Is Bob Dylan overrated?

it doesn't make any sense, but it's pretty interesting nonetheless

yeah it is! i think Dylan has always had weird systems that are probably incomprehensible to everyone but him ... cool to at least get a glimpse of how his weird mind works.

kinda feel like he's trying to convey some kind of Coltrane-level musical system there but can't be bothered to use a nomenclature everyone else would use (like notes lol)

I'd go so far as to argue that Dylan is deeply underrated as a composer of melodies but Coltrane he is not

Oh wow, I forgot some of that (to maybe make more sense of it all, or at least get some intriguing sequences, see Part Four of Chronicles); He went to the bar, yes, but no Lonnie yet; instead, he sees "an old jazz singer" perform, reminding him somewhat of Billy Eckstein, and suddenly remembers a vocal techique---runs back to rehearsal, can't wait to tackle those old forgotten Dylan songs (and the ones he knew too well): At first it was hard going, like drilling through a brick wall. All I did was taste the dust. But miraculously something internal came unhinged. In the beginning all I could get out was a blood-choked coughing grunt and it blasted up from the bottom of my lower self, but it bypassed my brain. That had never happened before. It burned, but I was awake. The scheme wasn't sewed up too tight, but I grasped the idea. I was having to maneuver more than one stratagem at the same time, but now I knew I could perform any of these songs without them having to be restricted to the world of words. This was revelatory. I played those shows with the Dead and didn't have to think twice about it...
Then he plugs himself into the tour with Petty & the Heartbreakers, still no vocal probs, however, his pre-Dead sense of dead ending comes back:
Night after night it was like I was on cruise control...Petty was drawing most of the people...My performances were an act, and the rituals were boring me...Even at the Petty shows I'd see the people in the crowd and they'd look like cutouts from a shooting gallery...I was sailing along.
Then suddenly, one night in Locarno, Switzerland, at the Piazza Grande Locarno, it all fell apart. For an instant I fell into a black hole. The stage was outdoors and the wind was blowing gales. the kind of night that can blow anything away. I opened my mouth to sing and nothing came out...I thought I had it down so well, yet it was just another trick... So, in front of thirty thousand people, with nothin' more to lose, I conjured up some different type of mechanism to jump-start the other techniques that weren't working...Everything came back, and it came back in multidimension. Even I was surprised. It left me kind of shaky...It was like I'd become an unknown one in the true sense of the term.
So hey, he starts digging the Petty shows, *really* sailing along. And then he breaks his arm, and then he knows, with no pleasure, that he'll have to go to work, and come up with another guitar style, to match up with the new vocal technique, "one that would go along with helping me re-create my songs":
I had always played in the casual Carter Family flat-picking style, and the playing was more or less out of habit and routine. It was always clear and readable but didn't reflect my psyche in any was. It didn't have to. The style had been practical, but now I was going to push that away from the table, too, and replace it with something more active with more definition of presence.
So then he starts remembering what Lonnie Johnson showed him:
...based on an odd not even numbering system...It's a highly controlled system of playing...how (the notes of a scale) form melodies out of triplets and are axiomatic to the rhythm and the chord changes..The method works on higher or lower degrees depending on different patterns and they syncopation of a piece. Very few would be converted to it because it had nothing to do with technique and musicians work their whole lives to be technically superior players. You probably wouldn't pay any attention to this method if you weren't a singer...The system works in a cyclical way...The total effect would be physiological, and triplet forms would fashion melodies at intervals. This is what would drive the song---not necessarily the lyric content...The opposite of improvisation...It doesn't run on emotion. That was another good thing. I had been leaving my songs on the floor like shot rabbits for a long time. That wouldn't be happening any more.

He fucked up his hand as well as his arm.

re: dylan and lonnie johnson, here's what Bob wrote:

"Popular music is usually based on the number 2... If you're using an odd numerical system, things that strengthen a performance begin to happen...In a diatonic scale there are eight notes. In a pentatonic scale there are five. If you're using the first scale and you hit 2, 5 and 7 to the phrase and then repeat it, a melody forms. Or you can use the 4 once and the 7 twice... the possibilities are endless... I'm not a numerologist. I don't know why the number three is more metaphysically powerful than the number 2, but it is. Passion and enthusiasm, which sometimes can be enough to sway a crowd, aren't even necessary. You can manufacture faith out of nothing and there are infinite number of patterns and lines that connect from key to key."

