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Bob Dylan - Down in the Groove

Down in the Groove Album Cover
List Price: $11.98
Our Price: $5.58
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Manufacturer: Sony
Release Date: 1990-10-25
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Customer Reviews
Summary: Speedy process. Was very pleased!
Overall Rating: Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5
Comment: Ordered this for my grandson, and he was very happy to receive it so quickly!
Summary: Crashing Disappointment
Overall Rating: Average rating of 3/5Average rating of 3/5Average rating of 3/5Average rating of 3/5Average rating of 3/5
Comment: Assigning three stars for an album review titled "Crashing disappointment" sounds too generous, I know, but as a reviewer who acknowledges Dylan as one of the great philosophers of human history, I find this far below the master's best work, but still worthy of the level of three-star respect. Perhaps I was most disappointed in relation to my previous Dylan purchase "Oh Mercy" which rated five stars based on a set of songs that just poured into my soul.

"Down in the Groove" plays more like "Empire Burlesque" instead of "Oh Mercy", the songs and lyrics of the quality one should expect from Dylan spread too thin. At least on the "Groove", the songs aren't ruined by a bizarre mix decisions as on "Burlesque."

Only "Death is not the End" and "Silvio" stand up to the best of Dylan's catalog. For the rest, most are covers of songs one won't find in most artists' repertoire, with good reason, given Dylan's decidedly unique arrangements (compare Dylan's "Shenandoah" to Springsteen's, for example). And the originals don't spark to life, even in the snappy uptempo--almost rockabilly--vibe that permeates the album.

As you might judge from the fact that the three most recent Dylan purchases I have mentioned ("Groove", "Burlesque", and "Oh Mercy") are from a relatively down period of Dylan's career, I am on a path to flesh out my iTunes with the complete Dylan catalog, and am far past the folk years, the early electric years, the gospel album years, and the recent soulful renaissance that actually began with Oh Mercy. So as I move through the lesser-known lights to complete the catalog, I don't expect to find another "Blood on the Tracks" set hidden amongst them, and judged next to the amazing body of songs on these albums over an incredible 45-year span, "Groove" is not great.

But many artists would like to have a song like "Silvio" to grace their best album, would they not? Here Dylan puts it on a throwaway album and keeps moving.

Now that's talent. Three stars. No less. Take your Dylan hating somewhere else.
Summary: Ragged & Beautiful
Overall Rating: Average rating of 3/5Average rating of 3/5Average rating of 3/5Average rating of 3/5Average rating of 3/5
Comment: I love this album - the songs all sound like very casual demos & rough mixes. It sounds like Dylan has rummaged through a bunch of rehearsal material & put together a mix-tape! Relaxed & confident, this is a really fun collection. Highlights: When Did You Leave Heaven & Shenandoah. But there's lots to like here. I recommend coupling this with 'Knocked Out Loaded', they're really Side A & Side B of the same "album".
Summary: Easily Dylan's worst studio album (but even at the bottom of the barrel there's a couple of gems)
Overall Rating: Average rating of 2/5Average rating of 2/5Average rating of 2/5Average rating of 2/5Average rating of 2/5
Comment: By the late 1980s, the once sacrosanct Bob Dylan had reached the lowest point of his career. During the mid 1960s, he was untouchable, a critical darling, and on a creative roll that has not been seen since. Things had changed drastically in twenty years. By the end of the 1980s, before the release of OH MERCY, many people thought he finally gave up the ghost creatively. While in some respects Dylan's 80s material is unjustly crucified, in other respects the critical assault was totally accurate about how bad he really got during that decade.

DOWN IN THE GROOVE is one of the prime examples of how badly Dylan's art had decayed. DOWN bears the dubious distinction as being the worst studio album in Dylan's catalogue. While Columbia's revenge album DYLAN from 1973 is arguably worst, at least Dylan didn't sanction that release. This album, however, is truly the bottom of the barrel. Dylan lost all artistic direction during this era of his career.

Just for a little context, by 1988 a lot of people had lost faith in Dylan. He hadn't released a decent record in years. Critics and fans overall found EB, his album from 1985, guilty of glitzy production and bad, dated arrangements, a consensus that has only grown stronger in the ensuing (though for my money, EB is as good as anything he's recorded post 1975). Critics panned his 1986 album, KNOCKED OUT LOADED, which barely dented the charts . In 1987, he started in a movie that was so bad it was never released stateside ("Hearts of Fire"), though the soundtrack had some decent songs. That same year, he did a notoriously bad tour with the Grateful Dead. Then in 1988, he released this dismal album. Things were looking pretty bleak for the Dylan faithful.

DOWN IN THE GROOVE is something of a sequel to the other critically reviled studio record Dylan released two years earlier, the aforementioned KNOCKED OUT LOADED. Unlike KOL, DOWN never raises above mediocrity. If anything, DOWN proves that KOL's methodology was not random. KOL pulled songs from several different recording sessions spread out over several years, with each track having a different backing band and filled with collaborators. The only real difference in this regard is DOWN's recording sessions were closer together, but still spread out with different backing bands.

