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Day Three Hundred Five

Bob Dylan Turned 70 today. My relationship with Dylan has always been an odd one. My first exposure to his music was thanks to an LP my folks had of his greatest hits. Eventually, I wound up with that same recording, and Freewheelin' on CD, and from there it's been a bit of a hodgepodge. I've got Blood On The Tracks, Highway 61, Bringing It All Back Home, and Blonde On Blonde. I have his MTV Unplugged set, and his set with the Band. There are probably one or two others that I've got lying around as well.

That said, I know I'm still missing a lot of his music. Knowing that I really didn't have anything to speak of from his later period (I had unintentionally stopped with Blood On The Tracks), I picked up Time Out Of Mind tonight, along with the latest issue of Rolling Stone that has Bob on the cover and ranks (or claims to rank) his "70 Greatest Songs."

I'll admit that I prefer Dylan when his voice is the clearest. While I may not own any later stuff, I've heard a lot of it. I think the man is a poet, moreso than a singer, and a brilliant one at that, and someday I would absolutely love to own all of his Bootleg Series albums. He's a legend, and a lyrical genius who changed the game forever at Newport in '65, and in all reality earlier than that. Watched him on the Grammys this year, though, and was saddened to see how far gone his voice is. College classes will be studying his lyrics soon, if they aren't doing so already... As he told John Lennon in 1965, "it's all about the words, man."

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