A Bob Dylan box set? Spanning just three discs?

How to make a Bob Dylan box set...well, you could put out one with about a dozen CDs and still be blamed that somebody's favorite song was missing.

But the compilers at Columbia have doen a good job solving this rather impossible task. 1985's "Biograph" wasn't the first ever career-spanning rock box set (the late, great Buddy Holly was honored with that in 1979), but it was the most important by far, establishing the format and sparking new interest in Bob Dylan whose career was in decline at the time.



Unlike many box sets, this one actually offers something to both the casual and the dedicated fan. Most of Dylan's best-known songs are here, as well as a generous helping of unreleased songs, B-sides, alternates and demos. And almost everything gels, actually, making "Biograph" an excellent, if not definitive, summary of Bob Dylan's career from 1961-1985.

Many great songs are missing, of course, but with an artist as prolific as Bob Dylan that can't be helped. And the songs that are here are excellent (with the exception of a handful that are merely good).



This is an immensely varied compilation, very well annotated and boasting magnificent state-of-the-art fidelity. The track list includes early acoustic numbers, electric rock songs, blues-rock, folk-rock, country-rock, and lovely ballads. And the rarities and previously unreleased songs aren't rejects or filler, most of them are in fact excellent, from the acoustic "Up To Me" and the surreal "Quinn The Eskimo" to the quirky, upbeat pop of "On A Night Like This" and "Heart Of Mine", and the gorgeous ballads "Lay Down Your Weary Tune" and "I'll Keep It With Mine".

Casual Dylan fans may well find that there are too many unfamiliar songs here, and they should probably start somewhere else...Dylan's original "Greatest Hits" album and the two-disc "More Greatest Hits" (AKA "Greatest Hits vol. 2") still provide the best introduction to Bob Dylan in his prime, much better than the more recent "Essential Bob Dylan". Or start by picking up Dylan's three best band-backed records, "Bringing It All Back Home", "Highway 61 Revisited", and "Blood On The Tracks".



There is no such thing as a definitive Bob Dylan-compilation, and three CDs wouldn't contain it if there was. And besides, the wonderful 70s albums "Blood On The Tracks" and "Desire" in particular are being short-changed, which is a shame.

But "Biograph" is still 3½ hours of some of Dylan's greatest songs, and the rarities and unreleased tracks makes it a must-have purchase even for the dedicated fan who already has all the hits.

4 3/4 stars.

Some of Dylan's Best Left Behind Stuff

I can just imagine the excitement this set must have generated among Dylan fans when this set was released. Biograph was so much more than a retrospective because of all of the unreleased material on it. The set opens with "Visions of Johanna" from the Sixty-six tour and draws you right into the music. Just imagine, Dylan fans had to wait two more decades to finally get a whole Sixty-six show in the legal Bootleg Series. "Quinn the Eskimo" the third song on the record was recorded at Mr. D's Isle of White show in Sixty-nine and curiously enough left off "Self Portrait" where you can find more songs from that show. "You're a Big Girl Now" and "Tangled Up in Blue" are out takes from "Blood on the Tracks." "I Wanna be Your Lover" and "Crawl Out Your Window" are both songs left over from Sixty-six. "Percy's Song" one of the true gems of this set is from the earlier acoustic period. And there is more, so much more. This is one fine five star Bob Dylan set and if you don't own it, you should.

Reviewed by Stephanie Sane

Reviewed by Stephanie Sane

The best "best of Dylan" available

Putting together a "best of" collection for a musical artist whose work should be heard in the context of the albums on which it originally appeared is a difficult task, but the folks responsible for Bob Dylan's "Biograph" did themselves proud.

The sequencing may not make much sense in the CD era, but this was released in 1985 when vinyl records were still the dominant format. By 33 1/3 standards, the sequencing makes perfect sense with each side arranged (loosely) around a theme. The so-called protest songs were relegated to one side, love songs were given another, and difficult to catagorize tracks like "Every Grain of Sand" and "Visions of Johanna" were collected on another side.

With that in mind, "Biograph" is hard to beat. As an introduction to THE singer-songwriter of the rock era, "Biograph" makes previous "hits" packages obsolete by providing an exciting and varied overview of Dylan's brilliance as both a composer and performer. Whether protesting society's injustices in "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are A Changin'," chronicalling the course of a love affair in "You're a Big Girl Now," professing a belief in the divine as in "Solid Rock" and "Every Grain of Sand," or just being inscrutably brilliant as in a previously unreleased live rendition of "Visions of Johanna," Dylan's songwriting genius is simply unrivaled in any genre of music.

For those who already own most of the official releases from Dylan's Columbia catalogue, the real treat here are the previously unreleased recordings, such as the breathtaking "Up to Me" (an outtake from 1974's "Blood on the Tracks") and the superb "Abandoned Love" (leftover from 1976's "Desire"), all of which prove that the scraps from the man's table are often every bit as tasty as the main meal.