I watched Martin Scorcese's documentary about Bob Dylan in his Greenwich Village and Newport Folk Festival days on PBS this week. Four solid hours of many, many interviews with ancient people who knew him then: Dave van Ronk, Joan Baez, a Clancy brother (Liam), Maria Muldaur, his girlfriend Suze Rotolo (lovely face, still) and record execs. Available as a DVD it contains the soundtrack of many live performances never-before released on CD.…
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26 - RogerMDillion
"Cobain made two albums,"
wrong. Bleach, Nevermind, In Utero. Please don't tell me that you think Nevermind was the good one. It will weaken your arguments.
Scorsese is certianly in the same class as Welles. I love Citizen Kane, but let's not get crazy. Welles only made two good movies.
27 - Bob A. Booey
Adam, your tastes in music, film, books and art are eccentric.
Roger: Cobain gave the biggest, best, subsersive "F.U." to corporate media ever done THROUGH corporate media and shattered all our notions of what it meant to be a rock star. He was the first TRULY conflicted mega-artist in mainstream music who had roots in the underground. It's no coincidence that rock died roughly when Cobain died. Look at the music numbers now: Cobain and alternative rock killed 80s cheese, classic rock, heavy metal, and cock rock as commercially viable and exposed them for the ridiculous artifice they were. And now alternative rock is dead commercially and culturall as well now that the revolution fizzled out and never took hold the way it should have. Rock sales are disappearing, rock radio is disappearing, and the few acts that make money are last-of-a-generation nostalgia touring acts. Rock is dead and Kurt Cobain helped kill it.
I'm not saying they were sophisticated politics, but Cobain and Nirvana made the culture cynical toward the BS hippie idealism of the 60s counterculture and the politicians of the era as well. In some ways, it was anti-political as much as Dylan was apolitical, but I think that's still culturally significant. Nirvana didn't hide behind hippie poetics -- they wanted to tear down the hypocrisy of the culture entirely.
That is all.
28 - Bob A. Booey
"In Utero" was possibly one of the greatest major label rock albums ever made and the biggest, noisiest, angriest, most uncompromising "F.U." to major label music ever recorded.
That is all.
29 - JR
Bob A. Booey: Yes, Kurt Cobain was a better musician than Bob Dylan and more important too when people look back on this era of music centuries later. Cobain basically destroyed corporate rock and brought punk to bear upon the mainstream years after it failed to shake America the first time around. He influenced an entire generation of Gen X kids in fashion, politics and culture.
Um... OK. But what has any of that got to do with music. I could argue that more people have been concieved in the back seat of a '55 Chevy than any other car, but that doesn't make it a better car than a Toyota Corolla.
At this point, I'm not even sure Kurt Cobain was the best musician in Nirvana.
30 - adam
OK, Booey, so you're a big Kurt Cobain fan, but I can point you to plenty of other conflicted rock artists: Lou Reed, Jimi Hendrix, Prince, Jim Morrison, Joni Mitchell, and Dylan himself, all of whom have had a bigger influence on rock culture than Cobain. In the history of rock, Cobain is a footnote, even if he's your personal fave rave. Pearl Jam made a bigger contribution than Cobain. He'll be more famous for offing himself than for his tiny crop of songs.
31 - Mark Saleski
if Kurt Cobain was a better musician than Bob Dylan then john bambeneck is a better writer than ernest hemingway.
32 - Bob A. Booey
Pearl Jam? You lose all credibility with little asides like that. That's why I didn't bother to respond to your bizarre comparison of Scorsese to other filmmakers either.
All the artists you list were phonies except for Hendrix. And Hendrix HAD to be conflicted because he was an outsider to rock.
Let me put it this way: beyond cultural importance and image, Kurt Cobain wrote BETTER songs than Bob Dylan did. Most of Dylan's catalogue is painful to listen to, pretentious, meandering, nebulous, and completely affected.
Kind of like my writing, right? I'll save someone the cheap shot.
That is all.
33 - godoggo
I've been thinking about the differences between this and Don't Look Back (which I much prefer, the new film striking me as an interesting complement to it), and had typed up a bunch of them when I inadvertently hit Delete.
