Bob Dylan Revisited In The "Highway 61 Revisited" Poll!

Love "Ballad Of a Thin Man", love "Queen Jane", love "Desolation Row".

And yet, "Like a Rolling Stone" is just too strong not to vote for.

The circus is in town.

Praise be to Nero's Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn
And everybody's shouting
"Which Side Are You On?"
And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot
Fighting in the captain's tower
While calypso singers laugh at them
And fishermen hold flowers
Between the windows of the sea
Where lovely mermaids flow
And nobody has to think too much
About Desolation Row

so man good ones but it takes a lot to consider, it takes a train to vote for.

I still remember how exhilirating that first chorus of "Tombstone Blues" sounded all those years ago.

this is my #1 fave album of ever and i cannot possibly vote

Never been one of favorites re: Dylan in the 60s. However, he who does not vote "Desolation Row" wastes his vote.

One vote wasted for Tom Thumb's Blues.

Make that two votes.

It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry.

I'm not normally one for tactical voting but I skipped LARS for Queen Jane Approximately, my second favourite.

i'm amazed how rapid i was in voting for 'ballad of a thin man'. particularly since, 'just like tom thumb's blues' is perhaps the one bob dylan tune i've played more than any other

if you ain't votin for like a rolling stone, you're kidding yourself--easiest poll yet

I guess I'm kidding myself: "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues"
But I love the out-of-tune guitars on "Queen Jane."

"Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues", just over "Tombstone Blues".

"It Takes a Lot to Laugh"

Solidest album ever, not an ounce of fat.

"Tom Thumb" for me too -- whether or not it's the more "important" song on the record, it's far and away the most personally relevant. There have been many, many times where it's sounded like the story of my life. For better or for worse, I guess.

Rock Hardy otm. Even "From A Buick 6," the only song that could possibly be called filler on the album is pretty awesome.

There's no need to get overly clever here:

Like A Rolling Stone

Am I the only one who likes the title track?

It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry = probably my favorite Dylan song of all of them. The sped-up bootleg series version is incredible.

Am I the only one who likes the title track?

-- I eat cannibals, Wednesday, October 3, 2007 5:29 PM (9 minutes ago)

Nope. got my vote too.

me three. but i could have as easily gone for...most of them. verse for verse, there are so many great lines.

also this is a chance to trot out my "desolation row" thesis (which maybe most people figured out long ago but i only clicked with when i sat down to learn to play it). the last verse is so different than the rest of the song, and it seems like the key to it. it's a breakup song: he's been dumped, he's sitting around the apartment bumming and trying to write; then he gets a letter from the girl who dumped him ("i received your letter yesterday"), which puts him in kind of a rage ("about the time the doorknob broke") and so he writes a long spiteful song about her and all her friends ("i know them, they're quite lame/ i had to rearrange their faces and give them all another name"). i don't know if that's how he actually wrote the song, but by adding the last verse he ties it together and makes it something a lot more personal than just a stream-of-consciousness ramble. "desolation row" is really just "heartbreak hotel."

also, where can i get that shirt?

i actually though the last verse of "desolation row" was a completely different speaker than the one who's been narrating the song up to that point. that those first 10-11 verses are the letter and then the last one is a response to the letter. so ... sort of the same idea? anyway, i could've sworn i've seen a replica of that shirt for sale online somewhere (the motorcycle tshirt), but i can't remember where ...

since we're trotting out obscure song interpretation theories, I feel compelled to mention something I read in a "Letter to the Editor" to the LA Times music section as a lad where some guy was expounding about "Ballad of a Thin Man" is not at all about the usual confused-square-guy-meets-the-counterculture explanation, but instead a not-too-thinly veiled paean to a closeted gay man. He listed all the blatant homosexual innuendos in the song:

- phallic symbols - bone, pencil, etc.
- a sword swallower who kneels and clicks his high heels and says "here's your throat back throat back thanks for the loan" = blowjob
- geek = bit the heads off chickens = two gay metaphors in one (head and chickens/chickenhawks)
- you're a cow/give me some milk = more sexual imagery
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, known for his (closeted?) homosexual dalliances
- every other line is about being ashamed and confused

I never heard the song the same since.

