should bob dylan retire?

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704594804575648691223353352.html?mod=WSJ_LifeStyle_Lifestyle_5#articleTabs=article]hang it up bob says wall street journal[/url]

discus

NONONO

Xmas album alone redeems his current output

feel like that article could've been written 20 years ago.

sorry bout the unsightly link

I don't think Dylan should retire but the concert I saw in late 2009 was unsettling. I thought his croaky crooning was "weird/interesting" while my wife & friends were underwhelmed and disappointed. nobody expected Al Green or Enrico Caruso. I have to admit there WERE huge chunks of unintelligible singing over (well-played) blues vamping. no idea what songs he played.

xpost

or 25 or 30 or 35 years ago....

i dunno, i haven't listened to any shows from this year, but there was one from last year i really liked. his band sounds great. the voice? yeah, pretty grizzled, but he can still nail a lot of the songs.

Dr. Lee Akst, director of the Johns Hopkins Voice Center, says it's impossible to diagnose Mr. Dylan without an examination, but

Dr Bill Frist wasn't available

gotta say, it is pretty crazy how many shows he plays! i keep expecting him to dial it back, but after every tour ends, there are more dates added. he must enjoy it, to some extent?

"I am just as good a singer as Caruso. Have you ever heard me sing? You have to listen closely, but I hit all those notes."

the drew friedman illustration is far better than the article it accompanies

dylan must enjoy it. and that's reason enough that he SHOULDN'T retire. the wall street journal should run articles calling for newt gingrich to retire

that article is horrible and insulting. this is the wall street journal, for fucksake -- let the free marketplace decide when it won't support him anymore

he is a pretty unique case, though. i feel like he's *never* really played shows that would please everyone in an audience, even stretching back to the protest days. his fans have always been tough to please. maybe the most crowd-pleasing tour i can think of is the fall 1975 Rolling Thunder thing, which combined almost all the elements of his career.

Re his voice, I thought I read somewhere that he still smokes cigarettes.

huh, really? i guess i assume that all of those old guys have quit. except for keith richards maybe.

Art Spiegelman is the only smoker left in the US, but he smokes enough for everyone else in the country.

I read that John Boehner smokes 2 packs a day - that's old school/hard core

http://www.plan59.com/images/JPGs/lucky_strike_hand_1959_00.jpg

dear john boehner: please continue smoking. and feel free to up your intake to 4 packs a day if you wish.

http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/WK-AW158_COVER__DV_20101202180446.jpg

thought his croaky crooning was "weird/interesting" while my wife & friends were underwhelmed and disappointed. nobody expected Al Green or Enrico Caruso. I have to admit there WERE huge chunks of unintelligible singing over (well-played) blues vamping. no idea what songs he played.

He was already doing this in '99. I thought, "Well! So this is art!"

On the other hand, during my last Dylan show ('05) he'd mastered the rusted-hurricane-panel tone, and the band kicked up one hell of a racket.

i mean, he's released two great albums (l&t and modern times) in the 00s, and one very solid album (together through life) and a fucking great book and a fucking great radio show and a wacked out xmas album. and several amazing volumes of the bootleg series.

many younger artists should do so "poorly"

He was already doing this in '99.

also '88

Musically, I guess he still has more to offer. Depends on his health though. Guy is an getting old now....

no creative person should ever be asked to retire from their trade or artform. except journalists who can't think of anything to do but call for an artist's retirement.

no way. still great

some dude otm. i saw bob around 2006 and he was pretty atrocious, but i'd never presume to tell the guy to retire before he's good and damn ready. plus he still makes great records now and again.

"should." wtf.

the wall st journal should retire imo

i mean, he's released two great albums .....many younger artists should do so "poorly"

I couldn't agree more. Maybe Rupert Murdoch should retire.

I once saw Lionel Hampton and his orchestra and Hamp was so old that he really was struggling to play and seemed a bit lost. I guess at that point I thought maybe he should retire, because it just seemed sort of undignified to put him up there. But short of that I don't see why any musician should retire.

