Murder Most Foul - New Bob Dylan Song- #1 hit!*

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Jerryb, Mar 27, 2020.

  1. My view is simplistic, but what I gather from this song is : play what song(s) give you comfort / realization in a time of grief.

    You can't change the situation … so find solace, or meaning, in music (or whatever area you can).
     
    Last edited: Mar 31, 2020
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  2. The Revealer

    The Revealer Forum Status: Paused Indefinitely

    Location:
    On The Road Again
    I don't know, @drad dog , I kind of had you lumped in with a bunch of people where I would barely scan some of the comments that were carrying on about qualities of Dylan fandom and it wasn't what I was looking to read. So, I may not mean specifically you when I say that the other part of a discussion that satisfies as many people as possible is just to try and keep a tone that doesn't sound too judgmental. No one has a perfect truth, am I right?

    Again, I definitely won't hammer anyone who says something I find completely dissonant to my own views. I'll speak to the details that pertain to the things I can speak about myself. And I avoid people who seem to enjoy using time in thread to discuss what's happening in the thread itself - which I have now done twice.

    I think I've spent so much 'time' with so many of you these past few days that I'm feeling expecially neighborly.
     
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  3. unfunkterrible

    unfunkterrible Forum Resident

    Location:
    A Coruña , Spain
    You both are pointing out the same here , I think, but with different implications , I side with the first option because allows for the basic unity of the voice , I´d like to point out that even when incarnating itself in one of this more subjectives voices it seems, sometimes, to retain part of its powers ( prescience , in this case) :
    "i'm goin to Woodstock, it's the aquarian age / THEN I´LL GO to Altamonte "
    At the same time the sense of dread and paranoia in the voice is undeniable and that doesn´t fit well with our modern sense of reliability ...and to that you have to add the way Dylan´s voice delivers the lyrics ....
     
  4. SPARTACUS

    SPARTACUS Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sheffield
    This is the new "spending time with friends"
     
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  5. fishcane

    fishcane Dirt Farmer

    Location:
    Finger Lakes,NY
    Building off the theme time radio discussion earlier, this song kind of has that entire shows’ mission built right into the track. Pretty neat
     
  6. uzn007

    uzn007 Watcher of the Skis

    Location:
    Raleigh, N.C.
    People have commented that the musical and cultural references basically stop at the end of the 70s. I wonder if that has anything to do with Bob's religious conversion around that time, especially given that he cites the assassination as the beginning of the "Age of the Antichrist".

    "Rock & roll all the way down to the pit", indeed.
     
  7. fishcane

    fishcane Dirt Farmer

    Location:
    Finger Lakes,NY
    “Very seldom do you hear a real song anymore” Dylan 86
     
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  8. Zeki

    Zeki Forum Resident

    :D I thought the thread topic was the 17-minute song, Murder Most Foul. What have you been talking about?
     
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  9. Socrates

    Socrates Forum Resident

    Location:
    New England
    I listened to it once. And I kept waiting for that one part of the song, that I knew would materialize, and sure enough it did. He couldn’t resist. At least I saw it coming. So I can always duck, right? Or run. Bob just can’t stop killing me.
     
  10. sekaer

    sekaer Forum Resident

    Location:
    United States
    In the world as in SHF, our only hope is in dialogue—which we’ve lost that we live in our own custom curated bubbles—and dialogue can only happen with mutual respect for each other’s positions. Not agreeing but agreeing to disagree. FWIW I fail at it every day here and there, but you keep rolling that rock up the hill with hope.
     
  11. lschwart

    lschwart Senior Member

    Location:
    Richmond, VA
    Does anyone know when Wolfman Jack stopped broadcasting regularly as a DJ?

    As far as the apocalypse is concerned, I don't think the song is about that. The central turning point of the song, the pair of linked couplets that begin the final long verse, suggests that the singer is registering his sense of a "long decay" that began with the death of Kennedy and continues (I assume) right up to the point at which the singer is singing--right on through the '60s and '70s to the singer's present moment. He doesn't point to any imminent end-times. The only aspect of millenarian thinking that fits with this slow decay idea is the idea of the reign of the Antichrist, to which the song refers, although in an unusual way (here it's the conspirators and the age they seem to have ushered in that stand-in).

    For me, the song lacks the urgency of a prophesy. It's elegiac, craning backward not pointing forward.

    L.
     
