I'm under doctor's orders, I'm afraid to over(h)eat

Note to self: Don't try running in the middle of the day when it's 74° outside. You're not that good yet.

Today was a working day. I listened to all of Dylan's Biograph while I worked - shuffled, but in its entirety. Biograph was the first boxed set of the "rock/pop" era, and I remember it receiving a good deal of media attention when it was released, back in 1985. Of course, I was eleven, so my perspective may not be perfect. But Dylan is an icon and all that - so it would probably have gotten attention no matter what.

Anyhow, fast-forward 19 years or so, when I finally get interested in Dylan. Why did it take me so long? Good question. After all, my record collection has its fair share of 60s icons - Kinks, Beatles, Move, Zombies, Beach Boys, etc., as well as countless more recent acts who cite Dylan as a direct inspiration - so you'd think I would have gotten into Dylan long before. I've owned copies of Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde for at least a few years. But I didn't really get into him until my wife bought Love & Theft a few years ago, on reputation alone, and then left it, unopened, next to our stereo for several months. Out of curiousity, I cracked it open one day, and found myself hooked - transfixed, even, by some of the things I heard.

She's looking into my eyes, she's holding my hand
She's looking into my eyes, she's holding my hand
She says, "You can't repeat the past." I say, "You can't?
What do you mean, you can't? Of course you can."

This led me to a prolonged Dylan kick - and fortunately, Dylan's the kind of artist who can withstand a prolonged kick. I was particularly sucked in by Blonde On Blonde, where one fantastic track follows another. I can't recommend it enough.

But back to Biograph: One of the things that makes Biograph so interesting today (and, despite the fact that Dylan has continued steadily recording and releasing records since 1985, including stuff like Time Out Of Mind and Love & Theft that rank among his best, Biograph is still considered the definitive Dylan box) is how unorthodox it is for an anthology. The standard boxed set - not only in rock/pop, but now even in jazz and another genres - is to take a chronological approach to the artist being anthologized, and aim for a certain formula of hits, albums tracks, and rarities to make it appealing both to casual fans of the artist as well as diehards who will have everything except the rarities before buying the box. Ultimately, the compilers want to leave both diehards and casual fans feeling like they have made a good purchase. There is also almost always an intentional skewing of the material towards the artist's earlier, inevitably more prolific period, with a few later tracks thrown in just to prove that the artist is still alive and recording (or, if the artist is dead or the band defunct, to prove that they still occasionally entered a recording studio even after their 15 minutes were up).

The best intentions (and we're talking about record companies here) only occasionally result in a solid box. Off the top of my head, the 1993 Beach Boys box comes pretty close to being as good as a boxed set can be, although casual fan and diehard alike probably can't stomach most of disc 4. The 1995 Velvet Underground box, on the other hand, was clearly aimed at committed fans; if you could sit through 15 aborted takes of "Wrap Your Troubles in Dream", John Cale should have to send you a Christmas card every year. The 1997 Doors box started strong, but then ended with a bizarre final disc of "band favorites" - which looked an awful lot like an effort to the pad the size (and cost) of the box with a pointless disc of widely-available studio cuts.

Biograph, predating this formula, takes a different approach. First, the box isn't chronological at all. It starts with 1969's "Lay Lady Lay" and then tacks wildly between some of Dylan's earliest material and some of his (then) most recent. Second, it isn't afraid of include his later material, and that's despite the fact that Dylan's late 70s/early 80s material was nowhere near as lauded or appreciated (even today) as his more famous 60s and mid-70s material. In fact, there is a sizable legion of Dylan fans who don't think anything he did post-crash (1966) was worthwhile, but Biograph ignores them, too.

For an artist with as long and as varied a career as Dylan, this approach really works well. I just hope they don't wait too long to work the last twenty years of Dylan's career into a future release of Biograph. And before someone pops-up to belittle everything Dylan's done since Desire or Another Side or whatever, I have only this to say: it's a Dirty World.