Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review
(158 customer reviews) 63 of 65 people found the following review helpful
Essential Listening,
September 29, 2004 Ron Atkins "Ron" (California) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Essential Bob Dylan (Audio CD)
After years of owning and losing Bob Dylan albums, I decided to buy one CD that would best represent my appreciation for this genius' work. I considered some of the box sets, but eventually purchased the Essentials. It was money well spent.
This is a complete set for anyone just discovering Bob Dylan, or for old guys like myself who are trying to rediscover the sounds of their youth-without having to buy a dozen CDs. The Essentials covers the range of tunes and styles of Bob Dylan and opens the door for further discovery of his music--by the way, there's a ton of it.
Songs like "Knock, Knocking on Heaven's Door," and "Positively 4th Street" remind me of summer days at the Drive-In listening to the jukebox and playing pool (when I had some quarters). The man puts his heart and soul into every song, and you can feel this. He's not some image created by a studio and thrust on the consumer by the media. Dylan came of age before million dollar endorsements and the...Read more
69 of 76 people found the following review helpful
Surely not the best available Bob Dylan-compilation,
August 17, 2004 Docendo Discimus (Vita scholae) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Essential Bob Dylan (Audio CD)
Whether or not you agree with the compilers' choice of songs is obviously a question of taste, and very subjective, too. And I'm sure that a lot of people will think that this collection is all good and fine, but despite the high quality of almost every song, I still believe a significantly better "essential" collection could have been made - and has been made, too.
First of all, this is obviously a collection for relative newcomers rather than seasoned Dylan-fans. Second of all, those newcomers should stick to the original "Greatest Hits" and "More Greatest Hits" for the 60s and early 70s material, and hand-pick the best of Dylan's later releases for the rest of his most important output.
There are just too many of Bob Dylan's best songs missing here, especially from the 70s and 90s. "Blood On The Tracks" is represented by only two songs, "Desire" is (mis-)represented only by "Hurricane"...and if non-album classics like "When I Paint My Masterpiece" and "Watching The...Read more
42 of 46 people found the following review helpful
the Picasso of music,
July 28, 2003 Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Essential Bob Dylan (Audio CD)
Trying to make a compilation of Bob Dylan's music is equal to taking 30 of Picasso's works, and saying "this is the artist"; the immense creativity is too deep, the development and changes too wide.
There will always be songs that the listener will feel were a mistake to omit, and for me "Ballad of a Thin Man" is the one I wish had been in this collection.
Disc One starts in 1962, with the folk days of "Blowing in the Wind", to when he went electric with "Like a Rolling Stone" from the ground-breaking Highway 61 Revisited, to the soft lilting folk/country sound of "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" from John Wesley Harding, released in 1967.Disc Two starts with the romantic "Lay, Lady, Lay" from 1969's Nashville Skyline, through the 70's and the return of acoustic guitar and harmonica with two songs from Blood on the Tracks, to end the decade with the beginning of his Christian recordings, and a great track from Slow...Read more
