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Keys to the Rain: The Definitive Bob Dylan Encyclopedia |  | Author: Oliver Trager
Publisher: Billboard Books
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
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Seller: bookmans_exchange
Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 839676
Media: Paperback
Pages: 768
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.5
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 7 x 1.6
ISBN: 0823079740
Dewey Decimal Number: 016.78242164092
EAN: 9780823079742
ASIN: 0823079740
Publication Date: October 1, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
The most encyclopedic sourcebook on one of the 20th century's most important artists, Keys to the Rain: The Definitive Bob Dylan Encyclopedia completely chronicles this music icon's recorded work. Discussions of all of his officially released albums and collaborative efforts, including year of release, record company, serial number information for all formats (LP, CD, and cassette), track list, musicians, and descriptive analysis of its place in Dylan's career are provided. In addition, it offers critical and historically detailed entries on each of the songs that Dylan has recorded or performed in more than four decades of touring, including composer information, and the album on which the song appeared. Completing this reference are detailed biographical sketches of more than 100 musicians, songwriters, and other individuals associated with Dylan, and a selected list of films in which he has been involved.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 8
Where's the index July 6, 2008
Stephen Pate (Charlottetown, PE Canada)
Trager's book is interesting, informative if not always accurate and exhaustive. But then would any 10 Dylanologists agree on anything.
A book of this size and nature needs an index and table of references.
I enjoyed it.
Heavyweight reference work June 7, 2008
Todd Stockslager (Raleigh, NC)
Weighty collection listing the albums and songs Dylan has written, performed, and recorded, is worthy if not quite as definitive as it claims in the subtitle.
Scanning the list from A to Z leads to an awareness of the amazing depth and breadth of Dylan's legacy in music, literature, culture, and religion.. Trager includes the many songs that Dylan has sung in concerts and performed with other artists, and spends a fair amount of time documenting these artist's and songwriters live's and legacy, and Dylan's reach is so great that this coverage could nearly stand alone as a general-purpose encyclopedia of folk, jazz, blues, country, and popular music in the 20th century. It will certainly give Dylan fans an introduction and connection point to all these genres and their greatest artists and songs.
Dylan fans, of whom I count myself among the many and most intense, will also learn many new and interesting facts from this guide:
--The album "Love and Theft" was released on September 11, 2001.
--The Ramones have covered "My Back Pages"!
--"Joey", Dylan's tale of a misunderstood gangster from the 'Desire" album, was based on a real life mafia don who was murdered in New York City in 1962.
--In consideration for the lowest point in celebrity vanity recordings, may I present this nomination: "Sebastian Cabot, Actor--Bob Dylan, Poet" (1967).
--In support of my contention that Dylan before, during, and after his Christian conversion has always been (perhaps primarily?) a deeply spiritual song writer, may I present this cover album: The Brothers and Sisters of Los Angeles, "Dylan Gospel" (1969).
Trager provides useful reference information for each entry, including headers with the recording dates and musicians and technicians on albums, the Dylan and cover albums and release dates on which songs appear, and biographical sketches with birth and death dates for songwriters and artists mentioned with each song. In the text of each song entry, Trager mentions generally the tours and years in which the songs were sung in concert, and mentions Dylan's frequent song lyric and musical tempo and style reworkings. He also provides descriptions of the recording circumstances around most of the albums and songs, and some idea of contemporary critical review and literary analysis, as well as providing his own capsule reviews.
While these are interesting, the books value as a reference work, might be enhanced by paring down the analysis and reviews (heaven knows there are plenty of those surrounding Dylan's work, many of which Trager lists in a bibliography at the back). The space thus saved could be used for more exhaustive listings of song performance dates. Also of value would be a cross reference index of artists, writers, and songs, so for example, I could quickly tell which songs the Brothers and Sisters of Los Angeles included on their no-doubt interesting album of Dylan covers.
In a reference of this size, fact-checking is critical, and Trager and his editing team got it mostly right. I found one obvious error: The entry for the song "Step it up and Go" is incorrectly attributed to the "World Gone Wrong" album, even though other entries place the song correctly on the "Good as I've Been to You" album. Trager also mentions Christopher Rick's valuable study Dylan's Visions of Sin (see my review there) in an entry, but does not include it in the bibliography.
This book would also make a valuable companion to the Bob Dylan Complete Discography (see my review there).
 Nothing Is Definitive December 11, 2007
L. Bullock (Mendocino, CA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I'm leery of "definitive" books on as changing an artist as Dylan. As with the famous "other" Big Black Dylan Book, this is good for killing a bit of time, digging up a few obscure artists and the like. I wouldn't buy this book again, though I might sell it. Not recommended.