Oh well. Here's the difference I thought was most interesting: in the older film Dylan comes off as childishly petulant prick, albeit a charismatic one. Scorcese edits his material, including a lot of outtakes from the older film, to make him seem like a nice guy, who ultimately became exhasperated with the a-holes who surrounded him.
Two different truths, I think.
34 - adam
My dear Booey:
You appear to be as ignorant about Welles as you are about Dylan.
Here are the Welles masterpieces:
1. Citizen Kane
2. The Magnificent Ambersons
3. Macbeth
4. Othello
5. Touch of Evil
6. The Trial
7. Chimes at Midnight. (Probably his best, but then you've neither seen it nor heard of it, have you, Booey?)
So that's seven masterpieces against your Scorcese's single one of "Raging Bull." Excuse me, but Scorcese cannot kiss Welles's ass, nor Billy Wilder's, nor at least twenty other American directors, let alone twenty more world directors. Scorcese simply hasn't made enough good movies. and of the ones he's made, the majority are crap. Like I said, for the last 20 years he's been about as valuable as Michael Bay. I'd trade "Boogie Nights" from one promising new director for Scorcese's entire output.
May I suggest you use google or look stuff up in Wikipedia before you lumber into a debate in your endearingly brash but stumblebum way?
35 - Sean
Who Killed Davey Moore? is on the Bootleg Series Vol. 1-3.
Cobain didn't kill corporate rock. The only thing Cobain killed was himself.
36 - Jones Violet
Adam said, "Pearl Jam made a bigger contribution than Cobain."
I thought that was pretty funny.
37 - Sean
Orson Welles also appeared in an episode of I Love Lucy. That alone grants him entrance into the pantheon of greatness.
38 - Bob A. Booey
I didn't write the Welles comment, buddy. That was Roger M. Dillion.
"Citizen Kane" is one of my all-time favorite films and based on that alone, I'm not sure I can say Scorsese's better. But Scorsese's the best director of his generation and changed the entire picture industry during the 1970s, although that change clearly hasn't stuck either given where it's gone now. PT Anderson wouldn't be possible without Scorsese and I'm sure he'd tell you that. "Taxi Driver," "Mean Streets" and "Goodfellas" are all just about as good as "Raging Bull" -- I'd say "Taxi Driver" is actually better. And comparing Scorsese to the great giants of international cinema past, his influences and loves like Fellini, is like comparing Dylan to Woody Guthrie or Mozart or Beethoven. It's silly. But Scorsese is the best director of his generation and most critics would agree.
That is all.
39 - adam
Hey Booey, I loves ya, BTW. Just trying to get a rise. Very disappointed I couldn't get one out of Shark. The wily bastard is lying low, frustrating the piss out of me. And there I thought I was definitely insulting him enough to lure him out of his dark waters and take a bite outta my profferred ass. But no, he circles out there in the dark, chuckling to himself. Shark, where are you, you monster of the deep?
40 - godoggo
One of the interviewees in the movie said something like some people get Dylan and others don't. I forget who. Anyway, that's really about the only reasonable response I can think of to Mr. Booey, except that I agree that he clearly hasn't listened to enough Dylan to say anything substantive about him.
Cobain was not a better musician either. Dylan was a better one, played better, wrote better melodies, even sang better on a good day, although nobody'd call him a virtuoso. OK, that's probably not true.
41 - Bob A. Booey
He's flogging his dolphin.
I love ya too, sexy bitch :)
Welles did get ridiculous late in life when he had to scrounge for money. I'll rent "Chimes at Midnight," and no, I hadn't heard of it. Thanks.
That is all.
42 - godoggo
...not that's it's even worth arguing about, but, hey, I didn't raise the point.
43 - Shark
Booey, yer on yer own, babe.
Cobain is a God to a small, culturally-historically challenged 'third generation' of punk wannabees. That is all.
His 'contribution' is that he expressed in public what 10 million semi-domesticated primate adolescent garage-band types were thinking/doing in private.
"Grown ups" could care less. Then. And. Now.
~fffft.
BTW: He married Courtney Love, which immediately brands him as a boy with no brains and no taste.
~NEXT!
