The Bob Dylan appreciation thread

I couldn’t agree more.

Love and Theft was released on 10 September 2001.

art is either forward thinking and progressive, or it is backward looking and regressive and conservative

The obesssion with 'originality' in the modern era has produced vast amounts of meaningless crap.

I also believe that rock n roll / pop / whatever should be immediate, sonically interesting. Danceable aint bad either. Really not sure Dylan fits into any of those categories.

I think if Dylan as a folk singer / story teller who has used various different musical styles simply as tools. Sounds like he's just not for you.

music is art and art is either forward thinking and progressive

Music isn't always art and doesn't always need to be forward thinking and progressive. To me Dylan has been a soundtrack to my life and I hear, feel, interpret earlier songs differently as I change .

There is always avant guard music at the cutting edge using new ideas sound instruments and that is one function of music and art. Other functions include dance, romance, protest and anger, joy, depressions, expression of emotions through music and much more.

Dylan, unlike many old rockers hasn't relied on his back catalogue to entertain but often broken the mould and lost fans with each new era. I suppose as an artist he doesn't give a damn whether or not people like what he does but is compelled. To be honest I struggle with his latest stuff, the Sinatra covers though respect his right to piss me off.

PS I can and do dance to lots of Dylan tracks

Folk was folk 60 years ago

Folk sing and make music, horses don't...
Ralph McTell

retro niche no different from people who use medieval instruments to replicate what was happening

What about 'world music' the huge amount of culturally diverse music which is not western music that has various functions within each culture and may change (and fuse with other sounds) slowly over decades.

Is flamenco, fado, malian blues, Han, Mongolian Throat singing etc art?

my view that music is art

Ah, this explains a lot. As you were.

Just realised my Dylan phase was now 17 years ago.

I'm old................but at least I've moved on to listening to other things.

folk is a retro niche

Folk is any music or art that tells stories about people, and doesn't fit into a particular period of history or superficial style. Folk music performs a function; a folk song is a way of remembering a story without writing it down, so it can be easliy transported and told to other people. Poetry performs a similar function. Dylan performed songs that were written decades before he performed them. Similarly, I might read a poem by someone else that was written decades ago, alongside my own work. The fact I am repeating something from the past has no bearing on weather it is 'good' art or not.

Often when we try to relate an experience or event we are dealing with the past, be it imagined or real. Inventiveness in art, which I agee with you is essential, comes about when solving a problen as to how to write / tell or perform a story more effectively, but you can't avoid the fact that other people will have told similar stories before you.

Blood on the Tracks is definitely art. Dylan played around with this type of storytelling, musical arrangements and escalating scales of emotion over the course of albums in the past but he pretty much nailed it here. There is a line in 'Buckets of Rain' which is a bit shit. And he rhymes 'paint' with 'saint' in Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts but it helps to carry the plot so that's OK in my book.

do you want to stand with the music of rich old white men whose career was nothing but cultural appropriation of black forms?

Yes that is one perspective. Another is that some white people loved black music and wanted to make it more famous and indeed offered credit where credit is due to the originators. Dylan was definitely the latter. cf. "Nobody can sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell"

(Was Paul Simon's Graceland exploitation or an attempt to bring South African music to the world?)

And Dylan broke the old folksong mould expected of him by going electric and lost may fans. The 'Judas' moment.

You could argue that Subterranean Homesick Blues influenced Hip Hop?
Beastie Boys Mike D on Dylan: "He's one of the first b-boys, if not the first. What more to say?" and in 1986: Kurtis Blow featured Bob Dylan singing the opening of "Street Rock" after Dylan used some of Blow's singers on one of his albums in the 80s

https://youtu.be/xfi7ME_Y5Vs

Art/music can't help but build on what came before and fuse styles and break moulds and Dylan has continually absorbed many styles and moved some on.

This is a thread derail which is about Dylan-There are reams of literature discussing what is Art with little consensus. Your view is one, perhaps narrow view, that art is something only relevant if it says something right now in a way never done before. By your definition art is not art the moment it has been created just like the present never exists, it fleetingly instantly becomes the past

By your definition of folk I would argue that "folk" (acoustic guitars, voice) is no longer folk, because "folk" does fit into a particular period and that period ended before the end of the sixties.

The cliched idea some people have of 'folk' i.e the style you describe, is still folk. Nothing is ruled out or in as a result of it's superficial appearance, but by the function it performs, i.e communicating a narrative about people.

you have some sort of modernity and progression

These are both contingent, and subjective qualities. I say forget modernity and progression and whatever else and just focus on what you want to communicate, and use the means closest to hand.

Contradiction is an art form in itself

https://youtu.be/kpy51TlTRSE

;)

I would love to give up work and dedicate my life to reading and writing about music

Hopefully you can do this without involving rest of us! :-|

@Butternut-Squash I'd be interested in reading your blog if you'd care to share. Here or PM.

http://www.glasgowlive.co.uk/news/history/bob-dylans-wild-night-glasgow-12022386

csb

i do like a bit of Bob

i like this cover version too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diKj5gF1kB8

And there's also the unreleased Blind Willie McTell

Sorry for the dredge on this; haven't been to this thread for ages. Is this the one on the Bootleg vol 1-3? Or is there another one out there?

There's the one on the bootleg and various live performances bootlegged

https://youtu.be/sahaKRuEZfk

Ok, thanks. I wondered if there was another semi-official version tucked away somewhere. It's a wonderful song.

I suspect that trying to collect live versions of Dylan is a lifetime's work.

Neverending ;)

Who's seen BBC's Arena: Trouble No More?

Interesting viewing if difficult.

Amazing sermons between the gospel songs