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