The Quest for Bob part 1: "magnum opus"

I throw around the term "Magnum Opus" a lot. As an aspiring music critic(i.e. This Hack's for Hire(oh look, a Toasters pun(and triple parenthetical clauses!) I tend to try and quantify where my favorites bands peaked and waned. With the Slackers, I must say some what emphatically, the Wasted Days album will probably turn out to be their best work, particularly when considered as a multimedia album, since the CD and LP are so startlingly different in scope and overall tone and focus, they form what is pretty much a two part release. Where the two platforms do overlap, the tracks are alternate version, possibly even alternate takes, but that requires research, which as a Hack, I have not the time for; gotta get those words to make that dollar-- hence appositives and parentheses and interjections. With the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, I think most would be hard pressed not see the band's fifth album, 1997's Lets Face it show cases what I think most fans would see as the confluence of their older, hardcore influenced sound, with the pop sensibilities of their later records. I say most, because I personally think Question the Answers Captures them at the critical point just prior to their pop success, and showcases what for me, the band was all about before said mainstream breakthrough, yet let it be known, that Lets Face It is probably one of the best rock albums of the 90's. I will fight you over this a-la "Beat It" music video.

I feel that with certain artists and genres I can critically look at their work and make such qualitative judgments with a fair amount of accuracy. I begin to have some trouble with older artists, as I can not evaluate them in the context of their time, or have not heard enough of their catalog to pin down an actual peak. Boston(S/T) is an exception, and perhaps so are the Velvet Underground (White Light/White Heat), The Who(Who's Next(that one hurts to say it), and maybe, if I want to step on some toes, The Beatles(Rubber Soul). But one artist who i don't even know where to begin with is Bob Dylan. Normally, i would just poll my friends who like Dylan and ask what they would pick as his best album ever, but i know that would be an exercise in futility. This one likes the Nashville Skyline era Dylan, soandso like the early electric stuff, and guy tree, doesn't really know much about Dylan or even music it turns our, and was just rocking what ever Rolling Stone had told him to.

Granted, much of my own curiosity about Mr. Dylan's music is fueled by his receivers throne in the Great Hall of Rock Journalist Fellators(along with John Lennon, The Rolling Stones, and others). Not to say that such seats aren't warranted to many artists, but i just refuse, as Lester Bangs refused before me, to buy into that every artist can maintain a consistent greatness for twenty to thirty years. It just doesn't work like that. Because it doesn't work like that, it means that some point Bob Dylan peaked, and perhaps he pealed again a while later. Further more, when we compare folk Dylan talking about the times and how they are a changin' and answers blowin' in the wind to the one strung out in Mobile, Alabama or contemplating Tombstone, Arizona and talking about ladies laying across his big brass bed or what ever he's turned out in the last year, you now have a series of eras to compare. 


I must say that I am not attempting to deride Dylan, but it has always seemed to me that artists with careers as long as his have lot of shit covering the diamonds in their catalog. Now one could just take those stones handed to him by others in the form of bits from sound tracks, compilations, etc. We all know that "Blowing in the Wind" and "The Times They are a Changing" are American classics, and that Hurricane was a land mark hit of the 70's and so on. But at some point, curiosity means that one has to put on the haz-mat suit a-la Bill Murray in Caddy Shack and go into the tainted pool to retrieve the proverbial gem(or candy bar, as was the case in Caddy Shack).


Its time to suit up...