Who else finds Bob Dylan rather dull?

Is Bob Dylan overrated?

Defend the indefensible - Bob Dylan.

Why don't I like Bob Dylan?

I (heart) Dylan, myself. I don't, however, (heart) statements like "I'm sorry, but if you can't see the genius in Dylan's songwriting and singing, you're a bonehead, and fur5ther I suspect your low opinion of Dylan has to do with (erronious) associations with what you think he represents rather than the music itself." Tons of inteligent ppl don't think Dylan's a genius, and many of those are well versed in his work.

(xpost there's also tons of inteligent ppl who don't like Shakespeare, shookout!)

I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes
And just for that one moment
I could be you

Yes, I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes
You'd know what a drag it is
To see you"

Don't try it with me, though. Dylan's bollox.

Ah, nobly and perfectly summed up. Said before and will say again that Dylan is best covered.

Oh, I was as much at fault, fret not.

There were actually two late sixties Dylan photo postcards I saw on vacation that actually really worked for me in terms of image, in that he was clearly laughing and having fun. As Tom notes, it's this kind of humor which is so missing in the Hilburnesque encomiums of the world towards Dylan, or else treated with such solemnity as to defuse said humor in any event.

Well, wasn't it Smokey robinson who, when asked who he thought was the greatest comedian in America, replied Bob Dylan?

As Tom notes, it's this kind of humor which is so missing in the Hilburnesque encomiums of the world towards Dylan, or else treated with such solemnity as to defuse said humor in any event.

I think this comment is very OTM - I've always found Dylan VERY funny, more often than I've ever found him, you know, "moving" and "profound" and all that stuff (though he is sometimes that as well). I remember hearing an album for the first time and expecting to hear some po-faced geezer like Leonard Cohen - while some of the early "Times They Are A-Changin'" (always my least favorite "major" Dylan song) era stuff did come off like that, most of it was delightfully playful and inventive and exciting - more akin to Wire and The Fall than Donovan. Speaking as someone who doesn't much care for the whole acoustic singer-songwriter thing OR any of the "new Dylans" (Cohen, Young, Springsteen, etc), Dylan is the only canonical '60s artist I can't see myself ever getting sick of, as long as I don't read another one of those MOJO cover stories.

Leonard Cohen is REALLY funny!

"Dress Rehearsal Rag"

Four o'clock in the afternoon
and I didn't feel like very much.
I said to myself, "Where are you golden boy,
where is your famous golden touch?"
I thought you knew where
all of the elephants lie down,
I thought you were the crown prince
of all the wheels in Ivory Town.
Just take a look at your body now,
there's nothing much to save
and a bitter voice in the mirror cries,
"Hey, Prince, you need a shave."
Now if you can manage to get
your trembling fingers to behave,
why don't you try unwrapping
a stainless steel razor blade?
That's right, it's come to this,
yes it's come to this,
and wasn't it a long way down,
wasn't it a strange way down?
There's no hot water
and the cold is running thin.
Well, what do you expect from
the kind of places you've been living in?
Don't drink from that cup,
it's all caked and cracked along the rim.
That's not the electric light, my friend,
that is your vision growing dim.
Cover up your face with soap, there,
now you're Santa Claus.
And you've got a gift for anyone
who will give you his applaus e.
I thought you were a racing man,
ah, but you couldn't take the pace.
That's a funeral in the mirror
and it's stopping at your face.
That's right, it's come to this,
yes it's come to this,
and wasn't it a long way down,
ah wasn't it a strange way down?

Once there was a path
and a girl with chestnut hair,
and you passed the summers
picking all of the berries that grew there;
there were times she was a woman,
oh, there were times she was just a child,
and you held her in the shadows
where the raspberries grow wild.
And you climbed the twilight mountains
and you sang about the view,
and everywhere that you wandered
love seemed to go along with you.
That's a hard one to remember,
yes it makes you clench your fist.
And then the veins stand out like highways,
all along your wrist.
And yes it's come to this,
it's come to this,
and wasn't it a long way down,
wasn't it a strange way down?

