Bob Dylan Wins Pulitzer prize

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan Wins Pulitzer prize
From: Karin
Date: 10 Apr 08 - 11:52 PM

His protest anthems ...Blowing in the Wind...protest songs about nuclear war...and racism (at a time when white support of racial equality was important for progress in that arena) made Dylan a poet and prophet for THE rebellious generation.
He was influenced early on had opportunity to meet Woody Guthrie one of the greatest US folk artists. Dylan brought attention to some major and important folk greats~ black blues artists blind fuller, blind lemon jefferson...Rev.Davis,Mississippi Hurt, E. Cotton just to name a few... by covering their songs and stood against racism.
Dylan freely used literary references including Walt Whitman,Kerouac,Chekhov. Made us all take notice of the men that enriched his lyrics. He was never afraid to quote the bible.
His book Chronicles, Vol One,won a National Book Critics Circle nomination in 2005 a book that is a literary mark...not just some celeb dribble. Reading several of the articles about him this evening reminded me just how much influence and cultural enrichment he has given us. Yay! Dylan!
I saw him in concert in New Orleans before hurricane Katrina he is a great stage personality...60 wasn't slowing him down!!

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan Wins Pulitzer prize
From: M.Ted
Date: 11 Apr 08 - 12:14 AM

Little Hawk,

I was trying to give you, or anyone, an opening to say something important for a change. Forget the Chongo Chimp stuff, forget the Shatner stuff--forget all those stupid threads about whether astrology works, or the discussions about the existence of God--

The bottom line is, forty or so years ago(more or less) a lot of us, maybe most of us, were sitting around the hifi in someone's parents rec room listening to Dylan, eating fritos and Jello cubes and having intense discussions about war and peace, or a hard rain falling, or the fact that the times really were changin', and what the hell were we going to do?

The music, and the songs were not much like anything anyone had ever heard before, and not like much that anyone has done since, and it changed us, and stuck with us--

I would just like someone, anyone, to say something true and real about it, rather the same old same old--

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan Wins Pulitzer prize
From: GUEST,Jeff
Date: 11 Apr 08 - 12:49 AM

No, Little Hawk, Mariah Carey hasn't expanded the boundaries of YOUR cultural perception. Her first appearance on the Arsenio Hall changed music for an entire generation...just not your generation. It was as important to 'urban youth culture' as the Beatles' appearance on 'The Ed Sullivan Show' was to 'suburban youth culture, circa 1964.

W/o the success of the Arsenio Hall show there would've been no 'In Living Color', 'Dave Chapelle Show', 'Kings of Comedy', etc. By putting her on, unannounced and w/o network approval he demonstrated power...black power. Which translated into 'green power' which is the only power that matters in showbiz. Arsenio understood that and has been largely overlooked in the grand scheme of things when there're discussions of peoples' influence on culture at large. He's a pretty private guy and understands the true recognition for his accomplishments may not come for alot of years. I worked w/him during his 'stand-up' days and while he was an 'average' comedian at best he revolutionized television in the late 80s and early 90s.

Mariah Carey may not win a pulitzer prize, but don't discount or poo-poo her writing/singing/subject master as trivial. What she does may or may not be to your taste, but there are millions upon millions of people who'd question Dylan's relevance whose I-Pods are filled w/Mariah Carey tunes.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan Wins Pulitzer prize
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 Apr 08 - 02:31 AM

Hmmm. Well, that's interesting, Jeff. You're talking about something that I know just about absolutely nothing about...and I have little interest it...but obviously it means something to you, and that's understandable. I've heard of Arsenio Hall...way back when...but I can't even remember what he looks like now. I have barely watched any TV since the late 80's! I don't own an ipod, and don't wish to. ;-) Today's urban youth culture means nothing to me.

So how would I even know about stuff like that?

If it's meaningful to you, I can't argue with that. Every succeeding generation finds new things that are meaningful for them, and that's just gonna keep happening forever and ever. Some day farther on down the road some young kids will be saying to you, "Mariah who? Arsenio who?" ...and they'll be telling you about someone that YOU maybe can't relate to.

So it goes... ;-)

I only have this vague impression about her that she does pop songs and seems to be marketed as a sex symbol in a very blatant way, always trying to outdo the last time with each new song...but, hey, it sells records, right?

I wasn't aware she was representative of any breakthrough in racial power or whatever...but then, I'm hardly even clear on what race or ethnic type she IS... (???) Does it matter? I don't care much about that anyway. She's human, right?

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan Wins Pulitzer prize
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 Apr 08 - 02:38 AM

M. Ted, why don't you just tell me what you want me to say about Dylan?

Then I can say it, just tell me what it is.

(I think that's something like what Dylan might have said back in '65 to a reporter. You get tired of not being able to answer people's questions to their apparent satisfaction after awhile...)

