Search - Rock Milestones: Bob Dylan - Changing Tracks on DVD

Changing Tracks, Indeed

Alfred Johnson | boston, ma | 07/04/2009

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Most of the review below was used in a review of the film documentary "Bob Dylan:1966-1978: After The Crash", which covers much of the same material, as background, to an up close and personal discussion among Trans-Atlantic professionals music critics about what is, perhaps, Bob Dylan's master work "Blood On The Tracks". There should be no question that the lushness and profuseness of the lyrics of more than a dozen songs presented under one album cover may be unequaled in music history. Maybe something of the Beatles, maybe of the Stones or that one of Elvis' in 1956 but not much else is even in the competition:

"Okay, okay I have gone on and one over the past year or so about the influence of Bob Dylan's music (and lyrics) on me, and on my generation, the Generation of '68. But, please, don't blame me. Blame Bob. After all he could very easily have gone into retirement and enjoyed the fallout from his youthful fame and impressed one and all at his local AARP chapter. But, no, he had to go out on the road continuously, seemingly forever, keeping his name and music front and center. Moreover, the son of a gun has done more reinventions of himself than one could shake a stick at (folk troubadour, symbolic poet in the manner of Rimbaud and Verlaine, heavy metal rocker, blues man, etc.) So, WE are left with forty or so years of work to go through to try to sort it out. In short, can I (or anyone else) help it if he is restless and acts, well, .... like a rolling stone?"

Frankly, I have covered so much Bob Dylan material, early, middle and late, over the past year I am beginning to feel like the guy interviewed in the "After The Crash" DVD who made something of a `journalistic' career (if also a nuisance) of going through Dylan's garbage to see if he could find the "Rosetta Stone" to decode the meaning of his lyrics. Whew! At least I am not that bad off. I "merely" write reviews of what, as is the case here, Trans-Atlantic (meaning from the British Isles and their environs) professional music reviewers think Dylan was up to and his place in the folk/rock/pop pantheons.

I will just quickly run through the main points that are presented here as the "talking heads' who dominate this documentary are fully capable of taking you through the technical/musical/cultural/personal highlights of this lyrically beautiful and poetically dense album from a very productive period in Dylan' career. The center of the documentary revolves around a serious discussion of the first song "Tangled Up In Blue", its meaning in Dylan `s personal life (he was having marital difficulties), his movement away from the starkness of some of his earlier American roots roots-oriented music ("John Wesley Harding") and his desire to develop a "concept" album heading back to a more folk/rock look than some of his just previous work.

Additional highlights center on the bittersweet" Idiot Wind" and the ambivalent "Shelter From The Storm". Less time is spent on my favorite, "If You See Her, Say Hello' and my now up and coming favorite (after I heard Dave Van Ronk do a version) "Buckets Of Rain". If you have to chose though between this one hour presentation and the other two hour, "After The Crash", DVD mentioned above go for the latter, it is more complete story of this period in Dylan's musical evolution.

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