The Weisman Art Museum's "Bob Dylan's American Journey, 1956–1966" exhibit is [over] and [The Current ran a live broadcast from the grounds. Details below.]
But really, what is the big deal with Bob Dylan? What is it about Bob Dylan that captures people's attention?
I can clearly remember how his music finally clicked with me when I was younger. There was a distinct moment when I thought, "Oh man, so that's what the fuss is about." He's given us an amazing body of work. That said, I'm not obsessively deconstructing his lyrics or declaring him a prophet.
Do you study Dylan? Consider yourself a Dylanoligist? Can you see why other people would?
________________
Julia Schrenkler
Minnesota Public Radio Interactive Producer
This information is for a past event:
If you can't get enough of Bob Dylan, tune in or stream Minnesota Public Radio's The Current 03/26/07 from noon to 3 p.m. Details from Live Broadcast: Highway 61 Revisited:
On Monday, March 26, The Current will broadcast live from noon - 3 p.m. from outside The Weisman Art Museum on The University of Minnesota's East Bank campus. Our broadcast is part of "Highway 61 Revisited: Dylan's Road from Minnesota to the World" a three day Dylan symposium. Steve Seel will host, play Dylan's music, and talk about it with expert Dylanoligists.
rate
email
print
link to this page
Comments: 39
My brother's won the Dylan Soundalike contest at the 400 more than once, which is kinda cool.
Crazy day today, so I won't be hanging around the Lounge much. I saved a stray cat yesterday - the most emaciated I've ever seen. She was stumbling and falling over from weakness due to starvation. Took her to the emergency vet clinic, where they hydrated her and ran blood tests (negative for feline leukemia, thankfully) and now she's home. I have to feed her small amounts several times a day, and will go home at lunch to feed her. Wish her the best, folks. Her name is Ava, after Ava Gardner. I'm feeling sad and frazzled by it all. If you saw her, you would weep.
That is cool, Zelda/Vannapie, but without picture proof ;-) You might have mentioned this before, but how did your brother master his sound? (Aside re: the cat: with a name like Ava she's bound to land on her feet and be beautiful.)
Maybe we're in the same boat, Mitch. I guess I can't consider myself a real fan, because the curve on what constitutes a real fan of Dylan's is steep.
Melinda your quote "it's just something that's terribly American and dirty, and rustic and absolutely pure part of the music geography" nails that aspect of his work. On to you dating musicians *grin* Is it really the only song of his you like?
Thank you, Fred. Done!
all the good ones, Julia, they're always bringing something new to the work. I've always liked the comment from Seamus Heaney that your first job as artist is to find your own voice and your second is not to imitate yourself.
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976916607
Hi Susan, it's been awhile since I've seen you. Pamela's Not Dark Yet: Discovering Dylan in Middle Age (clickable version) article has one of my favorite lines in it, where she writes, "I still have so much to discover in the work of Dylan, many studio albums still to buy and live performances to hear." It speaks to his body of work and her exploration of his art along her own journey. BTW She's getting a lotta linkage in this discussion! ;-)
Think you'll go back and peruse further, Frick? I've yet to see it.
Nana to Seven D., too bad you can't be here! I don't know if the exhibit will travel to Philadelphia or not, but I've put in a question about it. Know that MPR has a tidy little article (see He's an artist, he don't look back - there's audio, a small slideshow) and a little more information about the exhibit.
It has bothered me greatly that I can't go to this exhibit, and especially that I could not go to the Dylan symposium that was held earlier this month at UMN. I actually emailed them to ask if they were taping the sessions for sale to his far-flung fanatics, like me. I could not withstand the temptation to book a flight to MN for Dylan Days in Hibbing in May, so happily I will be making my pilgrimage to the home town of His Prophetness. ;-)
I've written enough here about why I love his music. I will just add that I am bewildered by people who think he peaked a long time ago as a "protest singer" or "60s singer." His mature music is many times more evocative and powerful, and his creaky, raspy, broken voice more beautiful even than how he sounded on "Lay Lady Lay," which I consider to be among his most beautiful VOCAL performances. The fullness of life in his voice these days lends great beauty and pathos to his music.
