What's your top 5 Dylan Songs

Subject: Folklore: Whats yout top 5 Dylan Songsd
From: GUEST,Baz
Date: 27 Jan 12 - 08:21 PM

1   To make you feel my love
2   I'ts all over now baby blue
3   Positively 4th Street
4   Abandoned Love
5   Sarah

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: Acorn4
Date: 28 Jan 12 - 03:25 AM

1. If You See Her, Say Hello
2. Like a Rolling Stone
3. Idiot Wind
4. Not Dark Yet
5. It's Alright Ma

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: David C. Carter
Date: 28 Jan 12 - 12:48 PM

1.Visions of Johanna
2.Not Dark Yet
3.Love Minus Zero
4.Hattie Carrol
5.Tom Thumb's Blues

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: Nick
Date: 28 Jan 12 - 12:58 PM

Love Minus Zero
Positively Fourth Street
Forever Young
Don't Think Twice
My Back Pages

Today - could be different tomorrow

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: paula t
Date: 28 Jan 12 - 01:13 PM

Masters Of War
Hard Rain
It Ain't Me babe
Like a Rolling Stone
Buckets Of Rain

Might change though.

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: catspaw49
Date: 28 Jan 12 - 02:02 PM

According to many folks around the 'Cat, Dylan didn't write any songs. All of his material was either stolen tunes, stolen words, or both. In the very few cases he cannot be pilloried for any of that, the song in question is then either a non-Dylan song where the theft has yet to be located, or a terrible, gawdawful, piece of shit.

Arguing with these folks has the same effect as one might expect from a birther, a truther, a fundamentalist, or some other similar fuckwit.........


Spaw

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 Jan 12 - 07:28 PM

True, Spaw. It's like pounding sand, milking a bull, licking paint off a wall, buying shoes for a snake...useless!

Well, it's really hard to pick just five top Dylan songs, but if I must, just off the top of my head:

Just Like a Woman
Love Minus Zero
Every Grain of Sand
Visions of Johanna
Mr Tambourine Man (one may have heard this one so often from so many quarters that it loses impact...but it's still marvelous)

Dang! AND It's Allright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)

Just couldn't keep it to only 5....

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: Bobert
Date: 28 Jan 12 - 08:01 PM

She Belongs to Me

Bob Dylan's Dream

Lay, Lady, Lay

Chimes of Freedom

Like A Rolling Stone

B~

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Jan 12 - 08:43 AM

I like the one he stole from his friend, Paul Clayton.

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: GUEST,JohnnyBeezer
Date: 29 Jan 12 - 10:00 AM

Tom Thumb Blues
Like a Rolling Stone
All Along The Watchtower
Positively 4th Street
Lay Lady Lay

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: GUEST,Hi Lo
Date: 29 Jan 12 - 10:24 AM

Sad Eyer Lady of The Lowlands

Isis

Black Diamond Bay

Dark Eyes

North Country Blues

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: GUEST,linusredding
Date: 29 Jan 12 - 11:50 AM

Blowin In The Wind

Knocking On Heavens Door

Don't Think Twice, It's Alright

Like A Rolling Stone

Simple Twist Of Fate

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: alanabit
Date: 29 Jan 12 - 01:54 PM

Impossible, of course, but for the time being:

If You See Her Say Hello

Ballad of a Thin Man

It's Alright Ma - I'm Only Bleeding

Mississippi

Not Dark Yet

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: MarkS
Date: 29 Jan 12 - 02:05 PM

It's All Right, Ma I'm Only Bleeding
The Times, They Are A Changing
North Country Blues
All Along the Watchtower
Don't Think Twice

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: Dave Sutherland
Date: 29 Jan 12 - 03:59 PM

1 Lilly, Rosemary and The Jack of Hearts
2 Visions of Johanna
3 Love-Zero/No Limit
4 Just Like Tom Thumbs Blues
5 Changing of the Guard

Number one won't change but I'll probably have four more favourites tomorrow.

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: kendall
Date: 29 Jan 12 - 04:01 PM

He did a good job on Don't think twice, but I like Paul Clayton's song better.

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: deepdoc1
Date: 29 Jan 12 - 04:53 PM

I did a MediaMonkey sort on Dylan and playcount and so far it sez I like Dylan's songs better than I like Dylan. Go figure. Of course I'm going to have a go at the ones listed above, so this may be a one-time list.

Buckets of Rain (Maria Muldaur)
You Ain't Goin' Nowhere (NGDB)
Winterlude (BD)
To Ramona (Sinead Lohan)
Tomorrow is a Long Time (Chris Hillman)

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: Joe_F
Date: 29 Jan 12 - 05:47 PM

Chimes of Freedom
Boots of Spanish Leather
It Ain't Me, Babe

That's all.

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: GUEST,C. Ham
Date: 30 Jan 12 - 03:26 PM

Boots of Spanish Leather

Buckets of Rain

Don't Think Twice

The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest

Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: GUEST,DonMeixner
Date: 30 Jan 12 - 03:27 PM

Not a Dylan fan for a lot of reasons. Mainly because he mumbles worse than Christy Moore.