=====
Adam, as far as picking up your gauntlet and "debating" the merits of various songwriters vs Zimmerman -- as well as playing "Whose Art-Knowledge Dick is Bigger?"
1) I'm too tired
2) I'm too lazy
3) I don't "debate"
4) Art is subjective
5) My Art Knowledge Dick is bigger than all of *yalls' put together.
* except fer maybe JR
=========
BTW, Adam, "F for Fake" was a Welles "masterpiece". You left it off your all-encompassing list.
...but I still love ya~!
(Carry on, kids)
44 - adam
Booey:
I don't know, I think Raging Bull is the one. It's got an epic quality about it that Taxi Driver doesn't. I think it also explores character deeper.
But you're right, Scorcese was certainly one of the most exciting directors of his generation, although not neccesarily the best. What about Coppola?
It's not as if Scorcese stands alone out there. The 70s produced Woody Allen, Robert Altman, Terry Malick, Nic Roeg, Peter Weir, Ken Russell, John Schlesinger. I wouldn't count out an overlooked fellow like Hal Ashby (Harold and Maude, The Last Detail, Shampoo, Bound for Glory, Coming Home, and Being There is a nice body of work). Then there's the odd guys like Jim Jarmusch and David Lynch, and Russ Meyer, some kind of ridiculous genius.
Besides Coppola, I'd put two other directors in competition with Scorcese as the best of his generation:
1. Sam Peckinpah. He started a few years before Scorcese, but you could make a case for him having made better movies in the early 70s -- The Wild Bunch, The Ballad of Cable Hogue, Straw Dogs, and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid stack up easily against Scorcese.
2. John Casavetes. I'd say his movies of the 70s beat Scorcese's: Husbands, Minnie and Moskowitz, A Woman Under the Influence, Opening Night are mind-bending. A Woman Under the Influence may be better than Raging Bull, though I'd have to see them back to back to decide.
Jeez, how did I end up talking about directors on a Dylan thread? Anyway, to quote you, that is all.
45 - adam
Shark:
"F for Fake" was a bit of throw-away for chrissake. I think you're ducking the songwriter discussion because you can't think of one, JUST ONE, songwriter who measures up to Zimmerman.
I defy you to name just ONE from your big art-knowledge dick-infested bottom-feeding ocean depths. You ain't got one, that's why you're swallowing seawater.
46 - Shark
Okay, Adam.
Better lyrics/songs than Dylan:
Fred Neil
Ray Wylie Hubbard
Chris Wall
Steve Earle
Springsteen
Tim Finn
Kim Richey
Zoe Lewis
Laura Nyro
Joni Mitchell
Joe Ely
James McMurtry
Carrie Newcomer
John Smith
Bill Miller
Rhett Miller
Robert Wyatt
Deborah Holland
um... and that's just off the top of my head...
47 - Adam Zero
Welles never made a movie as bad as either Age of Innocence or the remake of Cape Fear. I can still hear De Niro saying in that fake drawl, "Coooounselor!"
48 - crooked spine
Bob Dylan was one of the most influential musicians in rock history. Period. You may not like him, but the music we hear today would likely be different had it not been for Dylan.
Take a listen to these five CDs: The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde and Blood on the Tracks. If afterwards you still don't get it, I can't make you understand.
BTW, I find it completely ridiculous to assert that Cobain was somehow better or more influential than Dylan. Just my opinion.
49 - Bob A. Booey
Coppola's had more huge bombs and misses than Scorsese has and has never been as consistently good. Yes, the Godfather movies earn him a spot in my pantheon of that generation, but even his best films like Apocalypse Now never had the clarity and order of thought and image that Scorsese's work had. They're both great and this could make for a great debate, but there's no doubt Scorsese's held up better over time and been the far more vital artist in recent years.
I love Terrence Malick, but he's barely worked. Woody Allen, Peter Weir and Robert Altman are decidedly NOT better than Scorsese -- they might tell you that themselves. I love "Being There," but it's not match for "Taxi Driver" or "Raging Bull."
The other directors you list are all great and I too like all their work, though. I love Lynch, but he's a madman experimentalist who'll never be able to communicate as effectively as Scorsese has.
Tha tis all.