You can still find a job,
go out and talk to a friend.
On the back of every magazine
there are those coupons you can send.
Why don't you join the Rosicrucians,
they can give you back your hope,
you can find your love with diagrams
on a plain brown envelope.
But you've used up all your coupons
except the one that seems
to be written on your wrist
along with several thousand dreams.
Now Santa Claus comes forward,
that's a razor in his mit;
and he puts on his dark glasses
and he shows you where to hit;
and then the cameras pan,
the stand in stunt man,
dress rehearsal rag,
it's just the dress rehearsal rag,
you know this dress rehearsal rag,
it's just a dress rehearsal rag.

All this is an attempt to understand the "dullness" thing.
Myself I'm endlessly fascinated by him because, as I said, the
man's got things to say, and always has had. Plus I like the folk/blues shit he comes from = it's easy to see where he fits in, he doesn't seem as much of an alien as he might to some maybe.
If you like listening to long Scottish ballads then with long obscure verses, you know you're prepared...familiarity breeds interest!

????

????

WHAT?

He has made some boring records: Planet Waves crawls to mind.

Good posting of Dress Rehearsal Rag lyrics too, I love that song.

MIXIN UP THE MEDECINE
MIXIN UP THE MEDECINE
MIXIN UP THE MEDECINE
MIXIN UP THE MEDECINE
MIXIN UP THE MEDECINE
MIXIN UP THE MEDECINE
MIXIN UP THE MEDECINE
MIXIN UP THE MEDECINE
MIXIN UP THE MEDECINE
MIXIN UP THE MEDECINE

but i dont want you folks to think im just about how funny he is (he has written a song about being angry at someone who spilled juice on him) because visions of johanna is probably one of my top 5 "serious" songs ever. ive also had a dream that was supposed to be movie and in one scene there was a small crab that i knew was played dylan; either he had transformed into it or was remote controlling it offscreen.

and check out this picture:

what i mean to say, really, is that he is the penultimate cutie patootie.

why cant i get images to work anymore...

That picture was in my town (I live in St. Andrews). My friends went along, but sitting through the graduation ceremony sounded like the worst idea ever.

That said, some of Dylan's prose (e.g. the liner notes to John Wesley Harding) are quite hilarious to read.

alright, dylan-oholics ... please help out a non-dylanite here? i'm aware of this line from eatb's "villiers terrace." is this also a bob dylan lyric (which means that ian mccullough is quoting dylan in that song)?

"Johnny's in the basement, mixing up the medicine"

Save for the UK sketch show which had an ending skit where a rough approximation of 'Subterrainian...' while an unemployed dole bludger held up placards (in the same stylee as the song, natch) which were all euphemisisms for having a wank.

see, that just shows why non-Dylan people don't know shite outside of shallow pop culture references.

still, if you can find me a better love song than Abandoned Love, Love Minus Zero, If You See Her...

Yes, I think that's part of it. I listen to a lot of that kinda stuff these days; it makes a good complement to all the other things I listen to which are generally a whole lot slicker. And I think to get Dylan you kinda have to appreciate the old stuff. I wish I enjoyed Dylan more, actually, but I never seem to be in that mood any more.

Me, I love him. Freewheelin', Another Side Of, Blonde On Blonde - sounded exciting and fresh to me early on, so i consider myself lucky to own lots of his albums. But yeah, agree that plenty of intelligent people don't get all excited, and that's life I guess.

Except this is not necessarily always the case. ;-) Then again I never had to force myself to like either beer or wine.

-- vita susicivus (n...), February 7th, 2007 5:18 PM,

did anyone else listen to it? i only caught a bit

http://www.mr-agreeable.net/stubbs/default.asp?nc=344&id=135

If you look at what the boldest rock artists were doing in the sixties - experimenting with tape manipulation, feedback, electronics, white noise, classical structures etc. then Dylan seems deeply conservative on those terms (which were admittedly not his terms, as he has never seen himself as a "rock" artist).

And even when shying from rock modernism, he didn't avail himself of most of the textural possibilities that were still on offer - no strings, no brass, and before 1975 not even any backing vocals.

