Is Bob Dylan overrated?

what can a nobel laureate do except what he does best

― F♯ A♯ (∞)

so he's bringing back his radio show? i loved that radio show.

on wballz

I just saw someone with a crazy looking t-shirt that turned out to be from a Dylan world tour. I wonder if I should try to describe and see if the hive mind can find an image of it.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10/17/nobel-prize-committee-gives-up-trying-to-contact-bob-dylan/

He should be made to be wearing a telephone

Would love to hear a live "Long and Wasted Years":

http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/bob-dylan/2016/comerica-theatre-phoenix-az-2bfd64ce.html

This t-shirt.

https://img1.etsystatic.com/133/1/5651148/il_570xN.1003061825_5932.jpg

What the heck?

I hope they become so ashamed of giving the award to an American who won't go to get it, who isn't Thomas Pynchon, that they give it to someone who is Thomas Pynchon next year. And then Bob Dylan goes and gets it on his behalf.

i really hope dylan turns it down, more than anything because it would hint at how dumb it was to give it to him in the first place

but maybe he just won't do anything, which would be good too

today in Dumb Dylan "News"
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CvPEYpNVMAAwfjY.jpg:large

Well I mean if someone knew the def of overrated it would be Vonnegut, don't @ me

haha, well i think vonnegut's fine, just weird to make a news story out of a dead author's offhand comment from 25 years ago. i'm sure bob dylan didn't keep vonnegut awake at night. dude was born in 1922, he definitely did not give a shit.

Pretty stupid to separate his lyrics from the music. As poetry, out of context, his "and then SHAKESPEARE / was frozen in FEAR / because the KING OF FRANCE / wasn't wearing PANTS" shit is terrible.

Dylan planning a gospel-years volume of the Bootleg Series

Did Dylan show at all? Last I heard was that he didn't respond to the prize.

Rejecting the prize or not acknowledging it at all seems like a very Dylan thing to do. Everyone else fighting if he deserves it or not while he doesn't give a fuck.

ceremony doesn't happen for a while -- dylan's site updated a page selling his new lyrics book with a small note about the prize, heh heh.

Assuming he is just laying low whilst cooking up a cranky speech.

he's been closing shows this week with "Why Try To Change Me Now?"

So let people wonder
Let 'em laugh
Let 'em frown
You know I'll love you
Till the moon's upside down
Don't you remember
I was always your clown
Why try to change me now

I sit and daydream
I've got daydreams galore
Cigarette ashes
There they go on the floor
Go away weekends
Leave my keys in the door
Why try to change me now
Why can't I be more conventional
People talk
People stare
So I try
But can't be
'Cause I can't see
My strange little world
Just go passing me by
So let people wonder
Let 'em laugh
Let 'em…

If dogs run free.

They're polling flagposts of the zinging

dylan's site updated a page selling his new lyrics book with a small note about the prize, heh heh

Now removed!

a tony award is next bob dylan has written lyrics and music for a musical opening next year

Wigwamalot!

how soon we forget
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-93Ck62tsGQ

^ almost makes me interested in Bob Dylan

eh he's overrated

a tony award is next bob dylan has written original lyrics and music for a musical opening next year

yes, yes i get it.

Wigwamalot!

lmao

My work is done here

would love for Dylan to reject the prize or not care too much, but based on his ramblings in the 2012 RS interview where he talks about iirc being reincarnated as a biker or smth, I'm afraid this is all wishful thinking:

I'd always been different than other people, but this book told me why. Like certain people are set apart. You know, it's just like the phrase, "peers" – I mean, I see this, "Well, your peers this, your peers that." And I've always wondered, who are my peers? When I received the Medal of Freedom I started thinking more about it. Like, who are they? But then it became clear. My peers are Aretha Franklin, Duke Ellington, B.B. King, John Glenn, Madeleine Albright, Pat Summitt, Toni Morrison, Jasper Johns, Martha Graham, Sidney Poitier. People like that, and they are set apart, too. And I'm proud to be counted among them.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/bob-dylan-unleashed-a-wild-ride-on-his-new-lp-and-striking-back-at-critics-20120927

dylan otm.

