Customer Rating:  
Summary: Blonde on Blonde
Comment: Blonde on Blonde being Dylan's 1966 release and his seventh studio album is a very good record. Tracks such as I want you, Absolutely Sweet Marie and many others make this a very pleasent record. Dylan is such a great lyricist that listening to his lyrics is pure ear candy. I must say that I love the book-let. The photos are great except the cover photo which looks a bit blurred. However, maybe they did this on purpose. Still and all this is a great record that should not be missed. I definitely recommend it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Best of The Best
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: overrated twaddle
Comment: I recently purchased this cd from amazon. The delivery was fast. I only wish I could say the same about Blonde on Blonde. What an overrated plodding piece of schlock this is. Most critics place this album in their top ten best. They say it's one of Dylan's best. I wouldn't place this in my top 30. If you want a Dylan starter kit here it is: Highway 61 Revisited, Blood On The Tracks, Bringing It All Back Home. Heck, Shot Of Love is better than Blonde on Blonde.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The poet of his times...
Comment: This recording is part of my family history. While my father was soldier in the Vietnam War, my mother sent him a copy of this album. It's taken me 40 years to give this piece of material a serious listening and it is quite outstanding. Bob Dylan is a folk singer in the tradition of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger but transcends that: not just because he embraced elements of rock-n-roll, but rather because he is the poet of his times and his country. He understands America in a way that Walt Whitman and Emerson once did.
His lyrics are cryptic, yet descriptive of certain moods and feelings. Dylan says what he feels without exactly saying so. It is the essence of poetry. There is also a great deal of humor in his words, as well as, a certain pathos. The more I listen to this album, the more it grows on me.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Mr. Dylan Struts His Stuff
Comment: It seems hard to believe now both as to the performer as well as to what was being attempted that anyone would take umbrage at a performer using an electric guitar to tell a folk story (or any story for that matter). It is not necessary to go into all the details of what or what did not happen with Pete Seeger at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 to know that one should be glad, glad as hell, that Bob Dylan continued to listen to his own drummer and carry on a career based on electronic music.
Others have, endlessly, gone on about Bob Dylan's role as the voice of his generation (and mine), his lyrics and what they do or do not mean and his place in the rock or folk pantheons, or both. I just want to mention a couple of points here. The selections here present quite a mix although the perennial themes of lost love, longing and perfidiousness get their full Dylan workout. I would start with Visions of Johanna that is being covered by more artists (the most recent version that I have heard being from Chris Smithers on his Leave the Light On album)) which in several minutes not only goes through the woes of the modern love dilemma but is real stream of consciousness song with some interesting use of language that Dylan had gotten away from for a while prior to the release of this album. Of course Just Like A Woman is something of an anthem for the Generation of '68 (although she is no longer breaking like a little girl). As is in very different and funky way Rainy Day Woman. Nor should one exclude the playfulness of Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat. But here is the real question for Dylan aficionados- who was Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands written for- really? If you know the purpose of the question (much less the answer) you qualify for the title of aficionado. Okay.
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