Thursday, September 2, 2010

#97: The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan- Bob Dylan

Listened to: MP3Without a doubt, Dylan’s second album is the best of his folk-era (in other words, when he was Christian Bale). Acoustic music has rarely, if ever, been performed as well as here, a staple album of the 60’s protest era, with Dylan playing songs of his own composition that sound and feel like they’ve been part of the American songbook for decades prior.

The album opens with one of Dylan’s most popular tunes, the classic protest anthem “Blowin’ In The Wind”, a track brought to notoriety first by Peter, Paul & Mary, but in recent times credit for the song has returned to it’s deserved writer, and Dylan now receives full recognition for one of his many masterpieces. To hear the album kick off with that gentle strumming and Dylan’s nasally, compassionate, weary tone singing about how either obvious or intangible all the answers in the world are. “Blowin’ In The Wind” is undoubtedly one of the greatest American compositions, and it is incredible to see a 20-something kid who just wanted to be Woody Guthrie managed to siphon everything Woody had tried to do his whole life into one song. It’s a song you wish you wrote, and every time you hear it, you’re just glad somebody did. It speaks straight to the soul.

We move on to another classic for Dylan fans, “Girl From North Country”, a song with a feeling of tenderness and longing that to glance at the album cover (adorned by Dylan and Suze Rotolo wandering down a New York street) evokes such an emotional chill one can’t help but recall Dylan’s later work, Blood on the Tracks (but we’ll get to that when the time comes). Following this is one of Dylan’s most intense anti-war songs, the impassioned “Masters of War”. Imagine in a tense time in an overly Christian nation singing the line “Even Jesus could never forgive what you do”. The power and fury with which Dylan strums that guitar makes it sound as though he wrote a Metallica track long before their inception (don’t pretend like this wouldn’t make a mind-blowing metal song. Get on that, Rage Against The Machine). It’s hard to avoid flashes of wounded soldiers, be them from Vietnam or Iraq, flashing in your mind as you listen to Dylan declare that these masters of war are “not worth the blood that runs through your veins”. The fourth track is the first, and possibly only, track on the album that’s never heard off of this record. “Down The Highway” shows Dylan not really protesting or lamenting anything, but more talking about his “baby” in the traditional blues sense. This is the kind of song you could picture Dylan playing with two black blues men a la Marcus Carl Franklin in that Tombstone Blues sequence in I’m Not There. It’s a fine enough track for the flow of the album, and a good example of Dylan just being Dylan. Just playing around, and enjoying music for music’s sake.

“Bob Dylan’s Blues” opens with Dylan doing a spoken ramble about the song’s compositional origins, giving us an inkling of what it would have been like to see Dylan live in his prime. To me, this song is less about the melody than the harmonica playing, which on this track is some of the best he’s ever laid down. This song is melodically and structurally very similar to “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream” from Bringing It All Back Home, except a little less fun since he doesn’t seem quite as stoned.

“A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” is one of Dylan’s most under-rated protest songs. Dylan speaks apocalyptically about the disaster that faces us, be it a rain of nuclear fallout or lies and deceptions from the man in charge. The song keeps itself lyrically ambiguous, teling you “Watch out for something. I’m not gonna tell you what. Just keep your eyes open and be ready.” He’s not saying “We should be afraid” or “All hope is lost”, he’s just saying “Something bad’s coming, wake up!”. “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” is essentially (get ready to watch 1,000 Dylan fans wanna shoot me) Bob’s “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)”. It’s a lamenting song, the final words of a break-up, in this case Suze Rotolo abandoning Dylan to wander Italy. Dylan is a master of emotion, and he channels all his pain and suffering into the words “Don’t think twice, it’s alright.”. But think about it, acoustic guitar being plucked, the singer lamenting a lost love, half-resigned, half-bitter. You gotta admit I have a point. “Bob Dylan’s Dream” is a really old-school Dylan track, hearkening back strongly to his folk roots, as he talks about his days living on MacDougal Street with Wavy Gravy. “Oxford Town”, a two minute track, talks about the plight of an African American, a subject Dylan focused a lot of his music on. In this case, the subject is James Meredith, the first black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi.

“Talkin’ World War III Blues” is another classic Dylan protest song, this one in he “talkin’ blues” style of Woody Guthrie, where Dylan, more spoken than sung, chats humorously about the threat of nuclear annihilation. “Corrine, Corrina” is an old traditional song, the first and technically only non-Dylan song on the album. It’s a country-blues song on which Dylan pays tribute to his roots, and has a nice country swing that‘s a welcome change to the lonesome strumming Dylan does for the rest of the album. “Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance” is a Henry Thomas song Dylan heavily reworked, a really upbeat track, the “You‘re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go” of this album.. The album ends on an often ignored Dylan track, “I Shall Be Free”. This is a classic Dylan folk number, and a great way to close out an album of some of the best folk music ever composed.

The fact is this is a fantastic album, and a great time capsule of one of America’s finest poet’s in his folk-prime. This right here is American music. Every track on here belongs in the Americana songbook. It’s a brilliant album for anyone interested in classic American music. But if you can’t get past Dylan’s voice….never mind, if you can’t get past his voice, fuck off. Yeah, he’s a genius. Sorry he don’t sing like Rhianna.

-Mike

Next, we’ll go to a completely different era and sound, with #252: Metallica by…yeah.

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