Another Side of Bob Dylan [HYBRID SACD] [SACD, Original recording remastered]

This record has a special place in my heart, as this is the very first Dylan album I listened too all the way through. And let me tell you, it has all the prerequisites of a great record to boot!

This release, recorded in an single night session (what a session that must have been!), is the true followup to his phenomenal FREEWHEELIN' release of 1963. Going through 11 compositions, with 5 being covered by other artists to later become big hits, this release shows Dylan far and away from the protest of the lp before this. Indeed, "My Back Pages" points toward his turning away from the protest movement. The opening track, as I read it, is telling the rest of the world Dylan doesn't want to be any spokesman, but just your friend. And "It Ain't Me Babe", besides the literal reading of a person saying he won't be a woman's lover, is much the same message as the opening track, but this time much more direct and confrontational. He ain't the spokesman for the protest movement, so get over it.

The rest of the collection stands out, from the poetic imagery reminiscent of "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall" dispensed in "Chimes of Freedom", pleasant throwaways ("I Shall Be Free #10", "Motopyscho Nitemare"), and while I found the line about the monkey doing the cat troublesome, but the reference to Hitchcock in "Nitemare" is worth the price of admission.

The rest really stand out, but a particular highlight is "Ballad in Plain D", the story of his breakup with Suze Rotolo (for those of you who are curious, she is the girl pictured with Bob on THE FREEWHEELIN' BOB DYLAN. According to family members, she still gets recognized for this contribution to Dylan's album. Now she's a freelance artist and still lives in the Village). As a previous reviewer noted, Dylan said this is the one track he wish he had left in the vaults, because it is so personal. Never again in the 1960s would we get such an intimate look at Dylan's personal life as we get on this track. As a man notorious for his love of privacy (although that is only reasonable), this is indeed a very rare opprotunity, Dylan won't grant that liberty till the 1975 release BLOOD ON THE TRACKS, a full 11 years later. For that reason alone we should pay attention to it. "I Don't Believe You" is another favorite of mine, and you really should check out the electric interpretation found on THE BOOTLEG SERIES VOLUME 4: THE ROYAL ALBERT HALL CONCERT. "Black Crow Blues" is notable for its piano, the only track to have an additional instrument besides guitar and harmonica.

Just as a side note: Dylan didn't want to name it ANOTHER SIDE. He thought that was stating the obvious. And to some degree it is. You can tell by this record he's getting bored with folk music and instead wants to go onto bigger and better things. Rock and roll is the natural progression for Dylan at this stage in the game. Again, it's easy to point at now, but for those folk listeners in the 1960s it must have been a major surprise when Dylan's next lp came out. Ah, but that is another story.

Often overlooked in the cannon of Dylan's masterpieces, Another Side Of... delivers one classic after another. The comedy of songs such as All I Really Wanna Do and Motorpsyscho Nightmare, the beauty of To Ramona and It Ain't Me Babe....and thats before even mentioning the jaw dropping wonder of Chimes Of Freedom!!! One of my favourite albums ever.

The vocal performance is perfectly simple and frank, and the remastering only adds to this. Buy it!!!!

In other Amazon reviews of the Bob Dylan SACDs, I have raved over how great the overall sound is much better and brings the great performances out even more (with greater appreciation of the production and instrumentation that was contributed by many of the session players being possible).

Every string of successes however must inevitably somewhere have a glitch and sadly this is it - what the SACD version does is highlight even more acutely what close listening to the LP and CD showed, which is how ragged and poor the overall performance and vocals are on this LP. While rumours are that it was cut in one single daylong session with a well juiced performer, the end result becomes even more dispiriting whether alcohol was the culprit or not. Dylan's love of the first take approach is shown here for it's limitations when his own solo input is off peak and not helped out by any support.

The real tragedy is that there are many great lyrics and songs from the Dylan catalogue on this release at a time when the man was so effortlessly writing with a passion but the fact that very few if any ever feature on his various later compilations and the better ones have been covered much better by others ("It Ain't Me Babe" by Joan Baez; "All I really want to do" by Cher & the Byrds; "Chimes of Freedom" by the Byrds and "To Ramona" by Sinead Lohan amongst others for example) underline what an aberration in form this LP was and make it even more surprising as an SACD release. So sad it was not "The Times they are a Changin'" that was selected for the SACD treatment instead to accompany the great "Freewheelin'" separate release.