It all seems a bit deliberately predestrian to me. Just the cheery, cheesy shuckstery good-naturedness of The Band interspersed with a bit of harmonica that is always recorded a bit too loud. It's no surprise that when his material is covered by artists with more vivid musical imaginations (Byrds, Hendrix, Roxy, Faces etc.) it appears to undergo an almost chrysalis like transformation.

Supplementary question: Why is Dylan so rarely covered by contemporary bands? Or indeed any bands since about 1980? It's not a problem encountered by Lou Reed, for example.

Apparently you weren't listening to what black people were doing in the sixties, or have considered the possibilities of "acoustic" music.

Hendrix was white? And neither he nor the Byrds or Faces utilised "acoustic" sounds?

Dylan was the first to have a song chart at over 6 minutes.
First guy to expand the lyrical possibilities of music, write about subjects other than girls, cars, etc.
First guy to make a "back to the roots" album, e.g. John Wesley Harding (followed by Beatles, Stones and practically everybody else)
First guy to have a backup band that went on to fame and fortune.
First guy to get the Beatles smoking dope.

Again, why are his songs so rarely covered today? What is it about his art that was so meaningful to the baby-boomer generation, but seems to have a lesser and lesser impact with each subsequent generation?

Or am I wrong? Are there loads of 20-something Dylan fans that I just haven't met?

BECAUSE no one's songs are covered these days!?!? There is money to be made writing your own songs!

stevem (you maybe picked a bad thread to revive unless you did just want morons to come out of the woodwork and rehash the exact same three arguments) are they playing dylan's satellite radio show on regular radio in the UK or was this a one-time thing?

i don't have XM or whatever the hell he's on here in the US. i've downloaded a couple installments and enjoyed it but not quite enough to want to download it every week. it'd be nice to be able to just listen to it normally.

First of all, dylan didn't give a shit about producing. He wrote songs and some people backed him up and some people recorded it. Looking to him for sonic innovation is misguided. The big deal with going electric has more to do with the understanding that rock was the music of the youth of the people, and not folk.

The effect he had on the subject matter of music is huge, and everybody, including the Beatles, Lou Reed, EVERYBODY, is in his shadow!

"back to roots" is absolutely not always the opposite of innovation. Innovation for innovations sake is useless and often leads down self-indulgent roads of utter boredom. In a time when music was forever expanding in all kinds of awesome...and also terrible ways, it was important to be reminded of the timeless roots of a good chunk of the music. This is a cycle that happens time and time again in every genre of music, when things get stale, some people find the way out by coming up with something amazingly new, while others do so by synthesizing a forgotten/neglected thread with new ideas. The back to roots moves at the end of the 60s are equally as important at whatever the truly adventurous moves at the time were (krautrock?).

wrong - get one Blonde on Blonde.

I think kornrulez6969's point about lyricism is more closely related to the fact that Dylan was the first pop artist to really write songs from his own POV, in his own inimitable language - ie, first person narratives, complete with an internal mythology and vocabulary that was both personal and archetypal.

However, those of us who weren't necessarily around at that time, and didn't experience life pre-Dylan, are only left with the artifacts he left behind viz. his records.

I'm sure if you can remember when Dylan really did seem to know the way forwards, when people hung on his every syllable, then I'm sure his music still has the power to thrill. However, if you come to him from a later time, when he is seen as just another bygone figure of history, you are just struck by how plain his music is set against many of his contemporaries.

I guess you are arguing about context here, but why should I place more emphasis on the context of Dylan than any other artist?

Dan - re: comments above - as I've said before there could be loads of Dylan fans my age or younger, if I meet any I'll reconsider.

My Dad is really into So Solid Crew. So are all his mates.

I respect your advocacy of Bob Dylan. Please respect my right to disagree with you.

Yes, and sort-of backing vox. I remember now.

also "contrary opinion" /= "not knowing what the fuck you're talking about" but that's a pretty common mistake on the internets so blood diamonds

All my posts are written by third world children.

Otherwise: eckk.

he is, actually. but also yeah the actual music on them mid-late 60's dylan albums can get into some (deceptively?) intense shit - plz to not be dissing fucking livewire bloomfield guitar ever.

I suppose you've never read a book written before you were born either?

Secondly, the book analogy doesn't work. There are a great many authors, very highly rated in their time, who have subsequently been forgotten/neglected.