But I like.

My Back Pages
Just Like A Woman
I Threw It All Away
Gamblin' Willie
Positively 4TH STreet

and that ones that's all allegorical.

Don

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: GUEST,KP
Date: 30 Jan 12 - 05:55 PM

Hattie Carroll
When the Ship Comes In
All along the Watchtower
Tambourine Man
Buckets of Rain

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: Neil D
Date: 30 Jan 12 - 11:04 PM

Tangled Up in Blue
Subterranean Homesick Blues
It's All Right, Ma I'm Only Bleeding
Like a Rolling Stone
Shelter From the Storm

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: GUEST,Martin
Date: 30 Jan 12 - 11:33 PM

Don't think twice its all right
When the ship comes in
Blind Willie McTell
Like a rolling stone
Song to Woody
Masters of war
The house of the rising sun, I know he didn't wrote the song and that the version he recorded he actually stole from Dave Van Ronk, but he sings it just the way it must be sung

many others... one of my favorite artists...

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: PHJim
Date: 30 Jan 12 - 11:41 PM

1. Walkin' Down The Line
2. Don't Think Twice
3. Tomorrow Is A Long Time
4. I Shall Be Released
5. Ballad Of Hollis Brown


Wait...I also love To Make You Feel My Love.

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 01:32 AM

Dylan quickly picked up on Dave Van Ronk's excellent version of "House of the Rising Sun" after seeing Van Ronk play it live a couple of times. I'd have done the same thing, because Van Ronk's version was wonderful! Anybody'd have imitated it. Previous versions of the song, which is a trad song as far as I know, were not nearly as interesting as Van Ronk's new arrangement which Dylan learned and then used on his first album. Van Ronk was planning to record the song shortly himself, but Dylan beat him to it! I don't think there's any law against learning a new arrangement of a trad song by observing someone else play it...we all do things like that...but Van Ronk was understandably miffed over Dylan scooping him on getting that arrangement of the song recorded first. I doubt that Dylan really thought about it or focused on that...he'd just learned the version of the song that he liked the best and he decided to include it with other covers of old songs (mostly old blues songs) on his first album, because it fit in well at the time.

Van Ronk has long since forgiven Bob for that, and speaks very well of him on Scorcese's film biography of Dylan. As for Dylan, he's been very praising and generous toward Van Ronk and most of the other folk veterans of that early Greenwich Village period in his book "Chronicles". If certain people on this forum were as gracious as both Dylan and Van Ronk have been toward the people they shared that early Greenwich Village period with, we'd hear a lot less bitching, accusation, and self-righteous fault-finding on these music threads, wouldn't we?

And wouldn't that be a breath of fresh air...

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: PHJim
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 02:21 AM

Little Hawk, While I love Van Ronk's version of Rising Sun, I don't agree that (some) previous versions were not as interesting. My favourite version is Josh White's. Joan Baez also did a fine version of htis song before Van Ronk or Dylan. Odetta also did a great version.

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: PHJim
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 02:33 AM

Here's another great version by Nina Simone that predates Van Ronk & Dylan: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLh73RPvfgI&feature=fvst

Both Dylan and Van Ronk kept the song from the point of view of a woman forced into a life of prostitution. The Animals, who learned it from Dylan's album, changed it to the john's point of view. Not nearly as tragic.

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: Mr Happy
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 07:50 AM

I don't have a top 5, in fact don't like most BD songs, however here's one I do like:

My Back Pages/u> 1964

Crimson flames tied through my ears
Rollin' high and mighty traps
Pounced with fire on flaming roads
Using ideas as my maps
"We'll meet on edges, soon," said I
Proud 'neath heated brow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I'm younger than that now.

Half-cracked prejudice leaped forth
"Rip down all hate," I screamed
Lies that life is black and white
Spoke from my skull, I dreamed
Romantic facts of musketeers
Foundationed deep, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I'm younger than that now.

Girls' faces formed the forward path
From phony jealousy
To memorizing politics
Of ancient history
Flung down by corpse evangelists
Unthought of, thought, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I'm younger than that now.

A self-ordained professor's tongue
Too serious to fool
Spouted out that liberty
Is just equality in school
"Equality," I spoke the word
As if a wedding vow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I'm younger than that now.

In a soldier's stance, I aimed my hand
At the mongrel dogs who teach
Fearing not that I'd become my enemy
In the instant that I preach
My existence led by confusion boats
Mutiny from stern to bow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I'm younger than that now.

Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats
Too noble to neglect
Deceived me into thinking
I had something to protect
Good and bad, I define these terms
Quite clear, no doubt, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I'm younger than that now.

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: Mr Happy
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 07:51 AM

ooh, shouldn't be all underlined!