Entertaining, informative, but not definitive yet August 31, 2005
B. W. Fairbanks (Lakewood, OH United States)
11 out of 12 found this review helpful
Oliver Trager's "Keys To The Rain" is far from the "definitive" Bob Dylan Encyclopedia. As another reader notes, there are errors including some he didn't mention that I'll add here: The original September 1974 New York recording of "If You See Her, Say Hello," re-recorded in Minneapolis for its release on "Blood On The Tracks," was not included on "Biograph" (Trager may be confusing it with "You're A Big Girl Now"), but on "The Bootleg Series, Volume 1-3." Trager also claims Dylan's 1984 "Real Live" failed to make the charts. Not so. It failed to make the top 100, but it did have a brief, albeit dim, blaze of glory in the Billboard Top 200. There are other errors, most of them fairly minor, but their cumulative effect makes one question Trager's reliability too often.
Despite the faults, this is still an entertaining and informative read with lots of background on the recordings and, more significantly, the songs, including those that Dylan only performed in concert. Yes, it is reasonable to argue that it wasn't necessary to provide two pages on the careers of Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini simply because Dylan covered their legendary "Moon River" at a handful of concerts (and if other sources are correct, Dylan only performed it once upon hearing of the death of Stevie Ray Vaughan). But I find these facts to be the main appeal of Trager's book. There are similar biographical details provided for everyone from Mel Tillis (whose "Detroit City" is another hit and run cover from the Never Ending Tour) and Charles Gates Dawes, vice president to Calvin Coolidge and co-author of "It's All In The Game," another chestnut Dylan dug out two decades ago in concert. And, of course, there are pages on less surprising figures, including Woody Guthrie, Blind Willie McTell, Johnny Cash, and Leonard Cohen. The result is that this book is almost a mini-history of popular music as much as it is about Dylan, but I find it contributes to a greater appreciation for Dylan's impressive range of musical styles and influences. On the other hand, a ridiculous amount of space is given to a biography of Catfish Hunter, the baseball player who was the subject of the most inconsequential outtake from the 1976 "Desire" album.
Trager's unpretentious style is refreshing, though, especially in contrast to those who write about Dylan and his songs as though the man was already dead and buried instead of alive, kicking, and as brilliant as ever.
Hopefully, Trager or someone at the publisher's office will pay attention to the complaints provided by the readers, and eliminate the errors in future editions. With a little work, Trager's book may one day live up to its title. It's still worthwhile overall, but Clinton Heylin would have gotten more of the facts straight.
Brian W. Fairbanks
Less Than Definitive March 31, 2005
A Dylan Fan (Vancouver, BC)
20 out of 23 found this review helpful
Keys to the Rain is undoubtedly a valuable guide to Bob Dylan's recorded output. The book is well-researched and written in a straightforward, accessible style.
Unfortuntately, the book has numerous flaws that make it an often frustrating read. The factual errors include the following: the author states that The Basement Tapes' version of "Million Dollar Bash" is "notable for Dylan's use of the harmonica" when there is no harmonica on the track; the version of "Spanish Is the Loving Tongue" that appeared as the B-side single of "Watching the River Flow" is not the same version that was released on the Dylan lp; "Step It Up and Go" is from the album Good As I Been to You, not World Gone Wrong; and "Down Along the Cove" is erroneously listed as being included on The Band's re-release of Rock of Ages.
Numerous errors in dates dot the book. There is a wonderful photo of Dylan and two youngsters (page 602) that is dated 1966 but comes from much earlier (either 1962 or 1963).
There is one particularly egregious misquotation of Dylan's words, as the phrase "Truth is shadowy" in the World Gone Wrong liner notes becomes "Truth is a shadow" in the book, which changes the phrase's meaning.
Trager writes in the introduction that "unreleased outtakes" and "unreleased material from The Basement Tapes are not included." Yet he includes songs never released by Dylan but recorded and released by other artists (which the author should have explained in the too-brief introduction). There really is no reason for Trager not to have included these songs, since he includes all songs Dylan has played in concert (both original songs and cover versions), and he includes unnecessarily long biographies of the authors of said covers. So the reader gets pages and pages on songwriters such as Sammy Cahn, Merle Travis, Lefty Frizzell and Donnie Fritts (to name a few), but nothing on such great unreleased Dylan songs as "I'm Not There," All-American Boy," "Goodbye Holly" and "Yonder Comes Sin." The author says that "these omissions were made for reasons of space," but surely he could have cut back on his discussion of other artists in a Bob Dylan encyclopedia and made room for all of Dylan's original songs, officially released or not. Nor is there anything on great covers recorded by Dylan in the studio but not released (such as "Freedom for the Stallion"). Including these songs would then have truly earned the book the title of definitive.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 8
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