Kinda think Bob is BS-ing here, but who knows, maybe it makes sense to him. I know that some of his 1990s lead guitar work is pretty uhhhh unique.

― tylerw, 17. oktober 2018 23:32 (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Lol, isn't he talking about intervals and saying he's using fourths rather than thirds? But then saying that he is jumping three notes rather than two for numerological reasons, but... I think he is bullshitting, he knows what a third is. Right?

if dylan had recorded utrs 10 years later with his love & theft-era touring band, it probably would be thought of as a minor late-period classic. the weak production / half-hearted performances don't do it any favors.

― tylerw, Wednesday, October 17, 2018 5:51 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is otm. "minor classic" is right because the lyrics are much weaker than Love & Theft, like "2 X 2" is a lazy turd that was originally (according to Heylin) a song about animals walking onto Noah's Arc, but became much dumber after rewriting. "Handy Dandy" has a nice groove but it's again a bunch of lazy rhymes without any story. I can see why he ended up playing ancient covers for the next half decade, to recover a better voice that we'd finally get in 2001.

When I first read that section, the whole section, I speculated that whatever he was talking related to the way he was then (early 00s, also some show tapes from late '90s) playing, say, "Cold Irons Bound"---although when I had seem him in the early 90s, he was doing a lot of fancy folkie finger-picking, and high-pitched bluesy solos on not particularly bluesy songs---all good to great, in the context of a band show (with extended police siren steel guitar etc., also a roadrunner, nerve-testing "Watchtower" that eventually and instantly vanished into something else) but apparently taking his guitarisms further in a subsequent show my Omaha buddy caught, and reported, "Seems like he's been going back and studying what Bloomfield did on 'Tombstone Blues' and all that." Trying different things, not just following that one Path.
(Also in Part Four, he cites Link Wray's "Rumble" and a Martha Reeves performance he saw as exemplifying the "numbering system.")

I often wonder what a mixing board soloing of Bob's live guitar would sound like, and I often think it would sound quite dreadful (or at least completely apart from what the rest of the band are doing)

https://youtu.be/B_nKf7BNqhA
^^this live @ the white house "times are a changing" is a lovely intimate version, but what is he doing on that acoustic guitar? half the time he's hardly playing

https://youtu.be/9hO-83CIVKM
^^this classic live-in-the-studio Cold Irons Bound has shredding galore, but Dylan's work is almost inaudible

and those are examples of, imo, great live takes more or less made for commercial redistribution - when you look at live videos from the neverending tour it gets even more mysterious

I tend to think of him mostly as a great singer/songwriter, his harmonica playing is much more distinctive than his guitar work (to my ears)

https://youtu.be/9v6XdUA8SK8

He plays a short solo on that ^^ Grammys performance of Love Sick. Making similar patterns as on the intro etc to Cold Irons Bound above

I always thought he was using simple pentatonic scales

that's a decent solo, though it hardly leaves the impression that he's got everything under control

so weird to have that choir/crowd in the background doing nothing

though it hardly leaves the impression that he's got everything under control

That's one of many reasons why it's such a brilliant solo. It's so intensely focused, and the focus is on, "How close to going-off-the-rails can I make this?"

When I saw him in '97, he took every solo of the night, and there were a lot of them. Every solo was this insane see-saw between no more than two notes. There might have been a third note in one of the solos, but I don't think so. I've never heard a guitarist play that way before or since. And his band (as in the "Love Sick" clip) drew inspiration from his guitar playing, ratcheting up the energy.

Isn’t there some story of Ronnie Hawkins saying to him something like “I know a few hundred guitarists worse than you but none of them make a living at it”?

to some extent I buy that - something weirdly convincing often happens when he does whatever it is he does, kept me coming back to the live shows quite a few times, the uncertainty keeping everyone on edge, every once in a while delivering magic moments

Isn’t there some story of Ronnie Hawkins saying to him something like “I know a few hundred guitarists worse than you but none of them make a living at it”?

― Harper Valley CTA-102 (James Redd and the Blecchs)

Also said about his piano playing, which I adore like an ugly child.

anyway, Uncle Greil answered the question last week:

What Dylan has, as the late Ralph J. Gleason was probably the first to point out, is swing. He can move rhythm. He has country time. At his best he can’t be followed. As with his piano playing on “She’s Your Lover Now”—no actually existing piano player could, as the word serves, accompany his singing. It was him or no one. It’s the same with rhythm guitar playing—listen to the simple, but essential counting in “Like a Rolling Stone.” And then there’s his early 1990s shift–when he decided, in his fifties, to become a lead guitarist, and suddenly his songs, in terms of how long they went on, became two thirds instrumental, one third sung.