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 10:50 AM

Good points, PHJim! I'm familiar with the Baez version of House of the Rising Sun, and it's excellent. I was not aware that it had predated the Dylan recording, but I guess it did, by golly. In that case, shall we accuse Van Ronk AND Dylan of ripping off Joan Baez? (grin) I don't think so. I don't think anyone ripped off anyone in this case, truth be told. They just all played the song, that's all.

I agree that the Animals reduced the impact of the lyric by turning the protagonist into a John...bad move! But their musical treatment of the song was probably the most effective version ever.

I love both Baez and Dylan's versions of that song, and they both kept the protagonist as a female.

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: PHJim
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 02:02 PM

Dave Van Ronk changed the chord progression and this is the progression that Dylan and The Animals copied. Baez and Josh White used a different chord progression.

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: pdq
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 02:12 PM

I undersand that Bob Dylan decided to repay the debt (stealing "House...") to Van Ronk by writing a new song for him. That was "All Over You", a raunchy number that fits Van Ronk perfectly. Van Ronk recorded it backed by a brass-based Jazz band.

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 03:10 PM

Yeah, I believe that's right, pdq. (Can you "steal" an arrangement of a trad song?) Bob has written quite a few songs that were deliberately created by him for other performers to sing, and in some cases he has himself never publicly performed those songs...or has done so very rarely. An example of that is "Seven Days", which I think was written for Ron Wood. Some others that Baez picked up and Bob hardly ever sang were "Love Is Just a Four Letter Word" and "Farewell Angelina".

PHJim - I don't remember exactly what chord progression Baez used. All I remember is, it sounded great. She always has had impeccable taste in music (and probably in other things too).

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: pdq
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 03:56 PM

Jerry Garcia doing "When I Paint My Masterpiece"

Chris Hillman doing "Tomorrow Is Such A Long Time"

Himself doing "Positively 4th Street"

John Duffy singing "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue"

Jimi doing "All Along the Watchtower"

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: pdq
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 04:00 PM

Add (or subtract) as needed...

Johnny Cash singing "Forever Young"

The original Byrds version of "You Ain't Going Nowhere"

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 04:27 PM

My absolute favorite version of "Forever Young" is by The Starbugs. And my favorite version of "Times They Are A-changin'" is by them too.

Look them up on Youtube by looking for:

Starbugs + Dylan

I kid you not.

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: pdq
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 04:43 PM

Note that most people are naming songs written from the record Blood On the Tracks and before.

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 05:52 PM

Yeah? Well, I'll name 10 great songs from after Blood On The Tracks:

Blind Willie McTell
Changing of the Guards
Jokerman
Every Grain of Sand
Most of the Time
Ring Them Bells
Dark Eyes
Brownsville Girl
One More Cup of Coffee
Not Dark Yet

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 06:48 PM

mostly I don't know what songs he has written but I would say\
Lay lady lay
hour the ship comes in
tomorrow long time
don't think twice
times are a changing

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: Gorgeous Gary
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 09:02 PM

I don't know if I have 5 favorites, but I HAVE been meaning to learn "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again".

The reason is sort of amusing - I was in the middle of a business trip and relaxing in my hotel room, catching up on a friend's series of short fantasy/horror stories. At the same time, I was streaming PASTE Radio over Live365.com. I got sleepy (not because the stories were boring) so I lay down for a nap, leaving the Live365 player on.

About 45 minutes later, I woke up in the middle of Cat Power's cover of "Stuck Inside of Mobile..." And the point where I woke up just happened to mesh with elements of my friend's stories (which featured an otherwordly diner). And it kinda blew my sleepy mind...so I've wanted to learn the song ever since.

Actually, I'm going to see that friend in July. Gives me a good excuse...

-- Gary

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: Bobert
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 09:53 PM

Just find your key and work around it... That's the beauty of covering... There are covers and then there are folks who take the songs new places...

Have fun figuring it all out...

B~

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: Bill D
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 11:31 AM

**grump** see what you started?

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 12:07 PM

Like waking a sleeping Dachshund, Bill? ;-)

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: number 6
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 03:19 PM

I like the one he stole from George Formby

biLL

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: PHJim
Date: 02 Feb 12 - 12:44 AM

I think Tomorrow Is A Long Time was written for Ian & Sylvia.

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: GUEST,albert
Date: 02 Feb 12 - 05:58 PM

Girl From The North Country
Hard Rain 's a gonna fall
Masters of War
Love Minus Zero No Limit
Song For Woody

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: GUEST
Date: 03 Feb 12 - 07:58 AM

My favourite is "Red River Shore"
from Bob Dylan's 'Tell Tale Signs' collection.

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: Little Hawk
Date: 03 Feb 12 - 11:24 AM

This thread should have been titled "Your 25 Favorite Dylan Songs"... ;-)

Subject: RE: What's your top 5 Dylan Songs
From: topical tom
Date: 03 Feb 12 - 12:34 PM

1. The Times They Are A-changin'

2. Blowin' in the Wind

3.Don't Think Twice, It's All Right

4.Tambourine Man

5.Song for Woody