Music Arcades: Bob Dylan: Modern Times

Having resisted buying the previous two Dylan released for some years before relenting, I bowed to duty and got this one immediately on release. And, out of habit, I got the "limited edition" CD+DVD version, and then, also following precedent, ignored the DVD (actually that's not quite true: I just put it in the computer and some of the paltry four videos look familiar; but four videos? all of songs that don't feature on the album? that's a very cynical joke).

I was listening to the CD just after I got it when one of those building society valuation people came round to look over the Chequer Court flat and check that it was worth what our buyer had offered (it was worth a lot more). He asked me what the album was like. I said I'd only just got it and was on my first play. But on that evidence, I said, it sounded very much like more of the same after Love and Theft. (He didn't know Love and Theft, or much other Dylan as far as I could tell, so that conversation fizzled out rapidly, with me wondering why he'd started it in the first place.)

Nearly two years on, I feel much the same about it. It's no revelation. And it's no great surprise that it became Bob's first album No. 1 album in the US: it probably sold many fewer than his earlier albums, but you only need sales of about 67 to make No. 1 these days. The question is: does it have any songs out of Bob's top drawer, like Love and Theft's High Water (for Charley Patton) and Sugar Baby. It may be too early to say, but my top candidates would be Workingman's Blues #2 and Nettie Moore. If Barb Jungr ever sings them, that will mean that they're great.

I love the "controversy" on Wikipedia about Bob borrowing lyrics from Ovid and Henry Timrod. I can't say I object to any such borrowing: on the contrary, it seems to me that it renders Ovid more accessible, and makes it more likely that I and others will investigate his work further.

And while we're dealing with parlour games, the cover of this album is, as with Desire, a copy of someone else's cover.