Customer Reviews
One real gem 
2008-03-25
One real gem is Please Crawl Out Your Window. A throw-away when Bob did it, but all of Bruce in this version.
As for Dylan covers - He was ALWAYS covered from the start (Byrds, Peter Paul & Mary, Turtles) so what's the big deal.
The Spirit of Dylan isn't quite here, either 
2008-03-19
A bunch of indie/alt stars get together and pay tribute to Bob with a lot of covers. It's an uneven experience. The most famous songs tend to come across worst. Stephen Malkmus, Karen Oh or Cat Power trying to turn well worn phrases like 'you know something is happening, but you don't know what it is' into their own comes off very karaoke. Other efforts work better. Yo La Tengo demonstrate that Fourth Time Around is a song they were in fact born to cover (and what a great song--practically invented the passive-aggressive attitude towards romance that has defined indie-rock forever). Eddie Vedder (with a lot of help from Tom Verlaine on guitar) pulls off an excellent All Along the Watchtower. And the less famous songs, like John Doe's version of Pressing On, and Sufjan Stevens' Ring Those Bells, tend to work better. However, there is a problem with the overall gestalt. In his day, Dylan was incredibly audacious--ignoring his cult and crossing straight over into the world of pop. By contrast, nearly all the performers here seem a little timid and smug. Here's an alternative idea--how about an album with all the acts who manage to straddle that art/commercial divide today--Kanye West, Amy Winehouse, Daft Punk, etc.--covering Dylan. Some of these acts are probably unfamiliar with his catalogue, and I'm sure that would be for the best.
I was tempted to add a star to my rating because of the inclusion of the previously unreleased Basement Tape, I'm Not There. It is outstanding.
Brilliant collection of Dylan Covers 
2008-03-03
You will not be disappointed with this soundtrack. The colaborative effort put forth to create this was well worth the effort. I especially love Cat Powers' rendition. Add this to your collection!
All Over the Map 2008-02-15
This soundtrack, like the movie, is erratic, diverse and mostly successful, often great. The best cuts are those where the performers take the Dylan material as a starting point and bring their own styles and sensibilities to it. The weakest are those where Dylan is approached on tiptoe, as if crawling too close to a deity, as if simply to sing a version of one of his songs is an audacity, and the result of that approach is just a pale copy of the original.
One other overall random thought -- what a great day it was when Dylan first plugged in. So many of these songs work as rock, electrifying them made (and makes) them all the more original and outrageous.
Best cuts: Sonic Youth's I'm Not There; Goin to Acapulco (don't much care for My Morning Jacket, but Jim James is fine here and everything Calexico does on the CD is arresting); Stuck Inside of Mobile (Cat Power snotty and sensuous at the same time, a nice trick); John Doe on Pressing On and I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine (and check out his latest CD, A Year in the Wilderness); Highway 61 from Karen O, truly revisited; Los Lobos taking Billy south of the border; Can't Leave Her Behind; Yo La Tengo's I Wanna Be Your Lover; the Once couple on You Ain't Goin Nowhere; Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window, Hold Steady at their best on one of Dylan's great under-known songs; Maggie's Farm, more because of the Million Dollar Bashers than Malkmus' vocals; Moonshiner; and Antony and the Johnsons glorious dirge take on Knockin' On Heaven's Door.
Less successful (see the too cautious comment above): Tombstone Blues (though to be fair, Havens' singing really works in the film); Dark Eyes; Senor (yes, I know Willie's a god, but he's also boring here); Ring Them Bells; and -- especially -- two standards, Just Like a Woman and The Times They Are a Changin' .
Nice take on Dylan's tunes 2008-01-25
I'm a huge Dylan fan, but have never liked the tributes and covers of his stuff. I'd always rather hear the originals. However, this collection really seems to nail it in a way that's hard to describe. Suffice it to say that I found most tracks to be interestingly interpreted and a few positively outstanding (When the Ship Comes In). I've really enjoyed the collection.
So much more than the movie's soundtrack 2008-07-05
Let me state upfront that, while I was rather apprehensive of the movie concept as such, I ended up really liking the non-delinear interpretation of Bob Dylan's life by director Todd Haynes. The structure of the film had the potential to turn this into a (well-intended) disaster, but it turned out to be quite the enjoyable surprise. When you watch the film. you hear a lot of Dylan songs, mostly from Dylan himself, and once in a while fragments from Dylan-covers also can be heard. The "I'm Not There" is a collection of those covers.