As far as misreading you: I should have told you what I had in mind; Hendrix is an all-too-familiar example. What about Sam Cooke? Otis Redding? The Miracles? The Supremes?

Have you heard Prominent Men by the Velvet Underground? Or any of the demos on the Velvet Underground box-set? Lou Reed was a bigger Dylan wannabe then Paul Simon and Donovan put together!

Phil, the only person who can persuade you is YOU. YOU have to decide if you like his songs or don't. If you don't, then don't listen to them. But if you argue the objective facts regarding his context, influence, importance, etc, then we will argue about it.

Another good reason why he's dull.

I could give a fuck about his feelings for Dylan; I mind formulations like: If you look at what the boldest rock artists were doing in the sixties - experimenting with tape manipulation, feedback, electronics, white noise, classical structures etc. then Dylan seems deeply conservative on those terms (which were admittedly not his terms, as he has never seen himself as a "rock" artist).

It's like arguing, "If you look at what Sun Ra was doing at the time, Steely Dan seems deeply conservative."

Yeah, this is def. better than most. Or at least better than the two or three other albums I've heard. (This doesn't count a couple dozen "best-of" tracks, so no "you haven't heard the right Dylan," plz.)

I only mentioned artists who had covered Dylan. If any of the above have, then yes I should have included them.

With regard to assessing worth, then I have assessed Bob's work and er, found it wanting.

That's my opinion, at this moment of time. It's subject to change, but there is more chance of me re-investigating by people like Dan and Shakey who speak warmly of the music than those who think that a contary opinion justifies abuse.

Dan - note I didn't question his influence/importance etc. It's just that I suspect in future his "influence" on others will be seen to be of more significance than his work. A bit like Sir Joshua Reynolds (tutor of Turner and Constable) in that regard.

You have got to be kidding with this.

Yeah what the hell does this even mean?

Just the cheery, cheesy shuckstery good-naturedness of The Band interspersed with a bit of harmonica that is always recorded a bit too loud.

So cheery and good-natured that Bob Dylan!

x-post

OK, I don't like Dylan because he's shite.

I don't hear a lot of "cheesy, cheery, goodnaturedness" in the music personally, except maybe when he's obviously having a laugh ("I was walking on the mayflower when I thought I spied some land..." followed by chuckles etc.). Altho even (perhaps especially?) when Dylan's having a laugh its usually kind of mean and cruel and sarcastic. I hear a lot of soul in the stuff cut with the Band, a lot of (as I said before) early Chess-era Muddy Waters and Howlin Wolf, not to mention a lot of fury on the faster numbers (like at the "Albert Hall" bootleg).

Phil, I don't particularly enjoy ILM's bullying tactics (someone was called a retard on another thread recently, and newbies get regularly trashed it seems), but I hope you are also able to respect opposing arguments (which most people are making here) and to self-reflect on the great likelihood that your "age theory" w/r/t Bob Dylan is very, very flawed. I mean: if "you had to have been there to truly appreciate it within the context of the culture and the zeitgeist" is true, then no one would understand, or really "get" anything that occurred before they were born/aware. Not just Dylan if you were born after the '60s, but most everything. Unless I'm misunderstanding something -- which is always very possible -- it doesn't really make sense.

Not to get all Geir, but what bores me about Dylan is that I just don't hear many interesting melodies or harmonies in his music. Songs tend to use fairly simple chord progressions and rhythms, Dylan's vocal lines are often static and monotonous, and too often the arrangements are too stripped down for there to be much counterpoint.

It's nothing against acoustic music per se: I like Joanna Newsom and Iron & Wine because their pretty vocal melodies and plucked/fingerpicked rhythms captivate me.

Exactly. Blues, esp. Chicago blues, is probably my most-hated genre.

I don't want to be presumptuous, but I think what most people find "interesting" about Dylan (or at least me) doesn't involve his melodies or harmonies. Which is to say: I'm listening to something else when I listen to him. Sometimes it's his lyrical wordplay, which the music compliments but you're right in saying isn't as effective. Sometimes it's his voice - which I evidently disagree with you about. I don't find it static and monotonous in the least. There's a lot of expression in it. "Abe said where you want this killing doooooooone - GOD said Highway -- 61." The way he measures the spaces in between words, which words he lengthens, how he sometimes mimics the words with his voice: "the heat pipes just cough..." as though his exhalation was the coughing of the pipes. (None of which is to say I don't love the music. I do - but not because it's necessarily complex.)

