Dylan birthday open thread

Tangled Up in Blue, Sarah, You’re Going to Make Me Lonesome When You Go, Don’t Think Twice.

Saw him at Blackbushe in 1978 with 250,000 other people. He was brilliant (I love Street Legal, though I’ve never met anyone else who does). Then I saw him last Fall in Madison and he was, well, brilliant in a completely different way. I, too, went through the teen phase (probably a couple of years after you, given our age difference, which might account for my openness to Street Legal), and it also faded, but I’m still sometimes intensely moved hearing him (as I was yesterday hearing Sarah on Johnnie Walker).

The BBC is doing a lot of programming around this. My favourite so far is this re-working of Freewheelin by contemporary folk singers. Seth Lakeman, Ralph McTell and Cara Dillon stand out for me.

My thoughts here (though they’re mostly about Wilentz’s idiosyncratic but overall wonderful Dylan book), written back in January when his “career” (if that’s the right word for his journey) hit the 50-year mark.

Unlike you Chris and Harry, my Dylan phase wasn’t a teenage thing. Dylan didn’t really start speaking to me until I’d gotten a lot more interested in and informed about country music and the blues, so I’d say it hit me probably sometime around the end of my time in graduate school; perhaps 10 to 12 years ago. And as it wasn’t a terribly strong “phase,” just an intense interest in really getting to know this music that friends of mine kept calling me out for being ignorant of, I could say I’m still in it; I’m still curious about everything the man records, because you just might be surprised by its quality. I won’t pick out a favorite song (though “Political World” in an unjustly overlooked rock ballad off Oh Mercy, from his otherwise weak late 80s period), but in the spirit of Harry’s citation of folk covers of Dylan, I have to say that perhaps my single favorite collection of Dylan tunes is Robyn Hitchcock’s Robyn Sings. His cover of “Desolation Row” is damn near definitive.

One of my most prized possessions is still my Bob Dylan sweatshirt I got at my first concert of his I saw during my first fall at University (during my own intense late teen Dylan phase). Saw him again two years later, where he was incredible, dancing little jigs with his guitar up front while playing all his songs with this southern blues/ rockabilly twang — his version of Tangled Up in Blue that night was well, brilliant.

It’s All Right Ma spoke to me again this early Wisconsin spring.

I was also somewhat surprised to learn yesterday about his smack habit very early on in his career.

Just like old times here at CT.

“Visions of Johanna” is my favorite of his songs, but Time Out of Mind is my favorite album. That and Love and Theft are much better than any of his other post-(Something to be) Desire(d) work. I found the most recent two disappointing and forgettable, though.

There’s a trilogy that ends the first Bootleg issue, “Blind Willie McTell,” “When The Night Comes Falling From The Sky,” and “Series Of Dreams.” It is an absolute triumph of album running order, not before or yet surpassed. Remarkably, “Series,” a roiling, turbulent passage through the surreal with Dylan in wonderfully understated, mellow voice, was withheld from Oh Mercy’s release, showing that even the artist himself does not always recognize his best work.

Betraying my age, I began with Dylan when Freewheelin’ was new, and still have a softspot for “Bob Dylan’s Dream,” derivative as it may be. But then Dylan has always worked within, or never far removed from, tradition, often edging it forward, as in the righteous rimshot that kicks off “Like A Rolling Stone,” or the second coming of Hoagy Carmichael in “Mississippi.”

Designating favorites is impossible, for they change like the weather. Some lines especially stick, however. “To live outside the law, you must be honest.” “The deputy walks on hobnails, and the preacher rides a mount.” “Only one thing I did wrong, stayed in Mississippi a day too long.” “Some are mathematicians, some are carpenters’ wives, don’t know how it all got started, don’t know what they do with their lives.”

And of course the late rise of rivers in my part of the country can only bring to mind, “High water, high water everywhere.”

Finally, why has no one made a movie of “Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts”?

I first encountered Dylan’s work in a Shopper’s Fair discount store in 1964, when I found The Times They Are a-Changin’ in a bin. What captured me was not the songs, because i couldn’t listen to them in the store, but the beginning of 11 Outlined Epitaphs, which were the liner notes. Blew me away (and read them here: http://www.bobdylan.com/music/times-they-are-changin). I still am amazed that he wrote this when he was 23:

I am still runnin’ I guess
but my road has seen many changes
for I’ve served my time as a refugee
in mental terms an’ in physical terms
an’ many a fear has vanished
an’ many an attitude has fallen
an’ many a dream has faded
an’ I know I shall meet the snowy North
again–but with changed eyes nex’ time ’round
t’ walk lazily down its streets
an’ linger by the edge of town
find old friends if they’re still around
talk t’ the old people
an’ the young people
runnin’ yes . . .
but stoppin’ for a while
embracin’ what I left
an’ lovin’ it–for I learned by now
never t’ expect
what it cannot give me

Of the albums, I’m torn between Blonde on Blonde and Blood on the Tracks. But Time Out of Mind, Love and Theft, and Good As I Been To You are all pretty damned good. But, then, almost everything up to and including Blood on the Tracks was more than pretty damned good.

