[lbo-talk] Why are we still turning to Dylan for the soundtrack to our demonstrations?

joanna 123hop at comcast.net
Mon Nov 14 20:18:49 PST 2005


Louis Kontos wrote:


>People have always felt the need to project their own failures on Dylan.
>He's like a screen. I mean the man has written over a thousand songs (!),
>
So did Barry Manilow, probably.


>reworked several genre of music and changed the way most of us understand
>music -- not just protest music.
>
Well, most of that was part of the air he breathed and the times he lived -- when those times were over, his art was over. He was very talented. And, perhaps, calling him a poseur is being too rough. Let's just say he was a great simulator and he knew which teat to suck, in more ways than one. Carrol once accused me of not appreciating the Earl of Rochester, but he was wrong, I do. I just don't take him for more than he was -- a talented poet who came along at a time when the English language had reached a certain perfection and when a couple of generations of great poets had sounded out the rhythms and permutations of its poetic forms. So, he lisped in poetry, etc. Kind of like being a classical musician during the baroque period --- waaaay easier than in the twentieth century.

But, you know, play some Robert Johnson; play some Dylan. Tell me about it.

But yeah. I like the early Dylan well enough.


>None of this can be denied.
>
Well, it can be qualified, at any rate.

Joanna



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