Overrated – Bob Dylan
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This week’s inductee into the “Overrated Hall of Fame” is … Bob Dylan.
You know, “The Voice of a Generation.” Yeah, a generation hopped up on LSD. Bob Dylan might be music’s most blatant embodiment of the emperor’s new clothes. Most of his songs are just a jumbled mess of nonsensical images and non-sequiturs, but people don’t dare pretend that they don’t have clue fucking one about what he’s going on about. It’s safer to just nod your head, look off into space and say, “Man … fuckin’ Dylan … dude’s a genius.” And I agree. You have to be a genius to parlay that mediocre body of work into godlike stature and an eight-figure bank account.
If his music were truly great, people would, you know, actually listen to it now and then. I’m betting that most of the blowhards who extol the music of the Great Bob Dylan haven’t listened to one of his unlistenable albums since they were getting blown in a mud-caked car on the way back from Woodstock.
Go ahead and name 10 Dylan songs. You might be able to do that, but I doubt it. How about singing five Dylan songs. Can’t do that either, can you? Of course not. Because he was shitty songwriter, a mediocre tunesmith and one of the worst singers ever. He doesn’t rock out, he doesn’t move you to goosebumps with profundity (save for one song, which will be addressed later) and doesn’t have the good looks to lube up the ladies or move men to uncomfortable man crushes. But somehow, he’s been sold as one of the all-time greats of music.
Even the most well known Dylan songs are overrated because they don’t say anything. We can all sing the beginning of “Like a Rolling Stone.” It’s a good song in that the lyrics roll off the tongue and are easy to remember, the melody is wonderfully doleful and it’s got a catchy chorus. A song with those qualities doesn’t have to make sense. R.E.M. and U2 have made gazillions with songs that follow that same formula. I don’t know what the hell Michael Stipe and Bono are talking about half the time, but their songs and lyrics stick in your head. That’s poetry and great songwriting, and that’s “Like a Rolling Stone.”
But people like to pretend that there’s some sort of great depth in those lyrics. If you subscribe to that school of conformist non-thought, please try to explain them to me. In fact, let’s look at the first few lines.
One upon a time, you looked so fine,
Threw the bums a dime in your prime … didn’t youuuuuuuuuu?
You never understood that it ain’t no good,
You shouldn’t let other people get your kicks for youuuuuuuu
See what I mean? It’s fun to say and it sounds good, but you know it doesn’t really say anything. The same can be said for “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” “Tangled Up in Blue” and “Highway 61 Revisited.” The lyrics are cool, but they sure didn’t help end the Vietnam War or help bring about Civil Right legislation.
The phony reverence for the Great Bob Dylan’s poetic stylings remind me a lot of that Seinfeld episode in which Elaine proves that no one really understands the cartoons in the New Yorker magazine. But people fear they’ll show their literary ignorance if they claim not to get the ramblings of Dylan, so they go with the party line that the man’s one of the great voices of the 20th century.
I’m not claiming all his work is overrated. He did write one of the greatest songs ever; “The Times They Are a-Changin’.” That song’s genius lies in its timelessness. The message – that progress can’t be stopped, and those who resist it will be left behind and treated badly by history – not only still makes sense in 2008, but it would also have been an apt message in 300 B.C. and will still be right on the mark in the year 2347. “Blowin’ in the Wind” is a fine song that makes sense, too: When will humans stop fucking up in ways large and small? How can we figure out how to stop this shit we keep pulling? Good luck. The answer’s out there somewhere, but it’s sure as shit is proving elusive. Kudos on those two pieces of art, King Bob.
But the rest of his lyrics? I’ll prove my point this way. Below are three lines from Dylan songs and two that I made up in just a few seconds. I found Dylan lyrics online and just clicked on a few random songs to find these lines. Can you tell which are the original Dylan lyrics and which are the off-the-cuff creations of a martini-soaked Ned Bitters?
- A. Sister claims she sold her heart to a ruby-scalded ocean,
But I tell her it’s no use because the stars are now in motion.
B. Beat a path of retreat up them spiral staircases
Past the tree of smoke, past the angel with four faces.
C. Her eyes were two slits that would make a snake proud
With a face that any painter would paint as he walked through a crowd
D. Well I woke up this mornin’ there’s frogs inside my socks
Your mama she’s a hidin’ inside the icebox
E. On the flooded turquoise highway I saw the devil playing cards
He just waved as I drove by, my numb stomach full of shards
Okay, let’s see how you did. The actual Dylan lyrics are B, C, and D. The just as full of shit Bitters rhymes were A and E. Even if you somehow made the right choices, and I doubt you did, at least admit that the inane couplets I conceived make no less sense than the whacked out babble of Sir Robert, Lyricist Emeritus.
