Blood On The Tracks is Old

I've always said that Dylan's "Blood On the Tracks" is the album that changed me from a fan to a disciple and have used it as a gateway drug for others who express indifference to Bob. I think it's safe to say that if you don't like this album, you're probably not going to like any of his other stuff. You should also have the shit kicked out of you, but that's another story.

The folks over at PopMatters evidently agree with me and are giving the album a proper "Reconsideration." It's essentially an intellectual analysis of the album in the form of quasi-academic articles with the usual dense prose. Example:

Dylan’s work has always been characterized by a poetics of place and displacement. The poetics of place establishes itself through recourse to repeated mentions of real and imagined places, which seem to fix many of Dylan’s texts in recognizable locations and which are therefore crucial to the ability of his audience to identify with the texts. These locations—whether actual or metaphorical—are fixed moments that the memory can focus on even as it struggles to recall other features.

Blech. Read at your own risk. Has anyone ever heard the original version that was bootlegged as "Blood On the Tapes?" I would say listening to that is a more fitting tribute.