The Dylan media player requires Flash 9
Good As I Been To You (1992)
(4 votes)
Tracks (Click song title for lyrics)
- Frankie & Albert
- Jim Jones (trad. arr. by Bob Dylan)
- Blackjack Davey (trad. arr. by Bob Dylan)
- Canadee-i-o
- Sittin' On Top Of The World
- Little Maggie
- Hard Times (Stephen Foster)
- Step It Up And Go
- Tomorrow Night (Sam Coslow - Will Grosz)
- Arthur McBride
- You're Gonna Quit Me
- Diamond Joe
- Froggie Went A-Courtin'
Album Info
Vocals, Guitar and Harmonica -- Bob Dylan
Production Supervised by Debbie Gold for The Gold Network
Recorded and Mixed by Micajah Ryan
Mastered by Stephen Marcussen at Precision Mastering, LA
Front Cover Photography by Jimmy Wachtel
Art Direction/Design by Dawn Patrol, LA
Special Thanks to Don Ienner, Debbie Gold and Jeff Rosen
Comments
GOOD AS I BEEN TO YOU: THE IMAGINATIVE LISTENING
The true listening of the music I love begins here. I discovered this album rather late and after listening to it I felt immense gratitude for the worlds I was allowed to go to. Couple this album with The Grateful Dead's Reckoning and lying in a cell you could say, I've been all around this world. The songs here become foregrounds for dreams, for motives and chances, for other songs and songs coinciding with life. There are lessons here no more than anywhere else; there are the mysterious workings of chance ever present in them.
I am baffled by the cold disregard of this album by listeners who ought to know music better. It is commonly taken, the album is Dylan's return to his roots. It is inconsiderate on their part to take interest in THE TIMES THEY ARE A- CHANGIN’ or BLOOD ON THE TRACKS and disregard this album roughly on grounds of a missing central theme.
When I say Dylan, I think of a poet who sings his poetry. Poetry is foremost an oral tradition. These songs are no less Dylan's than any other of his compositions are his own. The meaning of folk blues or poetry in general, is to become part of tradition. To cure the early Dylan listener of the proposed separation of the poet and his ballads, I suggest a deep listening of The Grateful Dead. Let us not leave that up to the "Dead-Heads" alone. If you are sick or poor to travel think of storytellers who travelled and sang ballads abroad. Invent a plot to find someone you have lost or forgotten about. Where there is representation with beauty, we become a part of it.
Not a favorite
No Rating
This is one of my least favorite Dylan albums, along with Knocked Out Loaded and most of all Modern Times.
The best would be:
Blood
Desire
Blonde
Freewheelin
Basement
Bob Dylan II
So, Bob's tired of writing and wants to remind us of where he came from and all that. This is the true sequel to his first Columbia album. Just Bob, his guitar, and some old folk tunes. All the folks who hated him for going electric can rejoice.
What is it?
I still can't believe that could be the new Bob Dylan album at some point. It was a big dissapointment. Not because it's only he and his guitar, but it doesn't sound good, it seems improvized, and have very few interesting performances. Even more dissapointing was the album presentation, with the vacant inside of the booklet. It seems a bootleg.
As Good As I Been To You
Once again, Bob tries something new. Or rather, something old – really, really old. Another collection of traditional folk tunes with just the acoustic guitar, harmonica and voice, it makes everything that came after his 1962 debut, Bob Dylan until now seem like a diversion. A long and pleasant diversion, but still just a detour from Dylan’s main calling: folksinger. And what of the grammatically incorrect Good As I Been To You? Where John Wesley Harding showed off his harp playing and New Morning demonstrated his piano playing ability, here Bob gets to spotlight his fingerpicking prowess. Compared to his debut, his improvement as a guitar player is not only stunning, but also surprising since we’ve never heard anything like it on any of his previous efforts. But the biggest difference between this album and his first is in song-selection. While history could eventually prove me wrong on this, the songs Bob dug up for this album are not nearly as good as the ones on Bob Dylan (why, I heard some character on the Showtime series Dead Like Me singing “In My Time Of Dyin’” just last night). There’s not nearly the range – none of the songs are as goofy and funny as “Pretty Peggy-O” or “Freight Train Blues”, and whereas he added his own personality and wit to those song, on this album he’s much more of a strict historian, performing these traditional ditties the way they are meant to be sung. While there are many great tracks on this album (“Blackjack Davey”, “Sittin’ On Top Of The World”, “Step It Up And Go” and “Tomorrow Night” are my favorites), overall the album is too monotonous to be truly enjoyable. Really the song that stands out the most is the closer, “Froggie Went A-Courtin’”. For the first time since Slow Train Coming, Bob’s doing children’s songs. He also recorded a version of “This Old Man” for the charity album For Our Children around this time. Maybe someday he’ll do a whole kids’ album. That would be great, but Good As I Been To You is an album that was probably a lot better for Dylan to make than for us to listen to.