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AUSTRALIAN IMPORT
Condition: Brand New Factory Sealed
While Bob Dylan's remarkable body of work is far too large and complex to lend itself to easy compilation, this 30-song double-CD package does a very reasonable job of presenting a balanced overview of Dylan's oeuvre, touching on the various junctures of his multifarious career while not always falling back on the most obvious hits. Unlike Columbia's three Greatest Hits comps and the sprawling Biograph box set, Essential is arranged chronologically, so it functions as a fascinating guided tour through the visionary -- and sometimes baffling -- twists and turns of the artist's unique career. The track selection does a good job of demonstrating Dylan's leap from such immortal folkie protest anthems as "Blowin' in the Wind," "It Ain't Me Babe," and "The Times They Are A-Changin' " toward the more ambitious surrealist poetry of "Like a Rolling Stone," "Positively 4th Street," and "Subterranean Homesick Blues," followed by his subsequent return to relatively straightforward insight in '70s tunes such as "Tangled Up in Blue" and "Hurricane," and it brings the story up to date with the haunting "Not Dark Yet" (from the 1997 comeback disc Time Out of Mind) and the non-album "Things Have Changed" (from the Wonder Boys film soundtrack. Of course no two-CD package can completely do justice to an arist as prolific -- and as profound -- as Dylan, but Essential offers a sensibly assembled, user-friendly introduction to his remarkable output.
TRACK LISTINGS
Disc 1
1. Blowin in the Wind
2. Don't Think Twice It's All Right
3. Times They Are a Changin (Orignal Source)
4. It Ain't Me, Babe
5. Maggie's Farm
6. It's All Over Now Baby Blue
7. Mr Tambourine Man (Album Version)
8. Subterranean Homesick Blues
9. Like a Rolling Stone
10. Positively 4th Street
11. Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?
12. I Want You
13. Just Like a Woman
14. Rainy Day Women #12 & 35
15. All Along the Watchtower
16. Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)
17. I'll Be Your Baby Tonight
18. Lay Lady Lay
19. If Not For You
20. I Shall Be Released
21. You Ain't Going Nowhere
22. Knockin on Heaven's Door
Disc
1. Forever Young
2. Tangled up in Blue
3. Shelter From the Storm
4. Hurricane
5. Changing of the Guards
6. Gotta Serve Somebody
7. Blind Willie McTell
8. Jokerman
9. Tight Connection to My Heart
10. Silvio
11. Everything Is Broken
12. Dignity (Alternate Version)
13. Not Dark Yet
14. Things Have Changed
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