DOWN, unlike its predecessor KOL, which had a number of highlights, is almost entirely bad. KOL has a number of songs that are just engaging, even though there are a couple that are flat out bad. While nothing on DOWN matches the horror of the worst moments of KOL, almost nothing on DOWN reaches the high, or even the enjoyable, moments on KOL either.

DOWN is just filled with simplistic, generic music and obscure covers from Dylan's life. Mostly, though, these covers are uninspiring and forgettable. The first half of the album fares the worst, filled with boring, generic arrangments that are never grating on the ears, but also never truly memorable. The second half plays better than the first half, with a few nice tracks sprinkled throughout. The entire album is filled with boring, generic synths, guitars, drums, and basic, run of the mill instrumentation.

There are only two Dylan originals here. "Death is not the End," an INFIDELS outtake, is very simple and a mildly pleasant song, though never one of my favorite. The song is a 1983 recording with some backup vocals overdubbed in 1988. "Had a Dream About You Baby," like the rest of the album, has that distasteful 1980s aura of Dylan being truly out of ideas. First recorded and released for the "Hearts of Fire" soundtrack, Dylan used an alternate recording for DOWN.

The other two Dylan songs, cowritten with Robert Hunter, The Grateful Dead's official lyricist, are "Silvio" and "Ugliest Girl in the World." Brent Mydland, Weir, and Garcia do backup vocals on "Silvio," easily the best song on the album. "Ugliest Girl in the World," like most novelity tracks, may be funny the first couple of times but there's nothing to return too. "Ugliest Girl" isn't even that funny to begin with, and sounds so bad that maybe even the Dead rejected it.

Despite how damning this review is, there are some bright spots to DOWN. For one, "Shenendoah" ranks among his best interpretations of traditional songs he ever recorded. "Rank Strangers to Me" is a nice little number. "Let's Stick Together" sounds like a companion to KOL's "You Wanna Ramble," if not nearly as memorable.

What's really sad is while DOWN sounds truly uninspired, there are several songs recorded during this era which would not only strengthen the album, but redeem it from being truly despicable to at least a "below average" Dylan album, a step up, in this instance. There are a number of outtakes that would change the entire record. "The Usual" and "Night After Night," both appearing on the "Hearts of Fire" soundtrack, are pretty good songs, better than eight of the ten songs on this record. "Who Loves You More", a fantastic outtake from EB, would have fit in well here, as would the other EB outtake "Freedom For the Stallion." "Important Words", which was released accidentally on the Argentina version of DOWN, was set to be released but was removed, and would have assisted the record.

The real sadness, to me anyway, is the three best songs Dylan recorded during 1986-1987 are almost wholly unknown to the general record buying public, and all three should have been on here. The first is "Band of the Hand," a 1986 song which appears on a soundtrack to the movie of the same name. The song recalls SHOT OF LOVE's "Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar," is one of the most hard-rocking, memorable songs Dylan wrote in the last thirty five years. It should not be consigned to a forgotten soundtrack to a forgotten movie. The second song is the very obscure "Hearts of Fire" outtake "To Fall In Love With You," a five minute gut wrenching work that is better than anything on DOWN or KOL, with maybe the exception of "Brownsville Girl." That song ranks among Dylan's best unreleased material. The third outtake is the Solomon Burke cover "Sidewalks, Fences, and Walls", an outtake that began circulating in February 2007. It blows KOL and DOWN covers out of the water.

Ultimately, DOWN shows us that even our heroes are only human after all. While Dylan purposefully designed the 1970 release SELF-PORTRAIT as a dovetail to get his radical fans off his back, by 1988, it's clear that he's simply running out of steam. With Dylan flooding the market with so many subpar records and products, it's clear he had no audience he needed to shed anyway, because by 1988 a lot of people stopped caring about Dylan. While nothing is absolutely horrible about DOWN, there is hardly anything good to say, which is a shocking statement in and of itself about a Dylan album.

This is a depressing album. A really depressing album. How the mighty have fallen.

Summary: so much beter than u think
Overall Rating: Average rating of 4/5Average rating of 4/5Average rating of 4/5Average rating of 4/5Average rating of 4/5
Comment: well ive now reached a point where i realise that even the small amount of weak dylan albums are much better that we all think...and this is no exception...ninety miles an hour down a deadend street, rank strangers to me, death is not the end, shandandoh,when did you leave heaven are all fantastic, gospel tinged songs, very sad sounding and very awesome...the rest of the album is fuelled with fine 12 bar rock nroll i remeber at the time, everyone i worked with in an indie record store would laugh about new bob albums( and play some awful stooges/ramones rip off band and think it great), id argue back that if it was the new johnny thunders album it would be called his masterpiece....rememeber every bad dylan album is actually much better than its reputation.( we all realise that dont we??).i still work in that indie record store and as a test we occasionally play this album ( or new morning,hard rain,infidels ,shot of love) in the store and the reaction is always great and it always sells as a result..the reason for this reveiw is that dylan just came to melbourne, i played this album in store on the weekend and sold all three copies as a result....so no it aint blood on the tracks or blonde on blonde but its one of those cute little records that slipped out and under the radar
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