"In another gesture of reconciliation, he makes peace with time: 'So many things that we never will undo/I know you're sorry, I'm sorry too' (Mississippi). But, as if to insist that he is not wallowing in despair, he immediately launches into another line as the tempo of the music rises. 'Some people will offer your their hand and some won't,' and that's how it goes, but in saying this he reaffirms his acceptance of life in a world where the conditions of his own well-being are out of his control. Expressing a strange and beautiful faith, he sings: 'I know that fortune is waiting to be kind/So give me your hand and say you'll be mine.' His logic is this: chance events have been going horribly, so they must be due to turn around sometime. Here, Dylan looks directly at a world lacking any clear purpose and makes an appeal that is filled with absurd faith in what is still possible. This is what may remain after a person has sounded out the depths of existential despair and come to terms with a finite and sometimes tragic life on the other side. In a universe from which all the stars have been torn down, a human being feels like a stranger. But it is not impossible to keep on living under such conditions, and Dylan shows us how it might be done. For this timely philosophical insight, we are forever in his debt." ["'I Used to Care, but Things Have Changed': Passion and the Absurd in Dylan's Later Work," from Bob Dylan and Philosophy]
just commenting on artists who were inspired by Dylan, Chris Smither, Eliza Gilkyson, and Lucy Kaplansky come first to mind -- inspired by seeing where you could take poetry and personal expression in song that is. Mary Black is another musician who has long found the quality of Dylan's writing inspiring, though that might be a bit unexpected; I'm sure the list is quite long actually. Mark Erelli, Eamon Friel, Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh... though I expect I am very far off the radar of musicians most people reading this know of by now.
The info is direct from The Director of Curatorial Affairs, Experience Music Project so you know it all legit.
Suggest/lobby for other venues!
No kidding, Kerry - the list of artists you've shared is making my music compass spin. I'll have to check them out and see if I can find what you've discovered there.
One would hope that would be a great compliment to any artist, Sue S.
*grin* to Melinda, those musicians are hard to resist.
Interesting:
Yes, i do consider myself a Dylanologist and have been named as such by others as well and even lecture on Bob Dylan for pop culture courses at NYU and The New School (NYC)... i also run a Dylan site that is picked up by Google News and expectingrain.com - the biggest Dylan site as well.... so yes, i write about Dylan all of the time, i find video footage (rare) of Dylan and make sure it's available to my 7,000 plus visitors per article on Dylan or more, and go way out of my way and i have never missed a Dylan show because they are all so different and i can tell you, so far, every one of them has been worthwhile in a different way - somethin offered diffrently each time.
Dylan is, and will remain, iconic. He represents a moment in time when things were really changing and he captured that in song and even changed the face of music (remember, when Dylan became big initially, the number one hits at the time before him wre songs sung by Harry Bellafonte and songs like, and i'm serious here, "How Much Is That Doggy In the Window" - nobody had done what Dylan had done...
Sure, there were murmurings in the Village of NYC, but nobody had heard a sound like Dylan's before (except maybe Woody Guthrie, whom he tried hard to imitate at first, but after that, Dylan vry quickly adopted his own sound, which i tell you - has morphed from one album to the next, never remaining the same. He is changable, malleable, in constant flux and changing with the times.
AS to his involvement with the 'protest movement' he never claimed to be a protest singer.... it was a label put on him and yes, sure, he rode on the coat-tails of Joan Baez to get to whre he needed or wanted to be - famous - and it worked. And hwen it worked, he very quickly stopped sharing the stage with her as she had shared the stage with him (hey, i didn't say he was always a nice guy!) ~~
But for example, "Maggie's Farm" is all about not working or singing for the protest movement. When asked if he was a "protest singer" in London in 65, Dylan responded, "That's all i ever do is protest...." If you read that carefully, you'll easily get the double entendre. He protests that he's a protest singer. He will not be pinned down. He's also said that he defines nothing, and nobody defines him.... and that's right.... why be pigeonholed?
But what makes Dylan so iconic and so wonderful? The fact that a song like A Hard Rain's a Gonna FAll as so far ahead of it's time and predicted what could not have been predicted. That so much of Dylan's songs are, whether he likes it or not, poetry (a label he has shunned, but then, he also wrote a book, so he's being somewhat coy and damn, he has to know he is a poet after It's Alright Ma, I'm only Bleeding or Desolation Row - songs of this caliber.
