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[Moldy Rutabaga]

WARNING: Those with a medical inability to laugh, please do not read.

This is from my web page on Dylan, Morrison, Bon Jovi, & Floyd. I also had it published in my uni newspaper years ago. http://keneckert.com/ken/bandrant.html

Bob Dylan

Why? Why? Why? Why did this man become a star? What sort of cosmic burp led both Bob Dylan and Dan Quayle to become famous on the absolutely most slender of qualifications? What on God's green earth am I missing? Am I the only one who doesn't get it? Let us review Mr. Dylan's claim to being, as I'm told, one of the most important cultural and musical influences of the twentieth century.

Voice: The sound of a dying vacuum cleaner morphed with Fozzie Bear with a throat cold.
Music: Three guitar chords combined with the sound of a harmonica which sounds as though it was run over by a truck.
Lyrics: Bad beat poetry littered with hopelessly dated expressions, all discussing a social situation relevant to those who lived in a certain social class in a certain American suburb in a certain period of the 60's (about eight people).

So what we have is the music of someone with warbling, irritating voice playing repetitive music with hack lyrics about issues no one below forty cares about. Sounds like the voice of a generation to me. This wouldn't be so bad if Dylan was like Leonard Cohen or Tom Waits or some other folk artist who has a small, loyal audience who doesn't force them on everybody else. No: we have Dylan, man. And no one gets to criticize him because his lyrics are poetry.
Bullcookies. There are many musicians who write thought-provoking lyrics or paint visually complex scenes with words, or connect aurally interesting phrases: Paul Simon; The Moody Blues; Genesis; Live; Pearl Jam; REM; U2 (as pompous as U2 is). There are many others. So who are these people who listen to someone who sounds like a German shepherd with stomach gas?
Hint: the same people who insist that a hundred-dollar bottle of French wine tastes better than the ten-dollar house wine you think is perfectly fine. The same people who lounge around in coffee bars wearing kerchiefs and discussing third world politics. If you tell them your misgivings about the entire Bob Dylan iconography, they give you the 'You-obviously-just-don't-understand' look and recite some bumpf about Dylan being the intellectual voice of the sixties because, well, because he's Dylan, that's all.
Sorry; I have two degrees in the humanities, and I'm not going to be told I don't understand. Most of us are too intimidated to say that the emperor has no clothes. I'm going to be the heretic: rock music in the 90's and now is generally better than that of the 60's, and there are performers now better than Dylan ever was. I know friends who actually saw the man in concert in '97. The concert was apparently Dylan stumbling through his set, and slurring his words into an even more raspy, toneless mess than usual. My friends say he was stone drunk. How could they tell?

Ken:>

[jinju]

Ken, I read your page. The thing about Morrison.

I just discovered the biggest moron on Daves.

congrats.

youre a moron.

[Moldy Rutabaga]

[Rteacher]

Don't worry, I formerly held the title of "biggest moron" on Dave's, and look at what a big star I am now!

[Privateer]

Dylan used to copy his lyrics off toilet walls.

Toilet walls that had been scribbled on by drugged up musical geniuses, that is.

[Ya-ta Boy]

Mr. Moldy, sir:

You have quite a few endearing qualities and a number of virtues. Unfortunately, being a music critic isn't one of them. If you posted that to show what a sophomore you were, and how much you have learned since, you forgot to put that bit in.

I choked on my apple crisp at this, thank you very much: rock music in the 90's and now is generally better than that of the 60's, and there are performers now better than Dylan ever was

(I will admit he isn't that great as a performer. It's the writing that counts, boy.)

Pop music of whatever decade has a shelf-life of a few months, outside of nostalgia circles, except for a very very few songs. The best that anyone can hope for is a brief moment affecting the latest dance craze or fashion choice. I mean, just how profound is wearing your baseball cap backwards? Out of the thousands and thousands of songs written by troubadors, only a handful are still remembered..."Mary Hamilton", "The Silkie"...not many others.

Dylan really did affect how millions and millions think. Not just how they dressed or wear their hair. How they think.

You might be too young to remember Tianamen Square in '86, but the Chinese were singing a 20 year old Dylan song when the guns started firing. In the world of pop music, that is an eon. Just the fact the at the 20-somethings on here know his 40 year old work is an achievement.

