Me and my weird relationship to Bob Dylan

Since I first started really listening to music, I've disliked Bob Dylan. Years ago I met two brothers who worshipped him and I spent many nights with them playing me his records and trying to convince me of his genius. I didn't hear it then and just forgot about Bob Dylan for a few years. Then I started really digging into folk music and country folk. The more music I discovered, the more it seemed like almost everyone went though a Dylan phase, some made a whole career of it. What's more, I like almost everyone Dylan influence and the impact he had on music. I love David Blue and his Dylanism, Ken Lauber and Eric Andersen. Area Code 615 and Barefoot Jerry are probably as cool as they are from backing Dylan and probably getting high for the first time with him. Still I can't stomach his music and I've tried. Was there a mysterious magic he had that I don't hear? How do I love so much music that was a direct influence from him, and yet I can't listen to his music? Tonight I listen to Highway 61 Revisited and couldn't wait for each song to end.

I've even read interviews and watched movies he was in or was about him, but those only made me dislike him more.

"Blonde on Blonde" exists for you.

Possibly check out "Blood on the Tracks".

Or maybe instead, the first album.

http://i1086.photobucket.com/albums/j455/flyingspoon/Gifs%204/angry.gif

The closest thing I have to this is Nick Cave. I love Scott Walker, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, quite a bit of '80s goth/industrial - basically anything that's epic, sweeping, theatrical but I've never really enjoyed anything by him.

skip the classics for starters, you know what those are and what they do already. cop new morning, rolling thunder 75 or love and theft for some other inroads. might help?

go straight for the 80s stuff, he's a lot more bearable with glossy production disguising his voice. try empire burlesque or infidels, lotsa cool tunes in there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nheBN2UWAaM&ob=av2e

Desire was the album that kind of got me into Dylan.

go straight for the 80s stuff, he's a lot more bearable with glossy production disguising his voice. try empire burlesque or infidels, lotsa cool tunes in there.

Where have you been all these years?

er, knowing jacob's blog, the 80s stuff might not be the best place to go. i'd say go for the basement tapes / john wesley harding / nashville skyline / self portrait / new morning. at least those are the dylan records that wouldn't sound out of place amidst the stuff you've posted...

here's the Tree With Roots complete Basement Tapes thang: http://doomandgloomfromthetomb.tumblr.com/post/5800834205/a-tree-with-roots-bob-dylan-is-70-years-old if you haven't already tried that.

I can't recommend BOB if you couldn't wait for Highway 61 Revisited to end.

As tyler hints, the stuff less burdened by myth and expectations (insofar as any of it isn't) is the place to start, John Wesley Harding in particular.

Hell, I'd even recommend Love and Theft, which is loads of fun.

yeah, the run from 68-70 (which is basically the albums I mentioned), that's low-key oddball singer-songwriter country rock. *seems* like it'd be up your alley! but maybe you've already tried it, I don't know.

and i'd throw pat garrett and planet waves in there too, i guess!

how can you resist dylan doing Gord
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-jHqjDRmOk

I'd say don't try to force it. I can understand having some idiosyncratic personal reaction to a singer, even though on paper, they should be the kind of thing that you'd like. Give it time, come back to it in a few years, maybe you'll feel differently.

had to bite my tongue at company christmas party when (much younger) coworker started in on how she couldn't stand Dylan, his voice, etc.

I just recommended she listen to his Xmas album

haha rip that ilm post about the man who disdains dylan or however it was phrased

dylan (in '89) was by some margin the worst concert i've ever seen

otoh this live ep from 10 years later is pretty damn great

I just recommended she listen to his Xmas album

lol

agree with the consensus here. i snuck in through the side door with n. skyline and self-portrait, pat garrett. aside from a few moments on the legendary early shit and i guess some later odds and ends those ones are still my favorites.