Simon Cowell recently said that he thinks that "Bob Dylan is" and i quote Cowell, "boring" (talk about the pot calling the kettle black) and that "kelly clarkson will be around for years longer and after Dylan is gone..."
Really?
I have nothing against Clarkson and didn't against Cowell until he made that stupid statement,, no doubt as a publicity stunt (and perhaps even jealousy). Nobody can out Dylan Dylan. Few have had as much success as Dylan and few will be remembered. He has even been nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature several times (did you know this?) - i think that speaks volumes. I am sorry, but i cannot see that happening with anyone on American Idol right now, no matter how talented. And talk about boring - Simon Cowell just says the same pissy and pithy things season after season.
Now that's boring.
To his credit, Dylan has maintained a good sense of humor through all of it, most of his life, for the most part, even when under vicious attack as a "sell out" (which i don't think he ever was - so what if he wanted to make money? This is what performers do... why should he be held to some 'higher standard'? As he always said, "i'm a song and dance man."
But of all quotes and i quite agree, no matter what you think of Dylan, he wouldn't much care because as he said, "i'm not angry.... i'm delightful...
cheers, and pardon the rant ~~ Xanthe -
you ask me, why Dylan? so you can find it here on Gather if so moved and at least there is some counter-point, which is always a good thing!
Thanks for the grist for the mill! Always good to keep the wheels oiled.... be well, and i hope you'll drop by and read... Xanthe...
Welcome aboard the discussion train xanthe, and I'm glad you shared your Web site and linked to your article - I will check it out! Glad to have a Dylanologist speak up.
You're right to mention his humor, that's something that seems to get lost in many discussions about the man. I'm curious: were you able to catch the audio from the Weisman?
Live Broadcast Highway 61 Revisited
In the right column you can find a list of the interviews and their audio.
Interviews
* Michael Gray
* Greil Marcus
* Dave Marsh
* Christopher Ricks
* Bobby Vee
* Ann Waldeman
I'm embarrassed to admit I didn't realize they were up.
You gotta know Minnesota's own Red House Records are a hit around here...hard to believe it has been over a year since Red House Records' president Bob Feldman passed.
He can have a charisma, but he can also be anti-charismatic. Bob's stage persona varies as much as his lyrics for a single song. Some of that changing persona may be due to his severe back trouble (he often plays no guitar these days, "just" keyboards). Nevertheless, he can appear subdued and disengaged, almost to a Miles Davis extent, and can appear completely engaged. On top of that, how he "appears" isn't related to any obvious reality because he is a master of misdirection. Take his famous or infamous speech and performance (of "Masters of War")- was it at the Grammys? I'm getting old and forgetful. The one where he said something like, "When I was a young boy, my Daddy told me, son..." and then didn't say anything for about what seemed like 5 minutes. It was probably 25 seconds, but that's a lifetime on TV. When the words finally came pouring out, I think that those words poured out of his soul from him to us, and he said exactly what he wanted to, in the manner he thought was appropriate. The performance of Masters of War was so raucous and practically atonal that it seemed to me to be a commentary on our collective, smug, safe-in-our-living-rooms enjoyment of CNN's war news from far away, as if it were a video game (it must have been Gulf War 1).
I have friends who've seen him every year for 30 years or so, usually more than once. I've just been to 4 or 5 shows, but most were good or excellent (I'm not a big GE Smith fan, so those particular years were not a touring highlight for me).
I could go on and on, until we've had too much, but I'll stop for now. Great post.
Now, almost forty years later, Dylan has been discovered again. He is still searching as he did in our youth and that's one reminder that we can't ignore. Maybe because some of oldsters, have the opportunity to look at out past and find it wanting, we listen to Dylan and wonder if we should further define ourselves.
I think Dylan has done that. He is constantly defining himself. Maybe because he has the time or is still touring and on the road. He kind of makes us stop and perhaps define ourselves in the latter stages of our lives.
I felt but could not put in words for myself
"Get out of the new one if you can't lend a hand!"
"It ain't me you're looking for babe"
"Don't follow leaders - watch the parking meters!"
and in love "Lay Lady Lay"
He's getting old, his voice is shot
but still he sings - troubador is not
giving up; he's still got the light
"Do not go gently into that good night"