More of the Music of Bob Dylan
- These early Stereo 360 pressings were doing just about everything right, with all FOUR sides earning roughly Double Plus (A++) grades
- You won’t believe how rich, full and lively this album can sound on a copy this good (particularly on sides one, two and three)
- Includes tons of quintessential Dylan classics: “Rainy Day Women,” “I Want You,” “Just Like A Woman,” and more – they all sound phenomenal
- Marks and problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
- 5 stars: “Blonde on Blonde is an album of enormous depth, providing endless lyrical and musical revelations on each play… It’s the culmination of Dylan’s electric rock & roll period — he would never release a studio record that rocked this hard, or had such bizarre imagery, ever again.”
Vintage covers for this album are hard to find in exceptionally clean shape. Most of them will have at least some amount of ringwear, seam wear and edge wear. We guarantee that the cover we supply with this Hot Stamper is at least VG, and it will probably be VG+. If you are picky about your covers please let us know in advance so that we can be sure we have a nice cover for you.
It takes a properly mastered, properly pressed copy like this one to get both Dylan’s voice and harmonica — two of the most critically important elements on any of his recordings — to sound smooth, full-bodied and clear. Any pinched quality will be painfully obvious to the listener, and for that shortcoming you lose a lot of points here at Better Records. That said, upper-midrangy sound on any vintage Dylan record to one degree or another is almost always audible. The less the better, but none is really not an option.
What The Best Sides Of Blonde On Blonde Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear
- The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
- The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1966
- Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
- Natural tonality in the midrange — with all the instruments having the correct timbre
- Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space
No doubt there’s more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.
Tubey Magic Is Key
This vintage 360 Stereo pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern pressings cannot BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing any sign of coming back.
Having done this for so long, we understand and appreciate that rich, full, solid, Tubey Magical sound is key to the presentation of this primarily vocal music. We rate these qualities higher than others we might be listening for (e.g., bass definition, soundstage, depth, etc.). The music is not so much about the details in the recording, but rather in trying to recreate a solid, palpable, real Bob Dylan singing live in your listening room. The best copies have an uncanny way of doing just that.
If you exclusively play modern repressings of older recordings (this one is now 56 years old), I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it — not often, and certainly not always — but less than one out of 100 new records do, if our experience with the hundreds we’ve played can serve as a guide.
What We’re Listening For On Blonde On Blonde
Here are some things we specifically listen for on a record by Mr. Bob Dylan — whether from 1966 or 1986, makes no difference to us.
Our hottest Hot Stamper copies are simply doing more of these things better than the other copies we played in our shootout.
- Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
- Then: presence and immediacy. The vocals aren’t “back there” somewhere, lost in the mix. They’re front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would put them.
- The Big Sound comes next — wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
- Then transient information — fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.
- Tight punchy bass — which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.
- Next: transparency — the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.
- Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing — an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.
A Must Own Record
Blonde On Blonde is a recording that should be part of any serious popular Music Collection. Others that belong in that category can be found here.
Side One
Rainy Day Women #12 & 35
Pledging My Time
Visions of Johanna
One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)
Side Two
I Want You
Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again
Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat
Just Like a Woman
Side Three
Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine
Temporary Like Achilles
Absolutely Sweet Marie
4th Time Around
Obviously 5 Believers
Side Four
Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands
AMG 5 Star Rave Review
Blonde on Blonde is an album of enormous depth, providing endless lyrical and musical revelations on each play. Leavening the edginess of Highway 61 with a sense of the absurd, Blonde on Blonde is comprised entirely of songs driven by inventive, surreal, and witty wordplay, not only on the rockers but also on winding, moving ballads like “Visions of Johanna,” “Just Like a Woman,” and “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.” Throughout the record, the music matches the inventiveness of the songs, filled with cutting guitar riffs, liquid organ riffs, crisp pianos, and even woozy brass bands (“Rainy Day Women #12 & 35”). It’s the culmination of Dylan’s electric rock & roll period — he would never release a studio record that rocked this hard, or had such bizarre imagery, ever again.
Dylan Discography
Here you will find his albums through 1989, after which you are on your own. The later recordings have never sounded right to us and we have no plans to do shootouts for any of those releases.
1962 Bob Dylan
1963 The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan
1964 The Times They Are A-Changin’
1964 Another Side of Bob Dylan
1965 Bringing It All Back Home
1965 Highway 61 Revisited
1966 Blonde On Blonde
1967 John Wesley Harding
1969 Nashville Skyline
1970 Self Portrait
1970 New Morning
1973 Dylan
1974 Planet Waves
1974 Before the Flood
1975 Blood on the Tracks
1975 The Basement Tapes [never heard this album sound better than tolerable]
1976 Desire
1976 Hard Rain
1978 Street Legal
1979 Slow Train Coming
1979 At Budokan
1980 Saved
1981 Shot of Love
1983 Infidels
1984 Real Live
1985 Empire Burlesque
1986 Knocked Out Loaded
1989 Oh Mercy