b.b. king is overrated though.

and i don't even know about madeleine albright.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/quotabelle/authors/pat-summitt/summitt1970utmartin.jpg

r.i.p.

feel like the death of pat didn't get enough love but it's been a busy year. also i don't have sportscenter.

it's interesting how he still seems able to tap into this kind of postmodern stream-of-consciousness rambling that's somewhat unique and recognizable in his mid 60s output, when it's absent on Together Throug Life and Tempest which are (most of the time) caught up in poor storytelling...

i would also add softball legend joan joyce to dylan's list of peers. one of a kind. i got to see her play in her prime. unbelievable.

http://flo-static-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/api/5791789ab14b8.jpeg

that 2012 dylan interview is kind of crazy, where he's talking about transfiguration?

By transfiguration, you mean it in the sense of being transformed? Or do you mean transmigration, when a soul passes into a different body?

Transmigration is not what we are talking about. This is something else. I had a motorcycle accident in 1966.I already explained to you about new and old. Right? Now, you can put this together any way you want. You can work on it any way you want. Transfiguration: You can go and learn about it from the Catholic Church, you can learn about it in some old mystical books, but it's a real concept. It's happened throughout the ages. Nobody knows who it's happened to, or why. But you get real proof of it here and there. It's not like something you can dream up and think. It's not like conjuring up a reality or like reincarnation – or like when you might think you're somebody from the past but have no proof. It's not anything to do with the past or the future.

So when you ask some of your questions, you're asking them to a person who's long dead. You're asking them to a person that doesn't exist. But people make that mistake about me all the time. I've lived through a lot. Have you ever heard of a book called No Man Knows My History? It's about Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet. The title could refer to me.
Transfiguration is what allows you to crawl out from under the chaos and fly above it. That's how I can still do what I do and write the songs I sing and just keep on moving.

well, maybe not in her PRIME prime, but she was still amazing when i saw her play. she played forever.

xp I cannot read that without laughing (a laughter tinted with anxiety)

sounds like more or less the same guy telling that Newsweek journalist abt big and small letter versions of words

and i don't even know about madeleine albright.

― scott seward, Friday, October 21, 2016 2:08 PM (ten minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

She said the price was "worth it" when asked about half a million Iraqi children dying due to US sanctions.

So...yeah, no fucking idea why he's lumping her in with those others...unless Duke Ellington's final act was to participate in the 1973 Chile coup or something.

i totally get what he's talking about with the transfiguration thing. makes total sense to me. doesn't sound crazy either.

I think it's walking a razor's edge wrt making sense - I feel like I kinda get it if I squint my eyes, but I'm not sure if that's because it distorts my vision or focuses on what he's saying

makes a little more sense in the entire context of the interview, but i guess just the fact that he's trying to explain it seems out of character. and i don't know the stuff about the other guys named Zimmerman -- a confusing thing, but I think Dylan's always been sort of obsessed with doubling / twins etc.

re xpost "Why Try To Change Me Now", one of my fave recent Dylan tracks, this is a pretty intriguing Cy Coleman tribute album: some of the renditions are a bit bland, but even those are at least transparent enough to show off the songwriting. Coleman might coulda been the East Coast Bacharach, but didn't care about pop-rock, incl. Broadway attempts at same. Art/indie-inclined pop-rockers etc. still find affinity with him on this set (which did pretty well on the jazz charts, says here). Would like for Mr. D. to some more of these:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Best_Is_Yet_to_Come:_The_Songs_of_Cy_Coleman

So when you ask some of your questions, you're asking them to a person who's long dead. You're asking them to a person that doesn't exist. But people make that mistake about me all the time.

in less mystical terms, this totally makes sense to me in terms of dylan and being interviews, like i can't even really think back to who i was at 19 and the things that person might have thought or said and relate to them in anyway...yet for dylan he still gets asked -- at 75! -- things about the early 60s folk movement. i'm sure that does seem like another person in another world to him, yet because of his icon status it sort of stalks him in a way that our past doesnt because no one cares about our past.