So Bob Dylan says that he hasn’t heard anybody make a decent record in the last twenty years and that everything is full of sounds.

It may appear a bit arrogant but I think Dylan is criticising modern recording techniques rather than contemporary artists. And he has a point, to a degree.Excessive production is often used to disguise the fact that songs/lyrics/singers are not very good. But is that any more true today than it was twenty or thirty years ago?

Dylan presumably includes his own recordings in his critique and that might be why he now says he doesn’t even like making albums, which will inevitably sound overproduced.

But we shouldn’t be upset or surprised by Dylan’s views. His influences are quite traditional: blues, folk, country. Musical forms that even today generally steer clear of heavy production or gadgetry. Dylan has only given one interview, to Rolling Stone magazine, and yet his comments are everywhere. Is BD to be held up as a spokesman for every passing generation? Little wonder the guy doesn’t like giving interviews.

In spite of his disillusionment, Dylan will always continue making music and rightly so. It’s in his blood, as he says. His new album, Modern Times, has been well received on the whole. However, I’m a bit surprised that some people are raving about it. It certainly has some good songs – Nettie Moore, for instance. But I can’t really get that excited, even though I’ve heard more albums by Dylan than I have by anyone else in the history of music.

It’s forty years since he plugged in his guitar and made groundbreaking material (with the assistance of modern technology it must be said). Blood on the Tracks (1974) is one of my favourite all-time albums but I wouldn’t call it groundbreaking in any way. It was just classic Dylan – great songs and lyrics, and nice production incidentally. I can quite happily have the occasional listen to some of the albums he’s made in the last twenty years: Oh Mercy, Time Out of My Mind... but they are not at the forefront of musical development.

Sorry Bob, but modern production techniques have enhanced great albums. Can you imagine OK Computer if it were Radiohead Unplugged instead? Wouldn’t be the same I’m afraid. And would later Beatles’ albums have been so original if they hadn’t been full of sounds?