Is Bob Dylan overrated?

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.

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.

http://thumbs.ebaystatic.com/images/g/h0IAAOSw-itXvIC7/s-l225.jpg

Listening to Tempest for the first time ever, and as my comments on several other threads probably shows, Bob Dylan isn't my cup of tea, but most most of it is pleasant and ok. But the title track is just BAD, huh? This is really one where the text works better on it's own, without the horrible melody and plodding rhythm, not that that's saying much. Oy. But some of the other tracks were ok, I'll give him that. But oy.

this is the part that feels the weirdest:

I'm trying to determine whom you've been transfigured from, or as.

I just showed you. Go read the book.

That's who you have in mind? What could the connection to that Bobby Zimmerman be other than name?

I don't have it in mind. I didn't write that book. I didn't make it up. I didn't dream that. I'm not telling you I had a dream last night. Remember the song "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream"? I didn't write that, either. I'm showing you a book that's been written and published. I mean, look at all the connecting things: motorcycles, Bobby Zimmerman, Keith and Kent Zimmerman, 1964, 1966. And there's more to it than even that. If you went to find this guy's family, you'd find a whole bunch more that connected. I'm just explaining it to you. Go to the grave site.

it's like the mystical messenger character in a thriller w/ paranormal elements

Too bad he didn't write a song about it--or maybe he did, and we just didn't get it...

It was "Wigwam."

haha! i mean, the most obvious candidate is "Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum" ... there was some essay about i that i can't seem to track down right now.

Those Dylan quotes just make me wish some writer sometime had put him and Ornette Coleman together in a room and transcribed the results.

yeah haha, they definitely both have/had weird brains

Well, the thing is, a big part of that is/was an act - I've had extended conversations this summer/fall with one of Ornette's bassists, and his son Denardo, and both of them said to me that Ornette liked to basically gaslight journalists. That within the band, he would have extremely detailed, down-to-earth conversations about the actual music and how it worked and what he wanted and why, but when a journalist (like me!) asked him about musical stuff, he'd give them a philosophical disquisition instead.

Oh I believe it -- the ornette in the Spellman book strikes me as very different than the mystic sage of his latter days. And Dylan is probably the same -- making a game out of explaining himself, playing with a journalist's expectations etc. but I do think they get wrapped up in that stuff themselves, to the extent that they might not know where it begins or ends.

I think he's trying to tell us that he staged a motorcycle crash in which he killed off his original identity and was reborn as "Robert Zimmerman", after getting the idea from a book he'd been reading that day

(xp re: the dylan interview bit in question)
would be pretty funny if you did go to the gravesite, something was off, & shit very rapidly went all North-by-Northwest tho -- mr. dylan if you're reading please finance this adventure film & I promise to find a way to put you in, even if you're dead by the time we start shooting, we will find a way to cast your remains in a minor speaking role

You gave your prize to a rockstar, duh

He'll try to make it

this is a strange thing to say, especially the way the journalist connected these two ideas

“There’s a certain intensity in writing a song,” he replies, “and you have to keep in mind why you are writing it and for who and what for,” he says. “Paintings, and to a greater extent movies, can be created for propaganda purposes, whereas songs can’t be.”

with films, you can really lead the viewer by the nose and force them to experience the work the way you want them too. maybe paintings are similar -- images are more potent in advertising than jingles.

i feel like his paintings are the opposite of propaganda though -- these quiet scenes, rendered with these bold, oversaturated colors that collapse space and texture. the most propagandistic things he's done are songs like "blowin in the wind."

his statements in interviews often seem tossed off

Can someone show Dylan this, cheers - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Propaganda_songs

I don't think of "Blowin' In The Wind" as "proprandistic", although yeah he's shaking his head re them cannonballs etc., but "the answer is"--not "we're gonna win, in a righteous peaceful way, that is" or "It's too soon to know", with cautious hope, folkie folk wisdom, like "the answer's out there, just hang in there"---nope, it's not doin' nothin" but blowin' in the wind, like a flag flappin' or any random piece of paper, paper bag, pine pollen, whutever. He marches us along and tips us over the edge like a trash can at the end of the line, over and over. And makes us, well some of us most of the time, makes us like it. Kind of an anti-anthem, or at the very least his own doubts.
Much later, one woman's experience of writing, in a way, with Mr. D.:
http://www.vulture.com/2016/10/bob-dylan-carole-bayer-sager-book-excerpt.html

Beautifully otm re blowing and that excerpt is outstanding

Outstanding indeed. Leafed through that book in the store the other day and read a funny anecdote about her and a shrink when she was breaking up with Burt.

