I’m currently listening to the Byrds’ The Byrds Play Dylan, and I don’t understand why it isn’t sequenced chronologically. Either chronology - the Byrds’ recording these songs or Dylan’s writing them - would suffice. But there are songs from 1969 stuck in between songs from 1965, and I just don’t understand how that was a conscious decision anyone made.
I read a book about Dylan earlier this year (Andy Gill’s Bob Dylan: The Stories behind the Songs 1962-1969), and one of the points it made was that Dylan was a constantly-evolving artist. There was the early folk stuff, then the protest songs, then he went electric, and then back to roots music. Not all of those distinctions would necessarily come across in the Byrds’ versions of these songs, but I still think it would be better to sequence the album chronologically.
Even from a more Byrds-favoring perspective, the sequencing is weird. Songs that were originally on the same album are separated in the track listing by four or five places, and the positions of those songs on the original albums are disregarded. Both “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” and “Nothing Was Delivered” were on Sweetheart of the Rodeo, with “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” starting off the album, but here, it comes five tracks after “Nothing Was Delivered.” Amazingly, ”Mr. Tambourine Man” the Byrds’ debut single (and therefore first Dylan cover) is track six. The sequencing is just all over the place.
