Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: GUEST,Essex Bor
Date: 16 Oct 16 - 05:44 AM

Zimmer man should get his zimmer and go ans sing his lightweight 'poetry' to those refugees from the sixties in old people home.s

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: GUEST,Essex Bor
Date: 16 Oct 16 - 05:40 AM

"BTW, many a great poet/composer took influence from English traditional song. Where do you think Coleridge, Keats, Wordsworth got their inspiration? Vaughan Williams, Butterworth, Elgar, Britten etc"

Wordsworth got his inspiration from many things including daffodils, your post muddies the waters Britten used traditional tunes but did not set any lyrics of any merit to traditional music, mind you Bob Dylans Dream is a forgettable piece of lightweight plagiaristic poppycock.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: Acorn4
Date: 15 Oct 16 - 01:42 PM

I think he deserves it for the lyrics of "It's Allright Ma" alone.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: Mrrzy
Date: 15 Oct 16 - 01:41 PM

Article by somebody who nominated him back in the '60's... WashPo Blicky.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: Jeri
Date: 15 Oct 16 - 01:31 PM

Mr Red, I didn't know that. I LOVE that song!

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: GUEST,Essex Bor
Date: 15 Oct 16 - 01:21 PM

Disgraceful.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: Mr Red
Date: 15 Oct 16 - 12:39 PM

Just heard on a BBC R4 prog about Sam Cooke. He apparently said he was impressed with "Blowin in the Wind" and said "if a white man can write a song like that, it is about time a black man wrote such a song"
The result? "the River" ("a Change Gonna Come")

I calls that one helluva inspiration.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: nager
Date: 15 Oct 16 - 10:42 AM

Well deserved

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 Oct 16 - 09:09 AM

Bernard Shaw once wrote that Wagner's music was a lot better than it sounded.

The same kind of thing could be said about Dylan's writing. It gets inside you. And not so much the stuff that is openly trying to sound "poetic".

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: GUEST,Pete from seven stars link
Date: 14 Oct 16 - 11:04 PM

Tend to agree with Steve though there does seem something clever in his use of words. The gospel era albums were more straightforward and understandable .

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: Charley Noble
Date: 14 Oct 16 - 08:24 PM

It's a well deserved award. Yes, there are other singer-songwriters who deserve recognition but Dylan most likely has had the most influence.

It's odd, though I know many Dylan songs, or fragments of them, I've never led one in a session.

There are so many other candidates on my Nobel Prize list but to name a few:

Si Kahn
Phil Ochs
Kate Wolf
Malvina Reynolds

Charlie Ipcar

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: Andy7
Date: 14 Oct 16 - 06:53 PM

Actually, when you think about it, 'Nobel Prizes', awarded by Nobel Committees based in Scandinavia, are rather an odd idea! But still an interesting phenomenon, which generates much interesting discussion!

Still waiting for my Prize, boo! I wouldn't mind Physics, Chemistry, Physiology, Medicine, Literature or Peace. I've achieved great things in all of those areas.

Btw, last year I visited the Nobel Museum in Stockholm, and they actually sell very tasty Nobel medals made of chocolate!! I just wish I could have resisted eating mine, rather than giving it pride of place in my Trophy Cabinet at home.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 14 Oct 16 - 06:18 PM

Perhaps using the word 'great' was too loose then. How about celebrated/influential?

Whilst there is truth in what you say, Dylan is part of popular culture. Should the Nobel Lit prize not also celebrate popular culture as opposed to highbrow culture?

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 14 Oct 16 - 06:07 PM

You can quote Dylan, but not Andrew Motion, because Dylan came to us via the pop world, via mass exposure and commercial impetus. Poor old Andrew didn't have a chance next to that. Wagner had a massive influence on lots of people. I challenge you to show me that any of that influence was anything other than baleful. Measuring someone's greatness by the influence they have is a rather dangerous game.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 14 Oct 16 - 05:45 PM

BTW, many a great poet/composer took influence from English traditional song. Where do you think Coleridge, Keats, Wordsworth got their inspiration? Vaughan Williams, Butterworth, Elgar, Britten etc.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 14 Oct 16 - 05:43 PM

It's all about influence. How many of us could quote a line from Andrew Motion's work. I certainly couldn't and I taught literature for 40 years. I'm not a big fan of Dylan but I could quote you many an influential line!

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: Andy7
Date: 14 Oct 16 - 05:42 PM

Steve Shaw: "Well I found Dylan's "poetry" to be dense, exclusive and obscurantist. To me, poetry should be crystallising notions that I can't articulate clearly for myself, that are inchoate in my mind. Happy, sad, tragic, life-affirming, anything. But making me focus, providing an illuminating spark. Dylan's lyrics are nothing like that."

I do kind of agree. I prefer poetry that is simple and easy to understand, yet is still able to put into words our deepest human experiences and emotions.

And yet, some of Dylan's poetry (not all!) does have a special rhythmic resonance. It's as though he's writing a melody just by using words. Like building a magic castle out of Lego bricks.