Heh, now I can't hear "You have many contacts/Among the lumberjacks" without imagining some secluded men's bathhouse hidden away somewhere in the Pacific Northwest...

EXACTLY

The dude singing "Just Like Tom Thumb Blues" is the coolest guy ever.

true.

the cops don't need you
and man they expect the same

"the sun's not yellow, it's chicken" is a thinly-veiled NAMBLA reference...

Someone call AJ Weberman.

Just listened to the whole thing through and its Tom Thumb - although 'she walks like Bo Diddley, she don't need no crutch' nearly stole a late, perverse victory for Buick 6

This and Another Side are my defintely my favorite Dylan albums. When I was in high school, obsessed with this album in particular, I listened to something like "Ballad of a Thin Man" and was so overwhelmed -- there were these incredible lyrics that were impossibly inscrutable, I had no idea what he was talking about, but Dylan sang as if he knew everything you didn't, everything behind the abstruseness of it all. The whole song, for me, was really "something is happening here and you don't know what it is.", to be pretty cliched. But now I'm not always sure whether there really is any meaning behind them. Sure they are truly incredible lyrics, but they sound so stream-of-consciousness to me, that it seems Dylan just picked them because they came out that way. Like I'm not sure that even Dylan knows what these images mean or what a lot of these lyrics are supposed to allude to. I think I read somewhere in an interview with him, that, in describing a lot of his output from this period, he had no idea where these songs came from, which runs contrary to the notion I had in high school that Dylan was masterfully choosing every single word of every verse.

but yea these are so amazing, here's just one that I always liked:
Now you see this one-eyed midget
Shouting the word "NOW"
And you say, "For what reason?"
And he says, "How?"
And you say, "What does this mean?"
And he screams back, "You're a cow
Give me some milk
Or else go home"

and it's pretty much impossible for me to pick one off this album. I won't be voting.

I think I read somewhere in an interview with him, that, in describing a lot of his output from this period, he had no idea where these songs came from,

haha dood Dylan is a total liar (about this and about a great many other things), he changes his story all the time. mostly cuz he's spent his entire career re-inventing himself/running away from his roots as a scrawny Jew from Minnesota.

I mean that's his MO right there - you either love him for it or you don't.

Yea I've heard it's pretty difficult to take anything he says in interviews at face value, and it doesn't really bother me either way. But in some ways I can find it more believable that a lot of these lyrics came out of nowhere, that he really was just stringing stuff together that came out sounding pretty awesome, even if they don't allude to anything. They can still be great lyrics (and a big part of it is Dylan's delivery, of course, which really can make it seem as if they mean a whole lot when they might actually not mean anything).

Wait, are these polls my personal fave or greatest artistic achievement?

I can find it more believable that a lot of these lyrics came out of nowhere

I just assume its the amphetamines talking, just stringing together references to what was at hand at the moment.

Right, which is quite believable. It obviously entails a big discussion of where artistic inspiration/creativity comes from, etc., but I think a large amount of really great artists don't always have a good explanation themselves of 1.) where their ideas for their art come from and 2.)what their art actually means.

insert a "but" before the second sentence there

actually maybe no "but" i don't know....i'm just rambling

Reason I voted for Tom Thumb is because, of all the songs on the record, it has the least quotient of possibly redundant poeticism; i.e. not 'out of nowhere' or 'just the amphetemine talking' (though the speed often had something cool to say)

Never seen the point about his blues songs. So hasn't any acts either, it seems, as other than a few versions of "Maggie's Farm", none of the most famous cover versions of his songs are of the blues ones. May of course also have to do with the fact that his voice sounds better in those though, thus making his versions of his bluesy songs the more "definite" ones than in the case of the more melodic folk ones.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

waht

What you mean what? "Like a Rolling Stone" winning is hardly surprising.

It's traditional. You have to either say waht or wtf.

