And so it finally ends. Remind me to choose a smaller number the next time a decade ends. Coming up in a few weeks: The Decade in Film, a collective affair with a very different format.
3.
Album: “Love and Theft” — Bob Dylan (Columbia, 2001)
This album has aged so well and I thought it was classic pretty much immediately. A Top 5 Dylan album for me. From my 2001 year-end piece:
I’ve listened to “Love And Theft” more in the last four months than I’ve listened to the supposedly sacred Time Out of Mind in the last four years. Casually profound and profoundly casual, this startling return to form reminds us that the key to Dylan’s greatness has always lain less in the weighty pronouncements that got him dubbed the “Voice of a Generation” than in the warm, open tone of his music, the freeness of his vocals, and the consistent humor and wit of his lyrics. It is (Oh no! Here it comes!) his best record since Blood On the Tracks.
Song Sample: “Summer Days”
