Quote:
Originally Posted by resumesomething
So, I have always appreciated Bob Dylan’s music, but I know I hadn’t listened to everything, so last week I decided that I would listen to all of his studio albums start to finish. I listened to 39 albums in 4 days, a total of 33 hours of music, I believe. This was just his studio stuff, not the Bootlegs series or live albums.
So, the conclusion that I have come to is that the producer really matters. He had two albums produced by Daniel Lanois and they sound fantastic. Dylan may be his own best producer because his recent albums are self-produced and are probably his best. Tempest was my favorite album without question. The two Lanois produced ones, Oh Mercy and Time Out of Mind are the best sounding, in my opinion. Interestingly, Dylan apparently didn’t like the way Time Out of Mind sounded, which might be why he started producing his own albums. Apparently Lanois is very particular in the studio about microphone placement to get certain sounds and mixing (I don’t know anything about audio production, but that sounds like something any producer would do). That info is from Wikipedia, so… 
I know it has been expressed that it would be interesting to hear what Lanois could do with DMB. I feel the same way 100%. How DMB would even record an album in the same city as King Batson is beyond me. |
Really interesting stuff- I've been wanting to do exactly this to dive deeper in Dylan, but the sheer number of albums is so daunting that I haven't been able to yet. It's weird to be such a huge fan of him and still feel like such a dilettante on his body of work- so I need to get on this. Impressive that you got through them in 4 days- I definitely don't think I could listen to challenging Dylan music for an entire work day and grasp it. Out of curiosity since I listened to it recently- how did Infidels stack up in the overall ranking / reaction?
I don't know a ton of Lanois' production work but I like the solo Neil Young album he produced a few years back -- I'd be really interested in what a Dave solo album would sound like with him producing. I'd love to hear Dave do something truly experimental. Off topic but an anecdote on Lanois- I read Anthony Kiedis's memoir recently and he wrote about how they considered having Lanois produce what would become Californication- as they were unsure of sticking with Rick Rubin. Lanois couldn't because he was on call for U2- but he invited the band to record a demo version of the album at his studio. When Lanois heard the tracks they laid down there / how great they were he called them up and said that he changed his mind and wanted to produce their record- but they had already switched to working with Rubin. Californication is a masterpiece imo- but I'd still love to hear how those demos sounded.