When at first I thought of the list of “fundamental records in my life”, the first title that came to my mind was precisely this.
I don’t think there is a better record than Dylan have never recorded. Also, I have difficulty thinking of more than 5 perfect records like this in the whole history of music.
In September 1974, Bob Dylan spent four days in his favourite recording studio in New York. He emerged with the most significant, darkest album of his career.
For me, it represents the perfection that closes an “era”, a wave of rock that Dylan has been able to ride, create and transform for years.
The record does not have a single weak point.
Ten perfect songs where no one is better of another. The perfect 10.
In the same time, half of America went to his direction to create new songs. When someone advanced the idea that perhaps he had already reached his creative top, Dylan creates an album that leaves everyone amazed and speechless.
I think that was at the top of the minds of those who have given to Dylan the Nobel Prize a few years ago.
It is the record that I recommend to everyone from “where to start” if you want to understand rock.
This is the record I recommend to those who at 12 is approaching quality music for the first time. But also for those who have been distracted for decades and now, in the middle of their maturity, have not yet heard this record. Sometimes the same people who always that complaining about his melancholy voice that leave them annoyed.
In “Blood On The Tracks”, there is everything, and it does not leave anyone disappointed. No one could be disappointed.
“If You see Her, say Hello“, “Simple Twist of fate“, “Idiot Wind“, “Buckets of Rain” and all the rest of the songs, should be subject in any school to make the new generation to understand what the ’70 was.
For me, it was a fundamental album in my life. I was 15 years old when I went out, and I must say that the previous records I had slightly neglected. I was a young man growing up with the Progressive sound of those years.
Dylan with this record “forced” me to take a step back. To recover and study what I had missed.
I felt at the time so weird when I started to listening to his previous records, I realised that I had lost a lot and that I had to recover. Feel shame to have kept him in the corner of my life till then.
For me, “Blood on the Tracks” also represents the album that contributed to change my attentions in the rock music. Since then, groups like Genesis or Yes began to disappear from my afternoons. I was a teenager, and I loved when, in long hot days, I was locked in my room with headphones on my head devouring on everything that was made on vinyl on those days.
They are not the best records ever. Maybe they are too.
Massimo Usai
But that’s not the point of this page on my blog.
Once a week, every Sunday.
The records that most contributed to getting to this point in my life.
The reason why I decided to write about my music in this way is that I am turning sixty this year.
Music has been essential in my growth as a person.
It made me make life choices, some even wrong, probably.
Every Monday, I will start to listen to a record that I think has been crucial in my past.
I’ll play it until I come out with happy memories, emotions and maybe some tears.
Finally, I will leave you every Sunday to let you find the record I was listening and to discovered something more about me.