Title: Another Side of Bob Dylan (Augst 1964)

Length: 50min 37s

Number of songs: 11

Best tracks: All I Really Want to Do, Chimes of Freedom, To Ramona, My Back Pages, It Aint Me Babe

If I could choose just one track: My Back Pages

Freshlyworded rating: 8/10

One of the great pleasures of listening to the Dylan albums in the order they were recorded is discovering new musical gems by the maestro, and seeing his talents and skills evolve.

On “Another Side of Bob Dylan”, there are a bunch of hidden gems, in addition to a number of classics I already knew well.

Among the new tracks I discovered on this great album and which I have listened to many times is the intriguing “My Back Pages” and its thought-provoking refrain: “Ah, but I was so much older then/I’m younger than that now.”

I’ve pondered a fair bit on that phrase, which seems to go against the conventional idea that we acquire knowledge and wisdom as we get older. For Dylan it may have meant he was reassessing his idealism and “ideas that life is black and white” and his naivety of “fearing not that I had become my enemy” It’s a beautiful song, the lyrics are full of dense poetic imagery.

This reminds of another pleasure I’ve discovered, that of taking the time to listen to each album and get to know the songs and lyrics. I am really delving into Dylan’s poetry and figuring out what he is saying. It reminds of reading poetry when I was studying English at university. “My Back Pages” may not appear on compilations or greatest hits, but it’s a song every Dylan fan should listen to.

Among the other well-known classics on this album are “Chimes of Freedom” in which lightning bolts on a stormy night are transformed into these pulsating symbols of freedom, an image that carries through the powerful song where Dylan praises the “warriors whose strength is not to fight”, the “refugees on the unarmed road of flight” and “ev’ry underdog soldier in the night”

“To Ramona” is an exquisite, melancholy love song which shows the depth and breadth of Dylan’s songwriting and the softness and emotional tone of his voice when he was at the start of his career.

In keeping with the title of the album, the collection of songs has a more eclectic feel by virtue of the very bluesy, “Black Crow Blues”, the humorous talking blues track “I Shall be Free No. 10″ where he takes on Cassius Clay (Muhammed Ali) and has some fun with rhyming phrases like: 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, gonna knock him clean right outinof his spleen”

I also loved the humorous “Motopsyscho Nitemare” in which Dylan finds himself at a farmhouse seeking a bed for the night and convincing the farmer that he is not a travelling salesman with designs on his daughter “who looked like she stepped out of La Dolce Vita”. There is also references to Anthony Perkins/Norman Bates and the shower scene showing Dylan was hip to the cultural scene at the time. As with most Dylan songs, there is a deeper resonance beyond the humour: the undercurrent of fear amid the Cold War at the time about communist and distrust in rural America.

The album ends with the plaintiff ‘It Aint Me Babe”, a song which has been covered many, many times and has become a folk rock standard.