Music Review: Bob Dylan - Dylan (3 CD Set); The Other Side Of The Mirror: Bob Dylan Live At The Newport Folk Festival 1963 - 1965 (DVD) - Page 2

Dylan's "middle period" on the second disc mainly covers the years after he first went "electric," up through the commercial peak of the seventies on albums like his masterpiece Blood On The Tracks. This is where you get Dylan's later hits from "Lay Lady Lay" to "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" to "Tangled Up In Blue."

The infamous "born-again" years of albums like Slow Train Coming and Shot Of Love get the same treatment, although the most gospel influenced album of the so-called "Jesus trilogy," Saved, is mysteriously absent from this collection. From one of Dylan's most overlooked albums, Street Legal, we also get one of the most underrated songs of his entire career (at least in my opinion), in the form of "Changing Of The Guard."

Dylan's early years as the great new white hope of the folk music tradition is the focus of disc one on the Dylan set. This of course entails that period when Dylan was the darling of the old guard of the lefty folk generation, before he basically blew that all to smithereens with his electric set at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival (a subject explored in greater detail on the other new Dylan release coming out this month). All of Dylan's early folk gems are here, including the likes of "Masters Of War," "A Hard Rains Gonna Fall," "Blowin In The Wind," and of course, "The Times They Are A Changing."

Disc one closes out as Dylan is shifting gears from folk to rock on his early masterpieces Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde, and his early breakthrough hits like "Positively 4th Street," "Maggies Farm," and the all-time classic "Like A Rolling Stone."

On the three-disc version, Dylan also contains a full color booklet with liner notes written by the respected critic Bill Flanagan. As a career overview, the three disc version of Dylan is a rather quick sumnation of a remarkable career. It misses some spots (Saved is a glaring omission in my own opinion), but for the most part succeeds in its given task of boiling the career of an icon down to its three discs.

For the diehards, its a nice way of narrowing the essential tracks down to a single set. For new fans, its probably as good an introduction as you could ask for. Dylan will be out in stores this Tuesday October 2.

However, it is the other Dylan release coming out later in October that should get hardcore Dylan fans the most excited. Dylan's legendary 1965 performance at the Newport Folk Festival has of course been covered on film before — most notably as a crucial part of the Martin Scorsese Dylan documentary No Direction Home. But this performance has never before been aired in its entirety within the format of a straight concert film.

Article Author: Glen Boyd

You'll find Blogcritics assistant music editor Glen Boyd sharing his Thoughtmares on his personal blogs The World Wide Glen, and The Rockologist. In a previous life, Glen was a music professional and journalist whose work has appeared in The Rocket, SPIN, Pulse!, and The Source. …

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