I have to say that after I figured out the rules of the thread, I was more or less happy to respect them. However, if you, the thread starter, start violating them....well....anarchy my friend, anarchy.
Very well said... and leave it to the slippery little bastard to capture the grandeur of history and the utter emptiness/vanity in the same breath
I know, I know....must.....stay on....topic...*internal conflict ensues* ok!, I am fine now got all the "jumping ahead" outta my system now, carry on everyone!
Dylan is insulting the killer in the worst way he can think of. The killer believes himself to be a big man, a man of action, a hero, and Dylan belittles him by explaining that he's just a little pawn being manipulated to do the dirty work. On the other hand, Evers will always be revered as a hero.
More ambiguous praise for the greedy, duplicitous narcissist. The 60th anniversary magazine at Publix applauds your timing OP Sixty years ago Bob Dylan changed music forever - Tortoise
“Only a Pawn in Their Game” - I think Bob isn’t wrong to suggest that their is a whole system in place to enforce and perpetuate racism and racist violence, but to dismiss the responsibility of individual actors, of the “poor white man” who actually kills a man, as “only a pawn in their game”, removes the agency of these terrorists, and ultimately removes it from everyone in the system, which is not a moral system I can support. Beyond that, the constantly shifting tempo and rhythm renders the song disjointed, like it’s falling down the stairs (and not in a good way). This is just heavy handed, simplistic, and musically boring and unpleasant. 1.5/5
Brian must have decided Bob was all right by the time he got him to sing a duet with him on one of his unreleased solo albums.
Brian Wilson recalls funny encounter with Bob Dylan “Once I was in the Malibu emergency room getting a weigh-in and this guy walked up to me. He had curly hair and was on the short side. ‘Are you Brian Wilson?’ he asked. ‘Yeah,’ I said.’Hi,’ he said. ‘I’m Bob Dylan.’ He was there because he had broken his thumb.” “We talked a little bit about nothing. I was a big fan of his lyrics, of course. ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ was one of the best songs, you know? And ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ and ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’ and so many more. What a songwriter!” “I invited him over to my house for lunch the next day. That was a longer conversation. We just talked and talked about music, we talked about old songs we remembered, songs before rock and roll. We talked about ideas we had. Nice guy,” Brian Wilson said. Dylan was part of the Wilson song “The Spirit Of Rock and Roll” that also had Electric Light Orchestra‘s Jeff Lynne. The track was part of Wilson’s unofficial album “Sweet Insanity” that was recorded from 1986 to 1990. But that album was rejected by Sire Records because of the inclusion of a rap song “Smart Girls” and the lyrics from Wilson’s former controversial psychologist Eugene Landy.
Don’t you think you’re a particularly American voice – for how your songs reference our history, or have commented on it? They’re historical. But they’re also biographical and geographical. They represent a particular state of mind. A particular territory. What others think about me, or feel about me, that’s so irrelevant. Any more than it is for me, when I go see a movie, say, Wuthering Heights or something, and have to wonder what’s Laurence Olivier really like. When I see an actor on the stage or something, I don’t think about what they’re like. I’m there because I want to forget about myself, forget about what I care or do not care about. Entertaining is a type of sport. Some of us have seen your calling as somebody who has done his best to pay witness to the world, and the history that made that world. History’s a funny thing, isn’t it? History can be changed. The past can be changed and distorted and used for propaganda purposes. Things we’ve been told happened might not have happened at all. And things that we were told that didn’t happen actually might have happened. Newspapers do it all the time; history books do it all the time. Everybody changes the past in their own way. It’s habitual, you know? We always see things the way they really weren’t, or we see them the way we want to see them. We can’t change the present or the future. We can only change the past, and we do it all the time. But you have a use for it. In Chronicles, you wrote about your interest in Civil War history. You said that the spirit of division in that time made a template for what you’ve written about in your music. You wrote about reading the accounts from that time. Reading, say, Grant’s remembrances is different than reading Shelby Foote’s history of the Civil War. The reports are hardly the same. Shelby