I'm not sure why I write reviews about albums this old, but my cousins' kids actually still listen to this stuff (and I thought I was late on the scene 25 years ago) so maybe it IS still relevent. And this disc warrants all that can be said about it. It took me a long time to "get" Dylan in college, but somehow... Anyway, this is my personal favorite, and has been for decades. Visions of Johanna alone is worth the price of the disc, but don't go the iTunes route, buying by the song. This collection has to be listened to as a set to be fully appreciated. If I had to rate all of Dylan's music, I'd put this 1st, Hwy 61 2nd, Bringing It All Back Home 3rd, and Blood On The Tracks 4th. Obviously I liked it whe he "went electric". Like the Stones, Dylan went though a period when it all "clicked" and this album was right there in the middle of it.

Also, if you like great poets/story tellers, try Richard Shindell (folk), the late Dave Carter w/Tracy Grammer (country/bluegrass), and, of course, Tom Waits - he'll take as long to "grow" on you as Dylan did and will be just as worth while.

Far and away his best.. although some of its enormity may to having been released as a 2-fer. Yet how else could a seminal juicy classic like "Sad Eyed Lady" have helped baize a trail for side-long cuts some 40 years ago? (a virtual godsend to us late night FM jocks..) Definitely one of the ten albums you'd be sure to take along 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 yet so magically it embeds itself in the mindscape. This is why he's him and we're not.. dig it for what it is or don't say he never warned us.. ~LD