The next album made me feel like I was back in the sixties; driving home from work in the summer sunshine with the top down, and my driving cap on
Disc 159 is...Bringing It All Back Home
Artist: Bob Dylan
Year of Release: 1965
What’s Up With The Cover?: A young, badly coiffed Bob Dylan sits amids a bunch of old magazines and an attractive woman in a red dress. Presumably these are all things that has 'brought back home' (note to Bob - next time skip the magazines). I like this cover - seems very seventies and ahead of its time, but Bob always was a visionary.
How I Came To Know It: This is just me drilling through the Bob Dylan catalogue. Of all his sixties albums, I believe this is the last one I bought - maybe a couple years ago. I also remembered the video that came out in the eighties for "Subterranean Homesick Blues" which featured Bob standing on a street with a series of signs he throws down as the music plays. It is a pretty cool video.
How It Stacks Up: I have seventeen Bob Dylan albums (yeah - I kind of like him). Of the seventeen, this is not one of my favourites, but there's no denying its strength. I'd say it is 9th or 10th best of these seventeen. Like with Queen, competition is fierce among Bob Dylan records.
Rating: 4 stars.
"Bringing It All Back Home" (BIABH) is right in the middle of a period of furious creativity for Dylan. It is the 3rd of 4 albums all released between January of 1964 and August 1965, just after "Another Side of Bob Dylan" and just before "Highway 61 Revisited".
BIABH is not as good as the records that precede and follow it, but it is still one hell of a good record. I noticed on this listen that it is the lesser known tracks on the record that appeal to me more.
The more famous songs are the aforementioned "Subterranean Homesick Blues", "Maggie's Farm" (incredibly remade by Rage Against the Machine on their "Renegades" album) and "Mr. Tambourine Man" which was made famous by the Byrds in 1965.
Yeah I wiki-cheated on that last one, after trying in vain to remember how I knew that song through another artist.
I can't remember the Byrd's version very well, but on the original I found it funny that a song called "Mr. Tambourine Man" features a harmonica solo. I suppose with Bob Dylan, you should always be on guard for any song to launch into a harmonica solo.
The songs that I prefer from BIABH are more obscure, but still run the usual gamut of what it is to listen to a Dylan album. "On The Road Again" and "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" is Bob being funny, but also devilishly satirical. You could make a pretty awesome album of Dylan songs based on dreams. There are a few.
"Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" tells the story of Bob as a sailor, asea with Captain Ahab. They think they discover the new world, but I think it is actually modern day New York, and they promptly get arrested. The rest of the song is Dylan encountering various Americans as he tries to raise bail and get them out. It sounds like a bender out of control. I particularly liked this stanza:
"Well I rapped upon a house
With the US flag upon display
I said 'Could you help me out
I got some friends down the way'
The man says 'Get out of here
I'll tear you limb from limb'
I said, 'You know they refused Jesus, too?'
He said, 'You're not Him
Get out of here before I break your bones
I ain't your pop.'
I decided to have him arrested
And I went looking for a cop."
My only beef with this song is it starts with a false take, where something funny obviously happens in studio, and everyone cracks up - they let the tape roll, have a good laugh and then start again. Attention musicians - your studio hijinks are funny only to you - keep them off your finished products.
Yeah - I just called out Bob Dylan, but it isn't like he cares about his critics anyway.
At the other end of the spectrum is the bitter and melancholy "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)." Dylan is so insightful at exposing the rot in society, and doing so in a way that plays no favourites. He is a true American poet. This song also shows how adept he is at putting a steady rhyme through a verse in a way that is strongly reminiscent of how rap artists make their points in more recent years:
"While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society's pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he's in.
"But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it's alright, Ma, if I can't please him."
Compare this with the often moronic so-called poetry of Jim Morrison, and I think you know who I think better represents the spirit of the sixties. Jim Morrison wit the same rhyme - "Girl, we couldn't get much higher/Try to set the night on fire." Whatever.
So it isn't the first Dylan album to get, but it isn't one to avoid either, with plenty of great tracks that will make you groove, make you laugh, and above all - make you think.
Best tracks: She Belongs To Me, On the Road Again, Bob Dylan's 115th Dream, It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding), It's All Over Now Baby Blue.
