( 4 reviews )
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Posted: Jul 14 2008
325 songs of early Bob Dylan, mostly 60's and 70's, with chords and complete lyrics. Music mostly heard in the FM underground, poignantly defining the changing times with a lot of poetic insight that most people didn't want to hear about. A must have music reference! The Definitive Bob Dylan Songbook (Bob Dylan) (Bob Dylan)
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( 4 of 5 found this review helpful ) Posted: Oct 26 2005
i was originally in my local borders looking at the bob dylan lyrics book and observing how much more expensive it is compared to this book, which gives you the lyrics and the chords & melody. deciding it would be better to get this book for the better deal and the fact i wouldn't have to write in chords on the top of the lyrics book when wanting to remember the chord progressions, i bought it. i do agree it is smallish print and not very complex musically. but i mean if you want to play exactly what dylan was playing then you are obsessed with him anyway. not to mention not very original. the chords and melody line are really all that's needed. if you want to pick out more, ie, the fingerpicking, use you ear. hey at least you know'll what key it's in.
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( 22 of 25 found this review helpful ) Posted: May 11 2005
At first glance this book is fantastic. Any casual Dylan fan will be blown away at the sheer volume of songs covered in this collection, no doubt many of which they have never heard of, while the Dylan fanatics will find several features lacking but still sufficient. In order to adaquately review this book claiming to be 'Definitive' it must be seen critiqued from multiple sides. 1. So firstly, for the casual Dylan fan. It seems obvious enough to me that I casual fan would not necessarily be looking for a 'Definitive' songbook, but you are pretty much guaranteed to find the songs you seek in here. It really is one of the more definitive songbooks for Dylan, boasting some 330 songs. However, if you have much experience at all playing guitar or keys or whatever, this book is surprisingly mediocre. The transcriptions of these songs come with simple notation, and extremely basic chord charts (as well as full lyrics for each song). Many of the transcriptions are downright wrong, and sound nothing like any studio or live recordings I have heard. Some songs that come to mind are "It's all over now, Baby Blue" "Ballad of a Thin Man" and many others. The downside for guitar players is that everything has been shifted to standard E tuning. This means that there are no songs transcribed with open tunings (as he did for "Oxford Town" and others I believe). But most disturbingly is the total lack of capo transcriptions. Not one song has been transcribed for capo. Dylan was surely one of the most notorious capo users of pop music, and yet this has been bypassed. This obviously will dramatically alter the tone, especially on songs like "Mr. Tambourine Man" and other obvious capoed songs. The other issue for the more experienced musicians is the lack of lead and/or solo transcriptions. There is no TAB whatsoever, and perhaps this is the reason for the exception of solos, but it would have been fantastic to have some of the guitar or organ solos from some of his Highway 61 days. I suppose though if you were a truly experienced musician you wouldn't have much use for this book anyway. In any case, if these seem like nitpicky comments to you, there is little else that comes to mind under the casual fan category. Although there are several glaring errors in transcription, I would say most songs are more or less accurate, and the errors are something a decent guitar player could fix himself by simply writing the corrections in the more than ample margins. 2. Now then, onto the really interesting and nitpicky things. The capo issue and chord charts are worth raising again. The chords are very basic and sometimes seem entirely wrong, but still, this isn't the first songbook I have found that problem in. The capo issue though is quite a nuisance. If you want to get the right sound across, stay away from this book, since Dylan used Drop C and D so frequently for some of his older acoustic songs, this book is entirely inaddaquete. The lack of solos, as discussed above, is also a great disappointment. Next on the list, I'm not sure exaclty how many songs are missing from Dylan's catalogue, but off the top of my head I can remember there being at least a few I wanted to see in those pages. One for instance would be "Baby, Let Me Follow You Down." Perhaps it has to do with songs he didn't write himself, I unfortunately am not quite a big enough Dylan fan to tell. The songs are only transcribed for one instrument, so it feels like a generalization of the songs, without any clear direction or motivation for a specific instrument. This could be a very good thing, in that it is not just for guitarists and not just for keyboardists. It does leave things a bit lacking though depeding on which instrument you actually are playing (especially if its harmonica - whatever you do, don't buy solely for that). Perhaps the most understandable omission from this songbook are the radical changes these songs have undergone from their original conception. For instance, take the studio recordings of "One Too Many Mornings" or "A Hard Rain's a Gonna Fall." Then compare them with the versions for the Royal Albert Hall and Rolling Thunder Revue (respectively). It is quite a transformation, and also quite a shame not to have each version in this book (as they are so totally different), but I suppose this truly is nitpicking. All in all, if it is for an inexperienced musician, or a casual fan, I could give this a recomendation. But for the elitists, the perfectionists, and the true afficionados, this book is Positively 6th Street. Don't be afraid to send this one to Desolation Row.