"I'm Not There" (2 CDs, 34 tracks; 159 min.) brings 33 covers, many of which do not appear in the movie. I am generally speaking not a great fan of these types of collections (cover songs of big name artists) but must admit that it works quite well here. Among the many highlights on tis collection, my personal favorites include "Goin' to Acapulco" by Jim James & Calexico (done brilliantly in the movie), "One More Cup of Coffee" by Roger McGuinn & Calexico, Jeff Tweedy's somber take on "Simple Twist of Fate", Charlotte Gainsbourg (who stars in the film) whispering-soft version of "Just Like A Woman", a surprising appearance of the Hold Steady for their cover of "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?", an almost subdued performance of the Black Keys on "The Wicked Messinger", and a memorable "Highway 61 Revisited" from Karen O (of the Yea Yea Yeas). The very last song brings Bob Dylan himself, doing "I'm Not There", along with the Band (from the Basement Tapes-era).
Bottom line: I was very pleasantly surprised by this album, which is so much more than a soundtrack. The best proof of that is of course that you can play this and it will resonate just as well, whether you've actually seen the movie "I'm Not There" or not.
Like the movie, these covers disappoint 
2008-06-21
I looked forward to seeing the movie; but, quite frankly it sucked! More artsy-craftsy contortions than a ballerenic pretzel. And the covers of Dylan's music all turn out to be lame and lifeless just like the movie. Read Chronicles or Suze Rotolo's memoir: much, much better.A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties[[ASIN:0743244583Chronicles: Volume One (Chronicles)]][[ASIN:0825634520Bob Dylan: No Direction Home - The Soundtrack]]
NOT MUCH THAT BETTERS THE ORIGINAL - BUT STILL INTERESTING 2008-06-20
As I look through my i-tunes collection, I realize that I already have six versions of "Highway 61 Revisited" saved digitally on my computer. A few are various Dylan recordings and the remainder are covers by other artists. I have eight versions of "All Along the Watchtower," nine versions of "Just Like a Woman," and over a dozen renderings of "Knockin' on Heaven's Door." All of this overkill begs the question; Does the world need another album of artists covering Bob Dylan songs? The simple answer is `Of course not", but the soundtrack for "I'm Not There" is not quite so simple.
Over the course of two disks, thirty-four recordings by almost as many artists veer wildly all over place. Some are faithful to the original recordings, while others are incredibly imaginative recreations. For my money, it's the reinvented tracks that may help this collection become something more than a novelty. Perhaps the most surprising thing is how many of the most iconoclastic artists are the very ones who play it safest. Eddie Vedder sounds great on "All Along the Watchtower," but he does nothing that hasn't been done hundreds of times before. Cat Power and Karen O created virtual carbon copies of Dylan's own recordings, leaving me to wonder why they would even bother, since any cover band could have done the same thing. Even Jeff Tweedy disappointed, with a true-to-form but straightforward reading of "A Simple Twist of Fate."
The most successful stuff here are the acts who chose obscure material, or have rendered the song into something new and interesting in its own right. The Los Lobos version of "Billy 1" is totally cool, and casts an obscure gem in an entirely new light. Iron and Wine teamed up with Calexico to create as moody an interpretation of "Dark Eyes" as I could imagine. You'll have to listen twice before you even recognize it. I also have to give props to Yo La Tengo - a band that usually does not impress me much - for choosing "I Wanna Be Your Lover." This may the hardest-rocking song this band has ever stumbled upon. I don't even know where Stephen Malkmus found "Can't Leave Her Behind," but I'm glad he did, while Sufjan Stevens turns "Ring Them Bells" into a Van Dyke Parks-style show tune.
I guess everybody will read this collection in their own way, but I doubt that anyone would consider it to be indispensable. As for myself, I intend to load a dozen or so tracks into my i-tunes, but I'll skip the recordings that bring nothing new to the table. B Tom Ryan
I'm Not There soundtack 2008-05-08
I bought this for my girlfriend. The music is great and so was the movie. Please buy if you like Bob Dylan's music!!
Dylan without The Dead??? 2008-05-08
A very good Dylan cover compilation, don't get me wrong...but how can you really have any kind of a Dylan cover compilation without The Grateful Dead??? For that I can only give it a 3 star.
Next time someone does a Bob movie...include The Dead.
