Review: New Dylan Album-Shadows in the Night

Subject: Review: New Dylan Album
From: GUEST,Arkie
Date: 11 Dec 14 - 06:49 PM

Sketch review at this point. Bob Dylan has announced a new album to be released in February will cover songs previously recorded by Frank Sinatra. To include versions of "Autumn Leaves", "Some Enchanted Evening" and "That Lucky Old Sun" along with seven others.

Next Album

Subject: RE: Review: New Dylan Album
From: Hagman
Date: 11 Dec 14 - 07:13 PM

Yep, I fear it has got "stinker" written all over it. Happy to be proven wrong.

Tracklisting from Amazon:

1. I'm A Fool To Want You
2. The Night We Called It A Day
3. Stay With Me
4. Autumn Leaves
5. Why Try to Change Me Now
6. Some Enchanted Evening
7. Full Moon And Empty Arms
8. Where Are You?
9. What'll I Do
10. That Lucky Old Sun

Suspect I'll be filing it with the Xmas album.... wherever that is.

Subject: RE: Review: New Dylan Album
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 11 Dec 14 - 07:38 PM

Will the songs all be credited to Bob Dylan?

Rimshot.

Subject: RE: Review: New Dylan Album
From: Hagman
Date: 11 Dec 14 - 07:43 PM

Also from Amazon:

Regarding the repertoire on this album, Bob Dylan commented, "It was a real privilege to make this album. I've wanted to do something like this for a long time but was never brave enough to approach 30-piece complicated arrangements and refine them down for a 5-piece band. That's the key to all these performances. We knew these songs extremely well. It was all done live. Maybe one or two takes. No overdubbing. No vocal booths. No headphones. No separate tracking, and, for the most part, mixed as it was recorded. I don't see myself as covering these songs in any way. They've been covered enough. Buried, as a matter a fact. What me and my band are basically doing is uncovering them. Lifting them out of the grave and bringing them into the light of day."

Subject: RE: Review: New Dylan Album
From: GUEST,Jerome Clark
Date: 11 Dec 14 - 08:47 PM

On learning the news of this fiasco in the making, a friend asked, "Don't we already have Tony Bennett for this sort of thing?"

In fact, back in 1992 Bennett released a Columbia album, Perfectly Frank, consisting of a generous 24 Sinatra covers, all splendidly arranged and brilliantly sung. Anyone who'd prefer Dylan's upcoming record to this ought to have hearing and/or sanity examined.

Subject: RE: Review: New Dylan Album
From: meself
Date: 11 Dec 14 - 08:57 PM

I don't care what they're singing - I'll take Dylan over Tony Bennett, or Frank Sinatra, for that matter, any day of the week. And twice on Sunday. (Available for hearing and/or sanity examination any time).

Subject: RE: Review: New Dylan Album
From: pdq
Date: 11 Dec 14 - 08:59 PM

File with his other clunker from 1970 "Self Parody".

Subject: RE: Review: New Dylan Album
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 11 Dec 14 - 10:25 PM

.. bit of a tangent..

I've just discovered and am reading about "Watertown",
a really bonkers sounding Frank Sinatra 'Rock Concept Album' recorded in 1969...

Curious to have a listen to that one..

Btw.. the new Dylan CD might turn out not too bad..

- mischeivous septuagenarian Bob seems to be having a bit more fun than many of his stern old loyal fans might allow....

Subject: RE: Review: New Dylan Album
From: GUEST,#
Date: 11 Dec 14 - 10:39 PM

"Then time will tell just who fell
And who's been left behind
When you go your way and I go mine"

Subject: RE: Review: New Dylan Album
From: Don Firth
Date: 12 Dec 14 - 12:32 AM

The amazing thing about a poodle wearing a tu-tu, standing on its hind legs, and dancing around is not that it can dance so well, but that it can dance at all!

I shall prepare myself to be either amused or amazed....

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Review: New Dylan Album
From: GUEST,Jerome Clark
Date: 12 Dec 14 - 09:58 AM

There's a reason Sinatra never recorded a Dylan song, and Bennett never has and never will. It's that, given how radically different their styles are (and how incompatible the requirements for performance of same), both understood implicitly that they could not do Dylan plausibly. Too bad that understanding hasn't worked in the reverse direction.

For an idea of what happens when a crooner does Dylan, there's the scene in Andrew Bergman's 1990 comedy The Freshman when Bert Parks warbles "Maggie's Farm." Yes, it's hilarious.