OTOH Hamp probably needed the money (not an issue with Dylan obv)

Yeah I saw Hampton 10 years ago or so and it was pretty sad. He basically just sat their and occasionally raised up his sticks but didn't really play much.
A friend of mine saw Bo Diddley in the 80s where he played a bunch of bad synth riffs and looked at the audience after every "dramatic" chord in a "hey doesn't this sound awesome, guys?" kind of way.
I loved seeing Dylan last year. He did these great howls with his ravaged pipes that sounded like he was burning in the pits of hell or something.

"A friend of mine saw Bo Diddley in the 80s where he played a bunch of bad synth riffs and looked at the audience after every "dramatic" chord in a "hey doesn't this sound awesome, guys?" kind of way."

this sounds hilarious

sounds AWESOME

if you've liked dylan's 2000s albums i don't see how you could not like his shows, at least not based on the show i saw (split bill with willie nelson touring his reggae album, in a minor-league baseball stadium!) several years ago.

Misread Bo Diddley as Bob Dylan for a second there.

Also, have heard live tapes of Lou Reed doing the same thing. (A version of Sister Ray, iirc, woe woe)

Just heard coverage of his China show and the reporter and fans were totally on a voice-of-a-generation, songs-of-peace, Blowin'-in-the-Wind tip, as if nothing had happened since 1965. It reminds me of Greil Marcus's complaint that when Dylan dies a lot of the obits will read: "Bob Dylan, best known for his 1960s protest songs, died yesterday…"

No Direction Home just starting streaming on Netflix fwiw

Musically, I guess he still has more to offer. Depends on his health though. Guy is an getting old now....

yeah he doesn't play the guitar any more onstage because of arthritis or whatever, it's fun seeing him at the keyboards though. he can really work those keys. he kind of leans on them which looks pretty funky

Beijing, China
Workers Gymnasium
April 6, 2011

1. Gonna Change My Way Of Thinking
2. It's All Over Now, Baby Blue
3. Beyond Here Lies Nothin'
4. Tangled Up In Blue
5. Honest With Me
6. Simple Twist Of Fate
7. Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum
8. Love Sick
9. Rollin' And Tumblin'
10. A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall
11. Highway 61 Revisited
12. Spirit On The Water
13. Thunder On The Mountain
14. Ballad Of A Thin Man

(1st encore)
15. Like A Rolling Stone
16. All Along The Watchtower

(2nd encore)
17. Forever Young

do play in the neverending pool tyler? i always meant to ask you if you did

i never have! i've been aware of it forever, but i've never signed up for it. are you doing it still?

http://www.theneverendingpool.com/

The winner for the concert in Beijing is rickdanko!
rickdanko scored an amazing 30 points! CONGRATULATIONS

GO RICK!

yeah i'm still doing it but this tour sucked because they had some probs and they didn't open the voting until like 6 hours before the first show so i am sucking it up something fierce. i won once though! one shining moment.

i can't believe someone brought in a ringer like danko, i'm gonna AIM charlie sexton and get him on our team.

i should do it for the next tour ... remind me! i guess the trick is just getting a few of the "surprise" tunes right, and then leaning heavy on the stuff he always plays?

well it depends....its done in multiple choice "tiers"...so you have 19 picks that you take from a multiple choice of say 5 or 6 songs for each slot...assigned point values based loosely on how common they are (like all along the watchtower, etc would be one point songs)...but they put in some sleepers in there with high point values.

then. the last tier all the songs are 20 and it's a list of every known song he has ever done in concert, like ever....so you could pick say, "london calling" by the clash for example...

but it's weird...there's been a couple of tours where he played something he had literally never played before....

would have far preferred love minus zero, visions of johanna, or desolation row over anything post-1976

xp the expectingrain.com forums have pretty much everything. you have to register to access the "rare recordings" board, though (just creating a username/password)

thanks! I wonder if my old login still works.

it does!

score! i don't know if they have your show, but sooner or later i'm sure it'll turn up.