I have nothing against Bob Dylan. He seems a like a humble, wry guy with a good sense of humor. He doesn’t walk around like he’s some sort of rock royalty. (That’s Bono’s job.) He just keeps making albums and touring. He doesn’t act in shit movies. He doesn’t trumpet some trendy cause-du-jour. He doesn’t adopt brown kids and hold press conferences about it. And even he knows that his “Voice of a Generation” status is a bunch of crap, because when he finally signed on to endorse a product, thereby sending the aging hippies into apoplectic rants about selling out, he went all the way and peddled for Victoria’s Secret.
Then again, maybe I’m the dipshit who just doesn’t get it. I wonder how Dylan himself would respond to my assertion of his overratedness. I guess he’d just quote one of his own songs. No, not some screwball lyric about striped horses and glass lilacs and rivers of green tea. He’d just hit me upside the brain with a line from “The Times They Are a-Changin’.”
“Don’t criticize what you don’t understand.”
Ned Bitters is, in fact, overrated. You can contact him at teacherslounge@hobotrashcan.com.
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Yeah, you are a dipshit.
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Well, I guess you just dont get it. Your knowledge of the impact of the talent of bob dylan on all of music since he arrived is very evident. “Cant name 10 songs?” I’ll bet you I could name 400 in a row, and sing most word for word. “It’s allright ma” is the most prolific lyric ever put to music. I wont go on and on cause I know I wont convince you. But I challenge you to acually delve into the history of rock music, and you will find a very short list of those who can hold a candle to Dylan and what he accomplished in his career, and still continues to this day. Its like saying Van Gogh was a shitty painter. Just silly. By the way, Bob Dylan was recently the first rock artist to ever be award a Pulitizer Prize.
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cliched drivel.
Hardly worth commenting on.
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Something happened, and you just don’t know what it was. Do you, Mr. Jones? Too bad it was (still is) over your head, but it’s easier to put something down than try to understand it. Loser. Go read Positively Fourth Street to yourself (out loud, please) in the mirror. You’ll know what a drag it is to see you.
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I think you’re right, “you’re the dipshit who just doesn’t get it”.
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wanker!
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dylan himself feels he’s overrated. he’s rejected his prophet, poet distinctions, and called himself “a song and dance man”.
but you and bob are wrong. yes, the lyrics you pointed out are horrible. but check out: “brownsville girl”, “it’s alright ma (i’m only bleeding)”, “not dark yet”, or “blind willie mctell” if you think respect for dylan’s lyrics are an emperor’s new clothes affair.
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That was an enlightning article on Bob Dylan. It sure sounds like you have a firm grasp on his career. After all these years it took someone like you to make me realize that I have been wasting my time listenng to Bob. Thanks Douchebag
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You are partly right. Dylan like many song writers just comes up with lines that mean nothing. Even Bono does it. But its lines that set a mood. When I say MOONLIGHT it sparks an idea, even a feeling. I could say My heart was swiming when I held her tight. Under the stars in the moonlight. We don t know what that means My heart was swiming. It evocs a surrealist immage and a surealist feeling. What does a Dali painting mean if we put it next to a Rembrandt. This article by Ned Bitters proves the guy is totally uneducated. Thats okay there is also music and lyrics for truck drivers and street sweepers.
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yeah, you’re just one of those dipshits.
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Hi, Ned Bitters,
First of all I want to comment of your way of expressing yourself: do you really think it`s so cool to use that stupid F-word constantly. As far as I know, even Bob Dylan never used that word in any of his lyrics.
That alone shows that he is a man of dignity. Better get that in your head, man. And, secondly, to claim that Dylan`s lyrics are nonsense is nonsense. Have you ever heard about surrealism, dadaism, modern art painting, have you ever read Baudelaire,Rimbaud, Gertrude Stein etc. and in Vienna/Austria where I live, we have here a great poet, her name is Friederike Mayröcker, who also writes poems, lyrics and novels in kinda surrealistic way and has got a lot of recognition, and then look at all the modern art – do you really claim, that this is all nonsense ? Only because you can`t appreciate or understand it, doesn`t automatically mean, it`s nonsense. In my eyes a great songwriter like Bob Dylan can never be overrated, he has proved that to a lot of intelligent people, who wouldn`t waste their precious time for a nobody, who`s just trying to fool them. So, please, be a little bit more careful with your statements.
