DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Jim McLean
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 03:23 PM

To dismiss any form of criticism as 'begrudging' means that we should end this thread now ... and all others.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 03:26 PM

Discussing it critically isn't getting "all heavy and judgmental". It is simply discussing it. If you have any interest in Dylan beyond just the music, ie what kind of artist he was, what his artistic influences were beyond Woody Guthrie (territory already too well covered, retreaded, and covered again and again and again...), then you look critically at his work, at the artists who were his contemporaries in his formative years, and at the artists he chose to work with over the years.

It may come as news to some of you, but there are patterns to be discerned from that sort of critical analysis that not only inform us about Dylan the artist, but also inform us about the art of his times. Which is something I'm interested in, so why not discuss it?

God, you people are a fearful, conformist lot.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 03:30 PM

He was influenced by a tremendous number of performers. Among them:

Elvis
Buddy Holly
Little Richard
Hank Williams
Johnny Cash
Robert Johnson
Odetta
Ramblin' Jack Elliot

and I could go on and on...

You could probably list 50 key performers Dylan was inflenced by besides Woody Guthrie.

What makes you think anyone here is afraid to discuss it?

And who the fuck are you? You apparently have no name. That must really suck. Even dogs have names (usually).

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 03:42 PM

Most the artists active in the Village at the time Dylan arrived were, in some way or another, trying to making traditional art forms contemporary and meaningful to them. Dylan did it musically (as did other folk revivalists), the Beats were doing it with poetry (Ginsburg's masterpiece 'Kaddish' is a good example), Shepard was doing it theatrically (he was heavily influenced by Beckett as a young man), and artists like Warhol were doing it through the visual arts. All of them influenced Dylan at the time, just as he influenced them.

All those artists were also busy challenging the American myths, especially the myths related to family and relationships, which were changing rapidly and dramatically at the time.

I mean, is there someone who may still doubt that 'Desire' was made to be the soundtrack to 'Reynaldo and Clara' and the Rolling Thunder Revue Tour the visual narrative, to Dylan's disintegrating marriage and his failed relationships with women?

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 03:59 PM

I am amazed that after thirty years , it still hasn't been made public what is blindingly obvious to anybody who has been involved in therapy.

Dylan is a classic example of a man who has been abused as a child, probably sexually, maybe violently, perhaps both.

The signs are crystal clear, for those who know, and it is to be hoped that one day he will find the strength to be able to tell all.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 04:09 PM

So if the signs are crystal clear 3:59, what are they?

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Peter T.
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 04:31 PM

I think the key comment in the whole film is Dylan's remark about Woody Guthrie's songs that "you could learn how to live a life from them." This is to me how Dylan began to do something interesting with the "play-acting persona" -- he began to write songs like Rimbaud, from the unconscious (he was writing all the time) and then would take that cue, and live like that, and then write the next, and so on. It is the iteration of a new poetic self from year to year that is what was so stunning to watch. Exactly the same thing was going on with the Beatles. That is what makes them so important for the 60's generation: they were reinventing themselves in public over and over: they showed that this is what you can do if you push beyond the limits of your self.

There is lots about Dylan I hate, but I give him that courage.   It is worth 100 lesser people.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Ebbie
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 04:35 PM

Even if that's true, Guest - and I have no idea - I see no reason why Dylan should feel compelled to 'fess up. After he is dead, perhaps. But before his death he would be eaten alive. Confession in our culture is so often co-opted and corrupted into a prurient feast. imo

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 04:37 PM

Labelling some kinds of comment as begrudging isn't the same as dismissing the value of criticism. In fact, begrudging is a refusal to exercise critical faculties. Not that different from the refusal to exercise critical faculties which is shown by people who treat artists as idols to be worshipped.

And, as some of the reactions to Dylan at various points have shown, idol worshippers can easily turn into begrudgers. Whether the opposite is true, I am unsure - but I suspect it is. Particularly when they turn their attention from one artist to another.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 04:39 PM

Well said, Peter.

Guest, I know a therapist who has a personal obsession of her own. She thinks that 99.9% of all the people in the World were sexually abused as children. And most of them "don't remember it"! So she kindly remembers it for them. ;-) Are you her? If so, I can see why you dare not have a name here, but must skulk in the shadows.

