Is Bob Dylan overrated?

Apparently there is also a 41-CD complete albums box about to hit the shelves, so he's trawling for newbies with deep pockets I guess!

holy shit i only just watched the video

At some point, because of the way the two hip-hop guys are presented, I expect this--meaning the video's director, not Dylan I would hope--will find its way into the Pop Music's Race Problem thread.

That's actually just one guy, Danny Brown, he's pretty well known and that's how he dresses, kind of eccentric guy

this seems like the kind of thing that was made just to be passed around on the net rather than enjoyed.

I wish some old people would get upset over it.

What's the name for the 0 point about which an artist's under or overratedness oscillates?

this seems like the kind of thing that was made just to be passed around on the net rather than enjoyed.

i think it's hugely enjoyable and impressive and i don't know if i have any deep thoughts on it beyond that

Yeah, it's interesting, but I'm not sure what to make of it either - using Like a Rolling Stone as an elegy for old media? A satire on the continuity between the "active" channel-surfer and the ADD continual partial awareness of the web? I mean, the original song was always sort of nihilistic anyway, wasn't it?

"The overall effect is head-spinning but incredibly compelling: the more you surf through the 'Like a Rolling Stone' video, the more the song's contempt seems to be addressed to all of western civilization. By the time you land on a vintage live performance of the actual Bob Dylan, he feels like the only real person in existence."

I get this, feel like the effect is probably intentional - all the other "performances" of the song are intentionally divorced from the content (they aren't really performing the song, the words have just been placed in their mouths) and then you see Bob (not singing, interestingly) and oh yeah here is the dude actually doing his song, "this is what authenticity looks like", that juxtaposition is pretty striking.

Aside from however you interpret the video, the thing that makes it so great for me is the most obvious explanation of all: surprise. I would just assume that anybody making a video for "Like a Rolling Stone" would either show Dylan through the years, or a montage of the same '60s footage you've seen 10 million times already--Vietnam, MLK, moon landing, etc. (which can sometimes still work for me, but most of the time, enough). I would never even have conceived of what this guy did.

I suppose encountering it "in the wild" on the net makes it more enjoyable than reading about it or having brian williams explain it to you.

it seems more like a shared celebration to me. It's such a liberating song to yowl along to, and that's what connects everybody--they're all having fun yowling along. Also, some of the participants aren't actors; I don't think we're supposed to feel contempt for Drew Carey.

Yes, and re. Shakey Mo's post, I'm not sure we're supposed to consider Drew Carey's authenticity either.

I'd say a lot of it comes from one's own personal associations w/Drew Carey, various tv shows etc (as well as one's own personal associations with the relatively vague lyrics of LARS). The strange combination of impressions, strange new feelings. I'm not feeling it, but I think I get it now.

drew carey is pretty authentic he's friends w/joe walsh

i think the video is about how dylan likes pawn stars

The great gift of this video is showing that footage of Bob Dylan performing in the 60s is more authentic than a home shopping network. Truly some great, mindblowing art here.

Oh wow Rolling Stone magazine proclaims the new video to "Like a Rolling Stone" is brilliant, didn't see that one coming.

Truly some great, mindblowing art here.

don't think anyone here claims it's mindblowing. it's kind of a novel application of technology, that's about it.

Bob Dylan performing in the 60s is more authentic than a home shopping network

I happen to believe this is true fwiw

will happily sub "more interesting" for "authentic" there if necc

yeah i think placing the song in such an "inauthentic" (i might say more distracted and fleeting) media context is meant to both demonstrate how the song has been fully commodified (it's hard to "hear" the song with fresh ears) while also paradoxically ratcheting up what remains bracing and "authentic" about it through that very context. the song break through despite everything (or so the intention as i read it seems to hope). it's an interesting double gesture, i think.

it's like "i can't really show young dylan tearing through this song, we've all seen that, it's not really 'new' anymore...so instead i'll go to the opposite extreme in order to suggest that same feeling."

