Album: Good As I Been To You
Recorded: July-August 1992
Released: November 1992
My personal favourites are Canadee-i-o (first arranged by Nic Jones on his wonderful Penguin Eggs album, and later covered by The White Stripes), Froggie Went a-Courtin’, played with deftness and humanity, as well as Jim Jones and Hard Times.
Album rating: C+
Recorded: July-August 1992
Released: November 1992
Songs / length: 13 / 55:31
As one of two consecutive albums released in the early 90s to fulfil the terms of a recording contract, Good As I Been To You is the first Dylan studio album not to contain any original material for almost 20 years. For those that care little for traditional folk song and blues, and how these genres had a formative effect on Dylan's own unique style, this record won't hold much appeal. For those that do, it's an incredibly rich and rewarding collection of songs, but not without its faults, and I've tried to be as objective as possible in my quick assessment of the album below:
Negatives:
– Recorded at his home garage studio in Malibu, California, the album attempts to recreate the mood of Dylan's live acoustic sets at that time, but definitely lacks for audio clarity
– Dylan's vocal range sounds more limited. Instead of singing, he's opting more for phrasing, a sort of "style of expression", where he puts emphasis on certain words and phrases
As one of two consecutive albums released in the early 90s to fulfil the terms of a recording contract, Good As I Been To You is the first Dylan studio album not to contain any original material for almost 20 years. For those that care little for traditional folk song and blues, and how these genres had a formative effect on Dylan's own unique style, this record won't hold much appeal. For those that do, it's an incredibly rich and rewarding collection of songs, but not without its faults, and I've tried to be as objective as possible in my quick assessment of the album below:
– Recorded at his home garage studio in Malibu, California, the album attempts to recreate the mood of Dylan's live acoustic sets at that time, but definitely lacks for audio clarity
– Dylan's vocal range sounds more limited. Instead of singing, he's opting more for phrasing, a sort of "style of expression", where he puts emphasis on certain words and phrases
– The album scores low on originality. In fact, Dylan performs the cardinal folk music error of not crediting other musicians for some of the arrangements. For example, the liner notes fail to correctly identify Sam Coslow and Will Grosz as the writers of Tomorrow Night, nor do they cite the influence of Mance Lipscomb, Nic Jones, etc. Australian folksinger Mick Slocum later sued Dylan's label over the arrangement credit for Jim Jones
– Dylan still hasn't lost his old habit of leaving some of his best recordings off his studio albums. One of the outtakes from these sessions, You Belong To Me, was added to the Natural Born Killers soundtrack two years later, in 1994, and it's an undeniable triumph
Positives:
– Intimate sound, reminiscent at times of his solo acoustic albums recorded in the early 60s
– Just like Under The Red Sky was a return to the innocence of nursery rhymes, Good As I Been To You is a return to the innocence of popular music before it was tainted by commercialism, and allows Dylan to reconnect with the songs that inspired him
– Many of the folk and blues songs here focus on richly drawn characters, who are either in exile or fighting oppression, often against a backdrop of war or the high sea. These echo characters in Dylan's own original songs, and underline why his art extends beyond the musical into the literary
My personal favourites are Canadee-i-o (first arranged by Nic Jones on his wonderful Penguin Eggs album, and later covered by The White Stripes), Froggie Went a-Courtin’, played with deftness and humanity, as well as Jim Jones and Hard Times.
Album rating: C+
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