I appreciate constructive critizism,
but you`re just simplifying and downgrading that whole matter. Regards, Ewald
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Yeah, I’ll agree with Dan – You are definitely a dipshit. Get a clue.
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Yes to dance beneath the diamond sky
With one hand waving free,
Silhouetted by the sea,
Circled by the circus sands,
With all memory and fate
Driven deep beneath the waves . . .
Let me forget about today until tomorrow.
Yeah, pal, this is real crap.
Tip: Don’t quick your dayjob.
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Listen to MASTERS OF WAR!
Stop dipping you head in shit and you may hear something other then the sound of shit.
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How about:
“Inside the museums, infinity goes up on trial. Voices echo, ‘This is what salvation must be like after a while.'”
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some folks just don’t understand some things and a calculation of dylan’s over or underrating is irrelevant. if you’ve heard and not just listened you get why bob d is a special human.
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I’m not saying that I agree or disagree with Ned Bitters on this, but reading these comments, none of you really puts forth a solid defense of Bob Dylan.
The closest anyone has come to a rational argument about Dylan is albert Insinger. I can certainly understand his point about the lyrics being the musical equivalent of a surrealist painting. That makes sense to me.
But Albert completely undermines his point by resorting to name-calling in the end. “Thats okay there is also music and lyrics for truck drivers and street sweepers.” So anyone who disagrees with the idea that Bob Dylan is great is automatically a truck driver or a street sweeper? And why look down on truck drivers and street sweepers? Why assume they are all uneducated morons? Perhaps truck drivers do love Bob Dylan, or maybe they prefer Mozart. Why generalize? It makes you seem elitist.
I would love to hear a true counterpoint to Ned’s article – a well thought out and intelligent defense of Bob Dylan’s music. In fact, if one of you puts together something like that and it’s engaging and well-written, I would be more than happy to run it on the site as a guest column.
But by all of you saying that Ned is a dipshit who just doesn’t get it, it kind of seems like you are proving his point that “people fear they’ll show their literary ignorance if they claim not to get the ramblings of Dylan, so they go with the party line that the man’s one of the great voices of the 20th century.”
If you disagree with him, prove him wrong. I would love to see it.
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I thought it was written tongue in cheek! Either way, I found it amusing–thanks!
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dont get me wrong im not saying just cause lots of people like something then its automaticly great,but you have to admit there has been more writen about Bob Dylan and/or his lyrics than just about anyone
does this count as a good point??
i love music! full stop! (not just Bob Dylan)and have a music collection of about getting on for 2000 albums (and its not even half of what i want!)
just thumbing through a few, Elvis Presley,john lennon,paul mc cartney,bruce springsteen,the beatles,the band,johnny cash,van morrison,neil young,elvis costello,fairpot convention,bob geldoff,the rolling stones,jethro tull,red hot chilli peppers,r.e.m,u2,eva cassidy,the byrds,jeff and tim buckley,martin carthy,ry cooder,nick cave,eric clapton,sandy denny,leonard cohen,rory gallagher,david gray,led zeplin,john martyn,joni mitchell,willie nelson,kurt cobain,pearl jam,gram parsons,rod stewart,richard thompson,tom waits,the who!!!! just a few mind you not all but from all the biographies and music articals ive read over the yrs the above have all commented on being fans on some level many practicly in awe of him
surely that must mean something!!!
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Two suggestions for Ned :
– Listen to “Desolation Row”
– Watch the DVD “The Other Side of the Mirror” – take particular note of “Chimes of Freedom”
and one question …
– Is it you or your father who was old enough to have gotten that mud-caked blow job coming back from Woodstock? Missed opportunity, either of the personal or generational kind, usually results in bitterness (pun intended) – which leads to
one more question …
Ever heard of “Blood On the Tracks,” a post-Woodstock Dylan album placed on many “Top Ten” all-time album lists? But then, those blowhard critics probably also had their minds blown at Woodstock and placed it on their lists without actually listening to it, as the Bitterman implies.
