Lets Talk Dylan.....Volume 2

OK tell me what is so magical about Dylan..

Apart from some lyrics and the fact he is always on tour

(challange)

That is a very good question Mr FP and a very difficult one to answer. First of all, I have to say I love his voice. The early singing thru the nose style, the more country mid period vocal or the gruff wrecked bluesy vocal of the later period music. All of them, its almost like listening to different artists. Listen to an early song like Blowing In The Wind ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ced8o50G9kg
) and then more forward 43 years and listen to Cant Escape From You ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvK_MaByGr8 ) it could be two different artists.
Also the lyrics are a huge reason to liking Mr D. So many songs tell a story and each of these storys can be translated in so many ways. What is Tangled Up In Blue about? Could be half a dozen things!
He continues to throw his audience in different directions, even namechecking Alicia Keys on 2006's Modern Times.
So many things but most impossible to write down in words!

Bob Dylan has given an interview about his forthcoming album, Together Through Life, and, in a typically playful, oblique way, he addresses questions of periodization and musical meaning: "Some people preferred my first-period songs. Some, the second. Some, the Christian period. Some, the post-Columbian. Some, the Pre-Raphaelite. Some people prefer my songs from the nineties. I see that my audience now doesn’t particularly care what period the songs are from. They feel style and substance in a more visceral way and let it go at that. Images don’t hang anybody up. Like if there’s an astrologer with a criminal record in one of my songs it’s not going to make anybody wonder if the human race is doomed.... If there are shadows and flowers and swampy ledges in a composition, that’s what they are in their essence. There’s no mystification. That’s one way I can explain it."
A couple of weeks ago I got to hear the new record, which the Columbia label is scheduled to release on April 28. I'm reluctant to say much after a single audition, but to my ears it was no letdown after Dylan's recent trilogy of new material — Time Out of Mind, Love and Theft, and Modern Times. In the interview Dylan describes it as a "romantic" album, which seems about right, although this romance clearly has more shadows than flowers in the corners. The songwriting is more straight-ahead than on the previous two albums, which were stuffed — sometimes overstuffed — with verbal imagery. I kept thinking of Hank Williams's spare, chiseled writing, especially on "Life is Hard": "Sun is sinking low / I guess it's time to go / I feel a chilly breeze / In place of memories." (Note: what I heard may not match the finished work.) There's a fantastically chilling, end-of-one's-rope number called "Forgetful Heart," which has this Kafkaesque image: "The door has closed forevermore / If indeed there ever was a door." But the sadness of the scene is lightened by sweet-sounding arrangements (mandolin, accordion, and violin fill out the band) and by flashes of wit ("Down by the river Judge Simpson walking around / Nothing shocks me more than that old clown"). Some up-tempo, old-time rockers also keep the night terrors at bay.
The version I heard ended with the double whammy of "I Feel a Change Coming On" and "It's All Good" — a pair that may cause listeners to detect a political undertow in this seemingly intimate, out-of-time affair. The chorus of the gorgeously lilting, almost Motown-like "I Feel a Change" could be heard as Obamaesque, although with a certain ambiguous regretfulness Dylan adds, "And the fourth part of the day is already gone." (That's apparently a reference to the Book of Nehemiah.) A Dylan album can't end on such a half-hopeful note, of course. On the grimly boogeying "It's All Good," the singer dons a mask of lethal irony, surveying a ransacked social landscape and then adding, after each exhibition of desperation and decay, "It's all good." That smug little phrase has now been destroyed. Dylan's protestations in the latest interview notwithstanding, some people may indeed come away thinking that the human race is doomed, although at least we go out with a crooked smile

[SIZE=1]Photo: Mazur/WireImage
[/SIZE]It looks like Bob Dylan may be hitting the road with John Mellencamp for a run of minor league ballpark gigs this summer. Nothing has been confirmed, but at a recent Joan Baez concert in Bloomingon she let the word slip. After playing “Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right” at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater to a crowd that included hometown hero John Mellencamp, Baez said “Mellencamp? Are you really going to go on tour with that guy? Seriously, come talk to me after the show.” If that wasn’t enough of a clue, yesterday Mellencamp posted this on his website: “A special tour is in the works, slated to start in early July and run through the end of August. It will play at minor league baseball fields, with John sharing top billing with two other major artists.” According to the usually-reliable Dylan fansite Bob Links, the third artist in the bill will probably be Willie Nelson

To me the magic, if we call it that, is that whatever he sings, however overblown, imaginative, stylistic etc. etc. he makes you believe that he truly means it. He's real and he writes about real emotions, real people, real issues; the real world. When he's singing it you nod your head because he makes it all seem plausible, probably, sometimes downright inevitable. That's magical!

got to agree! Listen to Masters of War. You feel yourself agreeing and urging death to war mongering world leaders, "I'll follow your casket to make sure your dead" Vicious and vivid!