I fear we're facing what may amount to another Dylan Christmas album. Or maybe just a hustle for a quick paycheck, financed by ever-gullible fans, to help Dylan raise money to settle an expensive divorce. Pardon my cynicism. I've been a serious Dylan fan most of my life, but I ceased being a Dylan true believer many grown-up years ago.

Subject: RE: Review: New Dylan Album
From: GUEST,#
Date: 12 Dec 14 - 12:16 PM

Here's one of the tracks.

http://www.bobdylan.com/ca

Subject: RE: Review: New Dylan Album
From: KB in Iowa
Date: 12 Dec 14 - 01:07 PM

I listened to that GUEST,#. If it were something a random dude posted on YouTube I expect it would go mostly unnoticed (and rightly so in my opinion). BD just doesn't have the voice for songs like this.

But it did get me thinking of Tom Waits singing "Young At Heart", which I love.

Subject: RE: Review: New Dylan Album-Shadows in the Night
From: Jason Xion Wang
Date: 12 Dec 14 - 01:43 PM

Hey, I've listened to the sample and it's much better than I had expected. He's doing something he likes to do, and it turns out to be - not bad. So why not be supportive? It doesn't aim for commercial success or critical acclaim; sorta "sing for the song" stuff to me.

I can't stand most of the cover songs Bob Dylan did, but as long as he likes doing things like that... There are exceptions, though, like Tom Paxton's "Annie's Going to Sing Her Song", on which Bob did a nice rendition. But I think he kinda ruined Eric Andersen's "Thirsty Boots". I found his "Complete Basement" tapes really hard to listen to, too. This Frank Sinatra tune he did is much better than most of the cover songs he'd done before.

Subject: RE: Review: New Dylan Album-Shadows in the Night
From: Little Hawk
Date: 12 Dec 14 - 02:12 PM

Hmm. I just listened to that sample (Full Moon and Empty Arms), and it's quite good. As Jason said above, better than I had expected.

The fact is, Bob Dylan has always admired Frank Sinatra's music, he loves the music of that era, and that's probably THE only actual reason he's recording a bunch of Sinatra tunes.

The idea that he "needs the money" is laughable. He'll never want for money at this point.

Bob Dylan does exactly what he wants to do, because he wants to, and because he can.

A lot of people would really like to be in that position, and it pisses them off that he is...and they aren't.

His recent concert in Toronto was great, by the way, again much better than I expected it would be. His music in the past 10 years or so has moved more and more into a sound that in many ways has echoes of music from a very long time ago...the 30s and the 40s...so it's not really all that surprising that he would record some Sinatra tunes.

I never liked Sinatra. Not my cup of tea. But I think Bob will probably do an okay job on this stuff, and I'm sure he had a lot of fun recording it.

Subject: RE: Review: New Dylan Album-Shadows in the Night
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 12 Dec 14 - 03:58 PM

"I never liked Sinatra. Not my cup of tea." If you track down live performances of ballads from about 1943, Frank really was one of the best pop ballad singers at that time. And just singing the songs, not giving them saccharine "character." Other than right around then... Fred Astaire sang "One For My Baby" better than Frank did, and he was a dancer.

Subject: RE: Review: New Dylan Album-Shadows in the Night
From: Little Hawk
Date: 12 Dec 14 - 04:16 PM

Oh, I realize Sinatra was a very good singer. I just wasn't much attracted to the music of that era, that's all. It was before my time and I didn't really relate to it much. Bob is 7 years older than me, and that would make a difference...and I think he's also far better educated about the music of the first half of the 20th century than I am. When you know more about something, you can appreciate it more.

Subject: RE: Review: New Dylan Album-Shadows in the Night
From: pdq
Date: 12 Dec 14 - 04:21 PM

Lots of great material from Jo Stafford on CD right now.

May I recomend "Spotlight on...Jo Stafford".

She actually did a Folk record about 1950, and it is very good.

That record inspired Judy Collins to take up the artform.

Subject: RE: Review: New Dylan Album-Shadows in the Night
From: GUEST,Jerome Clark
Date: 12 Dec 14 - 04:36 PM

Dylan's worth is estimated at $180 million, by the way. He won't be out on a street corner selling pencils anytime soon. Thus, whoever thinks he "needs the money" (those three words are in quotes above, though I can't find who's being quoted) is misguided.