I guess, but I have a hard time paying attention when the music doesn't move me on a visceral level.

I didn't say that about his voice, I said that about his "vocal lines" -- i.e., the melodic contour.

I've said before that I think for me to get into Dylan, it would require me to fundamentally change the way I listen to music. I would have to listen to it in a much more analytic way, paying extremely close attention to lyrics. And I've thought about doing this, but it just feels like such a fucking chore to me.

Shakey, surprising things can be done within the confines of a 4/4 beat or 12-tone scale. Chicago blues has always sounded utterly predictable to me: even if I don't know the song, I know exactly which chord is going to be next, and it makes it sound bland and generic.

I did float the "age" argument as tendentious in the first place, as I did state that I was prepared to be proved wrong.

I think it's a more difficult concept to explain rather than grasp, if you get what I mean. The excitement that an artist generates when they emerge is greater than afterwards, because at the time their story is just beginning and full of possibilities. This is above and beyond any excitement in the actual music.

There was obviously something very exciting about Dylan at the time, and I think (I wasn't there) alot of it was bound in his personality image, crypticism, the fact that he appeared to see more and understand more than both the previous generation and even his own generation.

For me, that excitement isn't primarily located in his music (maybe more in his words), so as I wasn't around to witness his emergence and having mainly his records to refer to, I do not particularly thrill to him.

As to "bullying", well this forum isn't any different to any internet forum in that respect.

I dunno, yr right about chord changes and predictable melodies and all that, I don't think that can be denied.

I will just have to think why else I find his music a bit dull.

Totally disagree. These are not spoken word records. From Freewheelin' through Basement Tapes and periodically since - great songwriting.

Chicago blues has always sounded utterly predictable to me: even if I don't know the song, I know exactly which chord is going to be next, and it makes it sound bland and generic.

Are you really claiming that all the great Chess Records sides are bland and generic?

the Muddy Waters and Howlin Wolf sides aren't really interesting on a structural level

Yes they are. Repetition is a factor of potential structural interest in music.

Repetition is a factor of potential structural interest in music.

I actually agree with this, so I'll have to think about why Dylan/blues doesn't appeal to me. The repetition I tend to like, though, is repetition that creates a trancelike effect, be it microhouse or krautrock.

(Weirdly, I can get into Dylan when I'm in a very particular head, where I was when I last posted to this thread. I still don't feel a burning need to own more than the GH, which I haven't pulled out since that last time I posted. I'm sure it'll come to me one day. I wonder if it helps to have some Christianity in your background to really 'get' some of his lyrics.)

"Proto-retrospective vision of all the gears and all the metaphoric functional gears never capable of concretion. Woo-wee! Surely, Dylan's greatest, bar none."

Well to be fair he's been a lot of things.

xp

For me, that excitement isn't primarily located in his music (maybe more in his words), so as I wasn't around to witness his emergence and having mainly his records to refer to, I do not particularly thrill to him.

I still don't get why this would only apply to Dylan, though. Or perhaps it doesn't. You might feel the same way about the Beatles, or punk or disco or old school rap, etc. But this would take the sting (or the pointedness or -- ohgodamireallygoingtousethisword? -- the relevance) out of most anything different or groundbreaking in the past, wouldn't it? It seems insulting to younger audiences, somehow: "well, you could never really get this stuff as it happened before your time!" But really, what Mordechai Shinefield said...

As to "bullying", well this forum isn't any different to any internet forum in that respect.

True. Here, though, it can be an especially fine, if annoying, art. I'm not really talking about insults and flames, just the piling on that sometimes happens (or appears to happen if an opinion is particularly unpopular).

CHESS WAS AN INDIE LABEL

Prince covered one at the Superbowl a couple days ago.

