One Response to “Bob Dylan”

1. one life, one record collection says:

   October 9, 2009 at 7:52 am

   This album was the beginning of 60s rock. Pete Seeger and all the other folkies who got so upset when Dylan plugged in, should have really listened to this record. He may not be using electric instruments but he’s playing traditional type material with a rock ‘n roll style and sensibility. Dylan’s guitar playing, with it’s pushing, leaning into the beat quality and heavy strumming and picking, is way more influenced by his high school idols, Little Richard and Buddy Holly, than Woody Guthrie or “folk” music. His singing, untrained, unpretty, but unique and incredibly expressive, with that astonishing phrasing and rhythmic sense, if it sounds like anyone else, sounds like the bluesmen and 50s rockers he idolized, not Baez, The Kingston Trio, Peter Paul and Mary and other big name “folk” acts of the time.
   Wasn’t the whole point of 60s rock to make pop music more real, serious and expressive? If you listen carefully and use your imagination a bit (maybe not all that much), you can hear it all start on this record.
   Random thoughts:
   Why all the songs about death on an album by a 19 year old?
   If you listen to “House Of The Rising Sun” on this record, the Animals version, great as it is, seems like, not a stroke of genius, but rather a grasp of the obvious.
   The great hard rocking version of “Baby Let Me Follow You Down” that Dylan played on tour in ’66 is basically a band arrangement of the way he plays it on this album.
   “Pretty Peggy-O” is just beautiful. A great song and performance.