The vast majority of men have experienced failed relationships with women...and vice versa. Why not Bob Dylan? Most people's romantic relationships "fail" (meaning: they end sometime prior to death). Most business ventures fail too.   These are not failures, they are learning experiences. You can see them as failures if you choose to, though...which is a sad and bitter choice to make.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Jim McLean
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 04:46 PM

McGrath, I'm familiar with the Irish phrase 'to Hell with the begrudgers' and know what it means. I remember Dominic Behan saying 'I don't why he hates me, I never did him any good'!

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Peter T.
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 04:57 PM

There is something weird about Dylan's relationship with other people, especially women (not that I think he was abused). He never seems really to blame himself for things that have gone wrong, ever. Even when people put forward songs like Idiot Wind, or If You See Her Say Hello, he never really comes out in the songs and says he was the one at fault, there is always mutual blame. A song like "You're a Big Girl Now" is classic Dylan: he acts badly, and the song is about how the woman has been tempted away from him, and is to blame.    There is something eerily slippery about this aspect of him, his irresponsibility, that gives me the creeps, always has.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 06:02 PM

Well, then I think you should probably avoid getting into an intimate affaire with him, Peter! ;-)

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 07:11 PM

It's often enough been said that just because a song is written in the first person doesn't mean it's necessarily a personal statement, any more than would be true of a short story or a novel. Charlotte Bronte wasn't actually Jane Eyre.

Writers use their own lives and relationships as material, along with the lives and relationships of other people. Sometime's there is a strong autobiographical element in a song or a story, but it's not safe to extrapolate from that in a too simplistic way.

And I can't see how it's too important. I'm interested in what Dylan has written, and in what he has sung, but I'm not sure I'm that interested in what he hasn't written or sung, and I can't really see how it's got much to do with us.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 11:14 PM

And still, we are no closer to knowing why he made those rubbish lingerie commercials that made him look like a sleezy creepy stalker perve.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 11:36 PM

It is very easy to figure out why he did that commercial. They asked him, they paid him, and they let him work with gorgeous women.   If he said no, THEN we would be asking why!

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 11:40 PM

I'm a man, and I'm asking why. Why do such a rubbish piece of commercial tripe with a bunch of undie bimbos?

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 11:54 PM

I am sorry, nameless one, but I can shed no light on that either... ;-) None whatsoever. Bob can do what he likes, I will still like his songs.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 02 Oct 05 - 01:18 AM

What do you mean you don't understand? I'm not sure why he needs to explain it either.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Peter T.
Date: 02 Oct 05 - 07:29 AM

Of course the big omission in the documentary was the act just before Dylan went electric.   I believe it was cousin Emmy doing her famous "Turkey in the Straw" beaten out on her cheeks. Makes you think.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Oct 05 - 09:23 AM

That would have been interesting as an electric version.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: GUEST, Sophisticated Beggar
Date: 02 Oct 05 - 09:31 AM

He does it. You talk about it, and for as long as you do he spends the cash. What more of a reason does a man need, before you call him a man?

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Oct 05 - 11:27 AM

If you love people, you can see a lot of good in them. If you don't, then not.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: GUEST,Sophisticated Beggar
Date: 02 Oct 05 - 12:24 PM

Still a man hears what he wants to hear

And disregards the rest

Lie lie lie ....,

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Oct 05 - 12:31 PM

and "the naked truth is still taboo whenever it can be seen"

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Don Firth
Date: 02 Oct 05 - 01:06 PM

This thread is starting to resemble a dissection table. . . .

Don Firth

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: robomatic
Date: 02 Oct 05 - 01:56 PM

GUEST with no name - 01 Oct 05 - 08:54 AM
I think the name of the critical analysis you espouse was "Dialectical Materialism" which called forth a dialect so obscure, full of its own definitions that it obfuscated rather than enlightened. Whether or not your argument holds water that BD was popular among certain classes does not call forth why you are so interested in this thread. By not identifying yourself you are more of a lightweight troll than a contributor.

It is just such trendy (or in this case defunct) analyses that bedevilled BD and made him such a hard press interview. I enjoyed the scenes where he was obviously trying not to be pigeon-holed by the press, including avoiding saying he was trying to avoid being pigeon holed, because THAT would have been a pigeon hole.

Guest, you would have fitted right in with the press of the time, even if you felt really cool that you were fronting the "Daily Worker".

So you obviously hold it against BD that he did not then nor does he now espouse those particular false ideals of class warfare that you embrace.