Who in the 90's will be remembered (outside of nostalgia circles) in 2030?

The old boy may get the Nobel. He has been nominated.

[Moldy Rutabaga]

Tiananmen square was '89, sonny, and I was finishing my first degree.

Yes, I did write that in '96, and I'm not sure I would use such strong words now, but in my defence, it was written halfway in humor, and the flak I'm getting, I think, proves my point that people tend to take Dylan and Morrison et al wayyyy too seriously.

Now that I re-read this, I did write that music in the 90s is generally better. How can I either defend this or sneak my way out of it? Well. I can be sneaky and say both that the recording quality of 90s music is far better, or that numerically the number of good acts is much higher because the industry in total is larger, but those are cop-outs, I think. While I do think that Dylan and the Doors are vastly overrated, I have to explain away the Beatles, Stones, Who, Moody Blues, Santana, Hendrix, et al. And I have to use Oasis, Alanis, Live, Pearl Jam, U2, and Madonna against them. Yeesh. That's good material, but certainly not their equals. So I think now I have to change that web page...

But again, I think some of my original points stand. There's still poetry in music in the 90s and after. There was crrapp in the 90s, but crrapp in the 60s too-- the Partridge Family, the Archies. I think that too many of us stand in awe of the baby-boomer generation music because that timeframe is safe in the past and we're so inundated with navel-gazing boomer sentimentality about that period. We forget that even the Beatles recorded a few clinkers.

Dylan to me still seems like a good example of that. I still don't get it; I listen to representative songs by him, and his guitar playing is simplistic and his voice slurred. His voice doesn't rip at me like Johnny Cash's would. It don't feel as real as a Grateful Dead song would. I read the lyrics and they just don't look like a Kerouac or Plath to me-- they seem so plain and filled with period slang to me. And no one's allowed to say this because Dylan's a sacred cow-- and the result is that few people actually listen to him as it's so inaccessible and intimidating, like my example of fine wine. "Pah-- you chose a '67 Dylan!"

I believe people in the 2030s will remember Dylan in the same way they will remember Liz Taylor-- famous for being famous, and people will have to strain to think of what they actually did. But I think people will remember Lennon & McCartney or Simon & Garfunkel for their songwriting. I don't know who will be remembered from the 90s--maybe Bono. So I hope I have some taste. But singing Dylan at Tiananmen doesn't say much to me-- in China, it could as easily have been the Carpenters.

I'm not writing this to be a wisearse. Honesty-- what is the appeal of Dylan, stripped of all his cool factor? Because I just don't get it.

Ken:>

[Rteacher]

Dylan will long be remembered for being the most influencial songwriter of the most seminal period of pop music of various genres.

He's going on five decades writing and performing. Certainly his career has had its ups and downs, but he's scaled momentous heights. The following are a few indicative quotes from the Wikipedia article:

His latest studio album, Modern Times, released on August 29, 2006, became his first US #1 album in thirty years, making him the oldest living chart topper in history at the age of 65.

The single "Like a Rolling Stone" was a U.S. and UK hit, and at over six minutes and devoid of a bridge, it helped to expand the limits of hit radio. In 2004, Rolling Stone listed it at number one on its list of the five hundred greatest songs of all time.[33] Its signature sound, with a full, jangling band and an organ riff, characterized his next album, Highway 61 Revisited (titled after the road that led from his native Minnesota to the musical hotbed of New Orleans, passing through the birthplace of blues, the Mississippi Delta, and referencing any number of blues songs. For example, Mississippi Fred McDowell's "61 Highway"). The songs were in the same vein as the hit single, surreal litanies of the grotesque flavored by Mike Bloomfield's blues guitar, a rhythm section and Dylan's obvious enjoyment of the sessions.[citation needed] The closing song, "Desolation Row", is an apocalyptic vision with references to many figures of Western culture...

For many critics, Dylan's mid-'60s trilogy of albums � Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde � represents one of the great cultural achievements of the 20th century. In Mike Marqusee's words: "Between late 1964 and the summer of 1966, Dylan created a body of work that remains unique. Drawing on folk, blues, country, R&B, rock�n�roll, gospel, British beat, symbolist, modernist and Beat poetry, surrealism and Dada, advertising jargon and social commentary, Fellini and Mad magazine, he forged a coherent and original artistic voice and vision. The beauty of these albums retains the power to shock and console."...

