Saved is the twentieth studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on June 23, 1980, by Columbia Records. Saved was the second album of Dylan’s “Christian trilogy”, following his conversion to born-again Christianity. It expanded on themes explored on its predecessor Slow Train Coming, with gospel arrangements and lyrics extolling the importance of a strong personal faith. (More from Wikipedia)
In like manner, I don’t view the release of Another Side of Bob Dylan as a radical break from the past, but rather a natural evolution of his music. For that matter, I feel the same way about Bob Dylan’s “going electric” on his next two albums, Bringing it All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited; and also his Christian period in the trilogy of albums from 1979-1981: Slow Train Coming, Saved, and Shot of Love. Bob Dylan is very much undervalued as an instrumentalist, in my judgment; his guitar playing – and his harmonica, and his work as a pianist – is so strong that I often don’t even notice whether a song is acoustic or electric. As an example, until I saw it pointed out in Wikipedia while I was researching this month’s post, I had not realized that one of my Top Ten favorite Bob Dylan songs – the last and longest track on Highway 61 Revisited, “Desolation Row” – was the only non-electric song on the album.
(May 2013)
