Bob Dylan: the Collection was the third iTunes complete digital album, following The Complete U2 and The Complete Stevie Wonder. It came with 763 songs and a 100-page digital booklet. The price was only $199.99, although iTunes usually charges $0.99 per song. This package was removed from iTunes in December 2009. Read more on Last.fm.
Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota, United States) is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career spanning more than 60 years.
Dylan started his musical odyssey in 1959 when he began playing in Dinkytown, Minneapolis while attending the University of Minnesota. Shortly after starting to play he changed his stage name to Bob Dylan Read more on Last.fm
Bob Dylan took what Woodie Guthrie did and he made it taste like something familiar. Guthrie was, among other things, a socialist, not too far removed from unadulterated communism. Dylan, a self described student of Guthries style, was less a socialist and more a think tank writer, seeing things as they were and exposing the two opposing viewpoints. What Dylan took from Guthrie was a fearlessness in the execution of his material. With Guthrie, there was no room for irony or even vulnerability. Guthrie was angry at his country, a Dust Bowl baby with a knack for attracting overrated coat tail riders like Pete Seeger, who still, at 91, hasn’t managed to die. Dylan, far from a hanger on, has built his career on an escapism and a mystique that allow his songs to have questionable meaning.
If you cull a greatest hits assortment from Dylan, the subject range begins with protest and Greenwich Village lore and then manages to speak on everything from born again Christianity to The John Birch Society, Hattie Caroles death and, lets not forget, a full album about divorce, the broken heart manifesto Blood On The Tracks. Dylan was never hard wired to turn out like Arlo Guthrie or ever be just another treasure of the Alan Lomax era. Dylan was too interested in turning heads, shaking things up and writing benchmarks punctuated by landmarks every so often. Praise never ended for The Freewheeling Bob Dylan, Another Side Of Bob Dylan is in your collection. Blonde On Blonde is still probably the most interesting double record ever made (The Wall be damned). Blood On The Tracks is the ultimate therapy for a dying love to get some closure.
If you’re me, the first Dylan record you ever bought was 2001’s Love And Theft, which you place in your top ten favorites eternally. The first Dylan I ever heard was Love And Thefts croaky, cigarette stained warble spouting lyrics about the end of the world, loose women, creeks rising and murder, sweet murder. I fell in love with the rawness of the arrangements, the way Dylans death rattle of a voice sounded as prophetic as Johnny Cash did on The Man Comes Around, a damaged noise unadorned by studio tricking, dropping heavy lines on the listener. It made me feel like smart people still made music. There it lays…….I find Dylan to be a spokesman for both the downtrodden and the rich, a master of self deception who’s voice never lies. This is where I resign to let my opinion stand.