Either that or look back through my last 10,000 posts on this forum. I have been inspired enough on occasion to really wax eloquent here about Bob...but I'm not inspired enough to right now. Maybe later.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan Wins Pulitzer prize
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 11 Apr 08 - 03:35 AM

"There are more biographies out there about Dylan than you can shake a stick at."

That's certainly true! My local branch of Waterstones has a whole bookcase devoted to 'Dylan Studies'. I just think it's weird and unhealthy and there are lots more interesting things in the world to write books about!!

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan Wins Pulitzer prize
From: PoppaGator
Date: 11 Apr 08 - 12:26 PM

Hey Ted,

I thought you were being uncharacteristically obtuse until you explained that you were just trying to prompt others to write something really new and interesting about Bob.

I'm afraid that may be something not so easily done; an awful lot has been said already. Let me echo LH and suggest that YOU tell us something new

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan Wins Pulitzer prize
From: M.Ted
Date: 11 Apr 08 - 01:29 PM

Little Hawk--that is exactly my point, you've been the Dylan point man, and now the boy has scored, and it's time to bring it all back home--time for the testimonial dinner speech-

As far as my "original" thought--Dylan turned pop music from a form of entertainment to a form of Art.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan Wins Pulitzer prize
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 Apr 08 - 02:09 PM

Well, yeah. ;-) There was something that grabbed me about the whole folk music movement, and that was that it was different from the other music of the time. It was different for one thing because it harkened back to so much past history, and the songs were often about serious stuff....whereas the other popular music was very seldom about any kind of serious stuff at all.

Dylan moved it up several notches. After Dylan, you could write a song about anything you could write a book about. No subject could not be broached seriously in a song. This was a wonderful thing. I think Bob did a great deal in broadening the boundaries of songwriting in people's minds.

The biggest influences on the people who were a few years older than me had been people like Elvis, Buddy Holly, the various rockers. Now those songs were pretty well all love songs...or they were sort of "partying" songs, I guess you could call them. Great music, but pretty light subject matter.

Then before that there was jazz and Big Band and Sinatra...jazz and Big Band was primarily instrumental music, seems to me, and Sinatra did love songs mostly, and songs about what a cool guy he was?

It was only in folk music that I could find songs about history, society, politics, unions, many past cultures and times, miners, sailors, philosophy, spirituality, PLUS of course the love songs and the other kind of stuff you found typically in pop music.

Folk music touched far more themes and it did it far more intelligently. It had more respect for and awareness of the past. It carried centuries of human development into the present and proposed new and radical possiblities for human development.

Now Bob took all that in, and he then shaped it in new and surprisingly modern forms. He bridged the ancient to the ultra-modern and with powerful effect. That was pretty breathtaking, and it transformed the whole songwriting scene.

The solid foundation Bob built on was laid down by a vast number of other great players who came before him, and his respect for what all of them did has always been plainly obvious. I like that. He didn't act like he had just suddenly sprung into the world out of nowhere, which is what I think I see a lot of younger artists doing now. (They're "cool" just because of their look or their "attitude" or something...what the heck is that? It's just posturing. It's not based on anything except the desire to be "cool".)

He honored the past. I see a lot of contempt for the past in people now....such as in the phrase: "You're history!" or "That's soooo old!"

This is sad. Things become history because they have lasting meaning...that's why they ARE history, whereas other things are forgotten. To be "history" is to have mattered enough that people remember you.

I respect Bob, because he respects where he came from and the people who were there before him. I wish I could see more of that in the contemporary urban youth culture. It seems to be based on ephemeral things that rise up like bubbles on the water and then vanish just as quickly.

I see so little respect for the past now in people that it really troubles me. People who cannot appreciate where they came from and where their ancestors came from are people who probably don't know where they are going either.

I think the transition of people's attention from books to television has had a great deal to do with this shift in consciousness. TV is ephemeral. It puts stuff in front of you for a moment...then it's gone...then something else is in front of you...then it's gone. Poof! No continuity. It's even worse now with 150 friggin' channels to flip between constantly. And it's all shot through with commercial advertising. It's sad what that does to people after awhile, how much it reduces their attention span. Books aren't like that. A book is something you move through steadily, without commercial interruptions...you take your time...you absorb the entire thing...you comprehend...and then you can go back and read it again. That stays with you. That encourages thought and reflection. It encourages understanding.

The kind of songs Bob wrote...well, I think they were like the last heroic echos of an age that has been quietly slipping away from us all since about the end of WWII maybe...an age where people actually thought about things in a measured way, and focused on one thought steadily until they had worked it through before going to the next thought.