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How do you measure a career? Grammy awards? Check. Acadamy Award? Check. Pulitzer prize? Kennedy Center Honor? Check, check. The lauding respect of your peers? That is obvious to anyone who follows music, voiced by Springsteen, Cash, Prine, Bono, Jagger, Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, Vedder, Seeger, Guthrie, Young, etc., etc… exemplified by the Tribute Concert. Almost fifty years of prolific longevity? Tribute albums by gospel singers, covers by folk legends, rock stars, and cult artists? I can’t beilieve I’m actually writing something to JUSTIFY Bob Dylan’s relevance to music, culture, and the human condition. Sorry to those of you that already know all this stuff. Keep listening, keep feeling, keep thinking…promote art.
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He’s been a folkie, a speed freak rocker, a Jew, a Born Again Christian, an actor, a poet, a filmmaker, a song and dance man, and the Voice Of His Generation…all of which he would deny while looking you straight in the eye. Is there anyone in modern history, let along the tiny world of entertainment, who has been more things to more people than Bob Dylan? He is a man that none of us has ever been able to grab hold to, he’s there in one guise and a moment later, a completely different person. Dylan makes Bowie look static. Because of this, an appreciation of his work is very difficult; which Dylan do we talk about?
I think the thing that pisses people off the most about Dylan is that he doesn’t give a shit about what we think of him. He refuses to be what WE want him to be, whatever that is. Only Dylan could get the peace loving folkies (Pete Seeger in particular) at Newport looking for an ax to cut the cables simply by playing an electric guitar. He records and releases the music he wants to and doesn’t care if it sells or if we even like it. He plays concerts and may or may not play his most famous songs. He doesn’t even stand center stage with his guitar anymore, but over by the side behind an electric piano. All of this has caused howls of protest by his fans, one even famously calling him “Judas” during one of his “electric” shows in 1966. Yet, they still come to see him, to feel the power of his lyrics, even if it is harder than ever to actually understand him anymore.
It really all comes down to one thing: Bob Dylan changed the way popular music was written and written about. There was no barrier for him when it came to writing music, no need to stick to Verse Verse Chorus Verse Chorus with a catchy middle eight thrown in for good measure. Words at the end of a line would rhyme with a word in the middle of the next, his vocals would bend the melody to fit the words, not the other way around and while everyone else was writing about being in love and holding hands, Dylan gave us Masters of War, a song that can be played in today’s environment as easily as it was in the early days of the Viet Nam War.
Dylan uses the language unlike any other songwriter of his or any other generation. He can be bitter (Idiot Wind), wistful (Boots of Spanish Leather), political (With God On Our Side), introspective (I Threw It All Away), religious (the “Born Again” trilogy), and twisted in a “what the fuck was he thinking of when he wrote this thing” kind of way (Desolation Row). Dylan is definitely the most visual songwriter, close your eyes and you can see exactly what he is telling you about, even with him most obtuse lyrics.
You can’t overrate Dylan simply because you can approximate his lyrical style any more than you can overrate Jackson Pollock simply by splattering some paint on the floor. As much as possible, you need to put Dylan in the context of his time, like a ballplayer when you are wondering if he should go into the Hall of Fame. There is Pop music Before Dylan and After Dylan. All you have to do is look at how songwriters wrote before he came along and how those same songwriters changed their styles after hearing him for the first time. Songs became less about how good the beat was and how you could dance to it and became more about what it meant, how it fit in our current world climate, music because something more than what you heard after putting a coin in jukebox. This led to some horrifically self-important bullshit being recorded (Hello Yes and others of that ilk), but the change was a good thing, I think, the same way movies changed after D.W. Griffith or comedy changed after Lenny Bruce. There has to be a time when someone says, “Yeah, Surfin’ Safari is nice enough, but…..” and that was Dylan.
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Bill – that is the kind of valid, well-written defense of Dylan I was hoping to see. Well done.
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Joel,
The discussion generated by Bitters obviously uniformed column has been much more interesting than the column itself. If a guy can’t name ten Dylan songs, can’t decipher any meaning out of “Like a Rolling Stone”, in fact, can’t even quote the first vierse correctly, he’s obviously not qualified to run down Bob Dylan’s career and artistic contribution. It did get you a link on Expecting Rain, and a little play from the Dylanphiles. Congrats on that, but I think you need to find writers more knowledgeable on their subjects….Perhaps, as you noted, Bill (from above). Bitters is getting called names because he suggested, in his last paragraph, that he may indeed be “the dipshit that doesn’t get it”. At least he got one thing right…
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Stating something is “overrated” is just a lazy person’s excuse to not have to think about something. It’s easy and boring. Do you not respect your readers enough to challenge us with some substantial ideas? Or are you just content with shooting out of your mouth whatever pops into your head? Because that really doesn’t do anyone very much good. Do you read? Poetry? Do you listen to music intimately? I mean, do you sit alone in a dark room with head phones on and your eyes closed and LISTEN TO MUSIC? Do you care about anything? Judging by the hasty words and sloppy ideas, I would argue that you don’t. Grow some balls and/or ovaries, man. Respect us and we’ll respect you.
