50 years ago this month, Bob Dylan released The Times They Are A-Changin’. For me, Dylan’s third studio record doesn’t offer the revelatory visions that are on display on The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan — that album opens with “Blowin’ in the Wind” and includes both “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall” and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.” Instead, Times seems to take Freewheelin’s “Masters of War” and blow it up into a full-length album that’s as scathing and self-righteous as it is poetic and pioneering; addressing racism, poverty and social change. It’s also the first Dylan album featuring only original material.

This is the record that makes Dylan a reluctant leader in the political wing of 60′s youth counter-culture, and though he later struggled to free himself from the “voice of his generation label,” it’s Times that marks the high point of Dylan’s early, activist legend.

The CBC network show QUEST celebrated the release with a special episode that features Dylan singing songs from the album and earlier releases on a soundstage that’s been dressed-down to look like some kind of isolated logging camp.

That’s rock ‘n’ roll…

Stay Awake!

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