In December 1967 Dylan released John Wesley Harding, his first album since the motorcycle crash. It was a quiet, contemplative record of shorter songs, set in a landscape which drew on both the American West and the Old Testament. The sparse structure and instrumentation, coupled with lyrics which took the Judeo-Christian tradition seriously, marked a departure not only from Dylan's own work but from the escalating psychedelic fervor of the 1960s musical culture.[42] It included "All Along the Watchtower", with lyrics derived from the Book of Isaiah (21:5�9). The song was later recorded by Jimi Hendrix, whose celebrated version Dylan himself acknowledged as definitive in the liner notes to Biograph. Dylan live has performed Hendrix's arrangement since 1974...

In December 1997 President Clinton presented Dylan with a Kennedy Center Honor in the East Room of the White House, paying this tribute: "He probably had more impact on people of my generation than any other creative artist. His voice and lyrics haven't always been easy on the ear, but throughout his career Bob Dylan has never aimed to please. He's disturbed the peace and discomforted the powerful."...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Dylan

Here are some quotes about Dylan from other notable artists:

Joan Baez, songwriter of some note:

"His [songs] were just the best. I was already comfortable with protest songs. But with Dylan's songs it was, 'Aha!' Because they're so good. After he wrote those images, thousands of young kids scribbling on their pads have tried to duplicate that and nobody's been able to. He's influenced every songwriter in rock and roll and folk. And whether or not he was involved in social action or not, he wrote this artillery for us."

Johnny Cash, the Man In Black:

"I love Bob Dylan, I really do. I love his early work, I love the first time he plugged in electrically, I love his Christian albums, I love his other albums."

Rodney Crowell, country songwriter:

"I'm an intense Dylan fan... I think [Infidels is] one of the most remarkably written albums I've ever heard. And I thought that Desire was a brilliant album too. A song like 'I And I:' 'I took an untrodden path once where I dare not stumble or set foot...' [sic!] The language in that record is brilliant, it's beautiful. That song with 'sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace...' That's really inspired writing. ...I'm kind of rabid about that one [Infidels].

Kirk Hammett, guitarist for Metallica:

"Coming from my background of rock and heavy metal and then blues and jazz, I wasn't really hip to folk music in general. But when I heard this ["Positively 4th Street"], it totally blew me away. I don't know if it's popular, but it's an amazing song that everyone should know about."

George Harrison of a little group called the Beatles:

"Dylan is so brilliant. To me, he makes William Shakespeare look like Billy Joel."

Levon Helm of The Band:

"He's turned himself into a decent bandleader. He don't strum no more. Bobby plays an electric guitar. He plays like [Steve] Cropper plays. He's really part of the rhythm section. Oh man, I love the way Bob has led his band... I like to go like that, just no plan, and play it all by ear. He's as good at it as anybody I know."

Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits:

[On his voice sounding like Dylan's:] "Yeah, well, it would. I'm not really a singing singer. You're not looking at Dolly Parton here. I listened to Dylan avidly from eleven years old on... [The similarity] just came out naturally that way. But probably, because he's so ingrained in the consciousness, that style, that you can't help but sound that way part of the time. But I was never conscious of trying to be someone else all the time."

Al Kooper, esteemed studio musician:

[At a Dylan recording session ("which was like the end-all for me"), Kooper has given up on guitar, feeling too unskilled, and convinced producer Tom Wilson to let him play organ:] "Now I had played organ before, but just on my own demos... The song was a very long one, and the band was playing so loud I couldn't hear the organ. I put my hands on the keyboard, and not hearing what I was playing but knowing enough about music to know that if I played a C it would fit into an F chord, I waited for the band to make a chord change before I played.
It was the first complete take of the day, and when they went to play it back, Dylan said, 'Turn up that organ.'
Tom Wilson said, 'That cat's not an organ player.'
Dylan said, 'Don't tell me who is an organ player. Just turn up the organ.'
That was the take of 'Like a Rolling Stone,' and that is how I became an organ player.'
"...You couldn't help being influenced by Dylan..."

Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead:

"His delivery is so unique, and I don't think any of the guys in the band ever tried to imitate him --- that would be impossible --- but surely the way his songs scan, their rythym and their meter [affected us]."

Dave Matthews of the Dave Matthews Band (of course!):

[Asked to name his favorites.] "It wouldn't be fair if I didn't name every Dylan record. It almost makes me furious sometimes, how good his lyrics are. You know, you aspire to things. I'm trying and trying [to write a song], and I'll get something and I'll say, 'That's pretty good,' and then I'll listen to Blood On the Tracks and think 'Who the hell am I kidding? What the hell am I talking about?' 'Come in, she said / I'll give you / shelter from the storm.' Asshole!"

John (Cougar) Mellencamp:
"If Woody Guthrie set the bar for American songwriters, Bob Dylan jumped right over it. No one I know will ever come close to possessing the beauty of melody and the use of language that Dylan shares with us, with ease. I once asked Bob... 'Tell me how you did it. I mean, how did you write all those beautiful songs?' His response, so vague and so poignant, was nothing short of remarkable: 'I don't know what you're talking about. I've only ever written four songs in my whole life, but I've written those four songs a million times.'"

Van Morrison, The Man Himself, songwriter supreme:
"But there's still some people I admire and listen to who can't be ignored. You were talking about poetry. Dylan is the greatest living poet... Dylan's not pop. No way. We're definitely connected on various levels. It was interesting because I'd stopped thinking about the whole music business, making albums. I was quite fed up with it. Then I saw him recently and I thought, 'Well, here's somebody who's still doing it and he's good.' It sort of gave me a kick in the ass. "

"I think Dylan's great. He's got it, he's an originator, and there's only one of 'em --- one in every generation."

"The subject matter wasn't pop songs... You don't have to write about 'I found my thrill on Blueberry Hill.' You could write about virtually anything, and I think Dylan opened that up. Leadbelly was doing this, Woodie Guthrie was doing it, but it wasn't that apparent, it wasn't in your face at that point. Dylan put it into the mainstream that this could be done."

Andrew Motion, British Poet Laureate:

"He's one of the great artists of the century. He comes on the scene at a very high level, then (with a few glitches here and there) extends himself steadily --- usually staying one step ahead of his audience. [Enumerating what it is about Dylan that he especially likes:] The concentration and surprise of his lyrics; the beauty of his melodies (and the rasp of his anger); the dramatic sympathy between the words and the music; the range of his devotions; the power of self-renewal; his wit; his surrealism; the truth to experience... [Speaking of how Dylan's lyrics, unlike most rock lyrics, can stand alone without their music:] He doesn't (as Robert Lowell said he did) 'lean on the crutch of his guitar.'"

Graham Parker:

[Speaking of Blood On the Tracks.] "I don't think anybody has made a record as good as that. Same with Astral Weeks. You know, we're all trying, but we ain't getting there, pal."

Tom Petty of his own bad self and the Heartbreakers:

"Sometimes all you can do is laugh, or you'll cry. Dylan gave us songs that made you laugh while informing you. It makes the medicine go down a little easier. ...I saw Dylan getting criticized in Australia by this guy who was saying, 'Your new songs aren't as relevant as your old songs.' And Dylan said, 'Well, I'm out here writing songs. What are you doing?' You know, like a whole generation is out there driving BMWs and trying to be lawyers, and at least I'm trying to do something. I thought that was pretty relevant."
"Not only does [Dylan] have so many great songs, but he also knows hundreds of cover songs that he could play at the drop of a hat. We'd be playing something, and then Bob would go, 'OK, now let's play "Tears Of a Clown."' And he'd just go right into it. For us, it was incredible. It was OK for him, too, because it'd been so long since he worked with a unit that plays together all the time. He said it was like talking to one guy. Well, by the time we got to Farm Aid we were beaming...
"Dylan told me recently I was a poet. Although I was impressed by what he said, I couldn't help feeling it was like being told you're an archer. Well, they may think you're an archer, but you know you don't own a bow."

