Bob Dylan - Tempest, Sept. 11, 2012

guy who does not care about the last 80+ years of American music

but i love nicki minaj

Today I learned that dylan isn't a very good singer and sometimes critically overpraised....man hard lessons....gotta pick up the pieces and start all over....*throws coat over shoulder, walks away down dirt road*

Well, Nicki Minaj doesn't seem to care about 400+ years of American slavery so it all fits.

Lex, with all due respect, is about the last person on the planet I'd turn to for an informed commentary on Bob Dylan.

or indeed on any planet

Tyler, lex likes a lot of the early old school hip hop singles too, like ”the rain” by missy elliot

what a completely worthless article!!!!

It is really amusing watching people attempt eyerolling boredom when they're clearly really annoyed.

Dude in the comments box has ruined the thread by claiming Dylan used to be the vocal equivalent of Marvin Gaye and Dusty Springfield, a challop so big that even the Dylan fans are pointing and laughing.

xxp yeah haha, i meant to write american folk/blues/country/rock n roll/r&b/jazz etc. whatevs! i think it's ok for some people to not like bob dylan. even if it makes you a bad person deep down.

I am absolutely sure that lex meant to set the matter definitively to rest.

I mean I think he was (was) a great vocalist in his way, not remotely a great singer

But he works with what he's got pretty well still

I cannot listen to cohen anymore

With waits, it's like if you sing in a fake voice for so long it becomes your real voice

Dylan's focus on set design and costumes at the expense of his principals' internal motivations and emotions leaves me cold

lex, how don't set designs and costumes reveal motivations and emotions?

"Dude in the comments box" double-ruined thread by dissing Celine Dion.

i intend to listen to no further b-dyl songs in my life i have sacrificed enough years on this

that's fine, but you shouldn't say things that are demonstrably not true just because they flesh out the number of un-nice things you want to say. your remark about meter is an "either this is true or untrue" one; it's untrue, not a matter of opinion.

I can't remember where, but there's a thread on ILX where someone drops the truth bomb that hardcore stans of people with 'difficult' voices (Cohen / Waits / Dylan / Reed / Murdoch) will always go "no you don't understand, the voice is the best part!"

Hefty dose of "lady, if you have to ask" as well.

Damn. I'm traveling now and this is the thread that will get 600 updates in two hours :(

who's murdoch? the dude from belle and sebastian?

lex, how don't set designs and costumes reveal motivations and emotions?

you tell me! in film, they are not things i've ever paid much attention to

great metaphor, bro

xpost i see how that's a fun observation but do you think stans lie when they say that the voice is the best part?

how do you love cohen/waits/dylan/reed/young without loving the voices?

I can accept that a lot of people do love the voices (I like early Dylan and late Cohen vocals a lot) but a) they're clearly not for everyone and b) most of those stans wouldn't care that much in the first place were it not for the quality of the songwriting.

hmmm...I dunno. Usually with Dylan it's (a) voice (b) musicians. For me.

Haha Young = I only really love the Dead Man soundtrack.

I think that 'lie' is completely the wrong way to look at it - they may are probably 100% right that it's what they prefer, but convincing someone that they have to get further than 'tolerate the voice' to start getting into the rest of the package is not generally helpful.

I really revel in Dylan's set designs and costumes whenever he's on stage. I understand a production of Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid On Ice is currently in preparation.

I don't give a damn if somebody's a skeptic tbh. Right now it's the aging hippies and lit majors who piss me off more than the skeptics (e.g. Christopher Ricks and his damn Eliot analogies).

a) they're clearly not for everyone
are there any vocals that are "for everyone"?

Al Green?

No idea. Champ Butler maybe?

I think we can all agree on blaming lit majors

and the sixties

the wussies and the pussies

gimme a lit major over a Nikki Minaj fan any day of the week

what's Edwina Currie got to do with all this?

countdown to the bob dylan vs. nikki minaj poll starts now

i think there are maybe lit majors who are nicki minaj fans out there - they'd probably know how to spell her name anyway

i love björk but her voice is so obviously "not for everyone"

Gotta love Nicki Minaj's forthcoming Empty Chair album.

I know of no dylan fans who claim his voice now is ideal

i know how to spell nick menage than you very much

i love his voice now!

nicki melange

If only there were some suitably reverential Bob Dylan reviews I could read to calm my outrage about this.

well this is quite a tempest!!

The one in Uncut should meet your needs. It's a stunning return to form and his strongest work in years, apparently.

John Mulvey of Uncut offers this interesting critique on his, um, blog.

Listening to “Tempest”, I can’t help wishing that one element Dylan would stop borrowing is the tradition of misogyny and objectification that is a recurring detail in a good few of these songs. Perhaps some of the more critical reviewers of the album could have examined this, rather than predicating their pieces on the apparent wrongheadedness of other reviewers, whose enthusiasm evidently doesn’t have the required ironic distance from the record.

Translation - "I hate Alexis Petridis"

we will never agree on anything again like we agree on the awfulness of petridis

I know of no dylan fans who claim his voice now is ideal

I love it. And it keeps getting better.

lit majors like Bob dylan & niki meange are the worst

Actually I think Lex's take on the lyrics in particular is pretty interesting, because it highlights how problematic it has always been to talk about Dylan as some kind of literary figure. He absolutely is one of the greatest lyricists of all time (even though he's also written plenty of lame, lazy stuff), but trying to say exactly how or why is not a straightforward thing. It isn't about storytelling, exactly -- tho he's written good story songs -- or "characters" either, which are usually enigmatic and symbolic (and often just one-liners).

If you think something like "Frankie Lee and Judas Priest" is a great piece of writing, and I do, then you should be able to say why. But it's not easy, and I can imagine Lex or any other non-initiate reading the lyrics and saying, "So what? A few half-assed jokes, some borrowed mythology, big deal."

On the singing, of course, I'm in that camp that thinks he's one of the greatest singers of any kind in the last half-century. His voice is shot, obviously, but his phrasing is still sharp and I think in some ways he's gotten better with age. So I can't relate to any complaints on those fronts.

I think shakedown is otm wrt voice status but isn't it almost magical how he still makes it work?

I think he's similar to Sinatra in the way he seems able to sing anything with ease.