They do. Already being talked about as one of the "must haves" from 2012.

I like Dylan's craggly voice just fine, but it got me thinking: are there any other singers, prominent or no, whose voices are regularly described as "shot?" Weakened, sure, or not at their prime, but even Macca, and Roger Daltrey, and Robert Plant, let alone Bruce at one extreme or even Iggy or Leonard Cohen at the other, or heck, even Phil Collins, can still belt one out. What made Dylan's voice decay so much more significantly/spectacularly?

Nilsson from Pussy Cats onward; first time I heard "Many Rivers To Cross" I pretty much busted out laughing

Yeah, but he's dead and was, before that, willfully self-destructive.

kinda not sure what I think of Tempest yet, having finally listened to it last week. in particular "Long & Wasted Years" got me a little disoriented on my bus ride, couldn't figure out the melody or the rhythm, all over the place, like the bus that day. "Narrow Way" is a jam though

Plant singing better than ever imo

Yeah, 'zactly, Or at least good enough for what he's doing. But Dylan sounds like he's been gargling lighter fluid and glass.

he wasn't Caruso to begin with

i'm pretty into tempest except for the last two tracks -- not sure how I feel about either of those. titanic one seems like it should be ... funnier?
tin angel is kind of crazy -- is he singing over a loop? the band does the same exact thing for 9 minutes. and i think he's punching his vocals in? like he almost overlaps on some of the lines.

I was surprised how well he could sing when his voice warmed up. Started at a gargle but peaked midway through the set with a warm rolling buzz on "Make You Feel My Love".

Sounded like an engine revving, which alerted roadies to shutting doors, exits, and windows so that Dylan could blow carbon monoxide on awed listeners.

pretty much!

he then crushed several dozen pepsi cans into a perfect cube with his teeth.

i imagine some singers sing in ways that are more or less damaging to their vocal chords? singing technique, etc

also dylan smokes a lot and still does i think

but yeah it's not like he was the greatest singer to begin with, cohen is in the same boat

neither is heartbreaking, like say joni mitchell now :(

tylerw - I was seated too far away to confirm that story.

Though I did hear a guy behind me say, "Dolphins. Creepy fuckers, aren't they?" between sets.

What I mean is that Cohen (for example) was never a great singer, but he's not significantly worse these days. Dylan clearly is, despite having never been the greatest of singers. And I can't imagine for a second that his hard-living and smoking and whatever has been worse than many a singer's, yet he just happens to be the only one whose voice is regularly described as shot. Certainly some other act would be in the same boat for all the obvious reasons, but they're all holding it together just fine, even the singers (like force of nature Bruce, or Daltrey, or Macca) basically defined by their decades of screaming.

i bet dudes like bruce, mccartney and daltrey have all done serious voice-training kinds of things with professionals over the years. and drink all kinds of the best teas.

I just can't think of any other singer whose voice is so far gone they're practically a different singer. Like, Emmylou Harris changed, sure, but no one would say she can't sing. Far from it. And Tom Waits has basically spent the past several decades intentionally shifting his vox to trash compactor mode, usually for the better.

I can imagine some suggesting voice lessons to Dylan decades ago, and him basically responding with a "fuck you" glare before shuffling off.

It's just strange is all. Hundreds of iconic singers, and the only voice people describe as "shot" is Dylan, of all singers.

i saw bob weir earlier this year and his voice had pretty much gone into dylan-y gruffness. kinda worked for him, though!

did any of you see leonard cohen, hearing his voice is amazing, it's like the crooner equivalent of going to see the swans

i didn't but i've heard some of the recent live albums. he makes it work. i do think dylan could take some notes -- my main complaint w/ dylan's voice isn't really the gravel-iness, it's the way he makes every song sound all hyped up, even the mellow ballads.

A Washington Post writer who likes Dylan tweeted that the Tuesday night Verizon Center gig was his least favorite Dylan show he's seen in recent years. I second the view that too much cigarette smoking has damaged his voice

the way he makes every song sound all hyped up, even the mellow ballads

what does this mean?

xpost But there's no way that Dylan has smoked more than, say, Keith Richards, and even he can make it work.

