Most recent truly great Bob Dylan song?

I love/hate this post because that song is so great and because saying the last great song was in '78 is crazy talk.

 

In general, I agree with you completely on the song itself. I think it's one of his best songs.

 

As much as I love Blonde on Blonde, Blood on the Tracks, et al, when I really want to hear some Dylan I turn to the releases over the last 25 years or so. Hard to pick a single track, but maybe "I Feel a Change Comin' On," but there's so many.

 

My answer to the posed question is: "When the Deal Goes Down" from "Modern Times" 2006. Love it.

Even Ringo Starr claimed it was one's his recent favorites by Bob.

 

I agree with your point about showing rather than telling, but I don't think there's anything particularly Marxist about that line or the song as a whole. I like to see it as just a sequel to Merle Haggard's song, as the title suggests.

 

Dusquene Whistle.

 

Another vote for "Nettie Moore". Reminiscent of Faulkner.

 

Actually, it gets quite interesting if you think of the narrator is "Workingman's Blues #2" as the same person as in Merle Haggard's song, only 40 years later. After all, both characters voice the same chorus: "Sing a little bit of these working man blues."

Also: Hag's character has nine kids and a wife, whereas Dylan's character has a brand new wife, suggesting he's been married before. Hmm...

 

Another vote for "When the Deal Goes Down"

Plus:
"Cross the Green Mountain"
"Tell Ol' Bill"
"Ain't Talkin'"
"Things Have Changed"
"Moonlight"
"This Dream of You"

 

To me the song is, in many ways, kin to "Stuck Inside of Mobile..." and I think as Crow recorded it that really comes across. I don't just like her rendition, I love it. And it's pretty rare for me to enjoy someone else's cover of a Dylan song that much. Of course her version was the first one the outside world ever heard too.

 

That's one of the reasons I think it's among his best pieces of music, ever. An astounding composition, without peer by anyone. Not that plenty of other people haven't created more dramatic or accomplished compositions along the way or anything, but this song sounds unlike anything else.

Any love here for the Dixie Chicks version? It's very much a cover of Sheryl's version, rather than Bob's. I prefer Sheryl's, but I think there's more than enough room in the world for all three...although Bob's four versions are still tops with me.

Speaking of Sheryl, though, I just came across a live version of hers that's got a great energy, and a cute story about Bob.

 

So many great songs listed (and some that I wouldn't consider "great.") But I'll just mention one that hasn't come up yet: Life Is Hard.

 

Actually, I was wrong: I think his last GREAT song was Every Grain Of Sand, from 1981.

He's written some very good ones since but that, imo, was the last real doozy.

 

Well, I wouldn't go anywhere near that far.

As much as I love Dylan and think he's a genius and a towering figure in American letters, I have to admit his music never sounds to me "unlike anything else," including "Mississippi."

Especially in his latter day work, but really throughout all of his career, he's basically done the same thing: take the shared stuff of American folk and popular (and even occasionally "high") culture -- civil war poetry, folk songs, blues songs, movie dialogue, etc -- and put in in a blender ultimately pouring out a brew that exists in a kind of eternal American present, that sounds contemporary and at the same time connected to deep streams that flow through the culture. But it almost never sounds "unlike anything else," especially musically -- in fact in part its magic is precisely that it sounds familiar -- and that includes with "Mississippi." A little diatonic melody and harmony built around a kind of walk-up (that little melody hook walk up is related to those kind of underlying harmony walk-ups he's used in all kinds of songs from "Like a Rolling Stone" to "Ring Them Bells" -- almost every song he's written on piano that's not a blues has some kind of diatonic walk like that --or sometimes down like with "Queen Jane Approximately," or a chromatic walk down like with "Make You Feel My Love"), a line borrowed from a folks song ("the only thing I did wrong was stay in Mississippi a day too long" from the prison song "Rosalee"), and Dylan's off to the races. What he does with that found stuff and readymade stuff and familiar stuff is astounding. But as a musical innovator, Stravinsky and Schoenberg he ain't; and "Mississippi" ain't The Rite of Spring or Pierrot Lunaire.

 

That IS a great song, one of his greatest. But in the years since then I think he's written a lot of ones that are in the ballpark. If I had to make a list of the songs that I thought were Dylan's best, without worrying about ranking 'em hierarchically, "Jokerman," "Blind Willie McTell," "Ring Them Bells," "Dignity" (which is one of my all time favorites, and I think lyrically the type of songs maybe only Dylan could write), "Not Dark Yet," "Mississippi" even "Most of the Time" would make my personal list of contenders with the likes of "Like a Rolling Stone," "Every Grain of Sand," "Visions of Johanna," "Idiot Wind," "Tangled Up in Blue," "Just Like a Woman," "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues," "It's All Over Now Baby Blue," "Senior," and the like.

 

Jokerman.

 

I'm being serially over-hasty on this thread: Blind Willlie McTell is indeed a great song, and may even be his best song ever.

 

The "Marxist" allusion to which I referred is his use of the word "proletariat," which, in the 21st century, sticks out like a sore thumb, and comes across as about as relevant to present-day concerns as the references to the "Reds" in "Talking John Birch Society Blues."

The even larger problem with the song, as your post hints at, is that, in every way, it's a pale shadow of the Merle Haggard song that inspired its title.

 

Early Roman Kings

 

"Tweeter And The Monkey Man" on the TRAVELING WILBURYS first CD. "Dirty World" is a really fun song as well.

 

That's the last one that really stopped me in my tracks as well.

 

Well, the term is older than Marx, and it's clearly being used as synonymous to "working class," which he probably avoided due to the semi-repetition it would have caused ("working class/working man"). I don't see how one word can constitute such a red flag (no pun intended), seeing as the song is just about poverty and hard times in general.

Different as they are, I like the two songs about equally, Haggard's and Dylan's. The former is a classic, though, so that might give it a slight edge.

 

My favorite is the Tell-Tale Signs version of Mississippi, stripped down arrangement. One of Dylan's best and most generous couplets lies within:

Well my ship’s been split to splinters and it’s sinkin' fast
I’m drownin’ in the poison, got no future, got no past
But my heart is not weary, it’s light and it’s free
I’ve got nothin’ but affection for all those who’ve sailed with me

 

However you want to categorize their take on the plight of the working man, Haggard's "Workingman's Blues" is a classic, I agree. Dylan's is not, at least not in my opinion.

 

Actually, my favorite take on this well-covered theme was Marty Stuart's from a couple of years ago. Never was
terribly fond of the Dylan tune. I do kind of find the odd clunkiness of the Dylan tune endearing, and love "sleep is like a temporary death," but I'd hardly call it a great one. Not even sure I'd call it a good one. But it is an interesting one.