Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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47 of 51 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Magnificent, 13 Mar 2008
If I was Prime Minister or President I would make Ace Records the national musical curator, and let them pick and choose any recording that they wanted for any project they wanted. They get it right time and time again, and this set is no exception, in fact this release even ups their game. You get two CDs containing 50 tracks and a beautiful 48 page accompanying booklet with a commentary for each track and illustrations galore. All housed in a neat card cover.
But, hang on, let's start at the beginning. Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour (or TTRH for short), the radio show, is everything you would expect of that eclectic, eccentric and electric troubadour. If you don't know it, though surely you do, each programme is an hour long and revolves around a specific theme (radio, jail, Christmas, luck, drink or whatever) with DJ Bob introducing each song in his sandpaper whisper, giving a brief and incisive commentary on the track or perhaps a pertinent quote or maybe a whimsical digression. The music played is hugely diverse, stretching back to the beginning of the 20th Century right up to last week. It covers all bases: country, blues, R&B, jazz, reggae, soul, rockabilly, punk, swing, any tributary that feeds into the great flowing meandering river of popular music. Each show is a delight and makes for fascinating listening whether you're a Dylan fan or not (though perhaps slightly more fascinating if you fall into the former category).
Show by show, then, the listener is being treated to nothing less than an alternative history of popular music. The themed approach prevents it from being a po-faced academic and ploddingly chronological exercise, rooting it instead in the realities of lived human experience, whether noble or mean, gleeful or grim. (Tony Blackburn used to do a similar theme based thing in his `Golden Hour' back in his Radio 1 days but of course with barely a hint of the wit and grace with which Bob acquits his role.) Bob Dylan is using his drawing power to expand our horizons by bringing to our attention songs and recordings that we should know about if we take music seriously (and serious doesn't mean joyless). If you think you know music but you've never listened to a song recorded before 2005, or 1990, or 1979, or 1967, or 1955 then TTRH demonstrates that being so blinkered isn't good for your soul.
This wonderful double CD then is a selection of highlights from the first series of TTRH. There is no involvement from Bob Dylan directly, though the producer of his show is a co-producer/compiler here, but really that's not the name of the game. Even if there isn't one linking theme, the track selection is wayward and intoxicating as you would expect, mixing the old, the new, the familiar, the unfamiliar into a big ole cauldron (or maybe a copper kettle) packed with flavours and spices that shouldn't mix together but act and react to one another to produce a mighty potent brew. The time span covered is as expansive as a typical show too. The second track here dates from 1930 and that's followed by Shortnin' Bread from 1960 and then the mighty Seven Nation Army by The White Stripes from 2002. That's eight decades straddled in the course of three songs. And they fit together just Jim Dandy.
This is real music for real people, as it is meant to be, with all facets of life addressed with wit and grit and sauce and elegance (in other words you'll find no hollow empty processed Westlife/Blue/Pop Idol/X Factor style bleating here). If you don't find the prospect of this set appealing then I guess you're in the wrong section on Amazon - home and garden is over there. To everyone else I say, don't think twice, it's alright to buy it.
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
WORTHY OF 6 STARS, 24 Mar 2008
Quite frankly, this is the best reissue of 2008, already. It shows that not only has Dylan been the cultural commentator of the world, but that he is also the cultural curator of some amazing music. It is almost as if this is the music that has even shaped his own recordings. It is not that far from Louis Jordan to "Open The Door, Homer" on the Basement Tapes, or the early blues on this album in relation to Love & Theft. But, isn't all pop/rock music Love & Theft ?
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21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
GOLDMINE, 21 Mar 2008
Ace Records could hardly go wrong with this aesthetically. Whether it sells or not is anyone's guess. OK, we'll all have our individual misgivings about some of the 50 songs chosen here, but they're just quibbles. The cumulative effect of hearing so many great original voices and players is mindboggling. The sound fidelity is so much better than the Theme Time Radio Show MPEGs that most of us have been listening to. Rhythms, styles and subject matter are as diverse as anyone could wish for. For all the diversity, however, all the tracks share a common humanity and integrity, which seems to be the main point of Bob's radio show in the first place.
I can't imagine anyone being disappointed at shelling out money for this. One thing I've liked about TTRH is its balance: male/female, black/white, 1930s/40s, 20s/60s and so on. We've all been taken aback by Dylan's knowledge, and obvious love, of Caribbean and Hispanic music, the latter of which, I would like to see better represented on the collection. But this is overwhelmingly a celebration of American vernacular music. It's also an affirmation that, for all its inventions, its movies, its self-marketing, vernacular music has always been America's best expression of itself.
PW
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~ Various Artists
~ Bob Dylan
~ Various Artists
~ Various Artists
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