Sunday, December 20, 2009

Photo/Album: Post 5

For this installment of my Photo/Album series -- where I post a picture from Leech Lake and highlight one of my favorite albums -- I've decided to go back a ways in history for both. The photo comes from a guided muskie trip we took back in 2003, and album goes back to 1965.

PHOTO


This is a picture of my friend Rick, who was visiting Leech Lake from his home in Brisbane, Australia, legendary Leech Lake guide Al Maas, my son Joe's shoulder, and a 50 1/2-inch muskie that was taken on a safety-pin style jig in 3-feet of water at the south end of Sucker Bay.

I had hired Maas to guide us on our hunt for muskie because at the time I was relatively unfamiliar with the lake, had never really fished for muskie in a serious fashion, and because it was Rick's birthday present I wanted to up the odds that he caught a fish. He did, and it remains to this day the biggest fish I've seen come out of Leech Lake.

ALBUM


Back when I was in high school I got a turntable for Christmas one year which finally gave me the ability to switch from cassette tapes to LPs which sound infinitely better, in my opinion.

As I started out compiling my album collection I knew I needed to add some Bob Dylan to the mix. Since I was unfamiliar with any of his albums in detail -- although I knew many of his hit singles -- my selection of his fifth studio album Bringing It All Back Home was made as much by chance as it was design. Boy, did I luck out.

It is not only one of Dylan's most celebrated albums, but one of the greatest rock albums of all time. In the 2003 issue of Rolling Stone magazine, where it listed the Top 500 rock albums of all time (see Photo/Album 4 for the #7 album on that list), Bringing It All Back Home ranked 31st.

Here is the studio version of Subterranean Homesick Blues, the first song on side 1 of the LP, which many people say foreshadowed the invention of rap music some 20 years later.