Dylan: I just don't get it, and I never will
- Thread starter k-punk
- Start date
Interesting - I actually REALLY hate After the Flood, would definitely fling it into the Not Good pile. Sorta the epitome of Live Album Shitness for me, every track played too fast, all the 'energy' destroying the original geist / tone / heft of the studio versions...
New Morning pretty undistinguished, but has a few stand-outs - Man in Me, If Not For You...
But Nashville Skyline is amazing - would put it among the best... Country Pie! Girl from the North Country! Lay Lady Lay! His voice is so different on it... There's a group glow to the playing which made me hear country music so differently, there's a real jouissance in all these hardened session players just slinging out off-the-cuff um, licks.... the Nashville section in Derek Bailey's improv doc is far more eloquent on this idiom than I ever could be... but it's after hours pastoral avant-yob if you like
plus the intriguing narratives of Dylan's career, rock post-67, the way JWH and then Nashville Skyline embrace this despised genre, undercut a lot of flabby psych bullshit... and then he moves on again before that whole roots-rock drive becomes worthy stodge... funny how Dylan and Bowie get opposed earlier in this thread and Dylan painted as rockist, but in so many ways he was just as un-rockist, just as gleefully inauthentic as anyone in glam or synth-pop... it fascinates me that he can be read as a Nietzschean chameleon, willing new selves into existence and disregarding consistency or 'authenticity' out of pure transcendental Ego, but it seems to be equally powered by *annihilating* the self so that these ghostly folk voices can speak through him
or Before the Flood even
Woebot
Well-known member
aaah. ok well i will give it another few goes. tbh i would rather it WAS good. "lay lady lay" is the only standout for me, and i prefer the earlier version of girl from the north country - love that tune.
yeah i'm feeling this. bring it on.
Woebot
Well-known member
cool. i hear you. will investigate.
yeh, but no-one's saying it could have stood on its own, just that it isn't simply reflecting America back to itself.... I'd say the English thing is massive with the Beatles throughout... it saturates most of the lyrics, the cadences, the grain of the voices... The Beatles barely sound r and r AT ALL... there sound is so not dependent on rhythm... or blues for that matter, except in a massively uh refracted way...
Ha! love it when old threads get reignited....
Anyway, for anyone (still interested in a 5 yr old argument, and) who thought the Beatles were only US influenced:
Ha! love it when old threads get reignited....
Anyway, for anyone (still interested in a 5 yr old argument, and) who thought the Beatles were only US influenced:
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
lol, can you guess who wrote this invective?
Bob Dylan
Dylan actually died of shame in 1964, shortly after he stopped pissing on warmongers' graves and became a sort of reverse-anachronistic John Cooper Clarke clone without the jokes. What people think of as "Bob Dylan" today is really a persona acted out by half a dozen octogenarian lesbian drag kings, who have perfected a marvellous can't-actually-make-out-a-single-word-he's-singing parody of what Dylan would probably sound like if he had continued his pretend-hobo faux-folkie act into late middle age, dragging in his wake an increasingly smug, flaccid and obese army of Mojo-reading male menopausal Peter Pans with biscuit crumbs in their spliff-yellowed beards, all just a few more years of nightly real-ale binges away from being permanently colostomy-bagged. In fact, that's the one thing modern "Dylan" gigs have in common with the days when he played in front of thousands of screaming teeny-boppers – the stench of piss. But not in a good way
Bob Dylan
Dylan actually died of shame in 1964, shortly after he stopped pissing on warmongers' graves and became a sort of reverse-anachronistic John Cooper Clarke clone without the jokes. What people think of as "Bob Dylan" today is really a persona acted out by half a dozen octogenarian lesbian drag kings, who have perfected a marvellous can't-actually-make-out-a-single-word-he's-singing parody of what Dylan would probably sound like if he had continued his pretend-hobo faux-folkie act into late middle age, dragging in his wake an increasingly smug, flaccid and obese army of Mojo-reading male menopausal Peter Pans with biscuit crumbs in their spliff-yellowed beards, all just a few more years of nightly real-ale binges away from being permanently colostomy-bagged. In fact, that's the one thing modern "Dylan" gigs have in common with the days when he played in front of thousands of screaming teeny-boppers – the stench of piss. But not in a good way
benjybars
village elder.
Sectionfive
bandwagon house
Just downloaded a few of his Theme Time Radio shows for the mothers ipod.
As much as it pains me to say it, old Bob is top selector.
Great music on them all, well worth checking out.
As much as it pains me to say it, old Bob is top selector.
Great music on them all, well worth checking out.
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Always enjoy it ain't over till it's over whenever I hear it, but everything else he's done is awful
sus
Moderator
To me a lot of what sets Dylan apart is how he's always changing, always reinventing himself, always rebuilding himself. This is a pretty vanilla stance in theory but in practice all the Dylan hagiography is around one single change—the Newport Electric moment. He's still thought of first and foremost as a political folk-rock songwriter which was a stage in a progression. Even people who talk about Protean Dylan are embarrassed by his Christian turn, they try to ignore it pretend it never happened they don't listen to anything he did after Blood on the Tracks
But what makes him great and not just some overhyped folk rocker is the full scope of his career—not just the conversion to electric at Newport, which is central to his hagiography, but many turns and pivots, including the Christian conversion. (Which is one of the parts of his career that is actually STILL subversive and interesting, that hasn't been domesticated and integrated into baby boomer mythology the way the Newport electric moment has been.)
But what makes him great and not just some overhyped folk rocker is the full scope of his career—not just the conversion to electric at Newport, which is central to his hagiography, but many turns and pivots, including the Christian conversion. (Which is one of the parts of his career that is actually STILL subversive and interesting, that hasn't been domesticated and integrated into baby boomer mythology the way the Newport electric moment has been.)
sus
Moderator
I think his lyrics are good but overrated
It's Dylan the self-inventing self-recreating changeling cult of personality channeled through pop song that's interesting
Very much like Bowie, who is heavily inspired by Dylan—see Hunky Dory's "Song to Bob Dylan" (an homage to Dylan's "Song to Woody")
It's Dylan the self-inventing self-recreating changeling cult of personality channeled through pop song that's interesting
Very much like Bowie, who is heavily inspired by Dylan—see Hunky Dory's "Song to Bob Dylan" (an homage to Dylan's "Song to Woody")