He is, at bottom, a folk singer, which means he does what’s necessary to find the song and seal it. Often that isn’t much. Often it’s just a little more than what the Blue Sky Boys do for “Down on the Banks of the Ohio” on guitar and mandolin. Isn’t it enough?

new pearl jam drummer seems to be working wonders
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oehJDt5Uag

wow, that was taken down fast

anyway, search: Not Dark Yet, Irvine, California, oct 11 2019, Matt Chamberlain on drums

https://youtu.be/wU9cnKOXMv4 new upload

damn, that's spellbinding

Underrated

his stuff in-between Desire and Time Out of Mind def. underrated

Matt Chamberlain on drums

― corrs unplugged, Tuesday, October 15, 2019 11:25 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

matt chamberlain or matt cameron? the latter is pearl jam's drummer, the former is tori amos' drummer (who filled in for cameron once with soundgarden)

yeah not the pearl jam drummer. seeing bob tomorrow in Denver for the first time in a couple years. excited!

i mean i'm still gassed that it's chamberlain, incredible drummer

love the feeling of that "not dark yet"

Chamberlain is great, he's played with everyone from Pearl Jam to Jon Brion.

He's not on Ten, but I think he was an early touring drummer. He's in that live video for Even Flow, iirc. Or maybe Alive? Anyway, love him.

you're right! quite a resume ... bill frisell, bowie, neko case, tori, fiona, broooooce ....

haha wow talk about super session drummer

having both Perfume Genius and Eric Clapton on your resume

wow this arrangement of not dark yet, so vibey and spacious

pretty much a new song, haha

going to see him next Thursday, even more excited now

always fun to have the oooooh shit that's (insert title here) at the 2 minute mark

awesome, let us know if he does some cool versions!

there's a new guitar player on board too, guy from the TooM sessions

matt chamberlain or matt cameron? the latter is pearl jam's drummer, the former is tori amos' drummer (who filled in for cameron once with soundgarden)

good thread idea: similarly named musicians who play the same instrument and are also connected in other ways

Is Bob playing guitar in that clip?

show in denver last night was great! bob is looking incredibly spry -- maybe the most animated I've ever seen him, whether he was standing at the piano, pounding the keys, or prowling the stage. weirdly, the performer i thought of most was mark e smith, haha. "simple twist," "masterpiece," "not dark yet" and "girl from north country" were all highlights ...

https://scontent.fapa1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/72842292_2648404011905072_1224765703194673152_n.jpg?_nc_cat=108&_nc_oc=AQm06c6AvfhcxwuTcuCPHifFrENw1Ijovh5BSMpgR5q7rcuaD0jwwu2YrTne3Jjg8xA&_nc_ht=scontent.fapa1-1.fna&oh=f8b9ca195e1ab750252c6d1c1b63e251&oe=5E2B2ADF

I assume arthritis = no guitar playing, and it's been that way for awhile, yeah?

he actually played guitar on the opener — "things have changed" — and pulled off some surprisingly solid lead lines. but that was it ... yeah, i don't know if it's arthritis, back problems, or just that he's not into it.

how's the voice?

really good! obviously still gravelly, but he's not barking things out — phrasing is dead on target.

cool I was hoping the relative improvement from Tempest (which was really getting rough) to the standards records was reflected live?

do you remember where you were when Bob Dylan didn't die
and everyone who ever listened learned he lived a lie
they had reflected on their mortality
apparently entirely needlessly
while his Cadillac cruised down the backroad not leading to the sky

I was never the biggest dylan fan but I saw him this week partly out of "see this legend before it's too late" obligation despite not knowing much about his live shows. It was different/better than I expected and holy shit is Matt Chamberlain fun to watch.

this tour has been really excellent

I don't think I've seen this mentioned anywhere on ILM as yet: anyone else listened to this Dylan podcast? https://isitrollingbobtalkingdylan.podbean.com/

It's naturally dependent on the guest but the dudes are the right side of obsessive and it's engaging enough. Can recommend the Jonathan Lethem and Geoff Dyer episodes.

Thanks for this. I've just listened to Robyn Hitchcock. Good stuff

I've got that one lined up. Favourites have also included Andrew Male and Michael Gray. Billy Bragg was hard going.