The Self Indulgent Bob Dylan Appreciation Thread

[Vider]

All his songs are shite too.

Ohhhhhhhh edgy!

 

[Roadkill]

A lot of people are annoyed by his honesty. He says of his fans "they say they love me but they don't even know me" What people love is his art and that is what he has given for half a century. I think Dylan is genuinely puzzled that this doesn't seem to be enough. He has to "love" his fans the way they "love" him.

So people get upset if he doesn't warmly greet his audience like old friends. He has a point, why should he? Just enjoy his creative genius.

I agree with that, but I was thinking more in terms of his personal life. But again, there's no reason why a great artist should have to be a saint. Art reflects the person who creates it, and Dylan's music certainly reflects the complexities of his personality. That's part of the fascination IMO.

 

[Vider]

"I used to tell my Ma sometimes,
when I see them riding blinds,
Going to make me a home out in the wind.

In the wind. Lord, Lord, Lord,
Going to make me a home out in the wind."

 

[Idaho]

I wonder when our culture will give up on the idea that artists we like need to be nice people who we would like to be mates with.

Dylan is/was a genius. That doesn't mean he's not a twit too.

Anyone heard the Dylan Christmas Album?

 

[goldenecitrone]

Tangled up in Blue, obviously, plus everything on Street Legal and Shelter from the Storm are ones I listen to quite frequently. A genuine genius in an increasingly vacuous industry.

 

[matt m]

Bob Dylan is one of the greatest artists. He can sensibly be mentioned in the same light as Dickens, Shakespeare, Mozart, Keats, Yeats, and the other greats.

Bob Dylan will be discussed in the future like Homer is today.

The most important popular musician of all time.

I dunno, I think the 'bob dylan studies' bandwagon has kind of exhausted itself.

Christopher Ricks wrote some interesting stuff on Dylan. Greil Marcus wrote some fantastic stuff on Dylan (in his book 'Invisible Republic'). But when you go back to the material, it doesn't quite live up to the claims made for it.

The best Dylan lyrics, written in the 60s, are probably his surrealist-bitchy ones, which do have something of Allen Ginsberg, Frank O'Hara or Ted Berrigan to them. They work as songs, but it doesn't do Bob many favours to treat his songs like poems cos, well, divorcing them from the music and doing a practical criticism on them would just leave em looking silly.

I mean, you mention Shakespeare, Mozart and Homer: they were all orderly formalists, which Bob Dylan isn't at all.

Both Keats and Yeats, on the other hand, drew on folk influences (and also wrote a lot of crap alongside the good stuff), so I can see the parallels there.

 

[butchersapron]

What i like about Dylan is that he could chuck out atrack like Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window as if it was nothing - lesser artists would still be touring on that song alone.

 

[DotCommunist]

a better poet than a singer imo

 

[SpookyFrank]

Advertising signs that con you
Into thinking you're the one
That can do what's never been done
That can win what's never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you.

You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks
They really found you.

A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit to satisfy
Insure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not fergit
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong to.

Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to.

Nuff said.

 

[Vider]

I dunno, I think the 'bob dylan studies' bandwagon has kind of exhausted itself.

Christopher Ricks wrote some interesting stuff on Dylan. Greil Marcus wrote some fantastic stuff on Dylan (in his book 'Invisible Republic'). But when you go back to the material, it doesn't quite live up to the claims made for it.

The best Dylan lyrics, written in the 60s, are probably his surrealist-bitchy ones, which do have something of Allen Ginsberg, Frank O'Hara or Ted Berrigan to them. They work as songs, but it doesn't do Bob many favours to treat his songs like poems cos, well, divorcing them from the music and doing a practical criticism on them would just leave em looking silly.

I mean, you mention Shakespeare, Mozart and Homer: they were all orderly formalists, which Bob Dylan isn't at all.

Both Keats and Yeats, on the other hand, drew on folk influences (and also wrote a lot of crap alongside the good stuff), so I can see the parallels there.

I think Andrew Motion put it in an interesting way. He said something like, Dylan might not be the best poet, but he is one of the greatest users of language.

