SACD / DSD

Bob Dylan with The Band – Planet Waves (1974) [MFSL 2016]
PS3 Rip | SACD ISO | DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 42:42 minutes | Scans included | 1,26 GB
or FLAC(converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | Full Scans included | 868 MB
Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab # UDSACD 2153

Reteaming with the Band, Bob Dylan winds up with an album that recalls New Morning more than The Basement Tapes, since Planet Waves is given to a relaxed intimate tone – all the more appropriate for a collection of modest songs about domestic life. As such, it may seem a little anticlimactic since it has none of the wildness of the best Dylan and Band music of the ’60s – just an approximation of the homespun rusticness. Considering that the record was knocked out in the course of three days, its unassuming nature shouldn’t be a surprise, and sometimes it’s as much a flaw as a virtue, since there are several cuts that float into the ether. Still, it is a virtue in places, as there are moments – “On a Night Like This,” “Something There Is About You,” the lovely “Forever Young” – where it just gels, almost making the diffuse nature of the rest of the record acceptable.

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Bob Dylan – The Times They Are A-Changin’ (1964) [MFSL 2017] {MONO}
PS3 Rip | SACD ISO | DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 45:38 minutes | Scans included | 1,86 GB
or FLAC(converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | Full Scans included | 934 MB
MONO / Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab # UDSACD 2179

If The Times They Are a-Changin’ isn’t a marked step forward from The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, even if it is his first collection of all originals, it’s nevertheless a fine collection all the same. It isn’t as rich as Freewheelin’, and Dylan has tempered his sense of humor considerably, choosing to concentrate on social protests in the style of “Blowin’ in the Wind.” With the title track, he wrote an anthem that nearly equaled that song, and “With God on Our Side” and “Only a Pawn in Their Game” are nearly as good, while “Ballad of Hollis Brown” and “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” are remarkably skilled re-castings of contemporary tales of injustice. His absurdity is missed, but he makes up for it with the wonderful “One Too Many Mornings” and “Boots of Spanish Leather,” two lovely classics. If there are a couple of songs that don’t achieve the level of the aforementioned songs, that speaks more to the quality of those songs than the weakness of the remainder of the record. And that’s also true of the album itself – yes, it pales next to its predecessor, but it’s terrific by any other standard.

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Bob Dylan – The Times They Are A-Changin’ (1964) [MFSL 2015]
PS3 Rip | SACD ISO | DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 45:10 minutes | Scans included | 1,85 GB
or FLAC(converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | Full Scans included | 885 MB
Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab # UDSACD 2123

If The Times They Are a-Changin’ isn’t a marked step forward from The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, even if it is his first collection of all originals, it’s nevertheless a fine collection all the same. It isn’t as rich as Freewheelin’, and Dylan has tempered his sense of humor considerably, choosing to concentrate on social protests in the style of “Blowin’ in the Wind.” With the title track, he wrote an anthem that nearly equaled that song, and “With God on Our Side” and “Only a Pawn in Their Game” are nearly as good, while “Ballad of Hollis Brown” and “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” are remarkably skilled re-castings of contemporary tales of injustice. His absurdity is missed, but he makes up for it with the wonderful “One Too Many Mornings” and “Boots of Spanish Leather,” two lovely classics. If there are a couple of songs that don’t achieve the level of the aforementioned songs, that speaks more to the quality of those songs than the weakness of the remainder of the record. And that’s also true of the album itself — yes, it pales next to its predecessor, but it’s terrific by any other standard.

