I think the best music makes us think of a moment in our lives when we were experiencing something important and a song was playing at the same time. We remember the moment and we remember the song. Good music makes us think, feel, dance, sing, fuck, be bold, take chances, question phonys, topple governments.
To me, the best music of our time has been made by Bob Dylan. To me, there's Dylan and everybody else. I've seen him in concert more than 20 times since 1982. I've seen him lucid and I've seen him completely unintelligible. But I've always been entertained, stimulated, and amazed. I move to the beat, laugh at the humor in his songs, and feel his descriptions of common human events to the marrow -- common events told in beautiful poetry. While I love his melodies, his lyrics are the thing -- never obvious or overtly sentimental. But never expect Dylan to perform a song live like the album. He might play a rock song in reggae, or one of his new boogie-woogie songs as a waltz.
If you don't know Dylan, I suggest the following as a sampler:
* "Highway 61 Revisited" (1965) (contains what Dylan and many people (including me) consider to be his best song, "Like a Rolling Stone")
* "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963) (Dylan's second album is his folk triumph)
* "Blood on the Tracks" (1975) (my favorite)
* "Love and Theft" (2001) (best among his "new" albums)
The following is an article about Dylan's 70th birthday tomorrow.
---------------------------------------------------
L. Kent Wolgamott, "Happy Birthday, Bob: Dylan turns 70," found at:
Bob Dylan turns 70 on Tuesday, [May 24, 2011,] a milestone that is being celebrated, at least in the media, as yet another occasion to reassess the man who has had the greatest impact on popular music in the past 50 years.
Like painter Jackson Pollock, Dylan changed everything in his field, altering the nature of the pop song, the way songs are written and, critics of his voice be damned, even singing.
Before Dylan, pop songs were "moon"-"June"-"swoon" affairs. After Dylan, pop rhymes of romance were, if nothing else, more personal and were easily discarded for lyrics of a far less direct, more poetic fashion.
Melodies and song structure got similar changes, drawing on old blues and country to work over just a couple of notes or chords and stretching out and altering the verse-chorus-verse-bridge formula.
Dylan's impact was immediate, and can be seen in changes in songwriting by contemporaries such as John Lennon and Paul McCartney and thereby translated throughout the pop/rock world.
So even if they've never listened to his music and don't care about the geezer, today's indie rock bands, especially the animal-named folkies, are sons and daughters of Dylan -- which is why he will be forever young.
A few more points about Dylan, who after five decades in the spotlight remains an enigma -- deliberately so.
* He never wanted to be the voice of a generation, and he really wasn't. While the baby boom nostalgists wrap themselves in Dylan, he wasn't around for most of the events they celebrate. For example, Dylan was on the Queen Elizabeth 2 ocean liner when the Woodstock festival kicked off just a few miles from his home. Nor was he anything resembling a counterculture leader.
* He was never just a protest singer and certainly isn't one today. He is, in a perfect term coined by jcurtis
of blogcritics.org, a "semi-mystical esthete."
* He's basically an introvert. Dylan has always had a brilliant strategy of remaining a mystery to hold interest. His interviews are rarely illuminating and often deliberately misleading. He never talks on stage and rarely even smiles. That also covers up for a guy who'd just as soon keep to himself and wander the streets in a hoodie, hopefully unrecognized.
* Nearing his 70s, he's still feisty and funnier than he's given credit for being. When writers, most notably the New York Times' Maureen Dowd, ripped him for playing China and allegedly allowing the government there to censor his sets, Dylan shot back with a letter on his website. Not only did he debunk their charges as the rubbish they were, he closed with this shot:
"Everybody knows by now that there's a gazillion books on me either out or coming out in the near future. So I'm encouraging anybody who's ever met me, heard me or even seen me to get in on the action and scribble their own book. You never know, somebody might have a great book in them."
In fact, all the Dylan books you'll ever need are already out. His autobiography, "Chronicles Vol. 1," is what he wants you to know, in slightly jumbled, occasionally baffling fashion.
Robert Shelton's definitive biography, "No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan," has just been reissued and to some measure updated.
The musings of critic Greil Marcus have been assembled in "Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus: Writings 1968-2010."
One of Marcus' primary arguments is that Dylan's subject matter has been and continues to be America, the old weird America before the country turned into suburban/strip mall/franchise land.
But Dylan is very American in another way: He's a worker. In his 50 years of recording, he has produced 34 studio albums. There are 13 live albums of his concert recordings, including the just released "Bob Dylan in Concert -- Brandeis University, 1963," a recently discovered tape of one of his early performances, two mini-sets of his protest/folk material done solo. He's acted in a handful of films and been the subject of four documentaries.
* Since 1988, Dylan's been on what critics call his "never-ending tour." That's an indicator of his constant touring, which takes his shows to places such as Haymarket Park in a 100-degree swelter, as was the case last August.
Surprisingly, he's not on the road somewhere for his birthday. But he's also not slowing down. Dylan will head off for a tour of Europe this summer, and he'll almost certainly be back in the states later this year.
So happy birthday, Bob, and thanks for everything.
Happy Birthday, Bob: Dylan turns 70 Tomorrow
