Customer Reviews

Knocked Out Loaded

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(30)

 

 

This record came out in the middle of my (approximately) five year "Dylan Absorption Phase" when I was a high school / college student. So I listened to this a lot even if it was pretty lame overall.

The meager highlights here include his lyrical collaboration with Sam Shepard, Brownsville Girl. A very long stream of consciousness reminiscence, the music behind the words is just okay but the lyrics make it pretty magical. This is a good one to listen to through headphones in the dark. Pretty funny that Brownsville Girl was included on Greatest Hits III because I can assure you, in no way was this a hit single. Just a great album track.

The really disappointing thing is that this came out right around the time Dylan was touring with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers as his backing band and those were really rocking shows. TP co-wrote one song here (the pretty rockin' and overlooked "Got My Mind Made Up") and the Heartbreakers play on the record a little but to no avail, the results are fairly sterile and boring.

Interestingly, right around this time, The Heartbreakers backed Dylan on a completely forgotten soundtrack single called Band of the Hand from a forgotten action movie of the same name. Band of the Hand rocks like nobody's business and is probably my favorite Dylan song from the 80's. Why it wasn't included on this hodgepodge record is a mystery but perhaps a bigger mystery is why Dylan has never added it to one of his rarities collections like Bootleg Series 1-3.

After reading reviews that this album and Down In the Groove are Dylan's worst albums, and still determined to collect all his albums, I find that this album is pretty enjoyable and a couple songs are my favorites. In my opinion, Dylan's worst albums are quality-wise at least as good as most other artists' best. There is just something about them. Also, they reflect the time and mood when they were made.

This album seems to have a very bad reputation among Dylan fans. It is far, far from being his best album, but it does have several notable songs (and one great one), and is actually quite underrated. It obviously wasn't intended to be a cohesive or even a "real" album: it plays like a scattershot, featuring songs from various different recording sessions spread out over a number of years, as well as more than a handful of covers and songs co-written with other people (there are only two songs credited to "Bob Dylan.") The sessions for this album were originally intended to have Dylan recording a set of cover songs. Whatever the original intent, though, Dylan - with this mish-mash setlist and scattershot tracking, not to mention its short running time - clearly just wanted, for whatever reason, to release an album at this time. (Dylan's lack of interest in the project is evident from a story regarding the cover: it's actually the movie poster for some cheap foreign film; some insignificant character - a session player's girlfriend, or the like - just happened to bring it into the studio one day. Dylan, liking it, opted to use it for the cover of the album. When asked about securing the rights for its use, he replied, "Just let 'em sue us.") Such lack of effort in compiling the album may have led to its bad reputation - not to mention its handful of less-than-stellar tracks. One often reads in reviews that this album is Brownsville Girl and 7 tracks of banality. In actual fact, the only track you should skip is the absolutely unstandable They Killed Him. Aside from this, there is an energetic and enjoyable cover (You Wanna Ramble), three fine songs (Driftin' Too Far From Shore, Maybe Someday, and Under Your Spell - songs typical of the good songs that Dylan wrote in the 80's, but very good ones, nonetheless.) Brownsville Girl is, of course, an absolute masterpiece. One wonders how many of the lines are Dylan's and how many are Sam Shepherd's, but, whatever the case, this song, featuring a brilliant "sing/speak" Dylan vocal, is undeniably amazing. To sum it all up, you definitely don't want to make this one of your first Dylan purchases; but, if you're a fan, it's definitely worth owning, and deserves a lot more credit than it is usually given.

