What My Kids Listen To: Blood on the Tracks

In the Baldwin household, my kids definitely listen to Sesame Street and Disney on Pandora. They've also got two parents with a very wide range of musical interests, too. I'm going to start sharing the kind of musical ballads I want my kids to grow up with -- very different from what I grew up listening to as well, which was mainly Rogers and Hammerstein musicals, Raffi, classical music, Motown and Evangelical Christian bands/ singers.

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Blood on the Tracks is my favorite Bob Dylan album.

"Tangled Up in Blue" - this is a wonderful song.

Then she opened up a book of poems
And handed it to me
Written by an Italian poet
From the thirteenth century
And everyone of them words rang true
And glowed like burnin' coal
Pourin' off of every page
Like it was written in my soul
From me to you
Tangled up in blue

Listen here for an amazing live version from 1975; Bob looks a little native in this version. A few years ago, my sister Marianne was listening to this track when she asked me, "What was he doing in a topless bar in the first place?" Topless bars, Italian poetry, New Orleans, revolution and lumber jacks ... what else does this song need?

"Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts" - here's to walking up to a stranger and grinning. I love this ballad of greed, conquest and revenge.

"Shelter from the Storm" is my favorite Dylan song, period, and its location near the end of the album is the perfect poetry.

I need to mention that the songs are best listened to in order on the album. It's easy to pick out one's favorites; but to really feel the emotional powerhouse this album is, it must be a continuous flow. This is Dylan's magic - the sublimity of story, the allusions of pain, hope and the path of someone else's journey.

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