Pick One

[Guest Tzar Lysergic]

Blonde on Blonde or Highway 61 Revisited.

 

 

[Guest Tzar Lysergic]

Choose one and only one thing. No ties, no back and forth. Pick one, and say why.

[Kinetic 0]

Blonde on Blonde. The combination of guitar, organ, and harmonica on that album produces probably my favorite overall sound on any album ever. Dylan was at his peak as a songwriter and lyricist as well. It's still fascinating to listen to even after countless plays.

[Copper Feel 0]

Highway 61 Revisited. Dylan was always a great lyricist, but I don't think that the musical element of his work was ever quite as fully realised as it was on this album. The production is clear and well suited, there are no mediocre songs (unlike "Rainy Day Woman # 12 & 35", "Obviously 5 Believers"and "Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat") and the album just has a better sound for me.

 

They're two of my three favourite albums of his anyway, along with Bringing It All Back Home.

[godthedog 0]

'blonde on blonde'. just has an awesome mercurial energy to it that isn't quite there on 'highway 61'. it's like dylan managed to take the intensity on the recording of "like a rolling stone" and stretch it across 70+ minutes. even the tracks that aren't so high-profile like "pledging my time" and "one of us must know (sooner or later)" have this perfect urgency to them, like dylan HAS to get these songs out before he explodes. it's partly in the vocals and partly in the looseness of the band, i think. 'highway 61' always dragged a little to me.

[Kinetic 0]

Is this idea here that other posters will subsequently come up with other "a or b" ideas, or are we just talking about these two albums?

[godthedog 0]

'the bends' or 'ok computer'.

[Guest Tzar Lysergic]

Yes, Kinetic!

 

The Bends, and not close.

 

The album has teeth to it. I'm not exactly well-versed in Radiohead, but OK Computer just seems like it's aiming for some kind of vague feeling that I don't possess. Its best facet is the production, I think, whereas the individual songs on The Bends are superb. The first four tracks are the band's best moments one after another, and "Street Spirit" is the perfect closer. I'll take those five tracks over any other collective five Radiohead songs. Not to say it's soft in the middle, but The Bends has a very difinitive beginning, middle, and end. That strikes me as the fruits of a more focused band with more to lose, in a way.

[Annabelle 0]

lets roll up our sleeves and have a heart discussion about bob dylan. count me in!

 

alright

 

highway 61 is straight bad ass. dylan's venemous search for redemption is the heart of this album. i don't think that too many people in his life where free from bob's scorn. i'm sure he had multiple people in mind for like a rolling stone and ballad of a thin man. approximately queen jame i assume is about joan baez. then, we have the boxcar punk rock of tombstone blues. musically, it is more rootsy and raw than blonde on blonde. this was his most experimental album at its time, and the results are a lot more tangible. the songs are rougher yet for some reason, easier on the pallett. it is meaner yet more people are attracted to it. this was dylan at his most self-aware.

 

blonde on blonde, i assume, is the opposite from highway 61 because this is the beginning of dylan being totally detached from his audience and music. it is probably his best album because of it. he had yet reach the self-indulgance of nasville skyline and especially self-portrait. there was still music here that meant something to his original fans, unlike the aforemtnioned two. anyway, to the music - it is dylan at his best musically, lyrically, sonically, heck, in pretty much every way possible he was making as perfect sounding of an album as possible. it is in one second silly, next elegent. slowly he the songs take their shape as these baroque visual pieces of work. i can place myself into the song as i hear them. sad eyed lady of the lowlands is like the culmination of the grandiouse epic he had been building up towards since the another side album. it almost cooks over to the point that it explodes. dylan never did anything like that again. it almost represents the end of the great dylan era unmatched by any artist. he almost strips all of the bass out of the production, making the music trebly in a way that has never been done before. it gives the instruments a totally unique sound that is unmatched by anyone. its that unmistakable yet unexplainable elements that makes a london calling, purple rain, or kind of blue. its like when someone asks why this album is so great and all you can say is "it just is". can't you hear it?!?

[Guest Tzar Lysergic]

Ballad of a Thin Man is my favorite Dylan tune. That song is a bad trip. A confused and lonely hallucination in plain english. I can't think of anyone else who has done that successfully.

 

It's great when Bob trips verbal. What's that one on Bringing It All Back Home? 115th Dream? Totally different side of the same fence.

[Kinetic 0]

On The Bends vs. OK Computer: I'd take the latter. As with Edwin, that album was really important for me as a bridge from Gwar and Marilyn Manson to all of the snobbish douchebaggery I've been engaged in since.

[Guest Tzar Lysergic]

David Bowie or John Lennon?

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

Bowie, though I feel somewhat unqualified to comment. I've heard pretty much the whole Bowie catalog through Scary Monsters, and I've never given solo Lennon outside of "Oh Yoko" much attention. I probably take too much away from Lennon because although he was often the driving force, the Beatles were still a group and a lot of those "Lennon/McCartneys" had a fair share of McCartney to them. Still, I think it'd be hard to top Bowie for me, considering that

 

-I like Hunky Dory, Ziggy Stardust, and Low so much that I can't even really separate them, and insist on putting them all next to each other whenever I make a "Top xx Albums of xx" list.

