Bob Dylan Time Out Of Mind 1997

A while back I mentioned Mary Lee Kortes' brilliant live performance of Dylan's Blood On The Tracks. In that post I also included my list of "best" Dylan albums. I got only one comment regarding (mainly) Dylan's Street Legal, an album I am quite fond of, but still one that I didn't deem worthy of the "best of" list. But the whole thing got me going and checking out the many Best of Dylan and Dylan Albums Rated entries on blog and professional publication articles. 

And I began to realize that I maybe never heard Time Out Of Mind more than once, and maybe never. I love Dylan's better work, and as a fan, I bought I don't know how many really crappy Dylan records in the eighties and nineties, only to regret those purchases. I mean, from 1979 (Slow Train Coming, which is pretty good if you don't mind the proselytizing) to 1993 (World Gone Wrong, which could just be called Dylan Gone Wrong) there was a lot of serious dreck. In fact, looking back on his career, he's made more mediocre and worse records than great ones. I know, there's almost always something worth hearing, but if you own all the Dylan albums, you've bought a bunch of terrible records along with the classics.

I went and took Time Out Of Mind out from the library, and by golly, it is indeed a keeper. Even with Daniel Lanois producing (in my view, not a great sign), the record has some of Bob's great songs and performances, and much more than half of it is right there with his best work. I'll let you read everyone else's song by song rehash, but suffice it to say that almost everything is excellent, and everything else is at least solid. I disagree with those who feel that Make You Feel My Love is a lesser track, and even the 16-minute Highlands that ends the album is good Dylan. 

So what do you know, I've got ten now. They are:

Bringing It All Back Home 1965

Highway 61 Revisted 1965

Blonde On Blonde 1966

John Wesley Harding 1967

New Morning 1970

Blood On The Tracks 1975

Desire 1976 

Time Out Of Mind 1997

Love And Theft 2001

Modern Times 2006