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“These songs are good because I can understand them! These songs suck because I can’t understand them!”
There’s some capital logic there, Socrates.
Culture yourself. Learn surrealism, learn poetry, learn art. Read some Beat literature. Listen to some of Dylan’s more recent work… For the love of God, kill this blog before you embarrass yourself even more…
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true dude
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c’mon this guy is pulling y’all’s chain. anyone can see that. He probably wrote the intro that gets read before his Bobness takes the stage – you know the one that appeared in USA today ( this guy’s main reading event) something like ” resurected froma a drug crazed period of inactivity to find god… to reinvent himself….blah blah blah”….well any way this guy thinks Neil Diamond’s cool. So go easy on him.
anyway, it’s more like a 9 digit bank account by now.
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Fascinating discussion – I too felt that the original article was pretty much tongue in cheek though and deliberately misguided in places(perhaps I am being too charitable here?). However, I need to take exception with Ned on a point no one has mentioned – to say Bob doesn’t appear in shitty movies implies that he’s never seen “Hearts on Fire”!
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“A. Sister claims she sold her heart to a ruby-scalded ocean,
But I tell her it’s no use because the stars are now in motion.”
That one’s not too bad – Dylanesque, really.
“E. On the flooded turquoise highway I saw the devil playing cards
He just waved as I drove by, my numb stomach full of shards”
That one was too obviously a fake – he’s NEVER used the word “shard” in any of his songs. Duh!
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Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like satin and silk,
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a pail of milk,
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, rattle and shake,
Wiggle like a big fat snake.
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ole’ Bill, you cracked me up. I know ‘his Bobness’ has made some good real estate investments over the years, so the nine figure estimate is probably on target…thanks for the giggle…be sure to go to the NPR website to preview the new BD album…mostly out-takes, some new lyrics, stripped down arrangements (which I love)…
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I heard of a man from a long time ago
A guy full of sorrow and strife
If someone around him died and was dead
He knew how to bring him back to life.
Well, I don’t know what kind of language that he used
or if they do that kind of thing anymore.
Sometimes I think nobody ever saw me here at all
‘cept the girl from the Red River Shore.
-B.Dylan
check out ‘Tell Tale Signs”
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Is this satire?
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evry thing is satire, man. I mean there’s no ideas in time magazine, there’s just these facts…..
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Ned, you is a crazy straight-line thinker. Bush loves you.
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To Joel of Oct. 1 looking for a well-written “counterpoint” to Ned’s article, not a snide, sarcastic one (as I had posted the other day in unneeded defense of our beloved Bob) … go to today’s “Expecting Rain” posting of Will Brennan’s excellent article from “Blog Critics Magazine” that puts Dylan’s work in the historical perspective of which Ned must have been unaware when he wrote his piece – the posting has a personal note which will ring true with many of us who discovered his/her own “voice” after hearing the voice of Dylan from an simple analog, monophonic device during adolescence. Thanks Will.
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I won’t bother defending Bob’s rightful place in music history. Others have already done that and he doesn’t need my help. I do want to point out that plucking couplets out of a song or poem and claiming that they are incoherent doesn’t make much sense.
B and C both come from “Angelina” a beautiful song that didn’t get released until the first Bootleg series. The complete verses are:
“Beat a path of retreat up them spiral staircases
Pass the tree of smoke, pass the angel with four faces
Begging God for mercy and weepin’ in unholy places
Angelina”
and
“His eyes were two slits that would make a snake proud
With a face that any painter would paint as he walked through the crowd
Worshipping a god with the body of a woman well endowed
And the head of a hyena”
Sure, they’re poetic, even surrealistic, but I don’t think they are particularly criptic.
The last one, “D”, is from the first verse of “On the Road Again” from “Bringing it All Back Home”. The full verse is:
“Well, I woke up in the morning
There’s frogs inside my socks
Your mama, she’s a-hidin’
Inside the icebox
Your daddy walks in wearin’
A Napoleon Bonaparte mask
Then you ask why I don’t live here
Honey, do you have to ask?”