 

-His string of amazing pop moments in the early 80s ("Under Pressure" and "Modern Love" in particular) is so, so good.

 

-I can listen to "Station to Station," "Subterraneans," and the song from Labyrinth, and feel like I'm listening to a different guy every time. The "musical chameleon" thing is the one of the most overused descriptions in the history of rock journalism, but he really did a whole lot of awesome stuff.

[Kinetic 0]

Yikes. That's tough. I'd have to say John Lennon because of the Beatles. As much as I love that stretch of Bowie albums from Hunky Dory through Scary Monsters, the Beatles from Rubber Soul through Abbey Road are untouchable. And yet Lennon's solo career can't be characterized as anything other than a major disappointment. Hmm. Difficult choice.

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

Yeah. If you expanded it to Bowie v. Beatles, I'd have to go Beatles, but I think he beats any of them on their own.

[Kinetic 0]

Still, based on Lennon's contributions to the Beatles and the one good solo album he released (plus scattered good songs elsewhere), I'd have to give him the nod. He also produced Harry Nilsson's godawful horseshit abortion of an album Pussy Cats, and co-wrote the Bowie tune "Fame."

[Copper Feel 0]

David Bowie. I was always far more of a McCartney fan than a Lennon one anyway, but I would probably take David's discography over that of the Beatles themselves. I think that you could put Hunky Dory, Station to Station and Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) up against any three Beatles albums in terms of quality, and the sheer range of the Bowie records would be far greater as well.

[Annabelle 0]

i'd taken lennon over bowie.

 

lennon was horrible at times. but even just little nuggets like woman is the nigger of the world are so much more powerful and encompassing than anything bowie could do. i never cares much for bowie's berlin stuff. i love the stardust era but none of lyrically or conceptually diverse to even compare to what lenon was doing on the plastic ono band or imagine. i don't think its close, really. lennon did get derailed in the mid 70's from the excesses of time time, but who didn't? lennon retired in 75 while bowie plowed on.

[Kinetic 0]

However, Lennon did reemerge in 1980 to release the largely worthless Double Fantasy shortly before getting capped by Holden Caulfield. On a mostly unrelated note, if anyone ever gets the chance to read the interviews Lennon gave with *I think* Rolling Stone right before he died wherein he discusses basically every Beatles song, I would suggest it. Hilarious and fascinating.

[Annabelle 0]

just like starting over makes up for that crap filled album. well, almost.

[Kinetic 0]

The Kinks or The Who?

[Copper Feel 0]

The Who. They appeal to me less and less as each year passes, but even so, I still prefer them to the Kinks on account of the fact that they have some excellent singles. I despise everything that I have heard by the Kinks. It may just be that their singles all appear to be paper thin-exercises in quirky pop, but it's also possible that they're not compatible with my taste in music.

 

Miles Davis or John Coltrane?

[Guest Bullshiterica]

David Bowie or John Lennon?

David Bowie, and it's not even close. Lennon the solo artist means nothing to me.

 

Miles Davis or John Coltrane?

Miles. Coltrane is the superior instrumentalist, insofar as we can measure proficiency across separate instruments, but Miles was the more groundbreaking musician.

 

Frank Zappa/Lou Reed?

[Kinetic 0]

"Paper-thin exercises in quirky pop"? You're off your rocker, limey. The Kinks are one of the five great singles bands ever, which is to say nothing of their handful of excellent late 60s albums.

[Copper Feel 0]

Lou Reed was a talented wordsmith, but I don't think that he was anywhere near being as good of a musician as Zappa was. Between his abilities as a composer, producer and guitarist I would easily take Zappa over Reed.

[PUT THAT DICK IN MY MOUTH! 0]

Frank Zappa/Lou Reed?

 

Reed, easily. I've tried and tried and tried to get into Zappa, but aside from a few scattered moments ("Trouble Every Day," a handful of songs from Sheik Yerbouti) it's just never clicked for me. Reed, on the other hand, is responsible for oodles of stuff that I absolutely love.

[Kinetic 0]

Y'know, that David Bowie/John Lennon comparison really doesn't work if we're judging it based only on their solo careers because Lennon's most acclaimed work was not done as a solo artist. A more apt comparison would be between Lennon's work with the Beatles and Bowie's solo material OR Lennon's solo work and Bowie's contributions to Tin Machine.

 

Anyway, pick one Traveling Wilbury. You can only have one.

[King Kamala 0]

Though I have a spot in my heart for all of them (Even Jeff Lynne!). The answer is obviously Dylan. George Harrison is a one album wonder, Tom Petty is more of a singles artist, don't know enough about Orbinson, and ELO has had more than its fair share of tripe. Dylan has at least four undisputed classic albums. I'm not sure if any of the other members have two.

 

Or are we talking just about their work with The Wilburys?

[Red Baron 0]

Nevermind vs In Utero.

[godthedog 0]

on those i'm qualified to compare:

 

lennon over bowie. his peaks are higher.

 

dylan over the rest of the wilburys, for reasons already stated (as much as i love george harrison).

 

'in utero' waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay over 'nevermind'. the overall sound is much more interesting and textured, and the songs seem like they're coming from a more sincere place (even if the hooks don't always work).