I still haven't quite gotten a grip on why his past three albums are considered so fantastic. On the other hand, I do have a soft spot for "Infidels", which may be his only underrated album (and which would have been better with "Blind Willie McTell" included)

-- senator second p. newcastle (a|e...), Today 4:28 PM. (a_p) (later) (link)

Um, yes they are.

Well to be fair he's been a lot of things.

-- Alex in SF (clobberthesauru...), February 8th, 2007.

Dylan's the original David Bowie!

Well, David, it just seems to me that there was a kind of "messianic" aura around Dylan in the 60s and 70s, that was subtley different to that around any other artist/band. I think Dylan himself has been dismissive of this, but I sense that people "believed" in him in a way they didn't with other artists. I've seen Don't Look Back(sic?) and it is interesting how everyone seems to be hanging on to his every word, no matter how commonplace.

Personally, as I don't buy into Dylan the visionary, I can only judge the music on its own merits. And to me it seems it bit dull. This may be my loss etc., but there you go.

Marmite is a British savoury spread made from yeast extract, a by-product of beer brewing. It is a sticky, dark brown paste with a distinctive, powerful taste that polarises consumer opinion.

I have his greatest hits on one side of a c90. it's...ok, I suppose. haven't fancied listening to it for many years. high praise indeed.

but I'm not that much into lyrics, which may be a substantial barrier to my enjoyment of bob.

I think Phil is assuming that Dylan's supposed cultural importance during the late 60s must validate the value of his music to contemporary listeners. But this is misguided and unrealistic. It doesn't have to and it often won't. At the same time, he's looking to the music to convince him of this hallowed socio-cultural significance, and obviously he's not finding the same parallels he would have 40 years ago. This is expected. But assuming that you have to buy into the cult of Dylan to appreciate the depth of his songwriting and the brilliance of his simplicity is doing a disservice to art. Don't get too caught up in context. It's not about listening more closely, it's about widening your perspective.

CHESS WAS AN INDIE LABEL

Umm, what does this have to do with anything?

yes!

Mark's post makes me want to give Dylan another listen. Especially "those words are more sound than meaning."
-- jaymc (jmcunnin...), February 8th, 2007

I've been saying this for a day now! HIs lyrics are only one element. I mean, Bernard Sumner is one of my favorite lyricists, if that's an indication.

I can't answer your question directly, Marcello, but the following links may help.

show credits:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theme_Time_Radio_Hour#Theme_Time_Radio_Hour_show_credits

part of a production diary:
http://leeabrams.blogspot.com/2006/04/dylan-diary-part-two.html

These programmes deserve their own ILM thread, if there isn't one already.

Baader - I have heard "Blood On The Tracks". I love "Tangled Up In Blue" but after that, errrrrr.....

That's the thing. If the majority of Dylan's output was as purely enjoyable as "Tangled", "Visions of Johanna", "As I Went Out One Morning", I'd have no problem with him. But the majority of his work just doesn't seem to swing like those songs too.

I suppose if I was to unfairly single out a song that (to me) emphasises the worst aspects of Dylan, it would be something like "The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest". Now it may be that this song is as many-layered as an onion, but to my ears it sounds like a bit of a shaggy-dog story set to a jaunty but by no means exemplary tune that doesn't really go anywhere.

Of course, that may be where I'm missing the essence of Dylan; that, as with Sterne, where he doesn't go is just as important (if not more so) as where he does go. But doesn't that make a true appreciation of Dylan somewhat rareified? (Think Mark is hinting at this?)

So if you like sound you must like instrumentals? Or an instrumental fan appreciates sound? Anyway, I have no idea what "instrumental" means in this context, since I own tons of jazz.

That's the thing. If the majority of Dylan's output was as purely enjoyable as "Tangled", "Visions of Johanna", "As I Went Out One Morning", I'd have no problem with him. But the majority of his work just doesn't seem to swing like those songs too.

You really need to listen to John Wesley Harding and Blood on the Tracks in their entirety. The minor works, filled with failed mainstream accomodations and grotesque sellouts, have their charms too (I recommended Empire Burlesque), in large part because there's no aura with which to suffocate the listener.

My Lou Reed fandom is a lot like my Dylan: their throwaways are often more revealing than their classics.