A Contrarian's View of Dylan

Most people see Saved and Slow Train Coming as two sides to the same coin. And while they may share a common lyrical focus, for my money Slow Train Coming has a lot more in common with its predecessor, Street Legal, than it does with Saved. Looking past the words, Slow Train Coming's songs sound a lot Street Legal's. They're basic pop-rocks songs with the same basic arrangement of horns and backing singers. Sure you've got Jerry Wexler doing a much better job recording it, and Mark Knopfler adding some more zing on the guitar, but really it always sounded like Bob just added the word Jesus to whatever songs he was working on at the time of his conversion. Really, Saved is the first of the quote-unquote born again albums that really sound like it. The music here is Gospel. I don't get why Slow Train Coming is always more respected than Saved either. I mean if the Jesus words bother you, you're not getting much help from either album. I think at the time, Slow Train Coming was seen as a weird one-off diversion, but the fear with Saved was that this would be all that Bob would sing about from here on out. Plus with the music so clearly Gospel, it's harder to pretend that the lyrics aren't really so dogmatic. I think the two are just about equal in terms of quality. I love the extended genre exercise into the Gospel milieu. The title track, as well as "Solid Rock" really rock out. "A Satisfied Mind" is a slip, but a brief one. "Covenant Woman" is really the only bad song on here. It's a solid uncompromising album.

Great!!

Even if you don't like and or beilve in the message the music is simply Dylan at his best..just listen to, "In the Garden"...WOW!!

Saved

There is a lot of truth and much to be gained in the lyrics that Bob Dylan gave us in Saved. Here we experience the basics of the foundation of Christianity.

The album is moving and still moves new listeners.