, finding himself alone at the end of a long, winding road, wondering how he got there and what happened to the people he used to love and trust.

Mostly, the songs on "Time Out of Mind" seem to concern a woman the singer once loved and lost, only to discover years later -- nearing the end of that road -- that he still profoundly loves and needs her.

For Dylan-watchers, the implication that Dylan is singing about his ex- wife, Sara, is unmistakable. There is great distance between the singer and his long-lost love -- "I try to get closer, but I'm still a million miles from you," he sings in "Million Miles." Later on, in "Can't Wait," he sings, "Oh honey, after all these years, you're still the one." There are even hints of the controversial alimony payments Sara Dylan was said to have extracted from her millionaire husband: "You took the silver, you took the gold/You left me standing out in the cold."

But this is not "Blood on the Tracks" or "New Pony" redux. Rather, "Time Out of Mind" takes a long view of their relationship, and the results are both surprising and heartwrenching.

The narrator on "Time Out of Mind" is forever walking alone, embittered by all that surrounds him and what has happened to his world. Indeed, the first three songs all begin with lines about walking.

The album kicks off with "Lovesick," a stark, bluesy march that cleverly inverts the concept embedded in the title to actually suggest illness. "I'm walking through streets that are dead/Walking, walking with you in my head," sings Dylan over ghostly chunks of organ chords. "I'm sick of love, and I'm in the thick of it/This kind of love, I'm so sick of it," he spits out, in a voice so broken and shattered it startles.

"Dirt Road Blues," the second track, is an uptempo blues that recalls mid-'60s Dylan with a bit of Sun Studios thrown in for good measure. "Gonna walk down that dirt road, 'til someone lets me ride," Dylan sings twice, sounding like he's coming through a time warp from 1965. "If I can't find my baby, I'm gonna run away and hide." The song also introduces a motif that runs throughout the album: that of false or decaying perception. "Gonna walk down that dirt road, until my eyes begin to bleed," he sings.

"Standing in the Doorway," the third song, is the first ballad on the album, which from this point on alternates between ballads and blues or blues-influenced numbers. "I'm walking through the summer nights, a jukebox playing low/Yesterday everything was going too fast, today it's moving too slow," starts off Dylan, setting up the opposition between the past and the present, which will resurface later when he sings, "I wish someone would come and push back the clock for me."

In light of Dylan's near-fatal heart infection last spring, it will undoubtedly be tempting to read intimations of mortality into many of these songs, even though they were recorded before Dylan's hospitalization. Indeed, illness is a motif running thorughout the songs on "Time Out of Mind."

But in Dylan's hands, illness is a mere symptom, typically representative of a spiritual or emotional ill. "Even if the flesh falls off my face, I know someone will be there to care," he sings in "Standing in the Doorway," while the line "My nerves are exploding and my body's tense," kicks off "'Til I Fell in Love with You." Then of course, there is "Lovesick," which catalogs the illness that begins this whole song cycle.

And a cycle it is. More than most of his albums, "Time Out of Mind" seems carefully programmed to make a coherent statement. For one, there's the intra-song, musical tension and relief provided by alternating ballads and blues. The songs also build on each other, exploring different nuances and aspects of the same concerns.

Coming near the end is the atypical "To Make You Feel My Love," a classic-style pop ballad that Billy Joel has already recorded on his "Greatest Hits Volume III" album. Following "Cold Irons Bound," the harshest song both musically and lyrically on "Time Out of Mind," the pop tune provides both sonic relief and a change of mood. There may also be more than just a bit of irony at play here: "I could offer you a warm embrace to make you feel my love" is a stark contrast from "I just don't know what I'm gonna do/I was all right 'til I fell in love with you."

"Time Out of Mind" concludes with a 17-minute, part-spoken, part-sung narrative called "Highlands." The title and length of the song both suggest an earlier tune from "Blonde on Blonde" called "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands," which Dylan told us he wrote for his ex-wife in the song "Sara" on "Desire."

A sprawling, blues-based epic, "Highlands" veers from Dylan at his most poetic ("My heart's in the highlands, gentle and fair/Honeysuckle blooming in the wild wood air/Bluebells blazing where the Aberdeen waters flow....") to his most direct ("I'm listenin' to Neil Young, I gotta turn up the sound/Someone's always yellin' turn it down") to his most surreal - - an extended, seemingly improvised segment involving a waitress in a Boston diner, a hard-boiled egg and Erica Jong.

But the song and the album conclude with some of Dylan's most striking confessional writing ever. He sees young people in a park dancing and romancing and envies them. "I'd trade faces with any of 'em in a minute if I could," he says. "The party's over and there's less and less to say," he goes on, and then, bringing the eyesight motif full circle, he says, "I've got new eyes, everything looks far away."

In the end, says Dylan, his heart is in the highlands, "over the hills and far away." It is indeed ironic that he should conclude his album with an image of being separated from his heart. This isn't to confuse his heart -- his capacity to love -- with the blood-pumping muscle that nearly failed him last June. This is merely to suggest that, at this late hour, our poet of politics and religion has set his sights once again on the poetry of the heart. And as is to be expected with Dylan, it is not a pretty sight.

[This column originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on Sept. 25, 1997. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 1997. All rights reserved.]
 
Annex: cover art

Front:
http://s52.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=23NTVQQAKW1WT3J63YXBGW8MDZ

Back:
http://s52.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=06BXH7SGF0AWR342X4G4JTL82C

Inlay:
http://s52.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=391HNET3KQUZQ10FY9A2JX1Q5J
 
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