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Bob Dylan – The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963) {MONO} [MFSL 2017]
PS3 Rip | SACD ISO | DSD64 2.0 Mono > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 49:39 minutes | Scans included | 2,04 GB
or FLAC 2.0 Mono (converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/96 kHz | Full Scans included | 1,09 GB
MONO | Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab # UDSACD 2178 Monoural

It’s hard to overestimate the importance of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, the record that firmly established Dylan as an unparalleled songwriter, one of considerable skill, imagination, and vision. At the time, folk had been quite popular on college campuses and bohemian circles, making headway onto the pop charts in diluted form, and while there certainly were a number of gifted songwriters, nobody had transcended the scene as Dylan did with this record. There are a couple (very good) covers, with “Corrina Corrina” and “Honey Just Allow Me One More Chance,” but they pale with the originals here. At the time, the social protests received the most attention, and deservedly so, since “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Masters of War,” and “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” weren’t just specific in their targets; they were gracefully executed and even melodic. Although they’ve proven resilient throughout the years, if that’s all Freewheelin’ had to offer, it wouldn’t have had its seismic impact, but this also revealed a songwriter who could turn out whimsy (“Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right”), gorgeous love songs (“Girl From the North Country”), and cheerfully absurdist humor (“Bob Dylan’s Blues,” “Bob Dylan’s Dream”) with equal skill. This is rich, imaginative music, capturing the sound and spirit of America as much as that of Louis Armstrong, Hank Williams, or Elvis Presley. Dylan, in many ways, recorded music that equaled this, but he never topped it.

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Bob Dylan – The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963) [MFSL 2012]
PS3 Rip | SACD ISO | DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | Scans included | 1,53 GB (2,02 GB)
or SACD-ISO PS3 Rip to FLAC 2.0 | 24 bit / 88,2 kHz | 50:23 min | Scans included | 1,02 GB
Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab # UDSACD 2081

It’s hard to overestimate the importance of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, the record that firmly established Dylan as an unparalleled songwriter, one of considerable skill, imagination, and vision. At the time, folk had been quite popular on college campuses and bohemian circles, making headway onto the pop charts in diluted form, and while there certainly were a number of gifted songwriters, nobody had transcended the scene as Dylan did with this record. There are a couple (very good) covers, with “Corrina Corrina” and “Honey Just Allow Me One More Chance,” but they pale with the originals here. At the time, the social protests received the most attention, and deservedly so, since “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Masters of War,” and “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” weren’t just specific in their targets; they were gracefully executed and even melodic. Although they’ve proven resilient throughout the years, if that’s all Freewheelin’ had to offer, it wouldn’t have had its seismic impact, but this also revealed a songwriter who could turn out whimsy (“Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right”), gorgeous love songs (“Girl From the North Country”), and cheerfully absurdist humor (“Bob Dylan’s Blues,” “Bob Dylan’s Dream”) with equal skill. This is rich, imaginative music, capturing the sound and spirit of America as much as that of Louis Armstrong, Hank Williams, or Elvis Presley. Dylan, in many ways, recorded music that equaled this, but he never topped it.

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Bob Dylan & The Band – Before The Flood (1974) [MFSL 2015]
PS3 Rip | 2x SACD ISO | DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 93:49 minutes | Scans included | 3,77 GB
or FLAC(converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | Full Scans included | 1,72 GB
Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab # UDSACD 2-2128

Bob Dylan and the Band both needed the celebrated reunion tour of 1974, since Dylan’s fortunes had been floundering since Self Portrait and the Band stumbled with 1971’s Cahoots. The tour, with its attendant publicity, definitely returned both artists to center stage, and it definitely succeeded, breaking box office records and earning great reviews. Before the Flood, a double-album souvenir of the tour, suggests that these were generally dynamic shows, but not because they were reveling in the past, but because Dylan was fighting the nostalgia of his audience — nostalgia, it must be noted, that was promoted as the very reason behind these shows. Yet that’s what gives this music such kick — Dylan reworks, rearranges, reinterprets these songs in ways that are still disarming, years after its initial release. He could only have performed interpretations this radical with a group as sympathetic, knowing of his traits as the band, whose own recordings here are respites from the storm. And this is a storm — the sound of a great rocker, surprising his band and audience by tearing through his greatest songs in a manner that might not be comforting, but it guarantees it to be one of the best live albums of its time. Ever, maybe.

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