He has an incredible turn of phrase and a sort of pressure in everything he writes. Infact, I actually think the surrealist stuff is the weaker work. I think he's at his strongest when using nursery rhyme type formulas. Simple songs about people mixed with simple themes. Combined with the music, they represent some of the most powerful, life-changing (yes!) art going, IMO, of course.

 

[Roadkill]

What i like about Dylan is that he could chuck out atrack like Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window as if it was nothing - lesser artists would still be touring on that song alone.

Indeed. Same can be said of Red River Shore, and Blind Willie McTell - all outstanding songs that never even made it onto albums.

 

[Housmans]

Housmans has got a nice Dylan event coming up:

'Bob Dylan & Babylon: Together through Life' with John Gibbens
Wednesday 11th November 7pm till 8.30pm

Drawing on his book 'The Nightingale's Code: A Poetic Study of Bob Dylan', John Gibbens will be discussing the many influences on Dylan’s music, examining his more recent works, and playing some tracks.

As a poet and rock musician, John Gibbens has the background to give us a fresh perspective on Bob Dylan's substantial body of work. He has also read all the major critical studies and biographies and tracked down Dylan's literary and musical sources, from Blake and the Bible to Howlin' Wolf and Woody Guthrie. As a result, this book is literate, personal, refreshing and shows a deep affection for the artist he calls 'our first old rock star'. Dylan, Gibbens suggests, made himself into a particular kind of folksinger, an individual who picked up pieces of whatever lay around, including the 'museum of sound' of 20th-century recorded music, to create an individual vision, continually open to what was new and fresh.

Gibbens looks at all the different kinds of music Dylan has appropriated in this way, from country to gospel, and also at the social and political background against which Dylan has worked, particularly the rise and fall of the 1960s counterculture.

This evening will concentrate on the works since 2001 that have made the latter part of Dylan's career as brilliant as any before. There'll be some singing to leaven the speaking and at the end, even if the hour is getting late, some time to not talk falsely...

All at:
Housmans Bookshop
5 Caledonian Road
King's Cross
London N1 9DX
Tel: 020 7837 4473

Free entry
Nearest tube: King's Cross

www.housmans.com
Tel: +44 (0)20 7837 4473
shop email: [email protected]
map: http://tinyurl.com/2oq9vv

"Support the shop that supports your campaigns!"

To receive Housmans’ monthly events newsletter with all our events, please email nik[at]housmans.com and mark the subject ‘subscribe to newsletter’.

 

[chazegee]

Bob Dylan is one of the greatest artists. He can sensibly be mentioned in the same light as Dickens, Shakespeare, Mozart, Keats, Yeats, and the other greats.

Bob Dylan will be discussed in the future like Homer is today.

The most important popular musician of all time.

Comments like this totally confirm my suspicion that his fans may be, a little bit, you know, pretentious.

 

[chazegee]

Dickens, Shakespeare, Mozart, Keats, Yeats, and the other greats.

And it's not lack of education, if you'd said Dostoevsky, Marlowe, Beethoven and Cummings I might have listened.

 

[dylans]

Comments like this totally confirm my suspicion that his fans may be, a little bit, you know, pretentious.

I feel sorry for people that don't like Dylan. It's the kind of pity of have for people who can't read. That they live their lives lacking something that adds so much to the quality of life. Tragic.

Imagine not being able to appreciate this..

 

[chazegee]

I feel sorry for people that don't like Dylan. It's the kind of pity of have for people who can't read. That they live their lives lacking something that adds so much to the quality of life. Tragic.

Imagine not being able to appreciate this..

Yes, poor me. Thank you for your sympathy.

 

[dylans]

Yes, poor me. Thank you for your sympathy.

Oh, there's hope for you yet. Try this

Oh Sister

 

[chazegee]

Look man, I'm a recovering Dylan fan, give up.

 

[Vider]

Don't like his voice? Fine. Don't like his music, fine. Don't like his hair-do, his hippy dippy look, fine.

But anyone who hates Bob Dylan to me is a wrong'un, thick, and a cunt.

Cheers.

 

[Kaka Tim]

I dunno, I think the 'bob dylan studies' bandwagon has kind of exhausted itself.

Christopher Ricks wrote some interesting stuff on Dylan. Greil Marcus wrote some fantastic stuff on Dylan (in his book 'Invisible Republic'). But when you go back to the material, it doesn't quite live up to the claims made for it.