Even so, rich people, even those not in danger of imminent poverty (relatively few), guard their wealth ferociously. Anybody who pays even casual attention -- you just have to scan the news from Wall Street, the corporate realm, politics, and/or show business -- knows that. The story of Dylan's current private issues, including his desire to protect his fortune, is out there if you're interested.

If Dylan were in mid-career, not 73 years old, this would be a matter of relatively little consequence. And maybe, all things considered, it still is. Yet, if you care about such matters, the reality is that time is running down. To quote somebody or other:

Let us not talk falsely now
The hour is getting late.

I don't doubt that Dylan likes Sinatra songs. Doesn't mean he can sing them. I like George Eliot novels. Doesn't mean I can write them.

In the end, of course, Dylan is free to do whatever he chooses, while the rest of us are free to approve or disapprove. As far as that goes, one might even argue that after the magnificent Tempest, best heard as a summing up of a long and historic artistic career, maybe the creative Dylan needs a rest. Maybe, too, the rest of us need a rest from Dylan.

Subject: RE: Review: New Dylan Album-Shadows in the Night
From: Amos
Date: 12 Dec 14 - 04:44 PM

Duquesne Whistle and the Sinatra track are both very good, very different facets of the mysterious Bob Dylan. I like him. He reminds me of my higher self. :D

Subject: RE: Review: New Dylan Album-Shadows in the Night
From: Jack Campin
Date: 12 Dec 14 - 05:26 PM

Let's hear him do a CD of Susan Boyle covers.

Subject: RE: Review: New Dylan Album-Shadows in the Night
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 12 Dec 14 - 05:30 PM

Probably better than Frank Sinatra singing Bob Dylan. But not a record I can imagine listening to much.

I''ve never taken to Frank Sinatra really. The early stuff a lot better than what came later, but that seems to be the way with most singers.

Now it might have been fun to hear the classic Bob ripping into some Sinatra songs, with the sneer and all. But that' song gone.

Subject: RE: Review: New Dylan Album-Shadows in the Night
From: Little Hawk
Date: 12 Dec 14 - 05:50 PM

He has a whole different approach now, not the angry young man anymore, but a grizzled survivor who moves from world-weariness to wry humor to nostalgia and then back to a surprising intensity and bite, depending on the song. He's become an elder statesman of his craft. And yes, the hour is getting late...but not just for him...for most of us here. I keep wondering if he'll outlast me. He might.

Subject: RE: Review: New Dylan Album-Shadows in the Night
From: GUEST,Arkie
Date: 12 Dec 14 - 06:25 PM

Dylan has been surprising people with his choices of music for many years now. Not all of his recordings have appealed to me but on the other hand I own more albums by Dylan than any other artist. And have enjoyed his music, both the new and old, over many decades. Since Sinatra was not a songwriter, I would not call these songs Sinatra songs but rather songs previously sung by Sinatra. I prefer Dylan's version of "Full Moon and Empty Arms' to Sinatra and look forward to more from the new album.

Subject: RE: Review: New Dylan Album-Shadows in the Night
From: GUEST,Scaramouche
Date: 12 Dec 14 - 06:30 PM

What next? "Bob Dylan sings Luciano Pavarotti"?

Scaramouche - (Just call me "Scary" for short).

Subject: RE: Review: New Dylan Album-Shadows in the Night
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Dec 14 - 03:03 AM

GUEST Jerome Clark says;

"Thus, whoever thinks he "needs the money" (those three words are in quotes above, though I can't find who's being quoted) is misguided".

I think it was probably a reference to this post;

"Or maybe just a hustle for a quick paycheck, financed by ever-gullible fans, to help Dylan raise money to settle an expensive divorce. Pardon my cynicism".

by a certain GUEST Jerome Clark.

Just trying to help.

g

Subject: RE: Review: New Dylan Album-Shadows in the Night
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Dec 14 - 03:43 AM

Listened to the track. I don't really like the song tbh. The voice quivers a bit now and again and he could maybe have set the key half a tone down (!) but there are still many of the familiar elements which will give Dylan followers a good feeling.

And it's not a commercial mistake because I assume for him it's neither for commerce nor for advancing his career. It's Dylan doing what he wants to do and sharing it with whomsoever among his public want to share. (But I'm guessing his record company are foreseeing a profit).

