The Last Temptation of Dylan- Watching the new documentary.

slate ^ | Posted Friday, Sept. 23, 2005 | David Yaffe

[WorkingClassFilth]

I spent many years in his old haunts on Cedar Riverside and have met a lot of his contemporaries. Many of them shared your view.

[siunevada]

I'll watch it just to see Pennebacker's footage. I always liked Don't Look Back. Dylan always had his head on straight. He said that he was a pop entertainer, nothing more. The earnest and sensitive seekers didn't believe it was only entertainment.

[Iscool]

If you don't understand on at least on a visceral level a phrase like "but for the sky there are no fences facing" then honestly I feel sorry for you.

And of course a hefty dose of marijuana or hash helped you get to that 'visceral' level...Dylan was fun, but like everyone else, he was a lot more fun when everything else was a little foggy...

[siunevada]

Dylan may have finally reached the last temptation, cross-promoting himself with a Starbucks latte and a Victoria's Secret Angel bra, a marketing triumph that would have made his wheeler-dealer manager Albert Grossman proud

The check cleared the bank, right?

[alrea]

his songs will live long after he does. for doubters, simply check out judy collins or warren zevon doing "dark eyes"

[WorkingClassFilth]

Yes, of course. The sands of time have certainly not buried these immortals.

[siunevada]

What we really need is fewer "poets" and a better dictionary.

LOL!!!!!!

[elhombrelibre]

The author says Scorsese was in the wacko in the movie "Taxi." However, that was Robert Deniro. If he is such an expert, I'd have expected him to know that.

[pissant]

Dylan is to pop music what Bach is to classical. He will be played and admired and his songs will be covered for the next 200 years.

[nuconvert]

"He will be played and admired and his songs will be covered for the next 200 years."

And his poetry referenced & quoted for longer than that.

[pissant]

Most likely!

[RayChuang88]

Yet, as for as I'm concerned, Dylan was an irrelevant whiner. And, BTW, he sounded terrible. To call his noise 'music' is really a stretch, in my opinion.

I believe that Bob Dylan is partially deaf, hence the reason why he doesn't sing that clearly. Dylan's songs often sound VASTLY better at the hands of other artists.

[bethelgrad]

Took me a minute on the "gay" part, then I remembered the gays are claiming Lincoln as their own.

[BohDaThone]

Oh, Joan Baez should be compared to Karen Carpenter or someone like that - not a poet like Dylan. Did she even write anything?

Yes- quite a lot. "Sweet Sir Galahad" ; "Honest Lullaby: ; (appropriate now) "Gulf Winds" Also lots of political pablum, but the personal is pretty good, IMHO, though not up to Dylan. If you google, you'll find that she wrote 2-6 songs on most of ehre later albums, after the very early folkie ones.

Also, Baez is certainly a leftist loon, but a consistent one, compared to FOnda, etc. After the end of the Vietname war, she actually spoke out against the Vietnamese COmmunist atrocities, which caused a lot of her lefty friends to drop her like a hot rock back then.

[Jonah Johansen]

Complaints of the ignorant
1. Dylan’s singing .. He is not a crooner, so what. The emotion, phrasing and the inflection he brings to the songs greatly enhance his albums. Which is why it is rare to hear a cover version match the original, when it does it is usually by someone like Springsteen or Hendrix. When you first listen to Tom Waits his gravely voice puts you off, but the more you listen you realize it actually goes well with the content of the lyric.
If you doubt me, listen to the emotion in the original Masters of War or The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll.
People who criticize his singing invariably have a superficial acquaintance with Dylan and the genre itself.

2. Dylan’s Christianity- Listen to the lyrics on Slow Trains Coming, they are incredibly powerful and prophetic. There is no lyricist in popular music who has so consistently weaved biblical themes and quotes into their work;
also, think of the courage it takes for a Jew with a large secular, and often left wing anti-religious fan base, to put out Gospel albums and tour singing gospel songs.
Three times in Dylan’s career he has made changes which alienated much of his fan base, and in each case influenced the direction of popular music.

3. Dylan’s legacy-
a. Simple challenge, next time you are in a book store peek at a copy of one of the books containing Dylan lyrics.(The large pink colored hardback for example); then name another 20th century poet who has written more powerful and accessible poems, not to mention rock lyricist.

b. Make a list of who you think the best song writers of the last 50 years or even your favorite songwriters, I can guarantee every one of them would acknowledge Dylan's influence.
c. Every time any music publication asks, music professionals who the most influential/greatest songwriter in the history of rock is, Dylan is the near unanimous choice.

4. Dylan is a leftie- I think it is important to note that he has given little if any support to the left since 1965. Writing a few anti-war civil rights songs in your early 20's is forgivable. In fact he was widely condemned by the left for abandoning the cause in the mid 60s.

---

A person has every right to listen to a little of someone’s music and say they do not like it. One of the great virtues of people here is their love of facts and the truth. I can guarantee, that if you make just a tiny sincere effort to read the lyrics and listen to the music with an open mind it will change your opinion.

If you are going to dismiss an artist, which many music professionals think is the finest songwriter and poet of the last 50 years you need to do a little more study before you throw out your one liners dismissing Dylan.

[pissant]

Well said.

[Emmett McCarthy]

I'm of the age that I had the pre-rock Dylan albums when they first came out, but I was also young enough to have dug the electric sound that the "folk Nazis" hated so much and I still listen to it.

I figure he just does what he does and all the analysis, criticism and such is somebody else's thing. He's just a freakin' singer/songwriter and making it ryhme and fit the musical "hook" is all that counts. If other folks think they have to find some great "meaning" to it all, well, let 'em have at it. It's an accident - or "A Simple Twist of Fate", if you will - that he's made so much money that he's had to hire people to hire other people to count it and, so he can do as he pleases. And that seems to be going around with a band and playing his stuff wherever people will buy tickets. As Ol' Waylon once sang - "Lord, I've seen the world with a five piece band, lookin' at the back side of me". That's just what guys like Dylan choose to continue to do. People make too much of it. Like it or don't like it as it suits you.

[nuconvert]

Bump!

[brazzaville]

Good morning.
"...the boomer g-g-generation is important to itself alone."

In a few years, when the unimportant boomers begin to go on Social Security in large numbers, we will see how important they are.

Where we 50-somethings were influenced by the Great Depression and WWII, the Gen-Xers are influenced by the Sixties and Vietnam.

911 will mark the whatever follows Gen-X generation and the wheel turns.

Dylan has a line in Shelter From the Storm that makes me think of Vietnam when I hear it....I offered up my innocence and got re-payed with scorn.... or something like that.

Michael Frazier

[Moby Grape]

Instead of offering your "opinions", try latching on to some FACTS...Dylan released THREE Christian albums...recently Gospel recording artists released an album of Dylan's Christian music...but most importantly, READ the words of the songs from his Christian albums...the lyrics are some of the strongest ever written in contemporary Christian music.

Of course, contemporary Christian music DIDN'T exist when Dylan did it, so the record industry, and the public did not know what to do with it...

I saw Dylan in concert three times two years ago...He opened those concerts with "I AM THE MAN THOMAS", an old blue grass song about Christ showing his wounds to Thomas...He also performed two of his other songs from his Christian albums; "I BELIEVE IN YOU" and "SOLID ROCK".