50 - godoggo
Serious words and music:
Conjure: Music for the Texts of Ishmael Reed
Conjure: Cab Calloway Stands in for the Moon
And ditto to crooked spine.
51 - godoggo
And one more thought: I remember reading somewhere that Schubert preferred to work with bad poetry. Tried googling it but could find a quote.
52 - Mark Saleski
shark, yea it's all opinions and whatnot. but since a large percentage of those people were highly influenced by Dylan (and i'm sure they'd admit to this), the point of who's hardly matters.
53 - Trent McMartin
Discovering Bob Dylan
I don’t know anything about Bob Dylan. I used to consider his music “old person” music from a bygone era. I watched the Martin Scorsese directed documentary American Masters No Direction Home: Bob Dylan recently and the film offered some insight on Dylan’s life and music during his critical peak in the early to mid sixties. The footage captured in the film was extraordinary fully encapsulating the emotions Dylan was going through at the time with his reluctance to take the helm as a generation’s unofficial spokesman.
I’ve always heard about the influence Dylan had on contemporary music. Many credit him as the individual who brought folk music out of the coffee shops and into the mainstream. Others call Dylan a forerunner to the genres folk rock and country rock. I’m not going to analyze the man and go off on some Greil Marcus-like rant since I’m oblivious too much of his music and don’t look at him as god like or anything. I’ve heard the big hits and have no favouritism to any Dylan era having really first encountered the singer in the late eighties when he was a member of The Travelling Willburys. Even then I paid no attention to him thinking Roy Orbison was the stand out performer of the bunch.
I just want to understand why everyone thinks he’s so great. Why is his appeal so lasting? Why is someone who plays pop music the subject of countless debate, analysis and reference? I want to cut through the bullshit and discover Dylan on my own terms without any outside influence from any popular music publication, Internet forum or Scorsese movie.
With the exception of a few great artists, I never had the chance to make my own realization based upon my own pure, original thoughts. I wasn’t alive when The Beatles played Sullivan, or when Hendrix played Monterey or when The Ramones were a CBGBs fixture. The only modern day act that made waves on an international scale where the media didn’t corrupt my outlook was Nirvana. I’m not saying I was in Seattle at some dive watching them before they were famous. But they literally came out of nowhere and the media was clueless at first. For a brief few months they were really unclassifiable. When I first heard Nirvana in late 91’ I never said ‘that’s a grunge band.’ There was no such word at the time. But I knew at the time that a revolution, maybe not on a cultural scale like hip-hop, but on a musical level was unfolding before my eyes.
Maybe it’s inevitable. Maybe if you love music you’re destined to discover Bob Dylan sometime or another. I’m at the age now and frame of mind where I can truly appreciate good music of all varieties regardless of popularity. My previous attempts to comprehend Dylan and his music failed miserably in the past. I passed his music over numerous times for the contemporary music acts of the day. I settled for whatever someone else told me was good.
Nothing really manipulates my tastes now even if coincidently the new Bob Dylan documentary aired on PBS around the same time as my interest perked up in singer. Maybe the film’s release inadvertently influenced my subconscious in some way but I’ve wanted to discover Dylan long before the documentary was even a glimmer in Scorsese’s eye.
Now the question is where to begin? Should I start with a hits album or such classics as The Free Wheelin’ Bob Dylan or Highway 61 Revisited? Those would be logical introductions to Dylan’s discography especially since I’m impartial to any Dylan era. But I don’t really want to focus on his most well known material at first. I’m going to start off with something a little less known but not any less deserving of praise such as Dylan’s 1969 country album Nashville Skyline, which I discovered buried in my parent’s record collection alongside Kenney Rogers’ The Gambler and Neil Diamond’s Jonathon Livingston Seagull. The follow up to the rustic classic John Wesley Harding and Dylan’s first full-blown country record (featuring Johnny Cash on one track), I figure it’s as good as any place to start.
Trent McMartin
54 - Shark
Seleski: "...it's all opinions and whatnot. but since a large percentage of those people were highly influenced by Dylan... the point of who's hardly matters."
I agree.
And I think most discussions of art are just a subjective pissing contest.
But Adam chummed my water -- and in the interest of fun -- and shutting his ass up, I bit.
