Customer Reviews

World Gone Wrong

5 star:		(32)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Aside from the astonishing cover art and photography adorning the liner notes, the power of Dylan's performance here cannot be overstated. Wholly deserving of the 1993 Grammy Award it garnered for Best Traditional Folk Album, the album's austere minimalism makes for as vulnerable an album as Dylan has allowed since Blood on the Tracks (listen for the tapping of Bob's shoe on track 3, for instance). Some critics pan "World Gone Wrong" as yet another morbid example of Dylan's inability to catch up with the times. Yet an attempt at updating his sound is exactly what nearly destroyed his career as he released one unfocused album after another throughout the late '70s and '80s. He's damned if he tries and damned if he doesn't. It seems that Dylan's enormous reputation and many musical masks have polarized his audience, groups of which subscribe to specific and stultifying expectations of what kind of sound Dylan ought to deliver. Yet "World Gone Wrong" further illustrates that the best Dylan records are the ones he records for himself. It is a lonely, paranoid, occasionally brooding and sincere recording, fraught with masterful finger-picking (Ragged & Dirty, Broke Down Engine), some rollicking harmonica (Stackalee) and an absolutely heart-wrenching interpretation of the traditional classic, "Two Soldiers," a rendition that has accompanied me during some of my loneliest hours for years now. In fact, the solitude articulated with these gritty performances is so real and honest that it actually keeps you company. And that, I think, is what good art does: it makes you feel less lonely, less misunderstood. Dylan does that with this release. I can think of no higher praise.

All those years ago as a school boy in Minnesota, Dylan sat listening to old blues and folk vinyls, playing his guitar and singing along with them. He grew to know them like good friends and became familiar with their essence and soul. He paid special attention to their inflections, timing and feel, so that when he arrived at Greenwich Village and began playing in the coffee houses Dylan had a genuine feel for the music. As he began singing and recording his own songs these songs and artists were part of his secure base, his roots.

In recording World Gone Wrong Bob Dylan decided to do a tribute to his roots by producing an all folk and blues cd. This is a very stripped down and spare cd. We hear only Dylan's nasal voice, guitar and harmonica and that makes a pretty powerful combination. Stripped of all the other instruments and studio finesse one hears how kinetic and emotional these songs can be with Dylan as a performer.

In addition to the Dylan's performances are the liner notes which he writes about each song. They are not to be missed. About the title song World Gone Wrong, Dylan says:

"Strange things are happening like never before, strange things like courage becoming befuddled and nonfundamental, evil charlatans masquerading in pullover vests & tuxedos talking gobbledygook, monstrous pompous superficial pageantry parading down lonely streets on limited access highway."

The songs themselves are of course wonderful things made more intense with Dylan's nasal voice of gravel and gritl which can be alternately tender, harsh, pain filled, caustic and angry. Ragged and Dirty by Willie Brown is about love, working man style. "If I clean up Sweet Mama, can I stay all night with you." Broke Down Engine a Blind Willie McTell song is intense and powerful.

In World Gone Wrong a Mississippi Sheik's song we hear Dylan's wonderful nasal voice with the familiar cadence of drawing out the ending notes.

I can't be good no more

Once like I did before
I can't be good, baby
Honey, cause the world gone wrong

Other noteworthy songs are Blood in My Eyes, a raw and ragged love song of great depth and caring and Delia, a tender and caring ballad about poor Delia who was a gambling girl and died of a gunshot would. Dylan sings "All the friends I ever had are gone.

This is perhaps not a typical Dylan cd because it lacks any of his original material. It does aptly showcase how powerful and emotional a performer he is. It also demonstrates his care and respect for the American folk tradition.

Dylan said after he recorded his 2 acoustic solo albums (Good As I Been to You and this one), critics wrote him off, saying he was done. He said it make feel so free and alive in a way he hadn't felt like in years. From now on, he could do just what he wanted. When Dylan toured in the 70's and 80's, he did mostly older material, with occasional new songs. On his current tours, he does whatever he wants for the most part, similar to the Grateful Dead and Phish, who did whatever song struck them at the time. While grunge was exploding, Dylan does 2 solo acoustic albums of old folk and blues standards. That's a beautiful thing. Dylan is always at his best when he follow his own voice. The songs here never date. This album is the better of Bob's two 90's folk albums. I'm not dissing Good As I Been to You (which is great), but this one is tighter, scarier, more haunted. The best songs are Stack a Lee, the title track, Two Soldiers (astonishingly beautiful and sad), Jack a Roe, and Blood in My Eyes. The whole album is magnificent. Thanks, Bob...

No white man has ever sung the blues like Bob Dylan on this record. A couple of years ago I borrowed a copy of Eric Clapton's "From the Cradle" from a friend, and just had to laugh. Clapton and other English rock stars can play a passable imitation of blues guitar, but, as Muddy Waters once put it: "the white man just cannot vocal like the black man." If Muddy had heard this record, though, he would have changed his mind. "World Gone Wrong" is as good or better than Robert Johnson's recordings. Blasphemy? Listen, and decide for yourself.

If I could take two Dylan records to the proverbial desert island, I would take Highway 61 Revisited and this album - young Bob and old Bob - young Bob went electric in '65 and turned the world upside down - old Bob went acoustic in the '90s and no one noticed or cared. Bob didn't make the cover of Newsweek when this album came out. It was this album, however, that deserved all of the accolades that Time Out of Mind later received. One man, an acoustic guitar, and a harmonica are still more powerful than all of the space-age echo effects in Daniel Lanois's bag of tricks.

