Bob Dylan
World gone wrong

1993, years of grunge, when rock returned to the punk and psychedelic sounds of the 70s, becoming harsher and shedding frills and sequins.

Dylan, always against the tide, decides to take , several steps back as well, returning to his roots, to the domestic folk of his beginnings, all voice, guitar, and harmonica: in 1992 he released Good as I been to you, and the following year came this World gone wrong.

Both albums feature traditional pieces, but while the first still showed a Dylan undecided about the new, so to speak, artistic path, this one lets us appreciate a rediscovered folksinger, with the decisive and sharp touch of his guitar and the roaring timbre of his voice, a folksinger who returns to having the fire, or rather the blood, in his eyes.

This, in reality, isn’t a strictly folk album, even though it earned a Grammy as Best Traditional Folk Album: these are traditional American folk and blues pieces, played and sung by Dylan with a pronounced country vein.

If I had to label this work, I would call it a country album, perhaps Dylan's best, or only, country album.

An example is Blood in my eyes, a slow traditional blues, beautifully executed by Ron Talley, the classic blues born on the banks of the Mississippi: Dylan speeds it up, removes the slide effects from the guitar and turns it into a country-folk gem.

Two soldier was already a country piece originally, in the beautiful execution of Mornoe Gevedon, a Kentucky artist from the 20s, a Johnny Cash ante-litteram.

Dylan turns it into a jewel with the sweetness of his guitar and voice, unusually melodious in this album where instead dark tones prevail: a splendid folk lullaby.

Jack a Roe is a ballad by Tom Paley, an American artist from New York, founder of The New Lost City Ramblers, the cradle of American folk.

Memorable are the versions of this piece by Jon Baez in 1962 and the Grateful Dead in 1981, the first being essential folk, the second rock blues; Dylan brings out a country-folk spirit, playing a cowboy song, it almost seems you can see him with guitar and murderous gaze in an old west saloon.

Love Henry is another traditional ballad, beautiful in Tom Paley's version from the early 30s, complete with mandolins; Dylan turns it into a poignant country-style lullaby.

Another great piece is Stack a lee, a late 19th-century jazz piece, initially known as Stagger Lee, played by Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington and then "transformed" into a blues by Frank Hutchison, an American guitarist from West Virginia in the late 20s.

Dylan draws on this blues version, transforming it, as is the inspiration for the entire album, into a fast-paced country rock.

For many, this is a minor album, not even a Dylan album in the strict sense, being a collection of traditional pieces; instead, as it is the tradition of folk where a personal arrangement allows the author to "take possession" of the piece, I consider it a Bob Dylan album, the truest, most unadorned Dylan, yet capable of unrivaled power with just the sound of his three favorite instruments: the voice, the harmonica, and the acoustic guitar. The first Bob Dylan is precisely this, the one glimpsed in the debut album, Bob Dylan of 1962, and which, already in the famous, subsequent, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan transformed into the grand rock-folk singer-songwriter that changed the history of music and sold millions of records.

Pieces like these or many from the debut album would not have brought the young Dylan notoriety.