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And finally, especially for Harbi, her favorite DDLR song, the one she mentioned in her earlier post in this thread:

Just what I needed right now, thanks FL, greatly appreciated.

Oh, you're very welcome, Harbi. And there's more to come later this week.

Man, that brings me back... I enjoyed those songs, but they didn't resonate with me as much as some of the more downbeat stuff; I went from classic stuff like Hendrix and the Kinks to Genesis "Man on the Corner," Dire Straits "Brothers in Arms" ... then I discovered The Cure (later than most) and by the time bands like Nirvana and L7 hit, I was just reveling in angstville...

When did you discover the Cure, Drake? As it happens, I was kind of a latecomer myself, jumping on board circa 1987 after hearing "Why Can't I Be You?" on a various-artists sampler cassette. That's why even though namedropping the original great Cure album trilogy (17 Seconds, Faith, Pornography) is trendier, it actually takes a backseat in my own pantheon to what I consider the second great Cure album trilogy (Head on the Door, Kiss Me x3, Disintegration.)

(Yes, I know, I know, "Three Imaginary Boys" before Trilogy 1 and "The Top" before Trilogy 2 -- the former, not bad, and a promising debut, but very much a tentative collection; the latter, IMHO unlistenable. I do love the transitional singles and B-sides collected on the Japanese Whispers EP, though.)

Ha -you shame me FL - while I was aware of them, I didn't really get into them until "Wish." That tour was my first concert ever (Hartford, CT) and I did gain a greater appreciation of their previous work afterwards.

One year later, I saw The Sundays (also in Hartford - Toad's Place) and it remains one of the best live shows I've ever experienced (and there have been *many* since) due totally to Harriet Wheeler's amazing voice.

Drake, OMG -- *j'adore* The Sundays, especially their first album, "Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic"!! Agreed 100% on Harriet Wheeler's voice.

My favorite Sundays song of them all:

Introducing a new recurring feature in this thread:

CRITICS' FAVORITES THAT I ACTUALLY LIKE:

BOB DYLAN (Born 1941) PART 1

To start with, I firmly believe there is a *lot more* to the former Robert Allen Zimmerman than a handful of overplayed, over-familiar 1960s anthems and That Kinda Funny Singing Voice.

But I also must stress that I was not an instant convert. Like so many people born after 1965 (and even some people of Dylan's own generation), I laughed at That Voice during my ignorant youth, until my father (with whom music was the first thing that brought us back together after the difficult years between when I was 8 and when I was 25) gently set me straight by pointing out that his voice has "character." Yes, in this case, Father did know best; I started listening more carefully, and have never looked back (of course, it didn't hurt that at that time, as I described earlier in this thread, in the post with the video of Television's "Venus", I was greatly expanding my horizons of musical appreciation.)

And for people who just can't get past That Voice, there's always the harmonic tonic of Dylan's best interpreters among his contemporaries, The Byrds. Here's their take on my Number One Favorite Dylan Song:



A little digression regarding That Voice. Like a lot of singers with less-than-perfect voices, Dylan took a while to transcend the affectations that inevitably come to any raw musical talent still in its formative stage. In Dylan's case, I'd say it took as long as four albums before he found his true singing voice, on what I consider his first really good album, "Bringing It All Back Home", which also has one of the greatest album covers of all time (link rather than image, 'cause it's huge, as it should be):

http://www.theedgesusu.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Bob.jpg

(And even on that album, one or two tracks still have That Kinda Funny Voice, but I still consider it the ideal starting album for those curious about Bob the Bard.)

Finally, for those who are still not convinced, I recommend at least reading some of his lyrics without listening to the songs. Because even some of those aforementioned Overplayed and Overexposed 1960s Anthems are capable of revealing surprising depths, such as this supposedly-for-Boomers-only chestnut:

Come gather 'round people wherever you roam
And admit that the waters around you have grown
Accept it soon, you'll be drenched to the bone

If your time to you is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin', you could sink like a stone
For the times, they are a-changin'

Come mothers and fathers throughout the land
And don't criticize what you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters, beyond your command

Your old road is rapidly agin'
So get out of the new one if you can't lend your hand
For the times, they are a-changin'

For the times, they are a-changin'

The line, it is drawn, the curse, it is cast
The slow one now will later be fast
The present now will later be past

The order is rapidly fadin'
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'

See what I mean? Like all of Dylan's best lyrics, it's not the us-versus-them/youth-versus-authority crap it gets unfairly lumped in with. This stuff is timeless, universal, well-balanced, and even a bit ambiguous.

Coming up in Part 2: My favorite Dylan interpreters from the later generations.

Right...as promised (a few months ago), a lucky 7 selection of my favorite Bob Dylan covers by artists born no earlier than 1950, presented in the reverse of the chronological order in which they were released:

1.

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7.