TV doesn't encourage coherent thought. It fragments. It trivializes. It encourages momentary distraction and all forms of consumption. It plays on every human weakness...just to sell you something. We are meant to be something nobler than mere "consumers", aren't we? I sure hope so!

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan Wins Pulitzer prize
From: GUEST,obscure author 61 revisited
Date: 11 Apr 08 - 02:18 PM

"After Dylan, you could write a song about anything you could write a book about."

I think we can now write books about anything we can write songs about. My next book is about girls by whirlpools looking for new fools. I'm only goin' to use the back pages though.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan Wins Pulitzer prize
From: M.Ted
Date: 11 Apr 08 - 06:18 PM

That's more what I was hoping for, LH--on behalf of posterity, thank you--


Here are a few comments of my own, on your comments--

People today have much more access to the music of the past than ever--there isn't too much that I can't find, either download from an on-line service like iTunes, or at least from either a collector or on line record dealer. And that's not counting all the artist-posted stuff, the podcasts, and archives--I agree that folks are isolated to a horrifying degree(especially from real, live music) and are force-fed the artificial, quality and portion controlled music that the Music Industry markets, but if people want to hear anything else, they can--

In case you've forgotten, back in our salad days, the minute a song fell off the pop charts, it disappeared--there were no oldies stations, no Hits of the xx'x stations, no soft-rock stations--there *were* friends who had the album, and friends of friends who had the album, and, if you were lucky, could make a cassette, otherwise you borrowed, or visited--

As to the business about "attitude", the 60's folk/rock/movement/scene was the most colorful aggregation of fakes, phonies, and pretenders that there ever was. The kids out there today have their affectations, to be sure, but our generation did it first and better;-)


There are a lot of kids making interesting music, though I feel like you do, the older I get, the harder it is to find it-

It throws me for a loop that REM and Morrissey are the artists that the new generation listened to while growing up--and even more that artists like say, Neutral Milk Hotel , are almost completely unknown to our generation of folkies, even though their music is so clearly "Post-Dylanist"--

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan Wins Pulitzer prize
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 Apr 08 - 06:56 PM

Yeah, you're certainly right about the "attitude" thing. ;-) It was a crucial factor in the careers of Rock n' Rollers too...the wave of popularity that was considered the antithesis of the folk movement. Attitude was everything in Rock n' Roll. It played a big part in folk also, but a different kind of attitude there, of course.

Sometimes, you know, people are faking it and just posturing...but they don't themselves realize it. They get fooled by their own image, so to speak and by their need for acceptance and popularity. In fact, I think that happens a lot not just in musical performing but in politics and executive boardrooms as well. It happens when people date and socialize. There's a simply tremendous amount of posturing going on all the time, all with the intention of pleasing or impressing other people or getting them to do what you want, and it becomes largely unconscious behaviour for many of the people doing it.

Are they hypocrites, are they scared or are they just a bit lost?

Many of Dylan's songs dealt with those issues in a very keen way. He was an acute and acidic observer of the games people play...(while no doubt playing some games of his own).

I agree that people nowadays have phenomenal access to the music of the past and to other information. I wonder to what extent they are taking advantage of that.

One thing I've noticed about affluent cultures, as opposed to poorer cultures. When things are too easy to get, people lose interest. They don't try as hard. They get bored.

Maybe it's become too easy to find instant gratification now, and that is why people's attention span is dwindling. Give a kid 10,000 toys to play with and he ends up bored, stupefied, and uninterested. He loses motivation. He gets angry, and he doesn't know why. He can't find anything that satisfies. He becomes incapable of self-discipline and focused purpose. He sees no reason to strive.

That's what I see happening to people in the affluent cultures. They've been poisoned by excess.

I've see maturity and dignity and poise in young people in the poorer countries...like Cuba and Trinidad...and it was striking when I compared it to what's happening in my affluent society. I couldn't help but notice the difference. They had not grown up poisoned by excess. They had not been given 10,000 easy choices, and found themselves unable to decide on even one of them.

See, in the 60's you had to work a bit to get to hear certain music, cos like you say, it wasn't so easy to find it. That created a powerful motivation in the people who sought that music out. That made you treasure the records that you bought or that you borrowed, because the only way you could hear that music was to get one of those records.

Nothing tastes sweeter than something you had to work hard for and wait for before you got to taste it.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan Wins Pulitzer prize
From: M.Ted
Date: 11 Apr 08 - 10:43 PM

Having a couple of young children, and what at least seems like ten thousand toys, I have an informed point of view on this--kids have lots of stuff because we, as a culture, have lots of stuff. Some kids are obsessed with their toys, some(and more than you'd think), really don't care that much about them. That's all.