Just the raw power of the words and the delivery! Check this song, avoiding The Bryds poppy cover

Crimson flames tied through my ears
Rollin' high and mighty traps
Pounced with fire on flaming roads
Using ideas as my maps
"We'll meet on edges, soon," said I
Proud 'neath heated brow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.
Half-wracked prejudice leaped forth
"Rip down all hate," I screamed
Lies that life is black and white
Spoke from my skull. I dreamed
Romantic facts of musketeers
Foundationed deep, somehow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.
Girls' faces formed the forward path
From phony jealousy
To memorizing politics
Of ancient history
Flung down by corpse evangelists
Unthought of, though, somehow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.
A self-ordained professor's tongue
Too serious to fool
Spouted out that liberty
Is just equality in school
"Equality," I spoke the word
As if a wedding vow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.
In a soldier's stance, I aimed my hand
At the mongrel dogs who teach
Fearing not that I'd become my enemy
In the instant that I preach
My pathway led by confusion boats
Mutiny from stern to bow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.
Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats
Too noble to neglect
Deceived me into thinking
I had something to protect
Good and bad, I define these terms
Quite clear, no doubt, somehow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.

I love My Back Pages! One of my favorite Dylan tunes. I think it's a song that can mean many different things depending on how it's sung and by whom. It can be pure cynicism, the passage from youthful innocence and a wish to change the world, to a weary acceptance that it can't be done. Or a testament to the young's inability to see nuances, to consider everything black or white. Or a tongue in cheek nod to one's younger, more serious self, as self-deprecating humor is a sign of maturity. Or any combination of the above.

That's another magical thing about Dylan's songwriting. There are layers there so, depending on the singer or the mood, it can mean many different things to different people. Just like great art touches different people differently.

Great description! About the words, with a lot of artists if you lay the words bare in front of you without the music they mean nothing or are just pure nonsense. With Dylan, they are words of poetry which need no music or vocal. Just read and make of what you will. Can words be art? I see no reason why not.

Okay now there's real talking starting...opinions...that is what we need here

Originally Posted by FPSHOT

Okay now there's real talking starting...opinions...that is what we need here

Where's yours then?

Also, thats what we need throughout this whole forum but sadly its very much lacking!!!

well you Dylan specialists need to seed first, then I will be in the Harvest process

You could start with My Back Pages, FP. I know the video from the Dylan 30 year anniversary concert is uploaded in the Love This Song thread, I think by JR. Gnome posted the lyrics above. Now just dig in!

JR Ewing? Cool !!

Oh I know that one very well, when George did it..and I saw the lyrics yeah just like the geographice ones.

I am often too impatient to read all the poetry Dylan writes, it is just a matter of taste and interest.

I do see where George and John got to him at the time, that Bob was different than all the rest in the music sean who sang about the birds and the bees and finally someone stood up and made music out of poetry with all these stories yeah.

It just never really got to me....yet

With some Dylan is a matter of maturity. Maybe in a few years...

John Mellencamp !!!! nooooo! not him ! YUCK please come back here with Willy or Merle but not John couger He can get someone better than that!

Originally Posted by hibgal

To me the magic, if we call it that, is that whatever he sings, however overblown, imaginative, stylistic etc. etc. he makes you believe that he truly means it.

True!

Early report of setlist from tonites Stockholm warm up show!

1. Most Likely you go your way
2. Senor ˙
3. I'll be your baby
4. Stuck Inside of Mobile
5. Tryin' To Get To Heaven
6. Things Have Changed
7. Watching the River Flow (bob on guitar)
8. Blind Willie McTell
9.'Cross the Green Mountain
10. Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands
11. Most of the Time
12. Highlands
13. Knockin' on Heaven's Door

Encore:
14. Thunder on the Mountain
15. Like a Rolling Stone
16. All Along the Watchtower

I'd love to have been there but it wasn't possible to squeeze into the budget.