The poet of his times...
This recording is part of my family history. While my father was soldier in the Vietnam War, my mother sent him a copy of this album. It's taken me 40 years to give this piece of material a serious listening and it is quite outstanding. Bob Dylan is a folk singer in the tradition of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger but transcends that: not just because he embraced elements of rock-n-roll, but rather because he is the poet of his times and his country. He understands America in a way that Walt Whitman and Emerson once did.

His lyrics are cryptic, yet descriptive of certain moods and feelings. Dylan says what he feels without exactly saying so. It is the essence of poetry. There is also a great deal of humor in his words, as well as, a certain pathos. The more I listen to this album, the more it grows on me.

Mr. Dylan Struts His Stuff
It seems hard to believe now both as to the performer as well as to what was being attempted that anyone would take umbrage at a performer using an electric guitar to tell a folk story (or any story for that matter). It is not necessary to go into all the details of what or what did not happen with Pete Seeger at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 to know that one should be glad, glad as hell, that Bob Dylan continued to listen to his own drummer and carry on a career based on electronic music.

Others have, endlessly, gone on about Bob Dylan's role as the voice of his generation (and mine), his lyrics and what they do or do not mean and his place in the rock or folk pantheons, or both. I just want to mention a couple of points here. The selections here present quite a mix although the perennial themes of lost love, longing and perfidiousness get their full Dylan workout. I would start with Visions of Johanna that is being covered by more artists (the most recent version that I have heard being from Chris Smithers on his Leave the Light On album)) which in several minutes not only goes through the woes of the modern love dilemma but is real stream of consciousness song with some interesting use of language that Dylan had gotten away from for a while prior to the release of this album. Of course Just Like A Woman is something of an anthem for the Generation of '68 (although she is no longer breaking like a little girl). As is in very different and funky way Rainy Day Woman. Nor should one exclude the playfulness of Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat. But here is the real question for Dylan aficionados- who was Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands written for- really? If you know the purpose of the question (much less the answer) you qualify for the title of aficionado. Okay.

Super-natural Blonde
Far and away his best.. although some of its enormity may owe to having been released as a 2-fer. Yet how else could such a seminal juicy classic like "Sad Eyed Lady" have helped forge the way for side-long cuts 40 years ago? (a virtual godsend to us late night FM jocks..) Definitely one of the ten albums you'd be sure to include in that proverbial desert island scenario, it uses nearly every structural blues idiom as a musical vehicle for some of the hippest most demonstrative poetic imagery rock & roll has ever known. "Jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule", so simply drawn, and yet how magically it embeds itself in the essential mindscape. Clearly this is a golden example of why he's him and we're not.. dig it for what it is or don't say he never warned us.. ~LD

Good
It is that kind of cd which values the price based in a single song.

In its own world
Bob Dylan has created enough classic albums that any debate over "the best one" is likely to be an exercise in futility. But as far as creating its own sonic universe, no other Dylan album comes close to Blonde on Blonde.

There's no unifying theme to the lyrics. Dylan's imagination runs free. The musical styles on this album run the gamut from blues, to pop songs, to good old folk-rock. And the mood ranges from blustery, to whimsical, to reflective, to melancholy. Yet despite this wild eclecticism, every second of music on this album seems to flow from the same source.

It's pointless to discuss the songs individually. Most people have heard "Rainy Day Women" and "Just Like a Woman", but nearly all of the tunes are masterpieces even if they don't seem like it at first. "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" is a masterpiece among masterpieces, a perfect finale to an album, one of Dylan's most majestic and moving compositions.

You can put this disc in your player, dim the lights and during the span of 70 minutes Dylan and his fellow musicians take you on a journey through this universe. And with each additional journey, you find another amazing spot in that universe that you never noticed before.

[This review is based on the original CD release, which has an identical tracklist to this remaster.]