dylanbest

Bob Dylan – New Morning

  • New Morning is back on the site for only the second time in three years, here with a Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side two mated to a solid Double Plus (A++) side one
  • “If Not For You” was the big hit on this one, and we guarantee you have never heard it sound better than it does on this very copy
  • During our shootout we were reminded how surprisingly enjoyable this album is – it fits in nicely between Dylan’s country era and his later 70s works such as Blood On The Tracks
  • He’s also singing in his familiar Bob Dylan “nasally” voice, not the country croon he developed for Nashville Skyline
  • 4 1/2 stars: “… the overall quality is quite high, and many of the songs explore idiosyncratic routes Dylan had previously left untouched… Such offbeat songs make New Morning a charming, endearing record.”

There are some great songs here like “If Not For You” and “The Man In Me,” and when you find a copy that cuts through the murk and veil of the typical pressing it’s a lot of fun. Big Lebowski fans will be happy to hear “The Man In Me” on side two, one of Dylan’s under-appreciated gems.

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Bob Dylan – Planet Waves

More Bob Dylan

More of The Band

  • You’ll find KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it throughout this vintage copy of Dylan’s 1974 release
  • With wonderfully rich, natural tonality, these early pressings are by far the best way to hear the album sound the way it should
  • Lots of great material on this one, not sure why it doesn’t get more respect: “On A Night Like This,” “Going Going Gone,” “Forever Young,” “You Angel You”… these are seriously good, very well-recorded songs
  • “Reteaming with The Band, Bob Dylan winds up with an album that recalls New Morning more than The Basement Tapes, since Planet Waves is given to a relaxed intimate tone…”
  • If you’re a Dylan fan, this 1974 release surely deserves a chance to find a home in your collection

This is an excellent recording, boasting not only great Bob Dylan sound, but some of the best sound for The Band that you’ll ever hear. That’s right, Dylan is backed by Messrs. Robertson, Danko, Helm, Manuel and Hudson on this album, and I don’t know when we’ve ever heard such audiophile quality sound from that crew. It’s a real treat to hear their signature styles without the cardboard-y, compressed quality we usually find on their albums.

This is not one of Dylan’s best-known or most-loved albums, but it’s definitely a good one. You can certainly tell that these are very emotional songs for him, and it really shows in the performances.

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Bob Dylan & The Band – Before The Flood

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More of The Band

  • Killer sound throughout these original UK Island pressings, with all FOUR sides earning roughly Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades, just shy of our Shootout Winner (side four actually won the shootout) – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Dylan and The Band team up for exuberant versions of many classics from each of their repertoires – a copy like this lets you appreciate just how wonderful the performances are
  • “Dylan reworks, rearranges, reinterprets these songs in ways that are still disarming, years after its initial release… “
  • “Without qualification, this is the craziest and strongest rock and roll ever recorded. All analogous live albums fall flat.”

One of the great Live Classic Rock albums of all time in stunning Hot Stamper form!

The version of “Ballad Of A Thin Man” that closes out side one is simply monstrous. Live rock and roll just don’t get much better than that, my friends!

We played a ton of these and found that many copies were too boring to earn our Hot Stamper grade. Some lacked energy, even more never opened up, and most of them were too thin-sounding. We had to play a huge stack of copies to come up with a few good ones, and on a double album like this, that’s a ton of work.

Finding, cleaning and critically evaluating a dozen-plus copies is a lot of work on a single album, so you can imagine how time-consuming it is when we have to double those efforts just for one album.

These ’70s LPs have the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern pressings barely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing any sign of coming back.

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The Traveling Wilburys – Volume One

More of The Traveling Wilburys

More Rock and Pop

  • With KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides, this amazing copy of the Wilburys’ debut album is one of the BEST we have ever heard – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Proof that, when you put Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, George Harrison, Bob Dylan and Jeff Lynne in a recording studio together, something good is bound to happen
  • Certified triple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America, this album was Grammy nominated Album of the Year in 1989
  • 4 1/2 stars: “There never was a supergroup more super than the Traveling Wilburys… It’s impossible to picture a supergroup with a stronger pedigree.”

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Bob Dylan – Bringing It All Back Home

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More Vintage Columbia Pressings

  • This vintage 360 Stereo copy was doing pretty much everything right, earning superb Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER from start to finish – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • If this price seems high, keep in mind that the top copy from our most recent shootout went for $1200, and the vinyl was just as quiet
  • These early pressings can be killer when you find one like this – they’re clearly more lively, more transparent, and richer, with dramatically more immediacy in the midrange so that Dylan’s voice is front and center and in the room with you
  • You would be hard pressed to find a copy that sounds this good and plays this quietly – we should know, this was one of the better copies from our most recent shootout
  • 5 stars: “With Bringing It All Back Home, he exploded the boundaries, producing an album of boundless imagination and skill. And it’s not just that he went electric, either, rocking hard on “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” “Maggie’s Farm,” and “Outlaw Blues”; it’s that he’s exploding with imagination throughout the record.”
  • For those of you who are fans of the pop, folk and jazz music of the mid-sixties, Bringing It All Back Home (along with Highway 61 Revisited from later the same year) has to be seen as a Must Own Album from 1965.