This is one of Dylan's worst albums (alongside Dylan and the Dead and Down in the Groove). Many of us Dylan fans like to argue which is worse, this one or Down in the Groove. This one is worse. A hodge podge of recording sessions hastily thrown together, it has a "let's get this f---er out and let the fans decide whether it's good or not" feel to it. There are only 2 songs that are really worth your attention. The first, "You Wanna Ramble", has a really good groove to it, but the second, Brownsville Girl, is a Dylan masterpiece. Brilliantly written (with Sam Shepard) and performed (with a great vocal by Dylan and the choir). It runs 11 minutes, and feels short, because it's so good. The other material is a chore to get through. The worst song of all is They Killed Him. Filled with cheesy synthesizers and a really bad children's choir, it runs a mere 4 minutes and feels longer than Gone With the Wind, which gives you an indication of how wretched the song really is. Nothing else on the album really stands out, and it sounds like Dylan's just putting product out there. As any Dylan fans knows, the 80's was an awful decade for him, and only made 2 albums worth mentioning (the awesome Infidels, which is one of my favorites of his, and the good but overrated Oh Mercy).

Knocked Out Loaded does, however, have a great title, and the cover art is pretty good.

Critics be damned; they never know what they're talking about anyway. Many of them have written about this record in a tone that presumes we all agree it's at or near the nadir of Dylan's output. But I don't agree, and neither do many of my fellow listeners. This is a soulful album, from the opening bass slide of "You Wanna Ramble" to the trailing chorus at the conclusion of "Under Your Spell." The songs (and the odd but intriguing cover as well) conjure desert landscapes and long, wearying journeys of the body and mind. The resolutions of the stories within are usually ambiguous, open-ended or simply unattainable. With much of Dylan's work, it's the spaces between people that help define how they communicate, because they must do so in relation to where they stand; point-of-view is paramount. This record is a good example of how Dylan's best stories feature players who must struggle across barren landscapes to understand themselves and each other. Bob might have changed some of the lyrics to the opening song, I don't know, but I find it interesting that the track includes the line, "What happens tomorrow/ Is on your head, not mine," a bit of foreshadowing since the line is spoken by Burl Ives in the 1960 Western 'The Big Country,' starring Gregory Peck. The band really kicks on this one, and the sound is very similar to what Bob and his band have been achieving on stage in recent years. "They Killed Him" was written by Kris Kristofferson, and I think it's a good song. People object to the use of a children's choir on this track, but it sounds right to me. The way it comes off it sort of reminds me of Tom T. Hall's "100 Children." The message of both songs is simple and direct; and who's going to argue with the sentiments expressed? "Drifting Too Far from Shore" shares its title with an old Charles Moody spiritual recorded by Hank Williams, and vaguely recalls the melody of that song. It features another good line from another good Western, this time 'Bend of the River' from 1952: "I figure [maybe] we're even/ Or maybe I'm one up on you" (Arthur Kennedy to James Stewart). I think this song and "Maybe Someday" came out of the 'Empire Burlesque' batch of songwriting; they have a similar sound and feel. I like the keyboards, but I wish they'd mixed the guitars a little more up front. The background singers get really steamy with all that "Ooooh--yeah," rocking the boat with an erotic appeal that offsets the spiritual allusions. "Precious Memories" is a beautiful spiritual, a traditional song affectionately sung. It was brilliant to include steel drums on the track; they add an exotic sound and once again bring up images of vast stretches of sand that "glide across the lonely years." The snare drum drives the narrator of "Maybe Someday" down the Lost Highway of longing and regret, defending his intentions with a touch of righteous indignation. Dylan adds just a dash of spite to his vocal delivery, and reels off so many clever lines so quickly that you have to listen to the song several times before you can begin to smile in all the right places. The trip down the Lost Highway continues on the next track, the epic "Brownsville Girl," wherein the narrator tells us of his adventures crisscrossing Texas, the girl with "teeth like pearls/ shining like the moon above" by his side, but then no longer there, replaced in the present tense by someone who perhaps doesn't quite measure up, yet remains at his side and has "that dark rhythm in her soul." The narrator is "a man with no alibi" who journeys from nowhere to nowhere, acutely aware of his own mortality, likening himself to the main character of 'The Gunfighter' (1951) starring Gregory Peck, understanding his position: "Here I am, 35 years old and I haven't even got a good watch." The film was one of the first "sociological" Westerns, exploring the mythos of the gunfighter who has simply lived longer than he ever thought he would and now steps along the brink of the possibilities for a new life. Yet it seems as if it could be too late... "Got My Mind Made Up" was cut with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, with whom Dylan was touring that summer. The line is oft-repeated by Peck's gunfighter character toward the end of the film. The song has a good churning grunge to it, with somebody going off to see a guy in Libya (more sand). In an interview about this time, Petty said he'd never before worked with somebody whom everybody wanted to know something about. People are interested in Bob. The last song was co-written with Carol Bayer-Sager (sp?), and is poignant but (shakily) hopeful. The singer hopes he doesn't expire "two feet from the well." I love the horns and the background singers on this track, to say nothing of Dylan's obvious emotional involvement with it. A fine ending for a fine record. So take that, critics; and next time, pay for your ticket and don't complain. I give this one an 86.6, especially since it goes so well with an afternoon of playing pool and/or pinball and drinking (responsibly) from a bottle of tequila on those hot summer days. Viva Bob!

