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Bob Dylan - A £ Changed Manle* By DON BLANKor . . the songs on this/c, specific record are not sotie much songs but rather exereises in tonal breath controlat the. subject matter—-thesomething to do with the Jo meaningful as It is—hasus beautiful strangers, vivaldisgreen jacket and the holy ill slow train/* From notes byIs- Bob Dylana. Bob Dylan’s songs becomels more obscure with each succeed ,(t ing alburn* while his new sound'' (exemplified by electric guitars} seems to have gained him a larg-j. er audience (witness the sue* v cess of Like a Rolling Stone* ) u. This ironic phenomenon has r. has prompted charges of com ,y mcrcialization by many of his confused old fans. Some simply r. don’t like his new sound1 Nevertheless, Dylan's newestalbum, Highway 61 Revisited, isv just as worthy as any of his^ previous ones, vd Dylan has not sold out. He iss still angry. His anger has simplye taken new' forms and new' ob-e jects.vIn his first three albums, Dy* h Ian’s contention is that man’st enemy is the system He rarely,if ever, sings any of these songs (never his so-called protest j songs) in concert now.I In his last three albums (beginning, perhaps ironically, with Another Side of Bob Dylan) arc l more concerned w’ith the individ-I ual He sings of alienation with jthe guilt on the alienated (Like a Rolling Stone and Ballad of a Thin Man). He sings of sick people in a sick society (Desoja j tion Row and Highway biL4iolt;, visited”), and offers no simple [answer as he did in his earlier protest songs.As for the rest of the album ). . there are two blues, with ’the traditional mood hut mod cern hang-ups, This is a tender. ?perhaps love, song: It Takes a Lol to Laugh, It Takes a Train v|to Cry, And there is one lighter vsong: From a Buick 6,Granted Dylan’s sound*’ is sdifferent. The use of aceompan liists, however, adds a musician- ^ship, which, whether you like it or not, surpasses anything Dylan r could or can do on solo guitar.The notes, a fine poem by Dylan, are a pleasant change from the typical self congradu latory type on most albums.Dylan has changed (note even the difference in his mood on his album covers, say between The Times They Are A'Changing and his latest) And as hard as it might be to some, the change is, at the least, worth examining. L n— -
Newspaper Details
Buffalo Spectrum
Buffalo, New York, US
Fri, Sep 17, 1965
Page 13
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
GB 02 Jan 2024
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