Dylan: I just don't get it, and I never will

k-punk

Spectres of Mark
I just watched the second half of Scorsese's Dylan documentary. Predictably, I found myself admiring Dylan only for the way he dealt with imbecilic journalists and the organo-folk nazis; I remain mystified about the appeal of his words and music. Admittedly I am the most prejudiced possible observer --- but I found it surprisingly easy to maintain a position of total hostility towards Dylan's oeuvre. Prejudice has been stoked up by Baby Boomer fucks like Bryan Appleyard (in the Sunday Times) drooling that Dylan is just about the greatest poet ever to walk the earth (with Oxford academic Christopher Ricks quoted as saying 'aren't we privileged to be living at the same time as Bob Dylan' for Chrissake). It's not only that I personally don't share the judgement (there are many esteemed artists I dislike but at least have some comprehension of their appeal to others); it's that I don't on any level understand it. What is supposed to be groundbreaking or interesting about Dylan's tuneless voice, frankly hideous harmonica dirges and pisspoor lyrics, which alternate between stoner doggerel and the stupefyingly inane (Bad Things are like gonna happen; hey, old folks, society's moving on y'know)? Dylan summarises everything that I so despise about the Sixties (bliss was it in that dawn NOT to be alive), it all just seems so ramshackle, so earthy, so earnest, so hairy, so unglamorous, so monochrome, so OLD...
 

zhao

there are no accidents
do you like any early American folk and country? what do you think about Woodie Guthrie? or any of the Harry Smith collections? what about mississipi delta blues? or 30s Chicago gospel? or is it only Bobby D that gets on your nerves?
 

Buick6

too punk to drunk
The rhythmic interplay and guitarwork on albums like Highway61, Desire, 'live at albert hall, 'the rolling thunder bootleg series' (with Mick Ronson) 'the Last Waltz' and even his recent 'Time out of mind' is not to be denied. Obviously yr not a rockist and don't get it. I had the same attitude as youth bred on indie and punk and having fucking people sing 'blowing in the wind' and 'like a rolling stone' at youth camps, until I heard those boots and saw him live, and all my Richard Hell& the Voidoids and Pavement records sounded kinda, I dunno, *dated*.
 

joeschmo

Well-known member
please

At this point in time, after so much has been written by so many intelligent people (ie, not Brian Appleyard) about Dylan, I don't see how it's possible to not get what the appeal is, unless you're really determined not to. Sure, you don't have to like it, and a good argument why he's not a genius would definitely be more interesting at this point... but to say you just don't understand at all, you have to be deliberately sticking your head in the sand.
 

joeschmo

Well-known member
please part ii

(and when i say a good argument against would be more interesting, i don't mean that childish ranting you're offering up top)
 

k-punk

Spectres of Mark
joeschmo said:
At this point in time, after so much has been written by so many intelligent people (ie, not Brian Appleyard) about Dylan, I don't see how it's possible to not get what the appeal is, unless you're really determined not to. Sure, you don't have to like it, and a good argument why he's not a genius would definitely be more interesting at this point... but to say you just don't understand at all, you have to be deliberately sticking your head in the sand.

Well, I've never read anything about Dylan that didn't baffle me when I actually heard the object of this reverence.. and of course vacuous and fallacious appeals to self-evidence and canonic authority aren't really going to persuade me.
 

michael

Bring out the vacuum
What are you after, though? All of the things you've written you don't like about Dylan are just describing your responses. Others will have different responses, and might present some post-hoc analysis of why they feel that way, which doesn't agree with your post-hoc analysis of why you feel the way you do. Then what?
 

michael

Bring out the vacuum
Actually, sorry, post-hoc analysis might not be fair. It sounds like you're coming to the music with a whole lot of notions about what constitutes good and bad music. As we all do, I guess. But do you want it affirmed that the same things you are looking to hate other people love? Sounding earnest, ramshackle, old (maybe repackaged as "classic" or of a certain lineage or something), etc.?
 

Buick6

too punk to drunk
The problem with 'getting' Dylan is when people over-psycho-analyse it and the fact that his appeal is one of the most 'innerlectyul' in rock - I can't think of any artist that has been more written about except for maybe Lou Reed, Neil Young, the Beatles and U2. As Richard Meltzer said 'Dylan frees us FROM meaning'.

If you don't like old-school, raw transcendent rock, fine, you'll never get it, go listen to MBV or the Smiths or Spacemen3 or Pavement or Sonic Youth or whatever.

But I can see yr confusion or inability to get it.

At the end the music speaks, nothing else. But I urge you to get the bootlegs first if you're curious.
 

treblekicker

True Faith
Feel somewhere between the doubters and the believers. Was never into him but recently bought Highway 61 Revisited after hearing a few tracks off it. It's good, but somewhere between the then and the now. Clever lyrics I guess and not a duff track on it. Don't think my Pavement records suffered as a result of exposure to Dylan though.

I'd say that the current boomer nostalgia is possibly down to another factor as well. Do you think it's possible that a lot of the cultural establishment now who love Bob Dylan were folkies then and not into more proletarian rock and roll/soul etc. at the time?

Pushing Dylan allows them to ignore the fact that they missed music of great importance (like dismissing hip hop in the 80s) and also appear culturally in tune by putting someone from a pop culture canon in a classical context - the whole Dylan vs. Keats thing. Why do people feel the need to make these judgements? It's art not sport! It's not supposed to have league tables.