It’s tough to find copies of this album that give you all the tubey richness and warmth that this music needs to sound its best. Too many copies seem to be EQ’d to put the vocals way up front, an approach that renders Dylan’s voice hard and edgy. Copies like that sound impressive at first blush (“Wow, he’s really in the room!”) but become fatiguing in short order. When you get a copy like this one that’s smooth, relaxed and natural, the music sounds so good that you forget about the sound and just get lost in the music.

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 better copies have an uncanny way of doing just that.

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Bob Dylan – Slow Train Coming

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More Folk Rock

  • A KILLER sounding copy with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it from start to finish
  • We guarantee there is dramatically more space, richness, vocal presence, and performance energy on this copy than others you’ve heard, and that’s especially true if you made the mistake of buying whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing is currently on the market
  • The big hit here is “Gotta Serve Somebody” – Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits is featured throughout
  • I doubt this is anyone’s very favorite Dylan album, but it’s sure a lot more enjoyable when you have sound like this

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Bob Dylan – Blonde On Blonde on the 360 Label

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More Vintage Columbia Pressings

  • These early 360 Stereo pressings were doing just about everything right, with all FOUR sides earning outstanding Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them – remarkably quiet vinyl too
  • You won’t believe how rich, full and lively this album can sound on a copy this good (particularly on sides two and four)
  • Includes tons of quintessential Dylan classics: “Rainy Day Women,” “I Want You,” “Just Like A Woman,” and more – they all sound phenomenal
  • 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.”

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Bob Dylan – Empire Burlesque

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  • This vintage pressing was doing pretty much everything right, with both sides earning superb (A++) grades or close to them – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • We guarantee there is dramatically more richness, fullness, vocal presence, and performance energy on this copy than others you’ve heard, and that’s especially true if you made the mistake of buying whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing is currently on the market
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Say what you want about Empire Burlesque – at the very least, it’s the most consistent record Bob Dylan has made since Blood on the Tracks, even if it isn’t quite as interesting as Desire. However, it is a better set of songs, all deriving from the same place and filled with subtle gems… this is as good as Dylan gets in his latter days.”

This is one of the better-sounding Dylan records from the ’80s. It’s not exactly Blood on the Tracks, the only Dylan album we think is qualified to be on our Top 100 Rock and Pop List, but it sounds good for a record from this era. (more…)

Bob Dylan – Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid (Original Soundtrack Recording)

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More Soundtrack Albums

  • An incredible copy of Dylan’s 1973 soundtrack album with Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) sound on both sides – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • This one is doing practically everything right – it’s bigger, bolder, richer and more clean, clear and open than almost anything else we played
  • Includes the hit “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” which charted on the Top 20 and would be famously covered in later years by the likes of Eric Clapton and Guns N’ Roses
  • “This record also proved that Dylan could shoehorn his music within the requirements of a movie score without compromising its content or quality, something that only the Beatles, unique among rock artists, had really managed to do up to that time…”

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Bob Dylan – Desire

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More Rock and Pop

  • This copy of Dylan’s 1976 release was doing just about everything right, with both sides earning outstanding Double Plus (A++) grades
  • Both sides are exceptionally clean, clear, full and lively with excellent bass and lots of space around the instruments
  • Desire spent five weeks at Number One, mostly on the strength of the powerful and provocative “Hurricane”
  • 4 1/2 stars: “…one of [Dylan’s] most fascinating records of the ’70s and ’80s — more intriguing, lyrically and musically, than most of his latter-day affairs.

As I’m sure you know, Desire is one of those Dylan albums from the ’70s that generally gets less respect than his earlier work, except from the All Music Guide, who gave it 4 1/2 big stars. Not sure we would go quite that far, but it is clearly a more enjoyable and compelling album when the experience comes from a high quality analog pressing. This one should do nicely.

It’s probably not fair to lump it in with later ’70s albums like Street Legal (1978) and Slow Train Coming (1979). It is, after all, the follow-up to the brilliant (and very good sounding, good enough to make our Top 100) Blood on the Tracks. And it did spend five (5!) weeks at Number One. And Rolling Stone did call it one of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time (#174 to be exact).

All of which makes it hard to deny that Desire has a lot going for it.

The album kicks of with the raging “Hurricane,” one of Dylan’s most passionate political songs, and doesn’t let up for a good twenty five plus minutes until the side is over. Most copies lacked the energy and presence that this music needs to really come to life, but not this one.

Drop the needle on “Hurricane” and you will quickly see how much the violin player (Scarlet Rivera) contributes to the song. I can’t think of another hard-rockin’ track from the era that has such a well-recorded violin. If you have an overly smooth copy (there’s tons of ’em out there and we’ve heard plenty of them) you aren’t going to hear the rosiny texture that gives the instrument its unique character.

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