He's not a particularly talented singer. But on balance, I'd say that he deserves his Nobel Prize, for the (often obscure) genius of his wordcraft.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: GUEST,LynnH
Date: 14 Oct 16 - 03:05 PM

......but this is an ill conceived nostalgia award wrenched from the rancid prostates of senile, gibbering hippies..." Irvine Welsh

Takes one to know one.........

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: GUEST,LynnH
Date: 14 Oct 16 - 01:35 PM

Headline -in english- on a german newspaper today:

"How many words must a man write down....."

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: Mrrzy
Date: 14 Oct 16 - 10:33 AM

Arlo, that was sweet.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: GUEST,Bloke in Groucho Mask
Date: 14 Oct 16 - 09:57 AM

Yeah but just stirring it like....

American tradition maybe, but his reliance on English traditional in the early days gives such wording a sense of irony.

😎

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: Allan Conn
Date: 14 Oct 16 - 09:30 AM

I don't think the award was given because they think he is the greatest living poet though!!! It was given seemingly "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition".

So the big thing is that they have decided to give a literature award to a writer of song lyrics rather than a writer of poetry or prose. Why not I ask? Poetry, especially shorter lyrical poems and song lyrics can kind of blend into each other anyway. If they are going to give the award to a lyricist at some point then Dylan does seem the obvious choice. Whilst he's still here.

I'd have thought people who have an interest in song would be glad that the literary academics are regarding song lyrics as worthy of recognition.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: GUEST,Bloke in Groucho mask
Date: 14 Oct 16 - 04:49 AM

Only the other week, a few of us were being boring in the pub and I mentioned that Andrew Motion, back when he was Poet Laureate said that Dylan's Visions of Joanna was possibly the finest example of twentieth century poetry.

Mind you, if we get into distinctions between poetry and lyrics, someone will probably find the minutes of an irrelevant meeting in 1954....,.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: GUEST,John rom Kemsing
Date: 14 Oct 16 - 04:43 AM

I have enjoyed much of Bob Dylan`s music, even if I found some of the lyrics rather strange but those Swedes who decided that he is the "world`s best living poet" - come on - smell the coffee!. They are in need of counselling. Perhaps treatment by some Nobel winning psychologist or psychiatrist might help. And, reading some of the commentators, the King`s New Suit of Clothes comes to mind.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Oct 16 - 04:25 AM

LOL

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch
Date: 14 Oct 16 - 03:01 AM

"Songwriting's just kinda like catching fish--you sit there and pull them out as they go by--though I think Bob Dylan's up stream from me somewhere."

Arlo Guthrie

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 14 Oct 16 - 02:26 AM

Well, Dylan certainly had the admiration of his peers.
Whoever you admire in the songwriting field, chances are that they are big Bob Dylan fans.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: Neil D
Date: 14 Oct 16 - 12:02 AM

I think it's great and I'm not surprised. I kind of saw this as a possibility when he was awarded the Pulitzer a couple years back. Songwriters have always been an important part of our literary landscape, especially in the last 50+ years, and it's good to see that being recognized. Hopefully, this will open the door for a few more deserving candidates, like L Cohen and Tom Waits.
Now that the paradigm is shifting as far as what is accepted as literature, I think film making should get some consideration as well.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: Mrrzy
Date: 13 Oct 16 - 11:18 PM

And he had strange dreams...

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: Amos
Date: 13 Oct 16 - 11:08 PM

His lyrics deserve acknowledgement--decades of scintillating, deep, passionate and human images and spinning metaphysics laced together like the offspring of Thomas Jefferson and Artur Rimbaud. I think he deserved the prize, and I am very surprised the Committee agreed.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: GUEST,pauperback
Date: 13 Oct 16 - 10:24 PM

Its measured ways I tread again
Quatrain by constrained quatrain,
Meting grief and reason out
As you said a poem ought.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Oct 16 - 08:17 PM

"To be is to do" -- Socrates
.
"To do is to be"-- Sartre

"Do be do be do" -- Sinatra

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: Airymouse
Date: 13 Oct 16 - 08:12 PM

"I laugh, because I must not cry, that is all, that is all." President Abraham Lincoln

"A people who values its privileges above its principles, soon loses both." President Eisenhower

"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" President Reagan

"Grab them by the pussy; you can do anything." Donald Trump

Rudyard Kipling, Winston Churchill, Jean-Paul Sartre, Andre Gide, Albert Camus, William Butler Yeats, Eugene O'Neill, T.S. Eliot, Pablo Neruda, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, Sinclair Lewis, Thomas Mann...

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Oct 16 - 07:47 PM

But it's true. Show me any Beatles lyrics that come anywhere near to Dylan's flowery, obscurantist nonsense. Shallow copies at best. .