So, this Nobel prize.

I don't care if Trump gets it, just no PHILIP ROTH

now he's overrated

LOL, not half!

well-deserved imo

Sure, but why now? Slow year in lit?

It's an award for lifetime achievement, not for any particular work. So I guess they just ran out of reasons not to give it to him.

nyt sez he is like homer and sappho

http://orig15.deviantart.net/1378/f/2008/104/3/d/halloween_iii_homer_by_blacksupernova.png

hah seeing his name trending I naturally thought the worst (given the way this year has gone) so this is quite pleasant news, really

Given the basic scenario of a Nobel prize in literature going to a pop singer, one would expect inevitable howls of outrage from at least some corner of the literary establishment. It will be interesting to see if this happens with Dylan- or who will be the highest profile author to voice discontent with the choice. I expect the protests from those rarefied precincts to be scarce. If so, that will be a kind of tribute in itself.

Going by the Irish Times today, its looks like 80% of our literati are pretty cool about it

it'll just be this guy lamenting the fate of the world...

https://nevalalee.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/bloom.jpg

truth is, if anyone is prone to hyperbole where dylan is concerned its academics/poetry professors/lit professors/writers/poets/etc. they love the guy more than anyone.

so many dots to connect for the egghead crowd. they looooove dots.

"for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition"

fuck off and die! Equally as bullshit as your peace prizes to genocidal psychopaths.

an act “wrenched from the rancid prostates of senile, gibbering hippies”.

truth is, if anyone is prone to hyperbole where dylan is concerned its academics/poetry professors/lit professors/writers/poets/etc. they love the guy more than anyone.

― scott seward, Thursday, October 13, 2016 8:13

That's true. Christopher Ricks' Dylan is more absurd and incomprehensible than Tarantula.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nP85Uc6H79U

ha, trainspotting. oi, sicky fell in the loo! i remember that movie.

A few snarky takes in here, notably one from Gary Shteyngart:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/trainspotting-author-criticizes-bob-dylans-nobel-honor/

truth is, if anyone is prone to hyperbole where dylan is concerned its academics/poetry professors/lit professors/writers/poets/etc. they love the guy more than anyone.

this is otm. his stuff reads very well as poetry esp if yr hermeneutic is a new-criticism style -- you can break it down, you can do stuff with it, there's always a little something you can't square

It seems like the acceptable move will be to argue that its a category error and not to confront Dylan's worthiness directly.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2008/jun/30/popandrock.poetry

notably ... Gary Shteyngart

does not compute

"It is funny that the only people who actually approached the ferocity of early pre-motorbike crash Dylan (1966 being the dividing line between scary can-do-no-wrong Dylan and bloody, beaten, bowed, sometimes scary, and good-when-he-feels-like-it Dylan) were the art brut garage and punk bands of the 60's and 70's. The dandies and aesthetes of those eras mainly pegged the corn pone/po'boy/nasal/fake Carter family/should sound like you're 60 when you're 20/spaghetti western Dylan that he could get away with because he was and is a freak of nature and because he invented the shit in the first place. That ferocity was hunger and could previously be heard on Charles Ives and Eartha Kitt records, making it alien to most pop and pop-folk fans at the time. The juvenile delinquents heard Dean and Brando in his voice, but unfortunately his words were too good and the boring people heard Shakespeare."

I can't really buy into that motorbike-crash dividing line theory. A lot of those early albums are frankly kind of uneven. It's true that Bringing it All Back Home through Blonde on Blonde is probably his best consecutive run of three albums, but if I had to choose between only hearing the pre- and post-crash albums for the rest of my life, I would choose the post- in a second.

you can find definitions of literature that include things that are SUNG. i mean it just has to be written to be literature. i think. i'm all for it. would have been happy for leonard cohen too. now HE doesn't have a chance. too dylan-y.