Disc 159 is...Bringing It All Back Home
Artist: Bob DylanYear of Release: 1965
What’s Up With The Cover?: A young, badly coiffed Bob Dylan sits amids a bunch of old magazines and an attractive woman in a red dress. Presumably these are all things that has 'brought back home' (note to Bob - next time skip the magazines). I like this cover - seems very seventies and ahead of its time, but Bob always was a visionary.
How I Came To Know It: This is just me drilling through the Bob Dylan catalogue. Of all his sixties albums, I believe this is the last one I bought - maybe a couple years ago. I also remembered the video that came out in the eighties for "Subterranean Homesick Blues" which featured Bob standing on a street with a series of signs he throws down as the music plays. It is a pretty cool video.
How It Stacks Up: I have seventeen Bob Dylan albums (yeah - I kind of like him). Of the seventeen, this is not one of my favourites, but there's no denying its strength. I'd say it is 9th or 10th best of these seventeen. Like with Queen, competition is fierce among Bob Dylan records.
Rating: 4 stars.
"Bringing It All Back Home" (BIABH) is right in the middle of a period of furious creativity for Dylan. It is the 3rd of 4 albums all released between January of 1964 and August 1965, just after "Another Side of Bob Dylan" and just before "Highway 61 Revisited".
BIABH is not as good as the records that precede and follow it, but it is still one hell of a good record. I noticed on this listen that it is the lesser known tracks on the record that appeal to me more.
The more famous songs are the aforementioned "Subterranean Homesick Blues", "Maggie's Farm" (incredibly remade by Rage Against the Machine on their "Renegades" album) and "Mr. Tambourine Man" which was made famous by the Byrds in 1965.
Yeah I wiki-cheated on that last one, after trying in vain to remember how I knew that song through another artist.
I can't remember the Byrd's version very well, but on the original I found it funny that a song called "Mr. Tambourine Man" features a harmonica solo. I suppose with Bob Dylan, you should always be on guard for any song to launch into a harmonica solo.
The songs that I prefer from BIABH are more obscure, but still run the usual gamut of what it is to listen to a Dylan album. "On The Road Again" and "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" is Bob being funny, but also devilishly satirical. You could make a pretty awesome album of Dylan songs based on dreams. There are a few.
"Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" tells the story of Bob as a sailor, asea with Captain Ahab. They think they discover the new world, but I think it is actually modern day New York, and they promptly get arrested. The rest of the song is Dylan encountering various Americans as he tries to raise bail and get them out. It sounds like a bender out of control. I particularly liked this stanza:
"Well I rapped upon a house
With the US flag upon display
I said 'Could you help me out
I got some friends down the way'
The man says 'Get out of here
I'll tear you limb from limb'
I said, 'You know they refused Jesus, too?'
He said, 'You're not Him
Get out of here before I break your bones
I ain't your pop.'
I decided to have him arrested
And I went looking for a cop."
My only beef with this song is it starts with a false take, where something funny obviously happens in studio, and everyone cracks up - they let the tape roll, have a good laugh and then start again. Attention musicians - your studio hijinks are funny only to you - keep them off your finished products.
Yeah - I just called out Bob Dylan, but it isn't like he cares about his critics anyway.
At the other end of the spectrum is the bitter and melancholy "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)." Dylan is so insightful at exposing the rot in society, and doing so in a way that plays no favourites. He is a true American poet. This song also shows how adept he is at putting a steady rhyme through a verse in a way that is strongly reminiscent of how rap artists make their points in more recent years:
"While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society's pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he's in.
"But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it's alright, Ma, if I can't please him."
Compare this with the often moronic so-called poetry of Jim Morrison, and I think you know who I think better represents the spirit of the sixties. Jim Morrison wit the same rhyme - "Girl, we couldn't get much higher/Try to set the night on fire." Whatever.
So it isn't the first Dylan album to get, but it isn't one to avoid either, with plenty of great tracks that will make you groove, make you laugh, and above all - make you think.
Best tracks: She Belongs To Me, On the Road Again, Bob Dylan's 115th Dream, It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding), It's All Over Now Baby Blue.
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