Foote is looking down from a high mountain, and Grant is actually down there in it. Shelby Foote wasn’t there. Neither were any of those guys who fight Civil War re-enactments. Grant was there, but he was off leading his army. He only wrote about it all once it was over. If you want to know what it was about, read the daily newspapers from that time from both the North and South. You’ll see things that you won’t believe. There is just too much to go into here, but it’s nothing like what you read in the history books. It’s way more deadly and hateful. There doesn’t seem to be anything heroic or honorable about it at all. It was suicidal. Four years of looting and plunder and murder done the American way. It’s amazing what you see in those newspaper articles. Places like the Pittsburgh Gazette, where they were warning workers that if the Southern states have their way, they are going to overthrow our factories and use slave labor in place of our workers and put an end to our way of life. There’s all kinds of stuff like that, and that’s even before the first shot was fired Yet people thought your music spoke to and reflected the 1960s. Do you feel that’s also the case with your music since 1997? Sure, my music is always speaking to times that are recent. But let’s not forget human nature isn’t bound to any specific time in history. And it always starts with that. My songs are personal music; they’re not communal. I wouldn’t want people singing along with me. It would sound funny. I’m not playing campfire meetings. I don’t remember anyone singing along with Elvis, or Carl Perkins, or Little Richard. The thing you have to do is make people feel their own emotions. A performer, if he’s doing what he’s supposed to do, doesn’t feel any emotion at all. It’s a certain kind of alchemy that a performer has. Bob Dylan Unleashed – Rolling Stone
Today's Song: Boots of Spanish Leather Lyrics/Official Appearances Info: "Boots of Spanish Leather" is a ballad written and performed by Bob Dylan, recorded in New York City on August 7, 1963, and released in 1964 on his album The Times They Are a-Changin'. It features Dylan solo on the acoustic guitar, playing the song using fingerpicking. The Song is written as a alternating dialogue between two lovers. Recorded: August 7, 1963 Released: 1964 Personnel: Bob Dylan – vocals, acoustic guitar, harmonica
Hello again, hope everyone is well today, after yesterday's song of which I wasn't about to touch with a ten-foot pole we reach.... Boots of Spanish Leather O, baby! now this is the good stuff this is a expertly crafted ballad of which takes the form of a dialogue between two lovers a woman whom is going on a journey to sea who warns her male lover that she will be gone a "long old time" in the first three verses and the last take on the male point of view and subsequent crumbling of the relationship in the final set of verses. This is such a simple idea for a song but so elegantly executed, this song occupies the same space as "girl from the north country" for me in feel, in case you cannot already tell my taste for the early "folk" period is dominated by the "love" songs rather than that of the protest ones as I principally find many of them rather drab musically however relevant the topic of the songs are, this not so much... So, uh yeah I want this one injected into my veins if possible 5/5 in the top three for the album most certainly (Witmark demo is also a great alternative) Bonus question: Anyone got any good live versions of this one? I haven't heard many so any suggestions welcome.
Boots of Spanish Leather Sometimes we first know of a song from a cover version and that version always feels like the "correct" version however much we later hear the original. In the case of "Boots of Spanish Leather" I first knew the song as my father used to sing and play it, with a somewhat different tune. I remembered to ask him in later years where he got the alternative tune from, and he protested it was quite unintentional, he just sang it from memory and it evolved that way. Hard to reconcile this with what he also told me about the Times album, that he was obsessed with it and played it religiously in his youth. When I listened to Dylan's version, I was disappointed that he just reuses the tune from "Girl from the North Country". However, it's still a fine tune. As for the words, they tell a great story. 5/5
suze says this song, and others, was weaponised against her so that when she came back from italy, everyone resented her for hurting 'bobby'. this is one of the songs i don't want to dissect as it's meaning for me is one! beautiful song, incredible
I just read this comment and so it does share the same "borrowed" traditional tune as "girl from the north country" no wonder I always thought this occupied the same territory as that song.... you learn something new every day.