...oh and another thing. Has anyone noticed how it's the literary critics who foam at the mouth? Too much attention to lyrics? I'm not saying Dylan isn't worthy of praise - I like him, but Savage, Morley, Bangs, Reynolds, Pareles etc didn't have the same rabid praise that I see from the ... dare I say it... logocentrists.
 
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JimO'Brien

Active member
While one must wholeheartedly agree with K-Punks comments in regard to Dylan's " tuneless voice, frankly hideous harmonica dirges and pisspoor lyrics", it is important not to overlook Dylan's greatest crime. He must be held responsible, along with Lennon/McCartney, in making it obligatory for all pop groups/singers etc. to write their own material. Most of whom are obviously not vey good at it.
 

owen

Well-known member
ha i do second that, but i'm going to out myself as a Dylan apologist here- if you draw a line under the horrible grotty anti-sensualism of the folkie stuff (and pretty much everything after 'blonde on blonde' (ie, the three electric albums) then he works as a kind of precursor to howard devoto or vic godard- cheap, clattery, overstuffed speedfreak lyrics, that sense of trying to say a million things at once, a determinedly urban, paranoid sound.

also he looked fantastic at the time- lovely, semi-Maoist coats, thick Eraserhead hairdo...
 

Peak

Member
spot on post owen. also, the mushy, muddy sound of Highway 61 (esp like a rolling stone), too many instruments, not much separation or hierarchy, the sense of everyone including dylan battling to get their own ideas heard, is great. Even by blonde on blonde though, there wasnt that same energy, everything sounds more in thrall to the Masters Voice.

And, a whole book on like a rolling stone? greil marcus has really lost it to his dylan fixation hasnt he? not that I've read it.
 

joeschmo

Well-known member
OK, let's break it down:

<i>What is supposed to be groundbreaking or interesting about Dylan's tuneless voice</i>

What's interesting is how much he does with his limited instrument. He must have used abut 10-20 different voices over the course of his career.

<i>frankly hideous harmonica dirges</i>

I've never been the biggest fan of his harmonica playing. I do like when he just blows hard on it, the pure noise quality he gets sometimes.

<i>pisspoor lyrics, which alternate between stoner doggerel and the stupefyingly inane (Bad Things are like gonna happen; hey, old folks, society's moving on y'know)?</i>

I'm not going to get into a lyric-quoting battle, but this is just objectively wrong as a description of Dylan's themes and sounds like you haven't really listened beyond, say, Times They Are A' Changin'.

<i>it all just seems so ramshackle, so earthy, so earnest, so hairy, so unglamorous, so monochrome, so OLD...</i>

Ramshackle.... OK. Earthy... maybe. Earnest.... not hardly. Hairy... eh, no. Unglamorous... in 65-66, he was definitely glamorous. Monochrome... hey, they had color film in those days, you know. Old... well, yes, it was 50 years ago, not much we can do about that is there?
 

joeschmo

Well-known member
joeschmo

But hey, I'm sure if he'd put on some dodgy makeup and sang about robots, you'd think he was really fuckin' deep...
 

stelfox

Beast of Burden
k-punk said:
(there are many esteemed artists I dislike but at least have some comprehension of their appeal to others)

not much evidence of that wrt to the almighty, towering genius of phil collins, though, was there
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
I like Dylan less than most canonical figures, partly cos his folky 60s sound does collapse into dirge too often for my liking (notwithstanding that Rolling Stone must be one of the finest pop songs ever written). But surely everyone likes Blood on the Tracks?
 

blissblogger

Well-known member
i do like the sound of that classic midsixties electric Dylan (wild thin mercury yada yada) but otherwise i'm pretty much with kpunk -- don't get it and don't think i ever will and more to the point don't want to get it -- a month or so ago i was in a car listening to a classic rock station and 'like a rolling stone' came on and i was like well this is nice but the sound alone of it doesn't carry the epochal, before-and-after momentousness that is attributed to it -- just as pure sound it doesn't have the force that is still present in certain records by the Stones or the Beatles... it's not really rock music at base, rhythmically, dylan's stuff

with dylan you have to do all this reading around the music, to set the context, the narrative -- newport, judas in manchester, the retirement, etc etc. and then all the reading into the lyrics

give or take the odd amazing line the lyrics seem like gibberish to me ( don't like the Beats at the best of times), and most of all it's his personality that's offputting, that horrible sneer. what a nasty chap! i always find myself sympathising with the bespectacled student in Dont' Look Back, and watching the Scorsese thing actually felt a weird sort of empathy for the betrayed folkie purists in Manchester, who seem like good hearted types.

dylan's resurrection in critical esteem is weird cos it felt like during the eighties he had disappeared off the critical/reference point radar -- such that when nick cave started going on about him, it was quite a striking taste stance to make -- (another one that nobody talked about in those days was Brian Wilson, as it happens) -- but at some point in the nineties it seemed like this unstoppable juggernaut of reappraisal got started and it just keeps escalating -- (same happened with brian and the beach boys)

what's behind it? hard to say but can't help thinking it's partly a kind of unconscious American babyboomer ressentiment at the fact that the biggest and most obviously important bands of the Sixties were British. Dylan's the one candidate who can rank alongside Beatles and Stones. (That might also explain the over-estimation of the Beach Boys actually) None of the others--byrds, doors, jefferson airplane, etc---come close to the brit megabands, and Jimi is a sort of honorary Brit really with a band that was 2/3 British. So if you want to restate Amurrrcan music as the central motor of rock history and an American figure as the fulcrum of the Sixties, then there's nobody better than Dylan for that role.
 
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