1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 52. Bob Dylan – Bringing It All Home (1965)

 

A return to the Bobmeister, and here he adds in some other musicians to the mix to give a more rounded sound; no longer is it just the man, a guitar, and a harmonica. Dylan unleashes his full poet here, with surrealistic and obscure lyrics that are often as much about playing with words and sounds as they are seemingly about anything – much like Bowie will come to do. Here we get the vocal legerdemain (legerdelangue...?) of Subterranean Homesick Blues, the classic Mr Tambourine Man, the bluesy Maggie’s Farm (which may be about emancipation from slavery). 

Here we also see Dylan’s first sojourns into long, long songs, with a surreal alternative discovery of America with Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream and the epic It’s Aright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) which seems to draw upon the talking blues style to construct an ongoing series of verses, both prefiguring epics like Tangled Up In Blue. This album is a clear step between The Freewheeling... and Dylan’s later works. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dr Simon Reads... Appendix N. Part One: Poul Anderson

Image
Dr. Simon Reads Appendix N: Introduction This is a new series that will feature sporadically, in which I explore classic fantasy and science fiction works. You will either know what I mean by “Appendix N”, or you will have no clue. In the original Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Masters Guide, Gary Gygax provided a large number of appendices, from random smells to reputed magical properties of herbs and gemstones. Appendix N was a bibliography of works that inspired him. Back in 1982 when I first got hold of this book, there were only a couple of items on there that I’d read, and only a few other authors that I’d even heard of. Many years later, after, much reading, I returned to Appendix N expecting to have added greatly to the works on there that I’d read; but actually, there were still very few. Many of the authors were obscure or out of print authors of, for want of a better expression, golden age pulp; the kind that feature in Amazing Stories and the like. Now, ...
Read more

Dr Simon Reads... BBC 500 Words (2013 Winners) - Children's Writing Contest

Dr Simon Reads… 500 Words - 2013 And so we reach 2013, the first year where I really started taking notice of the 500 Words competition. For more information on the 500 Words competition see my post on the 2017 awards; but in brief it’s a creative writing competition run by the BBC for children aged 5-13, who can any kind of story they like, as long as it is within 500 words. Three winners from each of the two age categories (5-9 and 10-13) get their stories read out by a famous actor in a live final, plus win a big stack of books. Since its inception in 2011 it’s grown massively with tens of thousands of entries each year. In each of these ruminations I look at the winning stories, and the celebrity reading, but I encourage you to also check out the other 44 finalists for each year; the writing on display is often breath-takingly good. Stone Age Steve and the Dragon by Christian Morton Bronze Winner Age 5-9 “ A long time ago in medieval times there was a boy called Steve, h...
Read more

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 10. Fats Domino – This is Fats (1957)

Image
  The only famous one on here is Blueberry Hill (itself a version of a song from 1940 that Domino made his own). But if you like that sound, you’ll like the rest. I don’t have much else to say about the other songs on the album. Fats (real name Antoine) is pretty much doing blues , bringing it into the rock and roll sound, but his distinctive voice really carries it , and the track The Fat Man shows off his piano playing skills as he solos, almost jazz-like, around the song . As with Little Richard’s similarly named album above, it drips exuberence , although Domino was apparently quite a shy and unassuming character. Surprised to learn that he only died in 2017.   Oh, and 10 down, so that makes me 1% of the way through this endeavour . Nearly finished....  
Read more