As for being involved in a recent commercial with some good lookin' women, it's his own affair and doesn't call into question anything in the Scorsese documentary.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 02 Oct 05 - 03:20 PM

Robomatic evidently has an awful lpot of information about GUEST with no name. Some kind of psychic reading I suppose...

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: akenaton
Date: 02 Oct 05 - 03:21 PM

Making a lot of assumptions there Robo....

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Oct 05 - 07:59 PM

Actually, I didn't say it was just a class thing, did I? If I did, my bad. It was a class and race thing.

In my mixed race high school, I didn't know a single black Dylan fan. And we actually had a fair amount of inter-racial dating going on in Westchester County back then.

Smokey Robinson and the Miracles OTOH...

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Oct 05 - 08:30 PM

I have almost never met a black Dylan fan either. So? What difference does that make? Dylan was certainly a fan of a whole lot of black musicians, and some quite notable black musicians were his friends and have covered his songs. You can see some of them in concert films, like the big Dylan anniversary show. Dylan gets along great with black musicians, it seems.

Does the fact that folk music was being marketed to a predominantly white audience back then invalidate it in your eyes? Why? What difference does it make? There were some styles of music that were marketed to an almost entirely black audience at that time. So? What difference would that make either?

The ethnicity of his audience is no argument against the quality or significance of his work.

You don't find too many black hockey players either. So what? It doesn't fucking matter! (and there ARE a few of them here and there)

It's a cultural thing. How many Sikhs do you find who are rodeo riders in Oklahoma? Does it matter. No. It doesn't.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: DonMeixner
Date: 02 Oct 05 - 09:10 PM

Little Hawk,

Actually to be rodeo rider anywhere I think the Sikhs would have to wear the wrong kind of hat. It would be a religious issue.

Don (ducks low to escape serious notice) Meixner

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Bobert
Date: 02 Oct 05 - 09:22 PM

Well, this past Saturday was the first time in six months that I've been able to make it up to Archie Edwards Barber Shop in NE Wsahington, DC, where more of the blues players are black than white...

But, hey, guy (okay, white) played "Maggie's Farm" and then I played "She Belongs to Me" an veryone seemed to diggin' the songs... Black, white, don't matter none... Everyone was playin'.... Sometimes foklks will walk out front if they don't like the songs but no one was walkin' out...

Now, I know that don't prove nuthin' an' maybe Dylan ain't been presented properly to the black community... If so, that's real sad 'cause Dylan plays a lotta blues...

As fir the other commentatries 'bout Dylan's influences and all... Hey, he is and was a friggin' folk singer... If we ain't caharged to look around at what's going down and report back in song, then who the heck is?????

Any criticism of Dylan because he was influenced by__________ (fill in the blank, is a lot of crap...

We are all influenced....

He did more than be influenced.... He reported what he saw... That's what make him a very, very special ( okay, maybe lucky) but special person...

MO....

Bobert

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Elmer Fudd
Date: 02 Oct 05 - 09:27 PM

No black Dylan fans????? What about Jimi Hendrix doing "All Along the Watchtower?" Richie Havens also sang Dylan songs and knew him in the Village.

Elmer

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Owlkat
Date: 02 Oct 05 - 10:05 PM

Meow y'all,
I was just channel flicking and watched it for a while. What I saw was an attempt to present an moving portrait of an apolitical, amoral, and pathalogically self-involved and very clever wordsmith, and his successful attempt to remake himself into a cultural icon and musical mystic, and profit. Oops. Freudian slip. He did nothing special in adopting/borrowing every popular style on his journey to stardom. So did hundreds of thousands of other urban folkies. Big deal.
I loved the part where he was working as a carnie. Boy, does that speak volumes.
He is a very sharp and opportunistic entrepeneur, who spotted music and cultural trends in their infancies, and surfed their leading edges to wealth, influence, and semi-godlike admiration. His anti-war songs were tailored to fit the sentiments of the day, but, all talk and no action is like a good intention. He never went to jail for protesting the war in Viet Nam, or walking in civil rights marches, or making any kind of significant gesture to really show his solidarity with the songs he was singing, and as far as Corporate America is concerned, I remember his songs being used for bank commercials.
So here's to Robert Zimmerman; con-man, and self-proclaimed guru. It's no wonder the documentary had little substance. So did its subject.
And I so totally mean it.
Cheers,
Owl

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Oct 05 - 10:24 PM

Why the race and class issue matters? Because white boy liberals don't speak for "an entire generation". Nor did Bob Dylan. Sure he influenced a few black musicians. But that ain't the same as saying he wrote an anti-war anthem that kept them out of the draft or out of Vietnam, now is it?