Paul Simon, no mean slouch in the songwriting department:

"I don't think [Dylan and the Beatles] influenced me a lot. I think it was inevitable; they were so powerful that you couldn't really escape the influence... As for Bob, I don't know. He's like the most mysterious of all the people of our generation. He's sort of impenetrable, really."

Jeff Tweedy of Uncle Tupelo and Wilco:

"Overall, Dylan's probably my favorite of everyone. The Basement Tapes are something I can't get enough of and all the unoffical, unreleased basement tapes too. Desire is one of my favorite records of all time."

Bob Weir of Grateful Dead, The Other Ones, and Ratdog:

"Bringing It All Back Home was a great record, too [in addition to four early albums Weir mentions]. But I think that got a lot of attention, and I thought the songs on Highway 61, he had more of a notion of what he was doing with a rock 'n' roll band at that point. He had successfully made the transition from a singer / songwriter folk singer, self-accompanied, to a band musician. Great tunes like 'A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall,' or 'Blowin' in the Wind' for that matter, or 'Chimes of Freedom,' taught me a whole lot of what songwriting essentially is about: a three-way marriage of melody, harmonic progression, and lyrics..."
http://www.geocities.com/temptations_page/encomium.html

[maya.the.bee]

[Ya-ta Boy]

[Moldy Rutabaga]

Thanks for writing all. I have nothing else to say. It is very convincing. I've always liked 'lay, lady, lay'. It may not be representative Dylan, but it's a start. I will try to listen more and see what the charm is.

Ken:>

[jajdude]

Wow. Some very cool responses. I am surprised. Personally I think Dylan is simply incredible. To me, he's like Shakespeare is to some Literature professors. It's an exaggeration perhaps to compare him to a literary genius like Shakespeare, but damn, the man can put words together in a wonderful way.

I liked his biography "Chronicles" too. He wrote some strange things in there, as enigmatic as his music. Something like, "They played music like they were navigating burning ships" (no dobt a misquote by me), and you wonder, what the hell does that mean? It probably means nothing, just sounds cool, and makes ya think. I think a lot of Dylan's songs are like that, not entirely meaningful, at least on the surface, but filled with these impossibly clever lyrics, strange juxtapositions and original expressions.

I think it is poetry, and I believe most poets really have no idea what the hell they mean, but it reveals something, some feeling, some need to express something....

Anyway, like him or not, he is a big deal.

[Rteacher]

I'll wildly take a stab at the metaphor: Our material bodies are ships on the ocean of life, and they're burning in the sense that we harbor so many desires (in the face of impending death?...) and intense musical expression is (frantically?) resorted to by some as a way of (navigationally...) charting our path in the universe ...

I'll admit to largely neglecting to actually purchase much of Dylan's work (other than John Wesley Harding which was too subdued for me in my college daze...) But, in Korea I bought The Essential Bob Dylan CD, and there are a lot of great classics among its 36 songs:
http://theband.hiof.no/albums/essential_bob_dylan.html

[Ya-ta Boy]

[jajdude]

Tell me if you think this song is poetry....

Every Grain of Sand

In the time of my confession, in the hour of my deepest need
When the pool of tears beneath my feet flood every newborn seed
There's a dyin' voice within me reaching out somewhere,
Toiling in the danger and in the morals of despair.

Don't have the inclination to look back on any mistake,
Like Cain, I now behold this chain of events that I must break.
In the fury of the moment I can see the Master's hand
In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand.

Oh, the flowers of indulgence and the weeds of yesteryear,
Like criminals, they have choked the breath of conscience and good cheer.
The sun beat down upon the steps of time to light the way
To ease the pain of idleness and the memory of decay.

I gaze into the doorway of temptation's angry flame
And every time I pass that way I always hear my name.
Then onward in my journey I come to understand
That every hair is numbered like every grain of sand.

I have gone from rags to riches in the sorrow of the night
In the violence of a summer's dream, in the chill of a wintry light,
In the bitter dance of loneliness fading into space,
In the broken mirror of innocence on each forgotten face.

I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea
Sometimes I turn, there's someone there, other times it's only me.
I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man
Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand.

Dylan 1981 (Shot of Love)

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There's a cover version done by Emmylou Harris which is pretty nice.