Firstly Dylan is back on Spotify so that is cool. This is the 8th and final album in the utterly ace Original Mono Recordings box set. Albeit in some territories there is a 9th album, an in concert recording from Brandeis University in 1963. Annoyingly the mono box isn't available in the UK on Spotify, but the 9th disc is. Got it? Good. Oh and the box comes with a free download code for the essential Positively 4th Street A-side. Which is also available on Spotify in the UK. Moving on...
John Wesley Harding has never been a huge favourite of mine but listening to it this time round it does make perfect sense in the Dylan canon. Coming at a time when he, for various planned and unplanned reasons, put his foot on the brake of the runaway train that was his stunningly talented career, it is mostly an easy listen compared to what had come before. Country tinged from the title track opener through to the almost MOR ballad I'll Be Your Baby Tonight, it does occasionally touch on the more serious on I Dreamed I Saw St Augustine and I Pity The Poor Immigrant. And of course it features his own version of the song immortalised, and taken to levels way above this, by one Jimi Hendrix in All Along The Watchtower. Check XTC's version as well.
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