White liberal males from middle class families, who loved Dylan, found ways to stay out of Vietnam though, didn't they? He did speak for them, I'm sure.

But did Dylan speak for an entire generation?

No way.

Thank god.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Oct 05 - 11:25 PM

I thank God he didn't speak for you. You have no name, and probably nothing much else worth remarking on either.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Oct 05 - 11:30 PM

And get this: NOBODY speaks for a "whole generation". Nobody.

After all, you'd have to have everyone agree for that to happen, wouldn't you?

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Elmer Fudd
Date: 03 Oct 05 - 01:22 AM

I like to speak for myself. I like to listen to others, Dylan included.

Elmer

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 03 Oct 05 - 09:44 AM

Do people who run rodeos have some religious objection to riders wearing turbans then, Don?

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: robomatic
Date: 03 Oct 05 - 06:53 PM

Guest with no name I'm guessin' you watched that documentary through a monocle...so's you wouldn't see more'n you can understand.

You are saying pretty much about Dylan what he said about himself, only YOU have a hangup about it.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Little Hawk
Date: 03 Oct 05 - 07:00 PM

Yeah, that's what I noticed too, robomatic. Ironical, isn't it?

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: DonMeixner
Date: 03 Oct 05 - 07:39 PM

NAh! I'm just enjoying a Sikh sense of humor.

Don

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: robomatic
Date: 04 Oct 05 - 09:23 AM

LOL had dinner with a child of the 60's last night (He's a bit older'n me). I brought up the Dylan 'mystique'. My friend is as with-it as anyone else, but he is also an experienced chorister and he could never stand Dylan's voice, which I find not at all hard to understand.

We also talked about a phenomenon which one of you folks may have a name for: Listening to music much later and developing a like or dislike for it very different from your earlier feeling. I grew up not listening to pop music, then enduring a trip across the United States by car where for some reason there were no classical radio stations until I hit Chicago (and I didn't hit Chicago). Two weeks later I was listening to pop for life. My friend used to listen to a particular Marshall Tucker album before every ski trip. Recently he heard it for the first time in years and had a profound negative reaction.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Little Hawk
Date: 04 Oct 05 - 09:15 PM

I couldn't STAND Dylan's voice between 1963 and 1969 (when I was listening to virtually all the other well known folksingers with great enjoyment). Then I converted to absolutely LOVING his voice in '69, and have remained that way ever since. I had actually never given the man a chance until that year. If you point blank refuse to listen to something at all, how are you going to find out if it's any good or not?

(by way of explanation: I simply did not listen to commercial radio as a kid, except by accident. If I had heard Dylan on some radio, I probably would not even have known it was him. I listened to records that I or my parents had bought. Lots of them. We bought no Dylan albums.

After '69, and my discovery of what Bob had to say, I bought every friggin' thing he had ever recorded, and have continued doing so to this day. What Bob says gets my attention.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Oct 05 - 09:59 PM

"White liberal males from middle class families, who loved Dylan, found ways to stay out of Vietnam though, didn't they? He did speak for them, I'm sure.

But did Dylan speak for an entire generation?

No way."

I have to agree with you on that Guest!

sIx

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 04 Oct 05 - 10:29 PM

Of course he didn't speak for everyone. Neither do guests.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Peter T.
Date: 04 Oct 05 - 10:32 PM

I hate Dylan's voice since 1966, and it has gotten progressively whinier and miserable. I have to tune out his voice and listen to it as if it were someone else singing.   The last two albums were excruciating to listen to.    Amazing what you will go through in the expectation that there is a pearl in all these oyster shells (or a pony under, etc....)



yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 04 Oct 05 - 10:36 PM

... but obviously you listened to them Peter T if you came to that conclusion.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: number 6
Date: 04 Oct 05 - 10:38 PM

Sorry .... Guest 9:59 is me.

Of course Bob didn't speak for everyone or 'his generation' ...many years later after 'that' period in the 60's history gives a rather one sided perception at that 'generation' of 'that period'. Many faces are missing from that snapshot many years later.

sIx