(I was also hoping some of these young dylan 'fans' might google some of those singer/songwriters on My List and find some real underground artists with intelligence and integrity. --heh)
BTW: *I think we tend to think Art is much more important than it really is.
(*I can't believe I said that!)
55 - Shark
Side comment:
If I had to cite Kurt Cobain as the best my generation had to offer, I believe I would put a shotgun in my mouth.
56 - Shark
BTW: Once again, in the interest of fairness -- and AGAINST this perception that these films just fell outta the director's ass:
Paul Schrader was Scorsese's SCREENWRITER.
(And Scorsese couldn't write his ass out of a paper bag.)
57 - Joanie
I'm sure I'll take a lot of flak for this, but I prefer hearing other people sing Dylan's lyrics.
58 - adam
Trent:
"Nashville Skyline" is as good a place to start as any. "Desire" might be your next album to listen to. I'd say these are the albums that would be the best intro, because they're the closest Dylan comes to easy listening.
Then you might be ready for the classics: Blonde on Blonde, Blood on the Tracks, Before the Flood, Planet Waves, Highway 61 Revisited.
Then you could go off into the byways, like New Morning, the last album (which won a Grammy I think), Basement Tapes, etc.
Shark:
Thank you for your list of songwriters. You definitely win the Bigger Art-Knowledge Dick contest. I bow before your superior knowledge. Trouble is, I haven't listened to much rock since the 70s, except for the unavoidable high points, like Booey's fave Nirvana, and innovators like Prince, who's not a bad Hendrix-follower/clone. I'm gonna google all the songwriters on your list. (BTW, there's that guy who did 69 Love Songs. I don't know if he's on your list or on your radar, but I heard a few cuts, and they sound damn interesting.)
Now Trent:
If you can give me a list of your faves from recent years I've missed out on, I'd be most grateful. I need to catch up with what's been happening. But leave off the Backstreet Boys and stuff -- only interested in people who are really original, idiosyncratic, or do very gorgeous melodies. I'm fucking envious of you, Trent, being able to come to Dylan fresh and discovering the mountain of this man's music for the first time like giant servings of delicious Sundaes -- it's like never having heard of Shakespeare and watching Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, and Macbeth over four nights consecutive nights for the first time. You're going to have a blast.
Joanie:
You have a point. Dylan is such a distinctive and maybe even bizarre stylist singing-wise, that other people often bring out the best of his songs melodically, even though he is the best to sing his lyrics for their meaning.
For example, the Byrds version of Mr Tambourine Man really takes the melody and makes it soar like Bob can't, though you have to listen to Bob singing it to get what it's really all about.
And Jimi Hendrix plays the absolute living shit out of All Along the Watch Tower.
Even so, some (probably most) of Dylan's own versions are unbeatable. Take Lay Lady Lay. It's one of his most "commercial" pop-like songs ("Just Like a Woman" is another example), yet I defy any more "commercial" singer or band on earth to do a sweeter, more affecting version. It's also one of those rare Dylan songs that aren't driven by sarcasm, rage, taunting, pain or despair. What makes Dylan truly original is that he is everything that is anti-pop, down to his strange voice. He does not pander, which is something most other artists do.
Booey:
Look, Cobain was great, but I'm with Shark on this. In the book of rock, he's a footnote, and Dylan is a chapter.
59 - adam
Booey:
Have you rented "Chimes at Midnight" yet? I'm jealous you're getting to it for the first time, too.
60 - J Glaubiger
Before you belittle Scorcese, there is no doubt that he presented Dylan's music and story in a scholarly and spell binding fashion. Thats all we can ask of a documentary. And by the way, I am not an expert, but I know that editing a movie can be as important to the finished product as filming the movie.
Here is a unique thought perhaps.
Early in the documentary, Dylan mentions how his two earliest girlfriends could bring out the poet in him. Therefore, he advises us on the importance of women as both lover and muse.
We observe that he first makes a name for himself as a musical interpretor of Woody Guthrie. Apparently, soon after he meets Joan Baez, he becomes both the prolific and stunning songwriter that makes him so remarkable. I recall her remarking that he is "writing all the time." There is the image of Dylan at the typewriter, empty booze bottles strewn about.....with Joan Baez nearby.
