Week 7: Fifty Albums That Changed Music

[3-LockBox]

I think its an important album in the context of folk music. I think Dylan's going electric pushed folk into the 20th century (much to the chagrin of some diehard folk fans). I think its important in the context of artistic expression, in which Dylan was brutalized and shunned by his core fans (at first), but received critical praise and a newer fanbase (that bathed) and brought folk into the limelight. Not that I'm suggesting he invented electric folk, but he made it plausible, viable, and bankable.

But here again, is an album by an who's influence and import is relative to one's personal tastes, but not quite as all-encompassing as the writer of the list wants it to be. And if I had to pick a Dylan album as influencial, it'd be Highway 61 Revisited. This is the point where Dylan's style and attitude changed; where instead of philosophizing about life, he started to turn into a jaded cynic. I don't know of anyone else who could write a song like Like A Rolling Stone, with its jaunty, jangly music and judgemental (if not viscious) lyrics.

[nobody]

Great album...although like others have mentioned, I prefer Highway 61 Revisited.

I also question this album inventing modern rock. Seems to me, there was already rock music floating around by 1965. Hell, the Beatles were already in the US. The Stones were getting going. All the surf rock bands were strong. Roy Orbison was making great records.

He combined folk and rock, which the Byrds were doing too.

Still, a great record, but the more I think about it not really inventing anything as is claimed, the more I gotta wonder why not Highway 61.

And, linking Sub Homesick Blues to rap is laughable. Do we wanna just start giving anyone who had a vocal that wasn't exactly sung credit for pitching into rap? Then I guess Shatner's reading of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds is what Kurtis Blow had in mind. Silliness. Raps inspiration for the spoken stuff was coming out of the Jamaican taosters...not anything Bob Dylan did.

[3-LockBox]

And, linking Sub Homesick Blues to rap is laughable. Do we wanna just start giving anyone who had a vocal that wasn't exactly sung credit for pitching into rap? Then I guess Shatner's reading of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds is what Kurtis Blow had in mind. Silliness. Raps inspiration for the spoken stuff was coming out of the Jamaican taosters...not anything Bob Dylan did.

Yeah, that speak-sing style had been around since the days of broadway and I doubt Grandmaster Flash had Rex Harrison or James Cagney in mind as a role model.

[Davey]

Yeah, that speak-sing style had been around since the days of broadway and I doubt Grandmaster Flash had Rex Harrison or James Cagney in mind as a role model.

Not sure the author was really talking about something like a speak-sing vocal style when he said "anticipating the surreal wordplay of rap", but hey, plenty of room for critique in such a silly article. There have been rap versions of Dylan's Sub Home Blues though, and I think Grandmaster Flash even copped a bit of it for one of his hits.