I've seen Dylan live twice, in '91 and '01. The '01 show was better. Go for the experience of seeing a living legend and hearing reworked versions of your favorite tunes, but just don't expect to understand much of what he's singing.

not really relevant, but someone just sent me this hilarious clip
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3enGDIYapkw

disappointed this thread is not a kiss and tell

well, there's a chapter in Neil Young's upcoming memoir called: "Me and my weird relationship to Bob Dylan"

but just don't expect to understand much of what he's singing.

made me chortle

entertainment tonight reporter in that clip sounds more solemn signing off than roger mudd.

can picture adam sandler starring dylan biopic

Ultimately, isn't everyone's relationship to Bob Dylan weird?

Aside from the 80's, I have listen to most of Dylan's records at some point. I can sometimes almost like the Freewheelin Bob, and Blonde on Blonde. But mostly I end up actively disliking him. But I'm never settled with the feeling, I keep trying to like him and understand how he was at the center of most of the music I love. I mean why did everyone go through a Dylan phase? Was it because he was selling records? I don't have this thing with any other artist. I'm ok with disliking the few artist I do dislike, does that make sense?

it's because his songwriting style was so compelling and innovative imho

He had terrible hair.

he was really cute

at every point in his career? xp

At every point. A disgrace.

the only good album recorded during an execrable hair period was Empire Burlesque.

whaaaaat

Best album recorded when suffering under the duress of follicle fascism.

I've made this argument on ILM before, but Dylan's one of the first guys in rock to emphasize the specific, unique viewpoint of the songwriter - first person narratives delivered with idiosyncratic language. Prior to this, the vast majority of songwriters trafficked in broadly generic idioms (boy meets girl stories crossed with the language/slang of old black blues guys, primarily). Dylan was the first dude to get over by putting out his own distinct lyrical viewpoint - he made a persona that operated under its own rules (mainly folk traditions refracted through concretist poetry) and upended the sort of language and subject matter that previously dominated.

xp

It's not even his voice I dislike. Take this guy who mostly made a whole career aping Dylan and even styled his hair the same, and I like his records more than Dylan's
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrllQxZifwI
and Ken Lauber first record using Dylan's same phrasing and his same backing band, and again one of my most cherished records
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0vb5D-TWlE

I'd say Chuck Berry got there first.

Dylan made bad poetry, paradoxes, zingers, and inchoate imagery acceptable if the songs are played with precision and sung in a voice that subsumes irony and sincerity like it's a handful of uppers.

do you like this jacob

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FISHEO3gsM

I'm not saying he was totally without precedent. as other people pointed out, guys like Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley totally had their own unique lyrical POVs, albeit still broadly concerned with more conventional subject matter like boning underage chicks and being generally badass. But I think Dylan really is this fairly clear dividing line in 20th century pop - there's the way performers presented themselves and developed their material prior to Dylan and then there's everything afterward. Dylan's one of those rare guys who changed how a lot of people wrote songs - broke pre-existing formulas and made the personality of the songwriter a key component of performers' overall presentation.

xp

That's certainly true. Bryan Ferry remarked, with sadness, about twenty years ago that Dylan forced everyone to start writing their own songs.

"positively fourth street" is supposedly the first pop record whose title has nothing to do with the lyrics.

speaking of chuck berry

dude uses pro tools these days

^ reminds me of an RS piece on Bo Diddley about a year before he died. Bo played the reporter some of his new music, mostly recorded digitally, lots of samplers and drum machines. Afterwards Bo said something like, "No one else will ever hear that."

Thought that it was going to turn out that JacobSanders was really Jakob Dylan.

I've made this argument on ILM before, but Dylan's one of the first guys in rock to emphasize the specific, unique viewpoint of the songwriter - first person narratives delivered with idiosyncratic language. Prior to this, the vast majority of songwriters trafficked in broadly generic idioms (boy meets girl stories crossed with the language/slang of old black blues guys, primarily). Dylan was the first dude to get over by putting out his own distinct lyrical viewpoint - he made a persona that operated under its own rules (mainly folk traditions refracted through concretist poetry) and upended the sort of language and subject matter that previously dominated.