I really don't care for the attempted ridicule and disapproval in some of the above comments - if you don't like it, no-one is forcing you etc etc.

g

Subject: RE: Review: New Dylan Album-Shadows in the Night
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Dec 14 - 11:16 AM

Tom Waits singing Young at Heart is not an anomaly. The songs he writes are often in that mold, a fact that most people have missed because he doesn't have the kind of voice that singers of that music usually had. If he did have that kind of voice, the idiots who buy rock music wouldn't listen to him.

Sun Ra pulled a similar stunt. He played straight-up swing jazz most of the time, and played it very well. But the musicians wore colorful costumes that suggested a cross between extra-terrestrial and primitive villager, instead of the suits that swing jazz bands always wore. Sun Ra's fans would have taken the suits as a signal that they shouldn't like his music, and if anyone had told them they were grooving to the kind of band that Bing Crosby sang with they'd have been horrified. To ensure that wouldn't happen, the Arkestra periodically diverged for a short time into random sounds that fit in with their costumes. So young people were able to enjoy the music their parents or grandparents thrived on, but without feeling square.

Dylan doing crooner songs is something else entirely. Not only does his voice lack the finesse, but the songs he wrote are crude in comparison, as are folk songs. But since he's so popular, there's some benefit in his release of an album of Tin Pan Alley songs, just as there would be if Paris Hilton performed Moliere. It would expose contemporary masses to something from the past that they'd otherwise never know about. Of course it won't sound good. The only time Dylan ever sounded good was when he sang Froggie Went a-Courtin'.

Subject: RE: Review: New Dylan Album-Shadows in the Night
From: GUEST,Jerome Clark
Date: 13 Dec 14 - 12:13 PM

Sorry, g, but you're really not being helpful, just sarcastic,. which is another thing entirely. I'll try to resist the temptation to indulge my own sarcasm in what follows.

Let me repeat: I never said that Dylan, quote-unquote, "needs the money," an absurd proposition. Quotation marks get their name because they're supposed to represent somebody's actual words, not another person's made-up version of those words. My point was that Dylan may be trying to "protect his fortune" (actual quote) as wealthy people do when they're going through divorce. I didn't make this up on my own, by the way. It's been reported in the press. There was even an accompanying photo of Dylan's ex-wife to be, accused by Dylan's side of being a dangerous free-spender.

Obviously, Dylan will never "need money" in the way ordinary people understand the concept. In the economic class in which he has resided nearly all of his adult life, fabulously wealthy people fight furiously, using a range of strategies (including, perhaps, the release of a throwaway but potentially big-selling album), to keep their core fortune intact against claims on a portion of it by alienated spouses and their high-priced attorneys.

Frankly, this reading of Dylan's motives, right or wrong, doesn't seem worth getting all that worked up about. The irritation and sarcasm in some of the discussion on this thread are genuinely head-scratching. Is this characteristic of the level of Mudcat discourse?

Subject: RE: Review: New Dylan Album-Shadows in the Night
From: Little Hawk
Date: 13 Dec 14 - 12:48 PM

It's more than merely characteristic of the level of Mudcat discourse, Jerome. It is absolutely typical of it.

You are correct about how zealously rich people guard their fortunes.

I think, though, that Bob's most likely motivation for recording this album is probably just that it's a project he felt like doing, regardless. If his organization wanted to cash in quickly on a new recording, there are about 50,000 hours of unreleased live performance recordings and other stuff like in the vaults from the past 50 years which they could release at any time, with no work at all to be done by Mr Dylan....and that would probably sell a lot more copies than "Shadows in the Night" will.

Still, anything is possible...

Subject: RE: Review: New Dylan Album-Shadows in the Night
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Dec 14 - 01:56 PM

I look forward to Bob's Songs for children album.

Subject: RE: Review: New Dylan Album-Shadows in the Night
From: Thomas Stern
Date: 13 Dec 14 - 02:22 PM

To unidentified Guest waiting for Dylan's songs for children,
How many of us of "that" generation are aware of PHIL OCHS' really FIRST album:
Cameo C-1047 (1963)
Camp Favorites
The Campers
1. The Welcome Song (1:56)
2. We'll Build a Bungalow (2:04)
3. Polly Wolly Doodle (2:08)
4. Gee Mom (2:17)
5. Patsy Ory Ory Aye (2:10)
6. Cannibal King (2:26)

7. Hambone (3:13)
8. Friends Friends Friends (1:51)
9. I've Got Sixpence (2:01)
10. A Thousand Years Ago (2:07)
11. Adam and Eve (2:16)
12. Hand me Down My Walkin' Cane (2:02)

Best wishes, Thomas.

