Jazz Articles about Bob Dylan

About Bob Dylan

Album Review

Bob Dylan: Springtime in New York 1980-1985: The Bootleg Series, Volume 16 (5CD)

Read "Springtime in New York 1980-1985: The Bootleg Series, Volume 16 (5CD)" reviewed by Doug Collette

by Doug Collette
October 9, 2021

Generally speaking, revelations abound within the various installments of The Bootleg Series, Bob Dylan's ongoing archive initiative, and Volume 16 is no exception. But in listening to Springtime in New York, 1980- 1985, the epiphanies come in slow bursts, flashing over the course of the five CDs to generate a cumulative momentum that reaches a flash-point with the content taken from the much-maligned Empire Burlesque (Columbia, 1985). And that outcome in itself is a truly Dylanesque curve ball: pre-release anticipation ...

Book Review

Surviving in a Ruthless World: Bob Dylan's Voyage to Infidels

by Doug Collette
January 16, 2021

Surviving in a Ruthless World: Bob Dylan's Voyage to Infidels Terry Gans 256 pages ISBN: # ISBN-13 : 978-1912733392 Red Planet Books 2020 Terry Gans' Surviving in a Ruthless World: Bob Dylan's Voyage to Infidels is an in-depth examination of Bob Dylan's Infidels (Columbia, 1983) album, the title of the book taken from the original name for the album. The author covers the gestation of the record all the way from the Nobel ...

Hardly Strictly Jazz

2020 and Me

by Skip Heller
December 25, 2020

As I type this, it is December 8, 2020, the fortieth anniversary of John Lennon's murder. I was then a newly-minted barband guitarist, fifteen years old and thinking how the world —via the election of Ronald Reagan —and music had just suffered the worst season that could ever be. 2020 has been an ongoing parade of American horrors. No matter what city you're in, the town is paused. I live in Hollywood, three blocks from the former site ...

Album Review

Bob Dylan: Rough And Rowdy Ways

Read "Rough And Rowdy Ways" reviewed by Doug Collette

by Doug Collette
July 18, 2020

Bob Dylan's Rough And Rowdy Ways is a uniformly excellent piece of work. On these ten new original songs, the Nobel Laureate blends folk, blues and country music with just the slightest dash of gospel and, accompanied with sensitivity by his touring band (plus a few additional musicians including Blake Mills and Fiona Apple), the seamless sound makes this thirty-ninth Dylan studio album superior to both of the other standouts of recent years, Time Out Of Mind (Columbia, 1997) and ...

Album Review

Bob Dylan: The Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings

Read "The Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings" reviewed by Doug Collette

by Doug Collette
June 15, 2019

In contrast to most of the massive archival projects exhumed from Bob Dylan's vault, The Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings is not accompanied by a smaller, condensed package of similar content. But that only makes sense: the third installment of The Bootleg Series was issued in 2002 in the form of a two-cd set devoted to a cross-section of such content. Preserving the rarity of that now discontinued release, every one of those very same recordings reappears in ...

Book Review

Dreaming of Dylan: 115 Dreams About Bob

by Doug Collette
December 23, 2018

Dreaming of Dylan: 115 Dreams About Bob Mary Lee Kortes 160 Pages ISBN: #978-1947026179 BMG Books 2018 Considering the subject of Mary Lee Kortes' Dreaming of Dylan, it may sound implausible to suggest the cover reminds of nothing so much as books of Shel Silverstein such as The Giving Tree (Harper & Row, 1964). But that implicit connection, intentional or not, is wholly appropriate: all three writers invoke the whimsical side of their ...

Album Review

Bob Dylan: More Blood, More Tracks: The Bootleg Series Vol. 14

Read "More Blood, More Tracks: The Bootleg Series Vol. 14" reviewed by Eric Gudas

by Eric Gudas
December 1, 2018

The challenge of finding something original to say about Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks (1975), the mother of all comeback albums, baffles even the most steely-eyed critic. But Sony has made the task easier with More Blood, More Tracks, the unfortunately titled, overpriced, but nonetheless revelatory fourteenth entry in the Bootleg Series. The six-disc Deluxe Edition contains all extant tracks for the album, recorded in 1974 over four September days in New York and two late December days in ...