Album: Desire
Artist: Bob Dylan
Released: January 5th, 1976
Highlights: Hurricane, One More Cup of Coffee, Joey, Sara

Though not as highly-regarded as much of his masterful 60s output, "Desire" is worthy of consideration for being up there amongst Dylan's five greatest works. He is a man that shines through his storytelling and playfulness with words, and although the latter quality is not very present on "Desire", the former is on full display on each and every song. Sometimes it's in the re-counting of a real life story, such as in the protest against an unfair arrest in "Hurricane", or in the polemic romanticizing of a gangster's life in "Joey". On others, Dylan is the architect of delightful fictions: the couple of outlaws running away through the Mexican desert in "Romance in Durango", a jolly summer vacation gone wrong in "Black Diamond Bay", the Arabic-sounding plea of a man fearful of the journey that's ahead of him in "One More Cup of Coffee", and many others.

"Desire" does not distinguish itself exclusively because of its many delightful characters; it is one of the most unique-sounding Dylan albums. The energetic and chaotic music comes from The Rolling Thunder Revue, a band put together by Dylan himself after watching a number of live gigs by other artists. The two most prominent items in the album, aside from Bob Dylan and Jacques Levy's shared compositions, are certainly the female backing vocals by Emmylou Harris, and Scarlet Rivera's beautiful violin. They are both constant during the course of the album, and they add such a level of novelty to "Desire" that it becomes a monster of its own. It's extremely different from everything Dylan produced before and after it, and it stands as a fantastic example of how Bob would sound were he the leader of a band.

Album: Mr. Tambourine Man
Artist: The Byrds
Released: June 21st, 1965
Highlights: I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better, Spanish Harlem Incident, Chimes of Freedom, We'll Meet Again

Sharply choreographed harmonic vocals, simple pop songs full of hooks, and little showcase of proficiency in the playing of the instruments. Those are characteristics that could easily be applied to The Beatles in the first half of their career, but in this case, it's The Byrds we are talking about. One key difference separated both bands, though: while the early version of Paul, John, George, and Ringo wrote their own music, which basically consisted of the expression of teenage feelings; McGuinn and his crew opted to focus on covers of rather poetic folk rock tunes. Often, they trumped the originals in their delivery - Bob Dylan's "Spanish Harlem Incident" sounds like a new and much better song - and, as a consequence, the band was massively responsible for making folk music popular.

"Mr. Tambourine Man" was the album that kicked off that journey, and it presents a certain divide between covers and original material. The Byrds' reworking of other composers' music was frequently stellar, and in spite of the fact that the band was flagrantly sloppy in its playing, the songs are invariably moving. Meanwhile, despite its quality, the original material penned by Gene Clark inevitably fails to reach the same level as tunes like "Chimes of Freedom" and "The Bells of Rhymney"; a difference that would grow ever thinner as The Byrds produced other records. Besides bringing folk to the masses, "Mr. Tambourine Man" is historically relevant for introducing McGuinn's jangly guitar-playing, something that would go on to influence an enormous horde of alternative rock bands, most notably R.E.M.'s Peter Buck. It's an album that, even with all its glaring irregularity, maintains an above-average quality through all of its thirty minutes.

Album: Five Live Yardbirds
Artist: The Yardbirds
Released: December 4th, 1964
Highlights: Smokestack Lightning, Good Morning Little Schoolgirl, Respectable, I'm a Man

The Yardbirds are usually, and understandably so, known as the band responsible for introducing three of the greatest guitar players ever to the world - Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page - though they never shared the stage at the same time. Musically, however, The Yardbirds were responsible for doing something that is often accredited to Page's other band: Led Zeppelin. The Yardbirds were one of the the first bands to dress up traditional blues tunes and turn them into modern rock compositions. "Five Live Yardbirds" is one energetic display of that experiment, as the boys take the very same stage that The Rolling Stones used in their debut two years prior in order to showcase the sheer force of the still young group.

Starting things up with a song that did not claim for much re-structuring, Chuck Berry's iconic "Too Much Monkey Business", they move on to take "Smokestack Lightning" with a harmonica work that would be enough to make Howlin' Wolf himself be very impressed, and three numbers originally coined by Bo Diddley: "Pretty Girl", "I'm a Man", and "Here 'Tis". As a band that refuses to limit themselves to one trick, they even give it a shot at an R&B song, The Isley Brothers' "Respectable", and they pull it off in a quite remarkable fashion. What is most enchanting about "Five Live Yardbirds" is how clear it is to see, even through sound waves, how much of a blast the band was having while going through their set. It's raw, roughly-produced, and freely played music by a bunch of British boys with a strong passion for American music. And, as it turns out, that is precisely the kind of solid fertile ground great old-school rock used to flourish.