I wish that for just one time / You could stand inside my socks

i love his new stuff

http://images.chron.com/blogs/askacat/hatcat.JPG

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

Buzza i've only ever had one sock and that's the truth. You just want to be on the side thats winning.

he carried on his shoulder a paranoid sock

I love nu-dylan too colorbro xp

I don't understand the sock reference, but who cares when theres low-hanging fruit like

Sock sock sockin on heaven's door

Mama take these socks from me

One sock?

How many shoes do you have?

Cant believe i missed my opportunity to tell buzza that i try my best to be just like i am

one too many logins

I like "rolling stone" a lot too but always find it hard to listen to because I didn't know about the sedgwick thing, and always thought he was being a dick to me (the listener) personally. like, he tells this sad story that is relatable to certain people, and then spits in their face when he gets them feeling all vulnerable.

That it's about a real person makes a lot more sense.

I'm just waiting to find out what price i have to pay to get out of going through all these things twice

Er sorry xp. Yeah, its an extremely vituperative song and i always identify with the addressee of the song more than the singer. Thats part of whats cool about it though. I think kogan wrote a thing abt the novelty of rock stars berating the audience instead of pandering to them in the 60s and dylan is very much a part of that trend.

treeship i don't know if you're a sock (i don't think you are) but i'll give a serious answer to your post. i'm a huge dylan fan and that edie sedgwick trivia fact was unknown to me. still, of everything that's going in "like a rolling stone," talking about how it may or may not have been about edie sedgwick seems like the most boring thing to do. i don't give a shit what was going on dylan's life when he wrote this song. i don't give a shit what was going on in dylan's life when we wrote blood on the tracks, which is also pretty bitter. i mean, it's mildly interesting, but it's just trivia. i'm not a very articulate person on this board, so this is pretty clunky, but i feel like music is powerful because it gives meaning to or illuminates aspects of MY own life. it's power asfaic is not as a biographical tool to learn more about the musician. i mean, it can be, but the fact that i can hear "like a rolling stone" and create my own meanings and interpretation out of the song's lyrics and sentiments and music and relate it to my own life is why the song resonates with me. i mean, we could also appreciate it as a pretty wild and masterful piece of songwriting craft, too. in interviews people always ask bill callahan "what does THIS lyric mean? what happened in your life that made you write THAT lyric?" and he always says "i just put the songs out there so you can create your meaning from them." dylan makes up half the shit in his songs anyways and it just seems limiting and uninteresting to think "oh, how does THIS lyric relate to whoever dylan was dating at the time?" again i'm not very articulate so this is clunky and cliched but just thought i'd share it. thanks!

i think the power of those 66 live shows stems (at least in part) from the fact that Dylan realizes he's been singing about himself the whole time.

I agree with tylerw. Obviously artworks ideally can stand on their own and in any case you can never really determine the original meaning of an artwork so it's better to accept it as it is, and constellate it with your own experiences and blah blah blah but with dylan this is almost impossible because his work comes with so much critical baggage, a d part of what's interesting about dylan for me is reading his songs against the backdrop of their own reputations. With like a rolling stone, there is this weird dissonance between how it's perceived -- generically, as a generation-defining masterpiece -- and what it is, a petty, vengeful song, that comes from a place of hurt no doubt but is still kind of abusive. So the question is not so much if the song being mean affects how good it is but like, isn't it weird that these powerful, confessional, unflinching and sometimes ugly but always personal songs have come to have this reputation for universal, or at least generational, resonance.

Also i'd be surprised if even buzza still thinks i'm a sock.

i don't hear "like a rolling stone" as petty or vengeful. there's something exuberant and liberating about dylan's rage in that song. the performance transcends and transforms what he's singing about. it also sounds (to me) much more like someone talking about himself and his own situation than someone singling out another person for ridicule.

There's something to that. "How does it feel to be on your own with no direction home?" is an ambiguous question. Scary is a plausible answer as is exciting... rock bottom is of necessity a place of hope. These layers are built into the song but still on a literal level i'm pretty sure it's about edie.

who cares who it's about

this is a song about how you used to live in a pampered thoughtless lie but now through trauma and loss you have been stripped of what you thought was yr identity and cast into a place of insecurity and confusion that nevertheless holds the possibility (you got no secrets to conceal) of truth. don't think it caught on in 1965 cuz everyone thought good riddance to their exes. i'm sure he started typing it thinking of edie but tylerw/jd otm.