  12. Brian Doherty

    Brian Doherty Forum Resident

    Location:
    Los Angeles CA
    Lschwart I don't disagree with you and to me the apocalypse feeling is not textual---it's the total gestalt of vocal delivery and music and topic. I don't think on the surface it is meant to summon the feeling of End Times. But I cannot deny that for me it did, instantly.
     
  13. mpayan

    mpayan A Tad Rolled Off

    Man, why couldnt we have had this kind of traction when the I and I thread was started...
     
  14. Socrates

    Socrates Forum Resident

    Location:
    New England
    Yeah, I think it’s just a feeling I get from the song. I’m not the Antichrist, anymore than Bob Dylan is. But some people want to carry on with abstract threats. I don’t know what they get out of it, a sense of vindication maybe?
     
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  15. Maybe Dylan wrote and recorded it around April 2018 when el trumpo made a splash saying he would release all JFK Assassination Records. (He and “intelligence agencies did not)

    Here’s a summary from WaPost article:
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...il-2021-bowing-to-national-security-concerns/

    Jefferson Morley, a former Washington Post staff writer who editsJFKFacts.org, a website devoted to the Kennedy records, said in an interview that he was disappointed by Trump’s decision to delay the full release for another three years and, possibly, beyond.

    “Trump said that all the JFK files will be released, but the truth is that thousands of JFK files are still secret. The clear intent of Congress was to have these released last October and now we’re talking about 2021,” Morley said. “The point is that the CIA wants to keep this secret forever. It’s a very clear statement of intent.”

    Morley also said that the Trump administration is not complying with the stipulations of the Kennedy Records Act, which requires that the administration provide declassified explanations for withheld documents.
     
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  16. summerteeth

    summerteeth Subterranean Homesick Alien

    Wolfman Jack still had a show until 1993, 2 years before he died.
    And I agree, I wouldn't call it prophesy -- it's a commentary on the "long decay that began with the death of Kennedy" and how he (we) can turn to music for comfort.
     
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  17. Socrates

    Socrates Forum Resident

    Location:
    New England
    MMf is like the opposite of this:




    That’s just my opinion. Everyone is welcome to continue enjoying whatever songs they like.
     
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  18. DmitriKaramazov

    DmitriKaramazov Senior Member

    Ah! Thank you for this! This was very wise and VERY nicely said, especially, “The song helped to place me within the history of my times and my life running parallel with it. It's the part about feeling like I'm an observer rather than a participant.”

    Thank you and my condolences!

    — DS
     
  19. Like many; I find the song to be compelling, a collage of deadly historical fact, lyrical gymnastics and pure whimsy - covered in blood.

    Except for a seventies musical reference - here and there - if you told me the lyrics were written during the Basement Tapes Era - I’d believe it! Maybe it was - with a touch up a few years later.
     
  20. unfunkterrible

    unfunkterrible Forum Resident

    Location:
    A Coruña , Spain
    Does nobody think that there´s a disconnection between the portentousness of the lyrics and Dylan´s delivery?:hide: like it is nothing more than a ritual when inside the song the fate of a country seems to be at play? :hide: again.
     
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  21. SPARTACUS

    SPARTACUS Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sheffield
    And I said I was done 2 days ago...


    I think maybe a period of stagnation generally shrouded with superficial progress, technological developments which give and take in equal measures along with some brief periods of hope.

    Approaching adulthood in the early nineties, it did appear to be a time of real progress. The fall of the Berlin Wall, The end of Apparteit and a black South African president, relative peace in Ireland, what seemed in the UK to be an end to greed & a more open and inclusive society.

    Then all of a sudden the bottom fell out, a short time after the turn of the century. Maybe Prince was right all along.... What was all that the fuss over just another rotation of our planet? It was never gonna live up to the hype.

    I'm not going to get into what happened shortly afterwards. But Bob was right there with us too. Or at least it felt like it. Which is all that matters really.

    Maybe it's an age thing. But this song resonates, despite my being born out of time.
     
    Last edited: Mar 31, 2020
  22. Socrates

    Socrates Forum Resident

    Location:
    New England

    The song sounds more like a ritualistic sacrifice to me. But enjoy it, everyone! Enjoy!

    Or is it of me?

    Well anyway, enjoy the hell out of it!
     
    Last edited: Mar 31, 2020
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  23. Wildest cat from montana

    Wildest cat from montana Humble Reader

    Location:
    ontario canada
    Nice line. It would fit right into this song.
     
  24. Last edited: Mar 31, 2020
  25. fishcane

    fishcane Dirt Farmer

    Location:
    Finger Lakes,NY
    Is it ok if I like both?
     

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