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Album Details

• Artist: Various Artists
• Album: Paupers, Peasants, Princes & Kings: The Songs of Bob Dylan
• Label: Doghouse
• Year of Release: 2006
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: patchen on 2006-06-23

XM Radio superstar Dylan sure could write a song. While the choices here are not very inspired "Lay Lady Lay"?) some of the versions are amazing re-workings of the original, that both pay tribute and extend new life to them. You can't ask much more from a tribute record than to be a mix of the revelatory and inane. This is both. On the upside, hip-hop mastery re-energizes both "All Along The Watchtower " (POS) and " Don't Think Twice It's Alright" ( Gatsby's American Dream) into raging street anthems, as does the feedback drenched version of "If Not For You" by Read Yellow, before it slips into emo and falls apart. The clunkers suffer mostly from reverence: Down to Earth Approach's "My Back Pages" and The Honorary Title's "Simple Twist of Fate" are just too close to avoid the obvious fact that the originals are better. Down To Earth Approach in particular sound like The Byrds in some ill future guest appearance on American Idol.

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