The boredom, anger, lack of motivation--which there is a lot of, definitely, has nothing to do with the stuff itself--some of it comes from neglect; as in kids who don't get the attention that they need(and often are given "stuff" to compensate), some comes because kids are taught to think "inside the box" and are taught not to use their imagination, some because kids are constantly put into structured situations that are convenient for adults, but not really "kid friendly", and some because kids with outdoor personalities are shut up indoors all the time--

It *is* all a consequence of our affluent lifestyle, or at least our culture's preoccupation with the value of stuff, and co-incident disregard for the value of anything else-

One other thing, and that is that the demands of a middle class, materialistic lifestyle are at odds with being creative, particularly as related to music, and I can speak to that from direct experience, as well.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan Wins Pulitzer prize
From: Little Hawk
Date: 12 Apr 08 - 12:27 AM

Yes, I would tend to agree with you on that.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan Wins Pulitzer prize
From: GUEST,Jeff
Date: 12 Apr 08 - 03:09 PM

Little Hawk, your answer is so condescending...I was/am speaking of culture changing moments. I wasn't speaking of HER ethnicity, that's immaterial. I was speaking of Arsenio Hall's bold step in booking her w/o network approval and what THAT did to change the face of television specifically and culture in the larger sense. He rolled the dice on one career move...they could've canned him the next day as he was, clearly in violation of his contract. Hell, they could've pulled the plug in the middle of her performance, but didn't. That's power. That spoke to urban youth specifically and black culture in general. Run DMC's collaboration w/Aerosmith on 'Walk This Way' was a HUGE moment in cultural change, also as it happened around the same time. Rick Rubin was responsible for that and was responsible for the 1994 solo acoustic release 'Cash' on what had been heretofore considered a Rap label. Whether it comes via, radio, TV, books, etc. doesn't invalidate, trivialize or marginalize the impact. The least you can do is educate yourself by obtaining a copy of Mariah Carey's first release entitled 'Mariah Carey' and a DVD copy of her 'MTV-Unplugged' performance and THEN you'll have some valid perspective. She wrote or co-wrote all the songs on her first release, which at 19 is pretty astonishing. And understand, I'm not a fan, I simply respect her work. Her sexuality and the marketting thereof doesn't negate her talent any more than Joni Mitchell, Janis Joplin or Grace Slick's. It's always been thus w/female singers. Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, Sheryl Crow...etc.

It's meaningful to me more in an observational way than in a direct way. While I've no connection w/'urban youth culture' I respect the fact that it exists and has it's own language and voice.

You don't have to have any interest or connection, either. But, don't the words 'don't criticize what you don't understand' ring a bell?

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan Wins Pulitzer prize
From: M.Ted
Date: 13 Apr 08 - 10:09 PM

It may have changed the music business, but it didn't change music, Jeff--and I saw the original MTV-unplugged broadcast, and even have it around here somewhere on video tape--I was surprised at how much it"improved" after the original broadcast--it's funny how they can do that, isn't it?

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan Wins Pulitzer prize
From: quokka
Date: 14 Apr 08 - 07:53 AM

Hi all, I am a new mudcatter from Fremantle, just wondering as a big fan of Dylan and Eric Bogle, what is his Dylan song? Thought I knew all Eric's songs...obviously not!

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan Wins Pulitzer prize
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 14 Apr 08 - 09:00 AM

gidday, quokka

welcome to Mudcat, lovely place Fremantle, my sister & brother-in-law allegedly live there (when they're not working overseas) Somewhere or other I have a pic of me feeding the quokkas an apple pastry in 1976, probably a forbidden activity now!

back to your question -

"Do you know any Dylan?" is on his double Album "At this Stage - The Live Collection" (Rouseabout/Undercover 2005) it's the story of the bloke who gets tired of the continual question ...

You'll find it in the Digital Tradition on this site tho under the title 'Do you know any Bob Dylan?' & here 'tis

Digital Forum menu is on Mudcat's homepage.

sandra

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan Wins Pulitzer prize
From: quokka
Date: 14 Apr 08 - 09:52 AM

Thanks, Sandra, for the info. Don't you just love Mudcat?!!

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan Wins Pulitzer prize
From: Peter T.
Date: 14 Apr 08 - 10:05 AM

Perhaps Dylan's greatest impact was to get the Beatles out of writing pop tunes, wonderful as they were, and into their own depths.

To marry pop culture, folk music, protest songs, Rimbaud, Brecht, etc, together gave a weight to popular music and its attendant culture that it has never since lost. Whether this is an unalloyed good is still an open question; but that it happened is due to that whole group of people, at the core of which was Dylan.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan Wins Pulitzer prize
From: quokka
Date: 14 Apr 08 - 10:31 AM

Good point, Peter T. I recently saw the two Dylan films 'Don't Look Back' and 'No Direction Home' back to back on TV - both films blew my mind.I would recommend them to any fan of Dylan.