 "A Voice Like a Claw that Reaches into Your Gut" | 2008-04-10 |
| - Reviewed By bootleg_press |
I was a junior back at Lakewood High School when this record came out just two weeks after my seventeenth birthday. My dad brought it by the house (my parents were divorced) and really surprised me. I'd liked his first record, but I was still listening to The Kingston Trio, that kind of music. Lord I loved The Kingston Trio from the Hungry I record.
But that all changed when I heard this record, which sadly I didn't play for a couple months. I'd been familiar with "Blowing in the Wind," who wasn't. Peter, Paul and Mary were coming out of every kid's transistor radio with that song. I really liked their In the Wind record, really liked them too, but that changed as well when I finally gave this record a good listen. I knew then Bob Dylan was the real deal. The Trios, both Kingston and Peter, Paul and Mary will always have a place in my heart and they reside on my MacBook, but they don't get played anymore. "Freewheelin'" changed that. Yes, they might have been singing about stuff that mattered, but Bob Dylan had a voice like a claw that reached into your gut and somehow made you care.
Six months after the release of Freewheelin' John Kennedy was shot and everything changed. Listen to "A Hard Rain's a Gonna Fall." It's almost like Bob Dylan was trying to warn us.
Ken Douglas, author of Dead Ringer, Desperation Moon & Running Scared. |
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| "People need this album" | 2006-11-21 |
| - Reviewed By User: AW85ANNTL6W5S |
| So I'm not that old but this album brings me back to my youth. I can't describe it but evertime I listen to this I feel this amazing calm and peace, like you know, everything will be alright, that the human race isn't so bad, like the sun is shining, like even though it may be cold outside I still feel warm. I'm not some Bob Dylan expert or anything like that. I just really like this album of his and don't know many other albums that put me in such a sound state of mind as this one does. If you're looking for a little piece of mind, this seems like a pretty good place to start. |
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| "10.0/10.0" | 2006-10-15 |
| - Reviewed By nohbody |
Nothing is content to be itself anymore. Everything gets passed off as something of greater value or significance. Mostly it's a foregone conclusion that items today are introduced as that which they are not: the public gets informed of the salvation in a cup of laundry detergent, or the happiness in a container of cookie dough batter. That's why if I wrote a dissertation on anything, it would be a connection between Baudrillad's simulacrum and how consumerism has enveloped our universe: everything, today, exists as product.
How does this square with a Freewheelin' Bob Dylan? Well-- the music here, it's small. It-- and its creator-- discourages inflation of the value it holds. That is, only a poor musical critic would call this album "a powerful album of enormous depth and scale, soaring over all previous understandings of art and beauty." Freewheelin' promises none of that. The ideas that emanate from the music here have existed upon the shoulders of the oppressed, the dissatisfied, the disillusioned for centuries. Small people have sung these words before: Dylan, here, merely repeats them, in a new and beautiful mode. It is not for nothing that Dylan came up with Self Portrait in 1970, a kind of slap in the face of those who thought he should be something beyond a musician. What happens here is a kind of small brilliance, cultivated at a time just before extravagance was seen as a virtue in music. All good folk music has been small in this way, and Dylan's work here is the perfection of that archetype.
There are instances of genius on this album (to clarify, I don't agree myself that Dylan was a genius, but I do think he has often created instances of musical genius in his work. Mostly I think my definition of genius differs from the popular one - I understand Caravaggio, Bach, and Plato to be geniuses - but just to illuminate you a bit, I highly doubt Dylan ever thought himself a genius). The first track, Blowin' In The Wind, is one such instance. Further, it demonstrates what I have said above: the album repeats small, but millennia-old themes. This song, in fact, follows the melody of an 1876 song, "No More Auction Block," but with the lyrics changed to emphasize the clearly timeless theme of liberation from greed and hatred. It is a slow, paced, piece with acoustic guitar serving as background to Dylan's voice, a harmonica adding a perfect accent to the melody: he melds the visions of natural hardship with human hardship: the voyage of the dove, the scourge of moral blindness. It is as if the cessation of human war (whether in the micro- or macrocosm) would purify the human being, but the tone mixes that hope with a weary skepticism.
Each song holds its brilliance. Talking World War III Blues, besides being forged in truth, is also a great joy to listen to, with the frequent gestures of irony and comic declarations. Dylan here is primarily a storyteller, and a perfect one at that: everything is on a high note, from the harmonica to the simple rhyming scheme. By the time we have had our share of smiling, the listener reaches the end of the song, and suddenly a great truth has been found ("I'll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours."). This ought to rank somewhere in every listeners' list of favorite songs.
That's all I have to say about that. The rest of the music is to explore for yourself. There is plenty of territory here to take joy in. The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan embraces simple direct themes, and although the work may be "small," its authenticity gives it an intensity hardly to be matched. Simply stated, this is an indispensable album for anyone who has any sort of interest in music. |
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| "The Answers, I'm Afraid, are Blowin' in the Wind" | 2006-09-04 |
| - Reviewed By User: A2RTS14J240LAD |
Freewheelin' is Bob Dylan's second record. While his first was an album of mostly folk song covers with only two originals, this record had only two covers, the rest being originals and some of Bob Dylan's finest work. "Girl From the North Country" is one of my favorite songs, by anybody, and to think it was written by a twenty-one-year-old kid, almost half a century ago, way back in 1963.
"Master's of War" still seems valid today. Re, those masters of war, those seller's of guns, "There is one thing I know, though I'm younger than you, that even Jesus would never forgive what you do." Yet, despite those words that moved so many, all these years later the masters of war are still plying their trade. And, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention "Blowin' in the Wind," perhaps the best antiwar song ever written. Dylan asks nine questions about war and freedom, the answers to all of them, I'm afraid are, "Blowin' in the Wind." |
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| "As Important Now as it was Over Forty Years Ago" | 2006-09-04 |
| - Reviewed By shalaila_earth_person |
| This is Bob Dylan's second album, recorded way back in the early Sixties, when he was barely twenty years old. It includes "Blowin' in the Wind" which I'm told took America by storm when Peter, Paul and Mary sang it. Then it became sort of the anthem of those protesting the Vietnam war. What a burden all this must have put on a young man's shoulders. Fortunately Bob Dylan was up to the task and didn't crack under the pressure of it all. Now, it's over four decades later and Dylan is still pumping out songs, though they don't have the rage you can find in "Hard Rain," one of the best songs Dylan has ever done. The images just pour at you from every line. This is a must own album and if you look at the situation we find ourselves in today, you'll see that not only has this record stood the test of time, but that it's as important now as it was over forty years ago. |
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| "one of his best" | 2006-08-28 |
| - Reviewed By sebasto20002002 |
| this album took bob dylan from folk singer to the voice of the 60s.1st off,"blowin in the wind" comes on.thats one of my top 5 favorite dylan songs.then the hits keep on keepin on with,"girl ftom north country".also a top 5 song,despite ges redo on a later album with johnny cash is way better.a few more then my moms favorite,"a hard rain is gonna fall".bob dylan really shows off his lyrical symbolism in this one.the great songs keep coming with "dont think twice its alright"-vintage dylan,man.a few songs later theres "corina corina",a love song.and no one writes a love song like bob dylan.theres 2 silly songs also where hes just playing with words called "bob dylans dream" and "i shall be free".a top 5 dylan album. |
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