Yeah, i agree with that more than i do with what i said.

Rest assured: Dylan had plenty of songs after 1975 in which the only substance of quite a few songs was an asshole's rage.

with a FAN-TAS-TIC collection of stamps

(^^^ this is a vietnam verse, had never noticed)

poll is nearly upside-down, title track wins

i love the lyrics of the title track but i've always found bob's performance of it kinda disappointingly goofy. much prefer p.j. harvey's take on it.

but apart from that there aren't really any wrong answers here. 'desolation row' is my fav long dylan song, 'just like tom thumb' one of his most unique and evocative lyrics. still find the last verse going through my head at least once a week.

i love the lyrics of the title track but i've always found bob's performance of it kinda disappointingly goofy. much prefer p.j. harvey's take on it.

I absolutely love PJ Harvey's version of this, but Dylan's is literally stomping -- you can hear the clips in his voice as he stomps his foot during the take.

"Desolation/Tom Thumb/Train" are monumental. Two or three I'm indifferent to. The one song I've never liked at all--heard it on the radio the other day--is "Ballad of a Thin Man." The idea, or at least its most famous line, is ingenious. As a song, I don't get the high regard for it.

i thought that song was way overrated too, for years, but these three things are pretty classic im current o:

1) the constant dick jokes

2) the f scott fitzgerald's books part (i avoid the beautiful and damned to evade this)

3) the climax of the live1966 version (otherwise kinda unlistenably muddy iirc) where "earphones" becomes "a... aspecialkinda... TELePHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONES

3) the expression on the face of my friend visiting portland from new jersey when he pushed open the door to the strip club and this came out

three things, yes, i even numbered them if you don't believe me

on the title track i rly like the pauses, where they're structured to fall in the conversations. the pregnant silence after god's threat. "let me think for a minute, son." the sadistic measure after "quick man!" peej makes more of the first of these than dylan.

Oh my god I never realized those were dick jokes

here is your throat back
thanks for the loan

Sword swallower

(Predicting kanye)

everything on live 1966 is awesome, even songs i don't normally care for.

Just finished Mark Polizzotti's 33 1/3 volume on the record. One of the more academic and thorough entries in this series that I've read, and though the endnotes reveal that a lot of what's in here is culled from sources that the hardest core Dylanophiles would already be familiar with (Hajdu, Marcus, etc), I can't imagine anyone who is a fan of this album not enjoying this.

1) the constant dick jokes

'Gimme some milk'

the geometry of innocent flesh on the bone

How is one record this good?

He believed he'd had enough and then made a record about it.

the geometry of innocent flesh on the bone

unreal

from bobdylan.com, celebrating the 60th Anniversary of Hwy 61 (wouldn't it have been cooler to wait 'til next year?)

Take a Digital Drive Down Highway 61

Celebrate the milestone with a new interactive site featuring a custom playlist generator and a deep dive into the album’s history.
Start Ignition

Fave "Stone" is currently Jimi's: the way he sneaks through verses, "Si-a-mese cat," pounces on chorus---that's at Monterey, anybody know of him doing it elsewhere??

& that beat (the original, yet sleeker, catter, not cattier)

my two favorite non-Bob versions of "Stone" are by Spirit and the Wailers

the geometry of innocent flesh on the bone

the official lyric site has it as "innocence", like it's two separate clauses, but I like your version better

wrt "Thin Man" and conversation about it upthread from years ago, I am shockingly old to be alerted today to the many, many dick jokes in its lyrics. lmao
Also want to draw attention to the awesomeness of the bridge ending with "tax deductible charity organization", and the slam back into the next verse after that line. reminds me a little bit of how John Darnielle can snap you to attention by deploying a dense, syllable-heavy and ostensibly non-poetic phrase as the kicker in a lyric

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zc-UYdQvbWE