Back to true random rolling my albums,
with my 9th Bob Dylan review.
This one made for some pleasant walking to work the last couple of days.
Disc 414 is…Another Side of Bob Dylan
Artist: Bob Dylan
Year of Release: 1964
What’s up with the Cover? Ah, the sixties – that golden era of record album
covers where they listed the songs on the front. I don’t like it, but at one time it was the
industry standard. I am more of a
seventies guy – I want a crazy piece of art on the cover, and you can put the
songs on the back. That said Bob looks
good enough, with a fine head of hair. He
kind of looks like me here, only brilliant.
How I Came To Know It: This was just me
drilling through Bob’s early records many years ago, unearthing gem after gem
from this golden period of his career.
How It Stacks Up: I have seventeen Bob Dylan albums, and competition
is fierce among them. I’ll put “Another
Side of Bob Dylan” at 9th, just edging out “Bringing It All Back Home” – the album that immediately
follows it.
Rating: 4 stars
After releasing the morose “TheTimes They Are A-Changin’” earlier in 1964, Bob Dylan clearly needed to
lighten up, and that’s exactly what he does on “Another Side,” mostly with good
success.
Many of these songs stray from
protest folk rock well across the line into comedy. Dylan warms up his funny bone with the
rambling and playful “I Shall Be Free –
No. 10” where he daydreams about boxing Cassius Clay and punching him “out of his spleen.” Since this album was
recorded in June of 1964, and Ali announced his name change after beating Sonny
Liston in February of the same year, I wonder why Dylan didn’t call him ‘Ali.’ My best guess is ‘satire.’ He is playing the fool here, after all.
In fact, “I Shall Be Free – No. 10” is some fine and fun-loving satire
throughout, as Dylan takes on the voice of a blowhard and unloads a torrent of
impotent threats and odd observations. It
is deliberately provocative in places, but mostly rambling and playful. At the same time, it is a bit too rambling,
mixing brilliance with lazy rhymes, and while Dylan loves a lot consecutive
rhymes, he isn’t usually this lazy with them.
Much better in the same genre is “Motorpsycho Nitemare,” a song about someone
who needs a place to stay and gets a farmer to give him a place to lay his
head, as long as he doesn’t touch his daughter and ‘in the morning milk the cows.’
With the daughter coming on to our protagonist, he realizes he is in
trouble and needs to get out of there.
However:
“Well I couldn’t leave unless the old man chased me out.
‘Cause I’d already promised to milk his cows
I had to say something to strike him very weird
So I yelled “I like Fidel Castro and his beard!”
This predictably works, and the
song ends with the character fleeing from the farm, sun coming up and the
farmer chasing in the distance with a shotgun.
‘Motorpsycho Nitmare” remains one of my all-time favourite Dylan
songs, and “I love Fidel Castro and his
beard” one of my favourite non sequitur exclamations (I don’t – but damn it’s
a funny expression).
Dylan isn’t all laughs on this
record, however and he has some beautiful and tragic love songs. These include “To Ramona” with its lilting and catchy melody, and just Dylan
singing in earnest over a gently strummed guitar and restrained interventions
on harmonica. This is a song that
reminds us that whatever you think of Dylan’s voice (I like it) the man writes beautiful
songs that sound just as fresh 50 years after their release. Not to mention that on top of the timeless
tune, are lyrics to one of the greatest and gentlest break up songs ever,
beginning:
“Ramona
Come closer
Shut softly your
watery eyes
The pangs of your
sadness
Shall pass as your
senses will rise
The flowers of the
city
Though breathlike
Get deathlike at
times
And there’s no use
in tryin’
T’ deal with the
dyin’
Though I cannot
explain that in lines.”
Um…I think you just did, Bob. And the effort is matched later in the more
famous, “It Ain’t Me Babe” which
opens:
“Away from my window, leave at your own chosen speed.
I’m not the one you want, babe, I ‘m not the one you need.”
Another song that shows no matter
how gently it happens, an ending relationship is almost always sure to hurt
someone.
Dylan also delivers one of his
greatest social commentaries on “Chimes
of Freedom” which is simultaneously uplifting and heart-wrenching. Caught out in a storm, Dylan sees the
lightning in the sky flashing like the harbingers of freedom for the oppressed,
the marginalized and even the simply lonely.
“Even though a cloud’s white curtain in a far-off corner
flashed
An’ the hypnotic
splattered mist was slowly lifting
Electric light still
struck like arrows, fired but for the ones
Condemned to drift
or else be kept from drifting
Tolling for the
searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail
For the
lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale
An’ for each
unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail
An’ we gazed upon
the chimes of freedom flashing.”
Dylan artfully reminds us that the
chimes of freedom don’t ring easily, and you have to always be listening if you’re
going to hear them – even in the midst of a thunderstorm. As an artist, he’s always been willing to pull
their chords, and help us hear them, and he delivers his gift again on this powerful
track.
“Another Side of Bob Dylan” is
well titled, with its greater measure of humour and satire, but it is still a seriously
good record. There are rare places where
his rhymes miss or he laughs while singing a lyric that calls for greater
gravity, but overall this is a worthy entry in the musical lexicon of one of
the great artists of our time.
Best tracks: All I Really Want To Do, Chimes of Freedom, To
Ramona, Motorpsycho Nitemare, My Back Pages, It Ain’t Me Babe.
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