― aesthetic partisan (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, December 21, 2011 1:04 PM

I'll argue that Jacques Brel got there almost a decade earlier with the same sort of stark, confessional, introspective lyrical content that most ascribe to Dylan popularizing. But since he wrote and sang in French rather than English, few outside his home country noticed until English translations of his songs became popular in the late '60s.

Let's not also forget that Dylan sold a lot of records.

yeah, and for better or worse, dylan ~meant~ something culturally in a way that very few other musicians meant something in the 20th century. as that entertainment tonight clip suggests, cultural relevance can really be a drag though. personally, i don't really care about the dude's historical significance, i've just always been drawn to his music. it's fun!

I completely agree as a songwriter, he can be amazing. I don't know if I would say he was a first but definitely the first to popularise many things. I used to think he was just at the right place at the right time. And for years I felt everyone who covered Dylan did a much better job with the song than Dylan could, but I can't use those as a detractor any longer. Mostly I don't understand why I still dislike his music. I used to dislike Talking Heads and Tom Waits, but eventually I discovered one record that opened me up to the rest. I don't know why this hasn't happened with Dylan.

have u tried this yet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JneNPaqx58&feature=related

get "New Morning"

New Morning is so great, the one I listen to the most these days

Dylan had a weird relationship with Colonel Sanders

What's the point? You don't like Dylan. Either don't worry about it, or figure out for yourself what you're missing.

C.K. Dexter breaks it down

You either get it or you don't.

forget it, Jake: it's Dylan.

which side are you on!

i get it

If he's not getting it, why bother? Let him try again later.

i'm not leaving this thread until he gets it

Let's make things interesting.

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

Please, Mister Sanders, Mister Sanders, please!
Please, Mister Sanders, Mister Sanders, please!

or how about this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruvm0PVTqls

I don't think posting more Dylan music is going to help someone who doesn't like Dylan music. Reading about him might I guess, but I'm not going to bother writing anything.

I could not disagree more.

But I do get it, I think I do, but I still don't like what I get. When Jerry Jeff apes Dylan, it's magic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyHsO8ZqR8Y

I haven't heard New Morning, but I'll pick it up if I find it in Houston this week.

JacobSanders have you heard anything from World Gone Wrong? It's magical.

So basically you want to listen to an authentic "folk" (volk?) artist rather than a slightly disingenous outsider (Jewish) trickster figure who semi-ironically uses the folk tradition as template for being one of the more significant artistic figures of the century (or at least selling most of us on that bullshit)?

Dylan does not use the folk tradition ironiclly

ironically

folk music is trickstery, ironic, and often disingeouous at its very root

I don't think posting more Dylan music is going to help someone who doesn't like Dylan music. Reading about him might I guess, but I'm not going to bother writing anything.

yeah, when i was first consciously trying to get into dylan, it would frustrate me that he gave such good interview, was an object of such fascination, and yeah, by all rights appeared to be a way interesting guy. b/c then i would go and actually try to listen to say, blonde on blonde, which, is supposed to be one of the best rock albums ever blah blah blah, but to me just came across like some guy writing terrible lyrics about... jugglers and clowns. not even clever, just word vomit from some guy on reds and weed or whatever... the worst kind of sixties datededness, like tim buckley as mummenschanz guy via bill harvey or whatever

but eventually i found in his work the stuff that uh, "spoke" to me. also there are a couple of his songs that have lyrics that i now believe in fact are every bit as profound and prophetic as his fanaticbase has always made him out to be.

as someone mentioned upthread, it's weird how there is a little bundle of overhyped artists prob for each of us that seem to resist appreciation for the longest time. i still don't really "get" tom waits... but then, some dude sang one of his songs at karaoke last night, and it was pretty damn good. so it's an odd learning curve of sorts i guess. but maybe the more interesting and telling question concerns why we glom onto some artists IMMEDIATELY. when that happens post-adolescence or young adulthood it always seems like something of a small miracle

disingeouous?????

