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What do you think of Bob Dylan

Dylan - how do you rate him

  • Excellent

    Votes: 57 44.2%

  • Good

    Votes: 28 21.7%

  • Average

    Votes: 12 9.3%

  • Poor

    Votes: 8 6.2%

  • Shite

    Votes: 24 18.6%
  • Total voters
    129
My reading of the "judas" comment was that it wasn't that he was "going electric" - but that it signified he was leaving behind the whole folk/protest scene that made him a star becasue being a rock star looked a lot more fun. So bye bye Joan Baez, civil rights and all the anti-war stuff - hello getting stoned with the beatles.
Now whilst the initial electric period was (IMHO) his very best stuff - it is very noticeable that he was now nowhere near any of the politics of the time. The fact that he essentially sat out the vietnam war is pretty glaring. He never even made a single public statement about his views on it - never mind writing a song. This from the man that wrote "masters of war". The political convulsions of that engulfed america from the mid sixties feature barely seem to feature in his work.
As far as i know he didn't have anything to do with the civil rights movement after going electric either - which is actually quite shocking because probably his biggest break was performing to the crowds at the "i have a dream" march on washington in 1963.
Yet when Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968, ( please correct me if wrong here) Dylan doesn't seem to have made any response. Why the fuck not? Did he now despise the folk scene so much that any association with it was totally beneath him? Did he just us the whole movement to piggy back his way to fame?
"judas" isn't the half of it really. How comes he gets a free pass on this?
 
And the Zim was just one of many, many examples of what in Soviet times was called bardy. Here's Daniel Kahn doing the songs of one Soviet bard, Bulat Okudzhava, in English translation:

 
BigMoaner said:
there is only one way to listen to Dylan. buy each album from the start to the finish. if you jump in at a random stage, or just stick to best of, he will disappoint.

from the amateurish first album onward, you suddenly will realise what the hype has been about.
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Ive always been put off but I just got a copy of the first album and to my surprise i love it! His voice is completely different to later stuff is it? Its kind of punky and playful, and a lot more bluegrassy than i thought he did.
I guess the voice in the first album is more affected and as time went on he became more himself? But i really like the affected version (if thats whats going on).
Im expecting that to my tastes its going to go downhill fast from here on in though.

this one - at 20 years old
220px-Bob_Dylan_-_Bob_Dylan.gif
 
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Rimbaud said:
Yes, I did actually find it to be under-rated too. I guess it was hated at the time for defying fans' expectations, but it really isn't so bad.

My attempt to listen to every single Bob Dylan album consecutively faltered somewhere around the late 80s/early 90s. Apparently it gets better again from the mid 90s but just too much crap to wade through for too long. Self-Portrait was better than a lot of his output from this period. His first Christian album was actually much better than I thought too, but it feels like he has already gotten bored of God bothering by the second and third Christian album and is just doing it to prove some kind of point. That is the point where he really loses direction for a decade or so.
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I think there might be the guts of one really great album in the Christian stuff.
 
bimble said:
The poetry society sells her work in silent print for a price, if you can't be bothered to listen for free. I saw her onstage once. It was beautiful.
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She high fived me when I saw her back when she was part of Sound Of Rum. I fucking loved Sound Of Rum.



Not sure how I ended up here, I’m bored! :)
 
Oh Bob Dylan, couple of good tracks. My mum and my auntie made me go and see him live and it’s one of the least enjoyable gigs I’ve ever been to but they rate it as being amongst the stars or something, I don’t get it. I always preferred Melanie Safka’s covers of his hits when I was a bairn and also Joan Baez’s later on.
This sticks in my mind from my childhood though:

“I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes
And just for that one moment I could be you
Yes, I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes
You'd know what a drag it is to see you”

Yesssss!
 
Read that Barney Hoskyns book about his time in Woodstock in the early 60s, the Band, and all that, interesting read, cool time and place, but he doesn't come across great. Gotta love Blood on the Tracks though.
 
I started listening to Dylan in 1962, which to my surprise is 56 years ago now.

At one point I owned every single official album release, and about twenty bootlegs.

Dylan has always been one of my favourite musicians, but I do have a bit of a masochistic streak, I've supported Heart of Midlothian for nearly as long.

He has written some of the most powerful music written by anyone, at any time. He has also written some utter dross. The 'Dylan' album released in 1973 is without doubt the nadir of his work. (I suppose, in the interests of completeness, it should be mentioned that it was released by Columbia, with no input from Dylan. It was possibly Columbia's revenge for Dylan leaving for a short lived association with Asylum Records.

The list of his 'treasures' is almost endless, but here are a few.









 
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I think I was here. Don't think I paid and don't remember seeing very much! Was thinking of tickets to see him with Neil Young in Hyde Park but can't really be bothered.

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Idris2002 said:
Len has a line somewhere about "the minority of high school girls who preferred my work to Dylan's".

As for Yusuf Islam, well - some tunes you recognize but not much else.

Joni Mitchell was the greatest of all the singer-songwriters. But none of them could have got through without Dylan.
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Cat Stevens wrote some stunners. Father and son. Where do the children play. Matthew and Son. My lady D'arbanville. Wild world. Oh Caritas. Und viel anderen.

Speak for yourself re 'some tunes you recognise'. This was the music of my youth. (Dismounts high horse. :))
 
Sasaferrato said:
Cat Stevens wrote some stunners. Father and son. Where do the children play. Matthew and Son. My lady D'arbanville. Wild world. Oh Caritas. Und viel anderen.

Speak for yourself re 'some tunes you recognise'. This was the music of my youth. (Dismounts high horse. :))
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There's a young lad here in the puzzle palace who's the spit of the young Cat Stevens. And he has a girlfriend who looks like a young Joni Mitchell.
 
redsquirrel said:
Lessing got it when she was in her 80s, Pinter got it when he was 75 and well after his most respected plays had been published, Llosa got it in his 70s, I'm not familiar with most of the other recent winner but I'd say giving to people late in their lives is pretty standard.
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Probably because it takes decades to produce a substantial body of work.
 
Sasaferrato said:
Cat Stevens wrote some stunners. Father and son. Where do the children play. Matthew and Son. My lady D'arbanville. Wild world. Oh Caritas. Und viel anderen.

Speak for yourself re 'some tunes you recognise'. This was the music of my youth. (Dismounts high horse. :))
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First Cut is the Deepest :)
That's a classic he also wrote.
 
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