i'm bob dylan, bitch.
yesterday we (danny, chris, peter and i) watched no direction home, the scorsese-directed documentary about dylan's early years (i think it went up to around 1965, or whenever his motorcylce accident was). needless to say, as anything all about dylan would prolly be, it was amazing. i could go on about dylan for ages; for now i'll just say some things that struck me.
1. present-day dylan, at least in this film, is very lucid and intelligible. anyone who's ever heard him sing should rightly find this pretty shocking.
2. present-day dylan came off as modest and unassuming. i kept on waiting for him, in the way of trying to explain himself and his place in history, to just say, 'look, it's tough to explain to a regular mind why and how i did what i did. i just operate on a different plane, is all. i mean, i'm bob fucking dylan, for chrissakes!'
I. younger dylan was not immune to such exasperation. during one clip, a reporter asks him what is indeed a stupid question, and he responds with something like 'i don't know, man. why would you ask me that? would you ask the beatles that?'
II. of course, as explicated perfectly by the Palm L.O. Hedcatt treatise below, dylan was entitled to be fairly aloof and arrogant, b/c he is, after all, bob fucking dylan.
3. it was crazy how much hostility dylan suffered when he went electric--from folk music--with 'like a rolling stone' and all that. in these clips, when dylan would start playing his electric stuff at some packed venue, the boos would be so loud and fervent that i was impressed that, even as a consummate professional, he could keep playing his set without acknowledging them in some way. (he does admit that they bothered him, after the fact).
chris opined that this was not so different than what happens when a popular current band changes its sound and its fans get pissy about it, but this was different, in its level of hostility and sheer zealousness. people would act like dylan had morphed into nixon.
aside from leaping to the conclusion that anyone who booed a live, inagural verison of 'like a rolling stone' was a brain dead moron, i can only explain this loony treatment by theorizing that dylan was/is so transcendentally talented, that his fans felt that his gift belonged to everyone, like a message from god, and shouldn't have been toyed with according to his whims. ie, that they felt that by changing his beloved music he was violating a public trust. i remember reading, in michael jordan and the world he made, that when mj was contemplating retirement, phil jackson warned him that if he was still capable of playing, many people would resent him for keeping his gift from the public, as if it wasn't his to keep. these two scenarios seem parallel to me. (maybe b/c michael jordan is my measuring stick for almsot EVRYTHING.)
Hedcatt would consider a jordan-dylan comparison total heresy, and i can't tell if he's right or blind b/c he doesn't appreciate basketball. is music inherently more valuable than basketball? most people would say yes, but if millions of people can be truly inspired by an athlete, who's to say one way or the other?
i'd have to cast my vote for dylan, though, i must admit.
anyone who liked 'no direction home' should def. see don't look back. since it was made during the given time period, and therefore does not bear the smooth varnish of retrospective reflection, it offers a slightly better view of how hectic and crazy dylan's life was back then. on the other hand, by the same token, this prolly means that it lacks the more worldly perspective of 'no direction.'
Hedcatt's dylan treatise (highly classy):
Basically, the album "Bob Dylan" entitled him to be enigmatic, " The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" entitled him to be arrogant, " The Times They Are A-Changin' " entitled him to be a total dick, after " Another Side of Bob Dylan," specifically "Spanish Harlem Incident," I would have allowed him to rape one cancer victim. By the time " Blonde on Blonde" came out in 1966, I would be happy to let him eat fresh newborns as they came out of the womb. Add " Desire" and "Blood on the Tracks" and you've got a person, who, basically, could walk up to a reporter (or a fan), take a dump into his hand, insist that the person he was talking to eat the shit before continuing and agree to be immediately slain at the end of the conversation. That excludes albums unmentioned.
Hedcatt:
1. present-day dylan, at least in this film, is very lucid and intelligible. anyone who's ever heard him sing should rightly find this pretty shocking.
2. present-day dylan came off as modest and unassuming. i kept on waiting for him, in the way of trying to explain himself and his place in history, to just say, 'look, it's tough to explain to a regular mind why and how i did what i did. i just operate on a different plane, is all. i mean, i'm bob fucking dylan, for chrissakes!'
I. younger dylan was not immune to such exasperation. during one clip, a reporter asks him what is indeed a stupid question, and he responds with something like 'i don't know, man. why would you ask me that? would you ask the beatles that?'
II. of course, as explicated perfectly by the Palm L.O. Hedcatt treatise below, dylan was entitled to be fairly aloof and arrogant, b/c he is, after all, bob fucking dylan.
3. it was crazy how much hostility dylan suffered when he went electric--from folk music--with 'like a rolling stone' and all that. in these clips, when dylan would start playing his electric stuff at some packed venue, the boos would be so loud and fervent that i was impressed that, even as a consummate professional, he could keep playing his set without acknowledging them in some way. (he does admit that they bothered him, after the fact).
chris opined that this was not so different than what happens when a popular current band changes its sound and its fans get pissy about it, but this was different, in its level of hostility and sheer zealousness. people would act like dylan had morphed into nixon.
aside from leaping to the conclusion that anyone who booed a live, inagural verison of 'like a rolling stone' was a brain dead moron, i can only explain this loony treatment by theorizing that dylan was/is so transcendentally talented, that his fans felt that his gift belonged to everyone, like a message from god, and shouldn't have been toyed with according to his whims. ie, that they felt that by changing his beloved music he was violating a public trust. i remember reading, in michael jordan and the world he made, that when mj was contemplating retirement, phil jackson warned him that if he was still capable of playing, many people would resent him for keeping his gift from the public, as if it wasn't his to keep. these two scenarios seem parallel to me. (maybe b/c michael jordan is my measuring stick for almsot EVRYTHING.)Hedcatt would consider a jordan-dylan comparison total heresy, and i can't tell if he's right or blind b/c he doesn't appreciate basketball. is music inherently more valuable than basketball? most people would say yes, but if millions of people can be truly inspired by an athlete, who's to say one way or the other?
i'd have to cast my vote for dylan, though, i must admit.
anyone who liked 'no direction home' should def. see don't look back. since it was made during the given time period, and therefore does not bear the smooth varnish of retrospective reflection, it offers a slightly better view of how hectic and crazy dylan's life was back then. on the other hand, by the same token, this prolly means that it lacks the more worldly perspective of 'no direction.'
Hedcatt's dylan treatise (highly classy):
Basically, the album "Bob Dylan" entitled him to be enigmatic, " The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" entitled him to be arrogant, " The Times They Are A-Changin' " entitled him to be a total dick, after " Another Side of Bob Dylan," specifically "Spanish Harlem Incident," I would have allowed him to rape one cancer victim. By the time " Blonde on Blonde" came out in 1966, I would be happy to let him eat fresh newborns as they came out of the womb. Add " Desire" and "Blood on the Tracks" and you've got a person, who, basically, could walk up to a reporter (or a fan), take a dump into his hand, insist that the person he was talking to eat the shit before continuing and agree to be immediately slain at the end of the conversation. That excludes albums unmentioned.
Hedcatt:
posted by Colby | 10:56 AM
1 Comments:
it's a related concept, yes.
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