Perhaps the love of a woman was an important ingredient in Dylans creativity.
Furthermore, as an artist, he didnt care what the audience thought, he just had to follow where his art took him. But that is why it still seems magical today.
Its a whole different world from the Music INC. we have today.
During the later years depicted in the documentary it is pretty obvious he is flying high on drugs. Perhaps the drugs dulled his thoughts and altered his priorities. As so often happens, maybe the drugs started to take first priority. Not surprisingly, Baez splits and his creativity faded.(It is hard to take seriously songs like "Everybody must get stoned" or "Lay Lady Lay") Thanks for letting me share my opinion.
61 - mike
Bob Dylan is an interesting enigma that attemps to hide his true thoughts behind powerful lyrics...His guitar playing is average at best. Piano ability isn't much to brag about..Simon Cowell would have the police throw him out of the audition room. Yet we are still very fascinated by him..I believe much of the allure is the fact that Dylan tries very hard not to be self labeled...He seems just as curious as the press when fielding questions about his popularity...
If you pay close attention to the music world you'll find that the less you say, the more mysterious you become...Mysteria sells albums..It almost seems that huge artists in film and music try to dodge interviews...It is almost as if they understand the more we know about them the less we'll care. When the answer is revealed the game is over...
I prefer Van Morrison over Dylan..Van isn't the so-called poet but makes his points quicker and smoother...I also prefer Morrison's melodies over Dylan's.
Dylan is one of the top 5 performers of the 20th century no doubt. His music will live for another hundred years. But it is important to keep in perspective that his job isn't to move revolutions from here to there. It is merely his job to create thought. Demand the audience to ask questions of itself to which there is no simple answer. Martin Luther King lead by method. Bob Dylan created thought with music..There is a big difference.
The lyrics do need the support of the music...The two should match...Think about the lyrics of Knockin on Heaven's Door paired with the music of Jumpin Jack Flash...It doesn't work.
So to me it seems it is harder to define a great songwriter than it is a great poet...There are just more material and feelings that go into a song than a poem..
Mike
62 - crackhead bob
Any of you losers on this post gotten any pussy in the last 6 months.
I HIGHLY DOUBT IT!!!
63 - Phillip Winn
And crackhead bob reminds us all what is really important in life.
Obviously crackhead bob is single.
64 - MaddyMappo
I saw Bob Dylan play his first concert at Town Hall. I don't remember the year and I was very young, I think about 15 years old. I didn't know anything about music, and no one stood up in the audience and gyrated and clapped to musci and shouted. But it was riveting. I never forgot that concert, and I have forgotten many since, even the fun ones with grear rock stars. He was and is a powerful persona that connects in a unique way into your heart. I am sure there are better guitar players and singers. He always makes fun of his own voice and ability, but all of him together with his haunting lyrics comes together and expresses something wonderful and beautiful that isn't like anyone else and yet the same as everyone else. As weird as Bob is, we all some how recognize ourselves in him. He also expresses the thoughts and yearnings of an entire generation that was trying to discover the core of our purpose. Things have gotten a lot more complex since then, yet, somehow Bob Dylan's words manage to still manages to raises up the mundane experience of love, and longing, hope, dispair and even hate to a level where we can wonder at the greatness of the ordinary human soul. And that is what I think makes him extraordinary.
65 - karenkat
Perhaps the biggest problem with Dylan and his influence on our lives is that a lot of it was visceral, and as hard to define as he is to 'analyse'. I'm a little more than a year younger than he is, and we were there for his first album, and for every one after that thru, interestingly, '66, then it got sporadic - Vietnam overturned a lot of our lives; and when MLK and Bobbie were killed, we all died a little, and the music didn't work any more for a long time....
This 'visceral' is not meant to reflect some foggy ancient sentimentality so much as the fact that his work changed our lives in ways we did not, and still do not, understand. He 'fit' into where we were at when we found him. Nor is it connected to any 'movement' - I know a lotta people my age to whom it never even occurred at the time that his songs were 'protest' songs - we'd been entrenched in the civil rights movement since the late-50's out here in California when he came along, all bright young people who were personally insulted by the cruelty and senselessness of segregation and its attendant horrors, and who did our little bit about it and, later on, 'Nam. If anything, his work merely enhanced mind sets that were already there.