So basically you want to listen to an authentic "folk" (volk?) artist rather than a slightly disingenous outsider (Jewish) trickster figure

I'm pretty sure the Dylan-influenced artists that the OP said he liked (David Blue, Ken Lauber, etc.) are no more authentic "Folk" artists than Dylan himself.

jacob - charlie daniels plays bass on new morning! you love charlie daniels!

folk music is trickstery, ironic, and often disingeouous at its very root

"folk music" (songs that have been picked up by "the people" to the extent that there are many regional versions/original authorship is murky/not widely known) vs. "Folk Music" (songs written by Seeger/Ochs/etc to rally said people)

xp there is some sweet bass playing on that record for sure.
i should re-up that new morning outtakes comp i did a while back. some amazing things from that period that still haven't been released.

"folk music" (songs that have been picked up by "the people" to the extent that there are many regional versions/original authorship is murky/not widely known) vs. "Folk Music" (songs written by Seeger/Ochs/etc to rally said people)

OTM. I'll take lowercase, thanks.

How völkisch of you.

vs. "Folk Music" (groups like Kingston Trio that were never particularly political but were very popular)

Not reading the whole thread as I've not got time, but to the OP; don't fear this. It's absolutely OK to not like Dylan. There is nothing wrong with not getting it.

Of course there's something wrong. Cast thyself out of society.

when loving Dylan is outlawed, only outlaws will love Dylan

"folk music" (songs that have been picked up by "the people" to the extent that there are many regional versions/original authorship is murky/not widely known) vs. "Folk Music" (songs written by Seeger/Ochs/etc to rally said people)

I actually meant the English folk music tradition (i.e. received songs w/o known authorship) when I said folk music was tricksy and cock-eyed, but I guess every iteration of 'folk' has had a good, prominent sense of humor.

This is reminding me of the great country vs. folk thread lost in the 17 Days Downtime exactly seven years ago.

p much what you need to know about "appreciating" Dylan is the last 3 seconds of this take

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJFNQI_ZiC0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMrObpTZ5sI

Honestly I'm not trying to sell anyone bullshit on this thread, just trying to understand my taste. It's only partly even about Dylan and more about what dell spoke about in his post. It has nothing to do with the authenticity of a folk singer or anything like that. I liked David Blue and 'Driftin Way of Life' immediately and have been making a genuine attempt to like Dylan for many years. It's odd to me because I can't even articulate what I dislike about Dylan.

you are a mystery

you aren't

I mean I used to many many reasons for disliking Dylan's music as I said above, but they don't hold weight for me any longer, now that I know more about music. But the dislike lingers.
Really love that Wonder who cover!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9u5x9pdInTU

http://www.canvasandpen.com/image-files/album-dylan-and-dead-r.JPG

^^^the dregs

p much what you need to know about "appreciating" Dylan is the last 3 seconds of this take

always loved this one, Dylan's (purported) song about meeting Elvis:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9dtEVPFcps

that might be my fav dylan song at this point

Love his crazy honkytonk piano on "Day of the Locusts."

xp I do love Charlie Daniels! Looking forward to finding 'New Morning'

and kenny buttrey, he's all over dylan's stuff! though if blonde on blonde wasn't doing it for you in terms of rad nashville session dudes, that might not make too much of a diff.

Maybe try the album "knocked down and loaded", the melodies are pretty decent and the production is this nasty 80s thing that verges on Big Music but is too frantic

admit it, you just don't like his voice. it's OK!

seriously, you've lauded nearly other aspect of his artistic genius, but sometimes there's just no accounting for how a voice makes you respond.

His voice is very different on New Morning/Nashville skyline though!

I mean, different than the popular notion of what his voice sounds like

this is p dope
http://youtu.be/gY3VrpyZnhs

but yeah if you're not feeling his default Dylan Voice it's prob not going to help you