It’s funny. If you leave out the pucnh line at the end, it doesn’t make much sense.
You could take random lines from any book of poetry that would leave you scratching your head.
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Whew. Finally got up off the mat after the pummeling I’ve taken on this one. At least the bulk of the vitriol was quite eloquent, which made me smile even more than usual when reading reader responses.
Listen, I know I’m missing something with this guy, as too many smart people and too many great artists revere his work. I’ll admit to being a bit too glib in my casual dismissal of an artist of such stature. I do intend to give a lot of your song suggestions some serious listens, and I’ll do it with an open mind eager to discover something great. Believe me, I want to “get it.”
However, I still think there’s less there than meets the eye. But I’ll take the fair route, do some further listening, and reconsider.
Oh, and the only comment that really stung was the one saying Bush would love me. As an 8-year Bush hater, as one who told every single fucking person he knew “before” the Iraq War started that it was total bullshit, as one who reads the Washington Post inside and out every day and foresaw this recent crisis coming for years…well, man…that comment hurt. This ultra-left wing, peace-loving, tree-hugging, able-to-correctly-pronounce-the-word-“nuclear,” opposer of everything he stands for, un-American, Patriot-Act hating Aider and Abettor of the terrorists despises that whole goddamn administration.
The dipshitted, stupid, uninformed blah blah blah Ned Bitters
p.s. I gotta know…what Dylan site did a link to this column show up on?
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Ned – Good enough … your link was on the “Expecting Rain” website, which can be accessed through http://www.bobdylan.com … your link was on Oct. 1, and the link “In Praise of Bob Dylan” which puts Dylan’s music and influence in historical perspective is an Oct. 3 posting on the “Expecting Rain” site (“expecting rain” is taken from a line in “Just Like a Woman,” a song on Dylan’s “Blonde on Blonde” album.) I enjoy your blog, keep freewheelin’!
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To correct myself, the “Expecting Rain” site name is taken from “Desolation Row” on Dylan’s “Highway 61” album … a good place to start your “serious listens” … enjoy.
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Thanks johnpilecki. Was just curious. Now, let me begin my listening quest to find the enlightenment I’ve been missing out on. Sure hope I find some success.
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Ned – I don’t know if it is “enlightenment” you will find, maybe just an appreciation of how some folks of my generation (I’m 59), and – to me somewhat surprisingly – some people of “today’s” generation (the “millinnials”?) have been influenced by the man’s voice, music and writing. By the way, London is giving Bob a 150-1 shot of getting a Nobel Prize this year.
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Ned, if you want to rip some washed up old muscian and not anger anyone, why not do an overrated on Loggins and Messina?
what time are you coming over tonight to suck my dick?
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I’ve been saying this for years. Dylan had a few good songs in the 60s, but he hasn’t had anything memorable in almost 40 years. The guy can’t sing and most of his songs are nonsensical. OK Lennon and some other guys loved him, great. But that doesn’t change the fact that Dylan is hugely overrated.
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To Mazer Rackem:
Do you know fact from opinion? The FACT is that, in your OPINION, Dylan is overrated. My OPINION is that you are as much of a dipshit as the author. See the difference?
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Dear Mr. Bitters,
I think your writing would be every bit as good if you refrained from profanity.
You know there are young people who use the Internet, and if they see that kind of language they may think it’s acceptable.
Sincerely,
SunDog
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may i quote a pretty good musician named George Harrison?
“We’re lucky to be alive at the same time as Bob Dylan”.
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Very entertaining article. I have to say I pretty much agree. We are talking about music here. Some of the misinformed pseudo-intellectuals that are so wrapped up in trying to interpret self absorbed Bob-babble need to take a step back and say, you know what, Bob Dylan is just a self absorbed boob – for the most part. And to try and overplay his role in modern rock music – give me a break! Modern rock comes from the blues, which arrived well before Mr. Dylan and done much better by his peers. In the grand scheme of things, Bob Dylan has his place, just don’t overstate it. Personally, and this is just my own taste, I think Neil Young had much more interesting things to say both explicitly and implicitly. But Led Zeppelin really rocked!
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Perhaps it’s not he who is overrated, but the image of those who worship him portray.
“Ned, you is a crazy straight-line thinker. Bush loves you.” -Brian
That’s a sad statement. Not sure who you offend more, Ned or yourself.
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