Why did he fit so well into so many of our lives then? Because all that stuff he created was so goddamn beautiful, that's all - the words, the music, the creaky voice, the harmonica, the mistakes, the heart and breath behind it, all made a unique frequently troubling breathtaking gorgeous package that we barely sought to understand. We inhaled him like the best grass on the block and didn't bother to try to figure him out. He was just "right" for us.
And maybe that's enough. He's been beaten up by words thrown at and near and about him for over 40 years now, and has aged into a gracious clear-minded fellow with enuf good feeling to TALK, really TALK in that remarkable documentary.
I was blown away all over again. Let the academics and critics have their continuing field day trying to find a comfortable place to put him so THEY feel better and less puzzled by him.
I know where he is, and so do many other normally highly articulate, overeducated, nasty, judgemental people like me - he's in my goddamn heart, and that's where he'll stay.
Certainly, the 60's without him would have resulted in a big hole in that space he ended up occupying.
That is all sufficient for me.
:)
66 - bloggs
shakespeare was crap, he didn't get much
cobain is an idiot
dylan knows
its about truth
67 - hippy
karenkat, bless you.
you've said it for all of us. (well, most of us anyway).
trent, if you're still there, perhaps the best way to listen to dylan is to start from the beginning. hear the changes in direction, in purpose, in vocal technique, in working methods -in the order that they happened. it will give a better understanding not only of his work, but of the man himself.
dylan has lived his life openly before us, and allowed us to see his soul. we are priviledged indeed.
68 - anita
Dude, you have a serious problem if you think that
Bob Dylan is as great as Shakespeare or Mozart. It makes me wonder whether you have ever attended a classical music concert or read a Shakespeare play, for instance. Have you ever just sat down and listened to Mozart or Beethoven for a few minutes? Let's face it, compared to Schubert or Mozart, Bob Dylan's music is nothing more than confusing, disorganized noise. I am really concerned about your inability to distinguish popular music from the most beautiful music and poetry ever written.
69 - Tiffany
I have always found it interesting that Bob Dylan and many other folk-type singers really do not appeal to audiences on an international level. While The Beatles have sold hundreds of millions of albums around the world, Bob Dylan's total record sales are limited largely to English speaking countries. I think that it is interesting to consider the reasons behind this phenomenon.
My feeling is that, on a musical level, Bob Dylan in fact is really not as good as The Beatles. With regard to melody in particular, The Beatles (and many other hugely popular international artists) wrote really great music that even people in China or India, for instance, might enjoy, regardless of whether they even understand the words. After all, music is the universal art form, isn't it? On the other hand, with Bob Dylan, there is really not as much there on a musical level. And once you take away the music, Bob Dylan's music loses most of the poetic qualties that it once seemed to have.
I also find it interesting that the only people on Earth who really seem to enjoy Bob Dylan and so many of your other folk singers are white, upper middle class people from the US and Canada. It is as though people with real problems don't want anything to do with this narcissistic, self-absorbed form of music.
70 - Pam from the 60's
I liked the interview with Dylan..I thought this was Dylan as bare as we have seen him except in his songs. I'm a 60's kid...and the thing we all need to keep in mind and/or realize is the TIME! Dylan was riding the wave. He was: the right guy, in the right place, at the right time. Just like Dylan said about songwriters...you have to be able to get inside people's heads...and that, my friends, is what Dylan does. And to be able to get inside people's heads...well, that takes a special gift/skill/talent-supernatural-bought at the crossroads...whatever you want to call it...but the fact remains...Dylan had/has it. To say Dylan borrows...hey, we are all part of the original...don't think so..check your DNA.
Pam
71 - Alexander
He's NOT the only singer-songwriter who's lyrics can be read as poetry. That's just a foolish thing to say.
Tom Waits, for one, at least never wrote nonsense free-form stuff. Dylan did. God, I hate bull**** poetry.
72 - James
We have a question, and hope there is someone here can help me and my friends understand the reference of Bob Dylan's All Along the Watch Tower.
We would certainly appreciate any and all comments.