Is Dylan rock?

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Ben Williams wants to disagree with mark s but mark s has no idea what he thinks: can you help them?

― mark s, Monday, 15 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

do not answer this thread if you hate [insert something funny here]

― mark s, Monday, 15 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Dylan sans electric guitar = folk. Dylan with electric guitar = electro-folk. Dylan as christian = rock. Dylan as less christian = country.

― Sterling Clover, Monday, 15 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Oh yes. Dylan in 1963 = punk.

― Sterling Clover, Monday, 15 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Electro-folk has just been made up here, surely?

I'd have said some of his best material is, near as dammit, rock. More of his best material is folk or folk-blues, however, so if I had to put Dylan in a genre box it'd be folk.

― Martin Skidmore, Monday, 15 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

There's some songs with just an acoustic guitar that are most definitely rock... they don't sing songs like "It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Bleeding" on sharecropper's front porches, that's for sure.

― Andy, Monday, 15 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Dylan in 1963 = punk

Who in turn jumped up to get beat down. I wish.

― Ned Raggett, Monday, 15 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

electro-folk = folk rock = dylan = rock.

― di, Monday, 15 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

raggett on the brand nubian tip!! 'get nothin but a beatdown!!!'

― ethan, Monday, 15 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

dylan - electric guitar = folk
dylan + electric guitar = electrofolk
-----------------------------------------------------
2 * dylan = folk + electrofolk

dylan = (folk + electrofolk) / 2

― geeta, Monday, 15 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

urgent and key: does "folk rock" = folk + rock, folk * rock, or is it something else entirely? if we make the assumption that folk rock = folk * rock, then using di's theorem "electrofolk=folk rock", we get this, via substitution: dylan = (folk + (folk*rock)) / 2

then, distributing out the "folk":

dylan = (folk * (1 + rock)) / 2

thus we get the variable "rock" by itself in the equation. but now it gets harder...!!

― geeta, Monday, 15 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

raggett on the brand nubian tip!!

I try to surprise somehow. ;-)

― Ned Raggett, Monday, 15 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Dylan = the very epitome of 'rock', because people are willing to give his stuff so much slack (or offhand dismissal) strictly on brand- name strength regardless of having heard it (rockist emphasis on the creator and all his peccadilloes as revealed in texts not textures)

― dave q, Tuesday, 16 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Oh yes, Rock for sure. Album-focus, a long *history*, *meaningful* lyrics, a place in every aging rockcrits canon, lots of books written about him. Snore.

― Dr. C, Tuesday, 16 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Dylan= he sings like a deaf mule and talks gibberish therefore he's a 'punk sound art poet'.

― Julio Desouza, Tuesday, 16 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

A man of great age and learning but always radically unclear wisdom: think of the range, from loathing to veneration, he inspires, with a great knotty mass of much more complex and conflicted thinking somewhere at the core. Now think of the range of attitudes to Woody Guthrie, say, or Howlin Wolf: it runs all the way from indifference to respect, with Wolf also probably garnering a hardcore of slathering devotees… As an achievement, what Dylan gets is much much more, more gratifying, more valuable, what Guthrie or Wolf would have wanted (should have been wanting): fans whose love is the vigour with which they fight back… And then you have to wonder, is this achievement a reflection of the respective work, or the respective milieus, or merely the inequity of the world as it stands (where the sleb gets the credit and the innovator the bum’s rush)?

I think this fan-star dynamic is an ideal in rock, not a reality: I think it’s maybe rock’s central and defining achievement that this ideal is established as something public, a potential in the heart of pop. I also think it is VERY RARELY achieved in rock (it’s rarer still elsewhere: the older grown-up arts, jazz and classical yada yada, still basically don’t get it, or anyway still constantly twist away from it). Besides, Frank Kogan says that Dylan = punk.

Therefore Dylan = not rock

― mark s, Sunday, 21 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

"jazz and classical yada yada, still basically don’t get it,"

Two words: Miles Davis. John Coltrane, too.

― Ben Williams, Monday, 22 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

eh?? i don't think we can be on the same wavelength here ben

― mark s, Monday, 22 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I am saying that Miles Davis enjoyed a combative relationship with his audience, similar to that which you ascribe to Dylan. Also that this seems like a weird definition of rock to me ;o)

― Ben Williams, Tuesday, 23 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

ok cool as long as you note that KIND OF BLUE is in fact the (second) worst record evah made (heh)

― mark s, Tuesday, 23 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

nine years pass...

mark s is better than dave q (though not by much)

― taking drugbs (to make music to take drugbs to) (Drugs A. Money), Thursday, 23 June 2011 22:36 (fourteen years ago)

six years pass...

far between sundown's finish and midnight's broken toll

― reggie (qualmsley), Monday, 23 April 2018 20:59 (seven years ago)

just bleedin pop music innit

― ian, Monday, 23 April 2018 21:05 (seven years ago)

three years pass...

Rhythm & Blues.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpcKmhgwYvk

― the pinefox, Saturday, 29 May 2021 21:33 (four years ago)

tom waits sounding a bit hoarse these days

― Left, Saturday, 29 May 2021 21:41 (four years ago)

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