The cover painting is from the poster of an old forgotten B movie, most appropriate since this album was whipped together at the behest of Columbia Records which insisted their then fading star have a new album to flog before agreeing to bankroll his summer 1986 concert tour with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

Despite its mercenary beginnings, "Knocked Out Loaded" is a modest but enjoyable effort dominated by covers, leftovers from "Empire Burlesque," and rounded out with collaborations with talents as diverse as Petty, playwright Sam Shepard, and middle of the road songstress Carole Bayer Sager.

The stunning "Brownsville Girl," co-written with Shephard, is also included on "Greatest Hits Volume 3," thereby giving everyone but the most die-hard Dylanite an excuse to skip this album. But for die-hards and die-hards in the making, there's a cover of Kris Kristofferson's "They Killed Him" that is superior to Mr. K's own version, the fairly exciting "Got My Mind Made Up," and a moodily romantic closer in "Under Your Spell."

Dylan also throws a bone to fans of his "born again" period with a nice version of "Precious Memories." It's an eclectic mix, enough so that the album might have been titled "Dylan for Everyone."

Not a great album but worth it for "Brownsville Girl."

Every Dylan album seems to have its own flavor. This one has an interesting, kinetic, Southwestern feel. Not so much as, say DESIRE, but this is definately a unique album.

What makes this work great, however, is the masterpiece of BROWNSVILLE GIRL. It is probably Dylan's best song about lost love, the bittersweet memories of more innocent times, and the open plains of America. I once met Kris Kristofferson, and even he said that this was a great song. Bob never plays this one in concert, but he should. It's about as magical and heartbreaking as music can ever get.

Bought this years ago to complete collection even though I was well aware of the album's poor reputation. I listened with a clear mind and needless to say, the terrible reviews are warranted. Thin, uninspired and soaked with that "80's sound" this album is simply cringeworthy.I consider myself a Dylanfile so writing this isn't easy, but a fact is a fact, along with "Under a Blood Red Sky" and "Down In The Groove" this should be avoided unless your in the depths of a Dylan collecting phase. My concern if a a new listener listens and forms a negative opinion on Bob before hearing the other more "accessible" entries. This review can be applied to the other two albums mentioned. All the power to you if you like this CD, this is my personal opinion and I just wanted to vent even though the chances of someone actually reading this is nil much less taking my advise. Thanks for the time, and remember Bob Dylan RULES!

okay..yes iam one of those massive,fanatical bob fans..piles of books on him..multiple vinyl pressings of every album..shelves of ""ehum..umm shall we say live recordins' and this,along with EMPIRE BURLESQUE..have always been the ONLY two dylan albums i couldnt listen to..however in hindsight ive found in the last year or two, ive gone back to both albums and enjoy them emenslly..DOWN IN THE GROOVE AND SELF PORTRAIT..have always been much much better than their reputations suggest and now im loving empire b..and this little gem to..sure it is not one of those major major masterpieces but its a quint little surprising curio,where one scratches their heads when going thru an artists lifes work and comes across these rough little diamonds that never cut the grade..i find that you need to take in the whole work.the good the bad the bizzaree the strange etc etc...its all part of the journey of following bobs amazing trip..