I recently got The Essential Bob Dylan 2 CD set and I have Vol. 4 The Royal Albert Hall Concert, but I’ve been wondering whether or not to get Dylan’s 3 CD box set Biograph. It’s gotten really good reviews but is it suited more for the Dylan fanatic or is it worth it for the more casual Dylan fan?
I heart Biograph. I’m not a hard-core fan, but I have Biograph, and his two latest CD’s, Time out of Mind and Love and Theft. I was also just given 3 bootleg series discs, but haven’t listened to them yet. I think Biograph is really well put together with something for everyone. WHen I look at the track listings, I think "ooh, that’s my favorite, oh wait, no! That’s my favorite, oh, wait… " In other words, I think you’ll like it.
Get it- this is a great box set. You don’t have to be a great fan to enjoy it.
I completely agree with fizgig and MSU 1978. Biograph is a superb box set (it started the whole box set craze, you know), put together in such a way that it can appeal equally to casual fans and hardcores who own all the other Dylan albums.
I think it depends on how much you like Dylan and how much more you’re planning on buying. I’m a huge Dylan fan, and I almost never listen to Biograph - just about everything on that set is on something else I’ve got too. For the money, I think the 3 disc Bootleg set gives you a whole lot more than Biograph does.
'Course, if you’re not planning on buying much more, Biograph will give you most of what you’d want, and then some.
Biograph is pretty good if you don’t have the CDs already. I like the Bootleg series, but if you are new to Dylan you might want to wait on them. It was nice to get cleaned up copies of some stuff I had on real bootlegs.
small hijack Does anyone know if there is a released version of the Bloomfield-Kooper version of “Crawl Out Your Window?” The one on Biograph is the Band version, as is the one on Masterpieces. I like the Highway 61 band version much better.
The decison is easy: Biograph is the only album (that I know of) that has “Up To Me” on it. A sparse but uptempo folkie thang, with lyrics like:
The only decent thing I did
when I worked as a postal clerk
was to tear your picture down off the wall
by the cage where I used to work.
If you are like me, you will spend way too much money to buy everything by Dylan.
OK, I am joking. It is not too much money.
There is no such thing as not enough Dylan.
Haj
Well, that didn’t make sense.
Let’s try, there is no such thing as too much Dylan.
Haj
digs beat me to it…Up to Me is an outtake from Blood on the Tracks , and it alone is worth the price of the entire box set, IMHO. But then I’m a fanatic. There’s a ton of other great stuff on Biograph as well.
If you have to get only on Dylan box, I’d go for the Bootleg series. You get a different feel for some tunes you already knew and the Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie poem is worth the price by itself.
Slight hijack:
I have “The Essential Bob Dylan” and was a bit disappointed because some of the cuts seem to me to be alternate versions. The lyrics on the “You Ain’t Going Nowhere” cut are definitely not the same as those on the “Greatest Hits Vol 2” version. This is not just “remastering”.
Other cuts have the same lyrics, but the cut has a different sound, again seeming to me to be more than remastering - for example, “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”. Has anyone else noticed this? What have they done to some of my favorite stuff?
I don’t have The Essential Bob Dylan, but I assume that the version of “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” on there is the original version from the Basement Tapes sessions. The version on Greatest Hits Vol. 2, which does indeed have substantially different lyrics, was a remake especially recorded in 1971 for that release.
Plus, you get “Jet Pilot,” which is a terrific little tune.