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: GUEST,pauperback
Date: 13 Oct 16 - 07:27 PM

Horse feathers

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Oct 16 - 07:15 PM

Big deal. Take the Beatles. Amazing music put to banal lyrics (I love them, by the way). Some influence. Chalk and cheese.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: GUEST,pauperback
Date: 13 Oct 16 - 06:57 PM

God don't make no promises that He don't keep

You got some big dreams, baby, but in order to dream you gotta still be asleep

When you gonna wake up, when you gonna wake up

When you gonna wake up and strengthen the things that remain?

__________________

"The Beatles and The Rolling Stones heard Bob Dylan and it changed them forever; all-time great singer-songwriters Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell and Paul Simon all looked up to him; so do such new generation stars as Marcus Mumford, Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift and Adele. You can even hear his cadences in hip hop, where he is the most venerated veteran white songwriter, name-checked by everyone from Jay Z to Kendrick Lamar."

www.telegraph.co.uk/music/news/bob-dylan-turned-the-simple-pop-song-into-fine-literature---of-c

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: Mrrzy
Date: 13 Oct 16 - 06:53 PM

Half of the people can be part right all of the time
Some of the people can be all right part of the time
But all of the people can't be all right all of the time
I think Abraham Lincoln said that
"I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours"
I said that

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Oct 16 - 06:19 PM

Well I found Dylan's "poetry" to be dense, exclusive and obscurantist. To me, poetry should be crystallising notions that I can't articulate clearly for myself, that are inchoate in my mind. Happy, sad, tragic, life-affirming, anything. But making me focus, providing an illuminating spark. Dylan's lyrics are nothing like that. They are for self-regarding ex-hippies who think they are "on to something" that the less sophisticated among us are incapable of seeing. Up their own bottoms in other words. Crap harmonica player too.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: meself
Date: 13 Oct 16 - 06:06 PM

I never thought of the Nobel committee as being made up of'senile, gibbering hippies', if that's what that unpleasant word salad is supposed to mean .... but then I've never thought much of the Nobel committee at all .....

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: Donuel
Date: 13 Oct 16 - 05:31 PM

Bob Dylan now belongs to the ages and will join all the other folk rock&rollers who have won the Nobel Prize.


THIS IS THE CUBS YEAR

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch
Date: 13 Oct 16 - 05:06 PM

"I'm a Dylan fan, but this is an ill conceived nostalgia award wrenched from the rancid prostates of senile, gibbering hippies..." Irvine Welsh

Like they say in Chicago... there's always next year (Go Cubbies!)

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: voyager
Date: 13 Oct 16 - 04:28 PM

I had one encounter with Bob Dylan, the man, back in the mid '70s.
My brother and I were at a movie theater in Beverly Hills where the
the feature film was 'Children of Paradise' (Les Enfants du Paradis).

When the movie ended and the lights came on, there was one person still in the seats wearing dark glasses (so you wouldn't recognize him perhaps). When he was leaving the theater I caught a glimpse of Dylan looking much like his persona from the Blond on Blond era.

End of story.
For that alone, I'd recommend him for the Noble prize (guffaw).

Cheers
voyager

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: fat B****rd
Date: 13 Oct 16 - 03:40 PM

Francis Ford Coppola once said, on apparently being accused of plagiarising King Lear with "The Godfather"*, "Well, if you're going to steal, steal from the best"
*I know he didn't write it!

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: Mrrzy
Date: 13 Oct 16 - 03:25 PM

I had totally forgotten lying in wait for him in the hopes he'd come to my college graduation, since his daughter was graduating too... thank you for reminding me his family name is Zimmerman!

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: GUEST,Dave Hunt
Date: 13 Oct 16 - 03:20 PM

Loved his words... but i'm afraid really hated his whiney voice...which meant i didn't listen to much of his stuff...
What would the reaction have been in the 60s/70s if someone had said that one day he'd be a Nobel prizewinner!!!

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: Mr Red
Date: 13 Oct 16 - 03:18 PM

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal. T. S. Eliot (Nobel Laureate)
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/t/t_s_eliot.html

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: Mr Red
Date: 13 Oct 16 - 02:57 PM

Cut Mr Zimmerman some slack guys. How is a singer/wrongciter gonna learn his trade if he doesn't immerse himself in a tradition?
He was a wordsmith before he started singing trad English.
He did more than learn songs, he learned how to construct them. He didn't pull his punches, even if they weren't there to smash the system. They woke up people.
And his influence - you can't argue he didn't influenced generations.

There were better singers, better musicians, but the prize is not for those. It is for his words, and their influence. Had he been British he would be Sir or even Lord Dylan of Laugharne.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: Mrrzy
Date: 13 Oct 16 - 02:22 PM

Interesting take from Slate.com here.

Subject: RE: Bob Dylan: Nobel laureate
From: GUEST,Roger Knowles
Date: 13 Oct 16 - 01:19 PM

Thats nice. It would have been also nice if the interim singer/picker/song collector & huge influence Rambling Jack Elliott was at least mentioned in Dylan's career.