Bob Dylan - Nashville Skyline (Columbia, 1969)

Bob Dylan - Nashville Skyline
(Columbia, 1969)

Yeah, it's this guy called Bob Dylan. You might have heard of him before.
I was driving on a lonely stretch of highway one afternoon nearly ten years ago, listening to the radio (gasp! radio?! what's that?!) when this then unfamiliar song came on and caught my ears' attention. It was "Lay, Lady, Lay" and I had no idea who it was but I knew I was in love with the man. Who could resist an invitation to lay across a "big brass bed" and see all the "colors you have in your mind?" Imagine my surprise when I looked the song up later and found out it was Bob Dylan. "Well, yeah...duh." you say? Well, this was a different Bob Dylan, a twangy, horny (though this may just be projection on my part), crooning, Bob Dylan. Apparently, back in the late 60s, Dylan grew tired of the "voice of a generation" persona he'd been labeled with and decided to turn his sound around and show another side, a side that said "Shut the hell up. There's more to me than that." Dylan was tired of the fans who expected more of him than just the music. He'd had enough of fanatics sneaking on to his property and disturbing him while he was trying to lead his private life, with his family. So, he recorded this album in Nashville, devoting one day of the sessions to duets with Johnny Cash. It's only 29 minutes long, which is a delight because you can enjoy it from front to back even when you've not got a lot of time to spare, it's a quickie. Apparently, there are better versions of most of these tunes on bootlegs but I've never really noticed that these studio tracks were lacking, myself. Now, I've got to give those alternate versions a shot. I wonder a bit whether hearing those is something like when you're young and you've been dry humping guys/girls for a while and finding it a thrill, only to eventually get down to actual sex and think, "Wow. That dry humping just won't feel the same now, will it?" Well, here's the dry humping, maybe I'll post the sex for you another day. ;)

01. "Girl from the North Country" (with Johnny Cash)
02. "Nashville Skyline Rag"
03. "To Be Alone with You"
04. "I Threw It All Away"
05. "Peggy Day"
06. "Lay Lady Lay"
07. "One More Night"
08. "Tell Me That It Isn't True"
0 9. "Country Pie"
10. "Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You"

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