Deep Buckets

There comes a point where you've got to answer the small question: Which is your favourite Dylan song? When I heard this put to the mighty Prof Christopher Ricks he came up with I Want You from Blonde on Blonde, rightly clarifying that he wasn't saying this was the greatest of all the songs, simply the one he had the most spreading soft spot for. I found myself, oddly, in instant agreement. I say oddly since it's not exactly the best known item in the Bobster's vast output despite its utter perfection. However, I've since changed my mind, even though the song has not in any way fallen in my esteem.

It's simply that I've come to realise that Buckets of Rain from Blood on the Tracks speaks to me with a huge intensity and seems, in a sense, more representative of the later bluesy, real Dylan - despite being closer in time to his earlier folksy, rock star incarnation. Anyway, it happens to have the one verse that pretty much corresponds to whatever I've got as a philosophy of life: Life is sad / Life is a bust / All ya can do / Is do what ya must / Ya do what ya must do, and ya do it well / I do it for you, honey, baby can't ya tell?

It helps that whoever he's playing with on the album hardly seem to have had time to run through the music before committing it to vinyl. Pure rough and ready feeling. It took me years to figure out why he did that. Now I wonder why hardly anybody else ever does.