I gave this album 5 stars simply because it contains many of Dylan's best. It's DYLAN, and all the songs are great. If you are more than a casual listener, this will not be enough for you. If you want to hear Dylan's best "GH package", buy Biograph. It contains not only his greatest hits, but the best of his lesser known songs in a great compilation that includes live recordings and the best recordings of his best work. It is a real find

I have been following Bob Dylan almost from the beginning of his career. I grew up listening to his messages; Dylan demands that you think. He assumes that if you are listening you are intelligent enough to listen to his messages and read between the lines. This album brings so much of his brilliant past into an equally troubled world. His messages are as appropriate today as they were in the 50's and 60's. Even if you have every album that he ever produced, this album is a "must."

Once every two or three years, it seems, the Record Company Compilation Generator pulls out about fifteen of Dylan's best-known songs (you know, the same fifteen or so that appear on every OTHER Dylan collection, splices on a couple latter-day tracks, and calls it "The Best of Bob Dylan... ALL OVER AGAIN!" Sorry, but no. That's not the way it works. Rather than look at Dylan's career with even the slightest amount of depth, this takes the cop-out way by giving little more than the sketchiest overview possible. One thing that really gets me about these collections is that they only include ONE song from the groundbreaking Highway Sixty-One Revisited, and that song is ALWAYS "Like a Rolling Stone" - one of the best songs on that album, to be sure, but there's MORE TO IT THAN THAT! "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues", the title song, "Tombstone Blues" and "Desolation Row" are all held in VERY high regard, why can't they ever be thrown in the mix, just for the sake of doing something different? And ONE song from Freewheelin'? Yeah, let's see "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" and "It's a Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall", shall we? Not to mention "Masters of War" or "Girl of the North Country". This is just your basic Dylan 101 I'm talking about here too - while I'm ranting, you also can't do a Dylan best-of without "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue", "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again", "I Want You", "Tonight I'll Be Staying Here with You", "Shelter from the Storm", "Idiot Wind", "One More Cup of Coffee", and so on and so forth. Plus I think they kinda botched the new tracks - there are far better selections from Time out of Mind than "Make You Feel My Love" ("Love Sick", for instance - or "Cold Irons Bound", "Standing in the Doorway", "Not Dark Yet", "Tryin' to Get into Heaven" and "Highlands" - okay, so the seventeen-minute "Highlands" isn't very user-friendly, but it's amazing - take your pick). Love and Theft is overlooked totally ("Mississippi", "Summer Days" and "Lonesome Day Blues" are definite "best-of" material in my mind), and the "Trouble No More" ripoff "Someday Baby" is one of the weaker songs on "Modern Times", his best effort in quite a while - may I interest you in "Thunder on the Mountain", "Spirit on the Water", "Nettie Moore" or "Workingman's Blues #2"? Oh yeah, I almost forgot "Jokerman". And "Brownsville Girl". And "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands". And "My Back Pages". And "It Ain't Me Babe". And on and and on. I understand that this is supposed to be a sort of sampler from the three-disc compilation of the same name. The three-disc actually is pretty much the comprehensive Dylan overview that we've been waiting for all these years (though once again the ONLY song from Highway Sixty-One Revisited is "Like a Rolling Stone" - why do they keep pulling that trick on us? There is more on Highway Sixty-One Revisited than "Like a Rolling Stone"!). This is more or less pointless. It's hard to go wrong with Bob as long as you stay away from all the '80s albums but Infidels and Oh Mercy! (and avoid the notorious Self-Portrait, of course), so go for those - for the record, they are (in chronological order) Freewheelin', Another Side of, Bringing it All Back Home, Highway Sixty-One Revisited, Blonde on Blonde, Live at the Royal Alpert Hall (you know, the "JUDAS!!!" concert), John Wesley Harding (iffy lyrics but fantastic melodies!), Blood on the Tracks, Desire, Infidels, Oh Mercy, Time Out of Mind, Love and Theft, and Modern Times. Yeah, fourteen that are more or less must-haves - Freewheelin' is a bit overrated, I'll admit, but it has some real gems on it you can't get anywhere else; Infidels is the most underrated of his career - unfairly so, too, because it rocks; and Blood on the Tracks is my favorite Dylan record and one of the five or so greatest records ever made. This is pretty much entirely made up of good songs, and I appreciate the lack of "Gotta Serve Somebody", but at eighteen tracks it's still skimpy. But hey, it's Dylan, and his work is tough to compile. Maybe they should just stop trying...

We just can't get enough of this album. We have been Dylan fans for years and years and this album just makes us want to dance. We were raised in California, born in the 40's and college in the 60's need I say more.

What's the point?

Ok, let's see, Columbia released a three disc compilation of the "Best of" Dylan, aptly named DYLAN. Kinda pointless, given they did ESSENTIAL BOB DYLAN back in 2000, but of course he's done two albums since and I guess they have to take a track or two from them.

But wait, there's more. We also have, confusingly enough, this album, appropriately named DYLAN as well (so that's the third album in Dylan's discography that has DYLAN as a name, if you included the [...] child DYLAN from 1973. Dylan apparently doesn't since you can't buy it on CD in America. Oh well, that's what bootlegging and overseas and ebay is for).

So what is this incarnation? Simply a single disc approximation of Dylan for dummies. Those who know anything about Dylan won't be surprised at the track list. It's about as predictable as a Beatles single disc compilation. I've had fun making my own single disc compilations of Dylan for friends, and it is quite challenging (actually, impossible) to try to capture his talent on one CD. He's just too prolific.

One curiosity of this disc is the songs are arranged chronologically, all except the last song, which, strangely enough, is from the 1974 album Planet Waves. It's one of the closest things he has to "inspirational" music and end the album on an inspiration. Maybe Dylan does want to stay "Forever young". Still, kind of odd given the rest of the songs are chronological.

While I suppose this is a decent single-disc version, what, exactly, is the point, given we have the new 3-CD set. That's a good question. And it's not even really that exclusive to what has went on before.

Like most major artists, Dylan has had his share of greatest hits compilations, some quite recent. First, we have the first GREATEST HITS album (Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits), released in 1967 as a stopgap release. Then we have the second installment from 1971, Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits, Vol. 2. Then we have the third installment from 1994, Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits, Vol. 3. Then Columbia gave us a double-disc compilation in 2000 entitled Essential Bob Dylan . Lest we forget, we also have the deluxe, three disc version of this set, Dylan.

Then we have various other Best Ofs, all released within the last ten years, including two "best of Bob Dylans". Here's a list from Amazon that pull up when you enter Dylan in the search engine: The Best of Bob Dylan , The Best of Bob Dylan*, and The Best of Bob Dylan, Vol. 2. And a lot of imports as well.

Now, if you compare the track listing to the above mentioned with DYLAN, you won't find any real difference, other than a couple new tracks from MT. Oh, and the remix to "Most Likely You Go Your Way and I Go Mine", which strangely enough does NOT show up on the three disc version. Just one more worm to bait the hook I suppose. Cheap business tactics.

All this being said, the question remains: what's the point?

Money, of course. There's no reason to buy this. Grab the remix off the Internet (legitimately or otherwise), and if you really want to get the DYLAN compilation, do the three disc version. Those looking to get into Dylan will be better serviced by the 2000 ESSENTIAL album. He's prolific enough he merits multi-disc compilations.

Don't even bother with this.



*Oddly enough, this has a warning saying "Explicit Lyrics". When has Dylan ever written anything to merit "explicit lyrics" warning?