The best Dylan lyrics, written in the 60s, are probably his surrealist-bitchy ones, which do have something of Allen Ginsberg, Frank O'Hara or Ted Berrigan to them. They work as songs, but it doesn't do Bob many favours to treat his songs like poems cos, well, divorcing them from the music and doing a practical criticism on them would just leave em looking silly.

.

Pretty much agree.

Song lyrics are not poetry - the context they work in is different. Try taking virtually any poem and put it to music and you will find it doesn;t work.

Dylans lyrics can certinaly be poetical - but they are lyrics first and foremost. I think people make the mistake of thinking that if lyrics are opaque, complex and use a wide and/or exotic vocabularly they are the mark of a genius songwriter - they're not, they can be, but they are more likely to be pretentious drivel (i.e Jim Morrison's artier efforts).
The simple directness of the lyrics to songs like 'You really got me' or 'great balls of fire' or 'nowehere to run' are great because they fit perfectly with the emotion, rythym and feel of the music.

Dylans beat-esque stream of conciousness outpourings I find less intersting and arresting then when he is delivering straight to the point, punchy stories and pespectives (masters of war, hurricane, motopsycho nighmare, Lonesome Death of Hattie Carrol) .

In fact hes probably at his best when he gets his arty expressiveness and folk/blues story-telling mixed together just right - Bob Dylans 115th Dream, Rolling Stone, Highway 61 revistied, Subtereanean Homesick Blues, Hard Rain, Its all over now baby blue. There's a fantastic inventiveness, frenetic energy, imagination and playfulness with language and themes that just seems to come tumbling out - in fact its exactly like someone whos steeped in the folk blues tradition and has just dropped acid for the first time.

 

[chazegee]

Don't like his voice? Fine. Don't like his music, fine. Don't like his hair-do, his hippy dippy look, fine.

But anyone who hates Bob Dylan to me is a wrong'un, thick, and a cunt.

Cheers.

Calm down, no one hates him here. Any fan who is so rabid about his idols detractors must be subconsciously insecure and suspicious of their idols.

 

[chazegee]

Listening to more Dylan now, I find it very easy to see why some people find him genius, and some find him to be self indulgent piffle.

God dam, this Open University course IS making me think differently.

 

[Zabo]

And now for the minimalist Dylan. The orchestration is superb and if this doesn't make you think of lazy summer days then I don't know what will.

It's used on the album as an intro.



All The Tired Horses

All the tired horses in the sun
How'm I supposed to get any ridin' done? Hmm.

 

[chazegee]

All The Tired Horses

All the tired horses in the sun
How'm I supposed to get any ridin' done? Hmm.

This just the sort of thing that irritates me about Dylan; He's so short I bet he couldn't even mount a horse, let alone ride one.

 

[dylans]

Interesting couple of outtakes from Scorcese's fantastic documentary on Dylan "No direction home"

Here you can see Dylans reaction and visible distress at the boos and walkouts that followed his electric sets in the late 60s. The footage gives a good insight into Dylan's approach to his art and his audience, something that posters have commented on here. I think they give a good answer to the accusation that Dylan is somehow "fake." I think the opposite is true, that Dylan has often angered fans precisely because he refuses to be what they want him to be.

 

[chazegee]

Interesting couple of outtakes from Scorcese's fantastic documentary on Dylan "No direction home"

Here you can see Dylans reaction and visible distress at the boos and walkouts that followed his electric sets in the late 60s. The footage gives a good insight into Dylan's approach to his art and his audience, something that posters have commented on here. I think they give a good answer to the accusation that Dylan is somehow "fake." I think the opposite is true, that Dylan has often angered fans precisely because he refuses to be what they want him to be.

I enjoyed that "If you needed my autograph I'd give it to you"

I don't find him fake, just so bloody precocious it hurts. A sort of high brow Pete Docherty.

 

[ska invita]

And now for the minimalist Dylan. The orchestration is superb

What's the album with him and an orchestra called? Someone was telling me that's the one to go for...

 

[butchersapron]

I also like The Man In Me.

 

[phildwyer]

I also like The Man In Me.

Yes, but which Bob Dylan songs do you like?

 

[dylans]

Yes, but which Bob Dylan songs do you like?