The predecessor to this album, "Good as I been to You" got a lot of attention. Riding high on this success and flirting with the idea of never writing another song ever again (that would last another 4 years) "World Gone Wrong" came out right on its heels. Both albums are adaptations of traditional or public domain songs, well played, finding Dylan in good voice, but the two couldn't be more different. This collection of songs is dark and world-weary. All but two of the songs feature the death of someone, murder, or the threat of murder. The two that don't, "Broke Down Engine" and "Ragged and Dirty" are as dark, low-down, and dejected as their names suggest. But there are two marvelous reasons to buy this CD: First is the liner notes written by Dylan himself. If you have ever started to doubt this man's genius, just get a load of the surreal visions and landscapes these songs evoke in his mind. You might hear a traditional blues song, he sees, "paint chipped & flaked, mattress bare, single bulb swinging above the bed," and so on. Almost all of the songs are summarized in his unique, brilliant perspective. The second reason is the last song "Lone Pilgrim" which to my ear is the single most heartfelt, expressive song he's ever recorded -- bar none. I want this song sung at my funeral; nothing else could do.

Bob Dylan comes from an age of music where "what you play is what you get." Despite what some computer corrected music sounds like these days, human music often involves mistakes, flubs, cracking voices, and one-take cuts. Way back in the nascent days of folk, these elements were accepted warts and all. Voices and instruments blended acoustically in all their perfect imperfection. Much modern music propogates the illusion of "the perfect performance" by filtering out gargles, croaks, and gutterals. Some recordings don't sound human. Dylan stands in stark opposition to such fiddling. As such, he never fully embraced the world of electronic music, though working with Daniel Lanois brought him close. In the early 1990s, as 80s synth-drenched pop drowned in a mire of grunge, Dylan exhumed his former life as an unplugged troubador on two solo acoustic albums, "Good As I Been To You" and "World Gone Wrong." Neither included any originals. They feature a raw unedited Dylan squealing through folk and blues classics. Throughout, he flubs and frets notes, his voice bubbles, and his guitar sounds road weary. Despite these seeming flaws, Dylan delivers memorable and poingant performances. Though nowhere near as polished, these late folk efforts evoke the earlier "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" and "The Times They Are A-Changin'." "World Gone Wrong" follows the latter in theme: melancholic, brooding, and fed up. The one-take cuts grind this mood into the listener's brain.

"Strange things have happened, like never before," the first song, also the title track, opens. In the CD's arcane liner notes, which also evoke an earlier surreal era, Dylan credits this song to "the Mississippi Sheiks, a little known de facto group whom in their former glory mustve been something to behold. rebellion against routine," he continues, "seems to be their strong theme. all their songs are raw to the bone & are faultlessly made for these modern times (the New Dark Ages) nothing effete about the Mississippi Sheiks." Fourteen years after Dylan wrote that, one can look up "Mississippi Sheiks" on Wikipedia for more information. Is anything obscure anymore? The CD continues how it started: world-weary, out of control, and wasted. "Love Henry" tells the story of a cold-blooded murder from a parrot's point of view. When the murderess calls the bird down to her, it replies, "I won't fly down, I can't fly down / And light on your right knee / A girl who would murder her own true love / Would kill a little birdlike me." "Blood In My Eyes," also attributed to the Mississippi Sheiks, seeps with desperate sexual passion. Dylan's rendition almost hurts. "Ragged & Dirty" and "Broke Down Engine" pick up the pace but not the mood. Both tell stories of people at the end of their rope. "Delia" and "Stack A Lee" revisit the brutal murder theme. The stunning, and almost meditative, "Two Soliders" recalls death on the battlefield and a mother's pain. Dylan says he picked it up from the now late Jerry Garcia. "Jack-A-Roe" and "Lone Pilgrim" conclude the album appropriately.

Some saw Dylan's cover albums as a sign that his muse had taken flight. Others saw it as an easy way to fulfill his soon to expire contract. Some were extactic at the return of "the acoustic Dylan." Some cried, for the umpteenth time, "comeback!" Nonetheless, the 1980s and 1990s left some skeptics weary of Dylan's direction. They need not have worried. Following an "MTV Unplugged" album, Dylan would start a streak that still hasn't let up, beginning with 1997's amazing "Time Out of Mind." In retrospect, "World Gone Wrong" fits right in with Dylan's overall ouvre: unpredictable, untarnished by needless perfection, and unapologetic.

i'm a mississipp kid..lover of the blues. dylan beautifully delivers the sultry sounds of sorrow and loss. this album is often overlooked, but a wonderful tribute to the grass roots. just dylan and an acoustic. back to the basics and back to the blues.

Bob has done it again, an excellent follow up to his preceeding release, Good As I Been To You. World Gone Wrong take things up a notch, his insight, interpretation, somberness, tiredness and expression silently shout and it it becomes impossible to notice them.

Ragged and Dirty, he really has a nice arrangement on this rendition, sounds like it is just that way...and Broke Down engine serves in many ways as the centerpiece for the album...not only in regard to the skill of the song but the general mood, message and temperment of the album.

This is another feather in Dylans cap and a wonderful expression of classic blues tunes.

Don't start your Dylan collection here. No worries though 'cause you'll eventually end up here. Dylan turns these old dark folk and blues tunes into his own. A must have.

Ah, what a wonderful, timeless piece of Music. It's a Cd full of Blues tales told by the gretatest living Folk storyteller. I shall never part with it. Thanks Bob.