Far between sundown's finish and midnight's broken toll

Continuing my trip back through the 1965 album charts.

09/05/65 : Another Side Of Bob Dylan - Bob Dylan


What?!? Three visits in five weeks to take Bob up to fourteen visits, which puts him in third equal place with Frank - he's really having his moment in '65, isn't he? I haven't hated the last few albums, but I do feel I might have enough of him for now.

Ah - he's developing his annoying voice here. It's starts off with "All I Really Want To Do", which was borrowed by Cher later in the year as the title track for her solo album (and I prefer Cher's version). I actually liked "Chimes Of Freedom" (although I didn't need over seven minutes of it) - quite possibly because I recognised the tune from Billy Bragg's "Ideology" from his Talking With The Taxman About Poetry album. I also quite liked "I Shall Be Free No. 10" which is amusingly bonkers and "It Ain't Me Babe" which is a nice ending to the album. Actually, despite the fact that he's got his annoying voice on and it's our third visit in quick succession, I didn't mind this at all - it's got interesting lyrics and I can see it would benefit from repeat listening. Am I FINALLY turning into a bit of a Dylan fan?

We're at #12 in the charts this week on his last week of a nine week run, with it peaking at #8 in the previous week but it managed four runs between late '64 and '65. The top five this week were The Beatles, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and Mary Poppins (no TSOM at all - but it was at #6) and there were two new entries in the chart for Bob Dylan (#19 - he had five albums in the chart) and Joan Baez (#20 - she only had the two). So I think it's fair to say the charts were having a folky moment.

Wikipedia has a reasonable amount (153 milliPeppers) on the album but most of it is boring and pointless background information. It's his fourth studio album and it wasn't well received by the critics who thought it wasn't as socially conscious as it should have been and he was too wrapped up in himself - retrospective reviews consider it to be a "transitional" album but they can't agree whether this is a good or a bad thing. Commercially, it did OK over here but only got to #43 in the US.

"Customers also listened to" Joan Baez, The Byrds and a load of other Dylan albums - no major surprises there. It's interesting that I quite liked this but everyone else has a bit of a downer on it - I guess he just presented another side of Bob Dylan to everyone. Given we've now met all of his first eight albums, that's it for him for the year but it was certainly quite the year for him. 

02/05/65 - An educational visit
16/05/65 - Another debut album

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