Biggest Dylan complaint, which seems to be in check, is the ... upsinging? Is that what people call it?

Cohen's voice was awesome when I saw him at the Beacon. My friend turned to me and noted that he was basically just talking, but it worked super-well.

Keith Richards also doesn't sing every song.

what does this mean?
that a song that should probably be delivered in a mellower tone is delivered in a kinda clipped, excited tone.

I like Dylan's craggly voice just fine, but it got me thinking: are there any other singers, prominent or no, whose voices are regularly described as "shot?"

billie holiday

this is more than 15 years old now, but it's a pretty amazing neverending tour vocal performance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BSW7ZTD6UY

yep that's pretty great

What I mean is that Cohen (for example) was never a great singer, but he's not significantly worse these days.

^^disagree strongly with this, dylan doesn't bother me really and i cannot even listen to newer cohen stuff

his old voice wasn't strong but it wasn't gravelly or harsh like it is now

i bet dudes like bruce, mccartney and daltrey have all done serious voice-training kinds of things with professionals over the years. and drink all kinds of the best teas.

― tylerw, Wednesday, November 21, 2012 1:51 PM (31 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Daltrey's voice was actually in pretty rough shape in 2004-2006. Turned out he had pre-cancerous growths, successfully since removed. First time I heard him post-surgery was on Jimmy Kimmel, with his solo band. They did "Young Man Blues" and I thought, ugh, maybe not a good choice. He killed. I was stunned.

But he also took much better care of himself than many of his contemporaries did. Starting around 1969 he would routinely head off to bed immediately after every show (and went to the gym every morning), and never partook in room demolition or heavy boozing or anything like that.

I love current Cohen voice, which is not terribly different from Cohen's voice 20 years ago c. "The Future." Whereas Bob in that '95 clip to my ears sounds much better than he does now, and he's almost a decade younger than Cohen.

I think a little bit of Dylan's "ruined" voice and bizarre phrasing might be attributed to him probably fetishizing being an "old bluesman" living a hard life on the road. He definitely wants his voice to be smoky and deep, at any rate. He probably likes sounding strange and alienating people and being (even by Dylan standards) enigmatic and low-profile. The riverboat gambler costumes would support this too.

Also in support of this is the fact that all of his recent albums have had a song or two that's basically a Mannish Boy rewrite, or a song that namechecks blues lyrics that are communal, done by many bluesmen, and essentially public domain.

And while I'm on a roll of talking out of my ass, Tempest is basically a ridiculously long rewrite of "Engine 143," isn't it?

riverboat gambler costumes are flamboyant!

*fetishizing the idea of being an "old bluesman," I should have said. Sorry, trying to kick caffeine.

Also, this is somewhat tangential and may or may not support my bullshitting, but when was the last time on tour that he was actively trying to sing instead of blurting/mumbling words way too fast for the tempo? This performance of "Shelter From The Storm" is a pretty rare "he's actively trying to sing and be an effective, dramatic vocalist in a rock idiom" performance as far as I can tell.

when was the last time on tour that he was actively trying to sing instead of blurting/mumbling words way too fast for the tempo?

1960, iirc.

"Nashville Skyline" Kermit the Frog voice?

This one?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfi7ME_Y5Vs

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/bob-dylan-to-unveil-enormous-iron-archway-in-maryland-w438057

We’re proud to collaborate with Mr. Dylan and bring his vision to MGM National Harbor’s Heritage Collection in a way that enhances this sensory resort experience

my mind is reeling over this whole affair tbh

"Gates appeal to me because of the negative space they allow,” Dylan said in a statement. “They can be closed, but at the same time they allow the seasons and breezes to enter and flow. They can shut you out or shut you in. And in some ways, there is no difference."

ha ha what?

working man's blues

https://s12.postimg.io/b1247ag0t/welding.jpg