Subject: RE: Review: New Dylan Album-Shadows in the Night
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 13 Dec 14 - 02:26 PM

I'm not a Dylan fan..
I loathed "Blowing in the wind" when I was a teenager back in the punk rock 70s,
[one 'friend' in particular would never stop singing it for his own wanky gratification]
and was equally sick to death of the "Desire" LP being played in entirety
at every stoned student party we went to...

In my late 20s / 30s I did make a grudging effort to explore his 1960s LPs;
discovering a real liking for the Johnny Cash duet LP.


.. Oddly enough, I must be one of the few people who genuinely enjoyed
Dylan's "Masked and Anonymous" (2003) movie.

Yeah.. it was a big surprise to me as well....???

I even bought the DVD and soundtrack CD after I sat through it on TV...

Since then I have far more time & respect for his newest musical escapades...

Subject: RE: Review: New Dylan Album-Shadows in the Night
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 13 Dec 14 - 02:38 PM

I meant to also say, back in the mid 1980s a Dylan obsessed flatmate
insisted I listen to his dodgy sound quality "Live at the Albert Hall" bootleg cassette..

That was the first thing I ever heard of Bob Dylan that truly impressed me...!!!

Subject: RE: Review: New Dylan Album-Shadows in the Night
From: voyager
Date: 13 Dec 14 - 03:05 PM

This thread begs the question......

If Sinatra had recorded his favorite Dylan tunes what might we hear?

Hard Times In New York Town
Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands
Bear Mountain Picnic
Motorpsycho Nightmare

or.....?

voyager

Subject: RE: Review: New Dylan Album-Shadows in the Night
From: pdq
Date: 13 Dec 14 - 03:11 PM

...sick to death of the "Desire" LP being played in entirety at every stoned student party we went to...


My sympathies.

I suspect that album was 'played' for the fine detainees at Guantanamo.

Subject: RE: Review: New Dylan Album-Shadows in the Night
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Dec 14 - 08:27 PM

You don't need to torture people with recorded music when you've got goon squads, waterboarding, police dogs, electric wires, wasp nests, and other sophisticated stuff like that which does the job so much better.

Subject: RE: Review: New Dylan Album-Shadows in the Night
From: GUEST,Zorro
Date: 13 Dec 14 - 08:43 PM

Sorry, Guest, I have to disagree. Playing an album of Bob Dylan's is about the least work-intensive method of torture I can imagine....

-Z-

Subject: RE: Review: New Dylan Album-Shadows in the Night
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 13 Dec 14 - 09:11 PM

Many of us would disagree.

I'm profoundly grateful for what Bob Dylan has given us. I don't have to like all of it, but the occasional dud stuff is outweighed by the stuff I can always listen to with interest and enjoyment.

Subject: RE: Review: New Dylan Album-Shadows in the Night
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Dec 14 - 12:02 PM

Why aren't there frequent arguments like this here about Barry Manilow, Freddy Fender, Wayne Newton, Louis Armstrong, Tiny Tim, Tom Waits (who in his later recordings sounds even "worse" than Dylan at his very worst), Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, and Elwood Scanlon?

Think about it...

Bob Dylan has clearly accomplished something on a pretty unusual level to be getting all this attention from the membership (either positively or negatively).

Subject: RE: Review: New Dylan Album-Shadows in the Night
From: GUEST,#
Date: 14 Dec 14 - 02:14 PM

"Shadows in the Night"

I thought it was Strangers.

Subject: RE: Review: New Dylan Album-Shadows in the Night
From: Jason Xion Wang
Date: 14 Dec 14 - 09:51 PM

Arkie - I think Frank did write "I'm a Fool to Want You". Most of the songs he sang were written by others but in this case not.

Subject: RE: Review: New Dylan Album-Shadows in the Night
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 Dec 14 - 09:26 AM

I wouldn't put Louis Armstrong in among that lot. No one has topped his best stuff.

Subject: RE: Review: New Dylan Album-Shadows in the Night
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 15 Dec 14 - 12:29 PM

"... the classic Bob ripping into...." Nothing of the classic Bob is missing in "Early Roman Kings" imo.

Subject: RE: Review: New Dylan Album-Shadows in the Night
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 15 Dec 14 - 12:43 PM

Jack Wolf and Joel Herron brought their song "I'm A Fool To Want You" to Sinatra and he changed some of the lyrics.