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The Essential Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan

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Album Review

A double-disc set released for the holiday season of 2000, The Essential Bob Dylan is a fine choice for the casual listener that just wants all the songs they know on one collection — it's Dylan's equivalent of Beatles One. Outside of the remastering and the previously non-LP (and very good) "Things Have Changed," there's nothing here for collectors, but, then again, that's not who this was designed for. This collection is for the listener that wants "Blowin' in the Wind," "Like a Rolling Stone," "All Along the Watchtower," "Quinn the Eskimo," "Lay Lady Lay," and "Tangled Up in Blue" in one tidy place. Yes, it's easy to find great songs missing, but for those casual fans, and for those looking for a fairly comprehensive yet concise entry point, The Essential Bob Dylan comes close to living up to its title.

Customer Reviews

The reviews say it all

...especially "YUK" and "he stole it from hendrix." Dylan was never for the average listener. He had no interest in that audience. That he ever reached a mass audience is still a source of amazement, and amusement, to him. When he was "on the scene," the "grownups" at the time said "YUK" and "he can't sing!" and "you call that music???" just as today's television zombie generation does. They can't get it. They never will. And of course, that was the point. It isn't pop music for Jonas Brothers fans. It isn't pop music at all. It's literature, and a life. It's the totality of Dylan's work that amazes those who do get it and dumbfounds those who can't get it. It's a joke on the cubes. If he ever read these reviews (and I guarantee he hasn't) he'd laugh his arse off.

Some of you are idiots

While Jimi Hendrix may have made a better version of all along the watchtower it was Bob Dylan who originally wrote the song. Idiot.

@gom

I just wanted to start out by telling you how awful at life you are. For starters i should have stopped reading your review when you said that you rated artists on personality and attractiveness. Honestly, when your listening to somebodys music you dont need to look at them. This was fine and all but then i read that you gave dylan 1/2 a star for SONG WRITING ABILITY. I could have maybe written your poor taste off to you just being a shallow person but then you had to come out and make yourself look stupid too. Dylan is widely accepted to have been the greatest song writer of all time. So to wrap it up i guess enjoy your shallow, stupid, failure of a life. Also about all along the watchtower, i may be biased from having heard hendrix do it so many times and so well, but i can't listen to dylans version of it. It just sort of grates on the ears. The rest of the music is great though. A must buy for anybody that enjoys music.

Biography

Born: May 24, 1941 in Duluth, MN

Genre: Rock

Years Active: '60s, '70s, '80s, '90s, '00s, '10s

Bob Dylan's influence on popular music is incalculable. As a songwriter, he pioneered several different schools of pop songwriting, from confessional singer/songwriter to winding, hallucinatory, stream-of-consciousness narratives. As a vocalist, he broke down the notion that a singer must have a conventionally good voice in order to perform, thereby redefining the vocalist's role in popular music. As a musician, he sparked several genres of pop music, including electrified folk-rock and country-rock....
Full Bio

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