Apparently the early acoustic albums remain so uncool as to be invisible. But “Boots of Spanish Leather” is still the greatest breakup song ever written.

My life has been one big Bob Dylan phase. I’ve been listening to his music since Junior High. His music led me to poetry and philosophy as lifelong pursuits. Lately, he has been helping make sense of middle age. “Time Out of Mind” is a record I keep returning to now. Back during his “Christian Phase” I went to see him at the Palace Theatre in Albany. He had a kick-ass gospel choir with him and they completely rocked a half filled theatre. It was brilliant! I hope to have “Lay Down Your Weary Tune” and “Blind Willie McTell” played at my funeral.

Saw Dylan with The Band in, I think, 1973. He opened and closed the show standing with his back to the audience and singing “You go your way and I’ll go mine.” We of course loved it.

Has anyone read the Christopher Ricks book on Dylan’s lyrics? Pretty silly, I thought. I wonder what Bob’s take is.

I received the 33 1/3 book on Highway 61 Revisited by Mark Polizzotti as a gift this Christmas and thoroughly enjoyed it

Haven’t read that, but the Greil Marcus book about that album’s signature track is a pretty fun one.

I have really enjoyed a couple of his more recent albums. Do yourself a favour and give Modern Times a listen.

Dylan fan from way, way back; mid-80’s at least. While I’ve always enjoyed his music, especially the magic of his voice, I feel that his lyrics remain under-appreciated. Anyway, back sometime when I was drunk and stoned and high on something that never mattered, I heard this message from Dylan, and it was a revelation. I think it’s from his brief sojurn with scientology.

Mailboxes drip like lampposts
In the twisted birth canal of the coliseum
Rim job fairy teapots mask the temper tantrum
O’ say, “Can you see ’em?”

Stuffed cabbage is the darling of the Laundromat
‘N’ the sorority mascot sat with the lumberjack
Pressing, passing, stinging half synthetic fabrications of his time
…
Allegory agencies of pre-Raphaelite paganry
And Shenandoah tapestries compared with good mahogany
Collapsing the undying postcard romance
…

If you can’t appreciate the shocking depth of his insights, well, I’m sorry for you, my friend.

When I was in college and for some years after, I disliked Dylan because I thought his most famous songs (this was the ’80s and his most famous songs were up through “Blood on the Tracks,” I reckon) had a vindictive and mean edge. When I was older I began to see that a lot of this was the literary-prophetic voice (while writing so much in that mode, he hated to be called a “prophet” — take that, Pope Clement). And that this voice, if bitter, usually turned on itself, or could be flipped around and be heard as compassionate.

Now I mostly like Dylan from “Oh, Mercy” forward. I don’t hear the vindictive streak; I hear reworking musical traditions and contemplating mortality, looking forward to heaven and backward to experience.

Instead of favorite songs, I think of a few songs that gave me chills or that kept coming back into my mind for months until I figured out why — When the Ship Comes In, Ring Them Bells, I Was Young When I Left Home, Nettie Moore, Summer Days.

Correction, it read “Stuck inside a mobile …”

Iain Anderson’s birthday show is up: I’m sure there are loads of them, but I’m partial to Iain Anderson. God, Visions of Johanna is a great song.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b011d9s0/Iain_Anderson_24_05_2011/

Tom Hurka: I have a vision of some callow youth at the BBC with little knowledge of American geography thinking that Bob Dylan was writing a song about phones of the future.

also, kieran is funny, fwiw – there ARE a lot of them that go like that. :)

There’s many things I could say about Dylan, but I’ll just mention that we ended our wedding ceremony with I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight.

I got cut off. What I was about to say was:

It wasn’t until I was 19 and began to listen, really listen, to Highway 61 Revisited, that I began to understand the phenomenon. That was in 1972. I haven’t ever let up, even though years have passed with very little listening. Here, however, is a test of everyone’s tolerance: what do you think of the Israel song, “Neighborhood Bully” from Infidels?

Needless to say, I love it, as I do “Jokerman” and “Man of Peace” from the same album. Man, if I had had those songs in my pocket back in 83 when the peaceniks were selling us all out to the Soviets, I would have been less scared.