Rex Murphy typically comes off as Canada's cranky, conservative old uncle, but I mostly* agree with him here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUmDDkIeIq4

*Dylan > Cohen

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22485-blood-on-the-tracks/

Pitchfork reviewing BOTT for some reason

They're planting stories in the press.

i feel like his paintings are the opposite of propaganda though -- these quiet scenes, rendered with these bold, oversaturated colors that collapse space and texture. the most propagandistic things he's done are songs like "blowin in the wind."

Don't tell me we're supposed to take his painting seriously too as well now, how much more overrated can Bob Dylan get?

Analysing the shit daubings of famous people is pure 1st world degeneracy and should never have happened. A recent example was that laughable Marr program about Winston Churchill's art club style Sunday paintings.

Dylan apparently really valued his painting lessons from his neighbor down the road, all the more so since the guy didn't care at all about rock and roll celebrity, although he did feel pretty guilty when he abandoned the guy one day to entertain George Harrison at his house.

Bob was painting in Dorfman’s studio on Thanksgiving 1968 when Pattie and George Harrison’s car came up the road toward his property. Bob put down his brushes and asked Dorfman excitedly, ‘Aren’t ya comin‘?’ ‘Well, Bob, I’ve got work to do. You go ahead.’ It seemed to Dorfman, as Bob left, that his friend was irritated by his lack of interest in such a distinguished visitor.

Sounes, Howard (2011-05-24). Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan, Grove/Atlantic

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/26/questions-raised-about-dylan-show-at-gagosian/

remember this?

this was an enjoyable read: http://www.villagevoice.com/music/when-bob-dylan-practiced-downstairs-929266

Dylan apparently really valued his painting lessons from his neighbor down the road, all the more so since the guy didn't care at all about rock and roll celebrity, although he did feel pretty guilty when he abandoned the guy one day to entertain George Harrison at his house.

― From a Vanity 6 (James Redd and the Blecchs),

not guilty

For leading you astray
On the road to Mandalay..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-lQyRihb3k

great read, thanks Karl

that garland jeffries album is great if you were there were another early graham parker & the rumor or elvis costello record

Can someone remember which Heylin book is good?

hmm my library only has the 1991 version of 'Behind the Shades' - must've been the one I read last time

iirc it's p definitive - any other recommendations?

wanna do a Dylan podcast, so I'm gonna read up a bit (the Heylin bio, Chronicles, Gray's Encyclopedia for reference, the Scorsese doc)

Took that one out of my own library a while back, perhaps in Revisited. The quotes are excellent, but I skimmed over his own opinions, since I was forewarned.

happy birthday, you overrated genius!

made a playlist for the occasion https://open.spotify.com/user/betamaxdk/playlist/5ObYSdPI0mpDzl7ObTe2cR

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

― conrad, Friday, 21 October 2016

i must say - i wasn't expecting three songs off of infidels

You got 'em, and so much more:
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/inside-bob-dylan-musical-girl-from-the-north-country-w502632?utm_source=rsnewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=daily&utm_campaign=091317_16

I saw it. It's very bad indeed. Don't waste your money.

Dylan's not overrated. Conor McPherson, however...

Bob Dylan is overrated, depending on who you're talking to.

trying to decide if i want to shell out to see bob next month — mavis staples opening definitely makes it more enticing.

didn't know they were still touring together, that's sweet

also Bob otm

https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.BWwHxBlXMM2QEE7z-aSxhwEsEK%26pid%3D15.1&f=1