[lbo-talk] Bob Again (Was National Review's Top 50 )

andie nachgeborenen andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com
Sun May 28 11:08:54 PDT 2006


In my right-wing days, we thought that
> Dylan's "My Back
> > Pages" was a great conservative song
> <http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/
> > backpages.html>:

Of course it is really more of an anti-political song, or any way an anti CP-popular front, "I'm not Woody Guthrie, Jr. song, a "don't box me into singing Peter Seeger-Phil Ochs-type topical protest music + classic folk songs" sort of song. You know, the sort of thing that makes Carl Remick mad and made that guy shout "Judas" at the "Royal Albert Hall" concert (actually the Manchester Free Trade Hall concert, but who cares about details -- did you hear that recently someone outed that guy? He's a bit ashamed of his 30 seconds of fame now.) He has more of that sort of stuff; it's possible to read Positively Fourth Street in that vein as well.

http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/positively.html

or at least as a response to people who got pissed off that he was bored with topical protest music.

Dylan has had strange politics at various types, particular in his Jesus phase when he was immersed in Hal Lindsay types, and it's led to questionable songs like the pro-Zionist "Neighborhood Bully" (which he doesn't sing any more and rarely did even them). He's been rock solid on racial justice all his life, although he's no feminist; he's consistently antiwar -- still does "Masters Of War" in very powerful versions, but basically he's come to see politics as a

dirty, corrupt business in which it is best (at least for him) not get get too mixed up -- listen to "Political World" or watch "Masked And Anonymous" (actually a pretty good movie.) He's done his share of benefit concerts and (alas) sang at Clinton's first inauguration (a ringing version of Chimes of Freedom).

But basically his vision is not right wing or left wing, it's intensely personal and spiritual. He's a great tragic poet/singer whose constant themes (really from the very start) are loss and death; that's his muse. If you want to say it's bourgeois individualism, feel free. But there is little comfort any political orientation can draw from his work, except by wrenching it out of context, except, as I said, antiracism and antimilitarism. He's always resisted attempt to put him in a box or to keep him to doing the same thing; he's still doing it.

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