Where are the other Bob Dylan remasters
From 2001: Missing in all this fun is the man who is arguably the most important and most influential American musician of the 20th Century, Bob Dylan.
From August 2001.
One of the great and one of the most fun trends of the record business over the last decade has been the remastered album. The casual observer might cynically say this is just another marketing ploy, but for music fans and collectors – as well as anyone with ears there are quite a few reasons for remastering.
When the great LP to CD conversion began, many of the transfers were sloppy at best and those who knew their albums well noticed. The Beatles catalog is still a source of controversy. About a year ago a friend of mine bought a new high-end sound system and invited me to hear it. He put on the remastered Rubber Soul. English version (different song selection) aside, it was not the album I remembered as the lack of electric guitars in the mix was severely lacking.
The Band was also a victim of poor CD remastering (finally rectified this year). I wondered if the engineer even bothered to listen to the original album. In the case of Stage Fright for some reason they used a different mix entirely and key parts to songs were missing.
The best of the remasters are usually done with great care, including updated liner notes with historical perspective, detailed session info and to the joy of any fan or collector, bonus tracks.
Missing in all this fun is the man who is arguably the most important and most influential American musician of the 20th Century, Bob Dylan.
So far, three collections Biograph, The Bootleg Series, Vol. 1-3 and the bizarrely titled Greatest Hits Vol. 3 have been remastered, but only one regular Dylan album, Street-Legal.
If there is anyone’s catalog deserving of this, not to mention one that holds tremendous promise, it’s Dylan’s. For one thing, the majority of LP to CD transfers were shoddily done from the sound to the artwork. And for another, there are the hundreds of outtakes and alternate versions of songs that many Dylan fans claim are just as good if not better than what has been released.
The most controversial CD reissue would have to be Blonde On Blonde. On the initial CD, songs were cut, most notably “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands,” and it took three more tries to get it approaching being close to correct on the “gold” CD. And no one knows what correct is anyway because Blonde On Blonde as an LP had two different mixes, stereo and mono, with the stereo tracks being longer and in the case of the song “One Of Us Must Know,” the stereo version had an organ solo not on the mono version. Dylan’s two preceding albums Highway 61 Revisited and Bringing It All Back Home also share the stereo versus mono controversy. British writer, Roger Ford has examined both albums intensively and his findings can be found on the web.
If Blonde On Blonde ever is remastered and remixed, the controversy will still rage among Dylan fans as many prefer the original mono mix, reportedly the only mix Dylan was actually involved with. As Ford expertly points out, the possibilities are endless and fascinating. Is there really a different drum track on “Fourth Time Around” or just a different mix, and what is that keyboard clearly audible on the stereo LP, but barely audible or not there at all on the mono LP and gold CD?
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