I want to write about something that might be upsetting to people. My intent isn’t to bother anyone with this comment, but I want address Bob’s reference to the Confederacy and Tom Dooley in MMF. I didn’t know what the “blood stained banner” even meant. Apparently, according to people on this thread, and other websites, it’s a reference to the Confederacy. Is that imagery really necessary in this song? And what is Bob trying to accomplish by weaving this horrible subject matter into his song in the year 2020? Bob marched on Washington for civil rights. He’s a child of the 60s, when the need for equality became a rallying cry for protest. I don’t think that Bob is a racist. I just want to say that right off. However, I have met some guys who think they can’t be racist because they were from Africa a long time ago. Well, so was I. Again, I’m not trying to upset anyone! Don’t take it too personally. If I may speak freely.... I’m not really seeing any African American rappers rapping about the plight of the Jewish people in the year 2020. Is Bob kind of overstepping his boundaries, or not? I’m just asking. Do black people want Bob to make these references in his new song? And could making such references have a sort of opposite effect, by being like a dog whistle for haters? Someone on this forum reminded me that American Indians are free to speak for themselves, after I was writing about their history. Appropriating someone else’s culture, or overstepping boundaries, can be a very subtle thing sometimes. Sometimes we don’t know that we’re doing it.
He has lived in my head for a long time. My mom was and is a big fan and his records were playing around me from before I was old enough to understand them. And I’ve kept on playing and wrestling with them ever since. My opinions are probably pretty conventional: I’d say that, along with Brian Wilson, Paul McCartney, and Lou Reed, Dylan’s on the short list of the greatest songwriters of his time and place, but, to repeat Dr. Johnson’s observation about the greatest playwright in the English language, Dylan is one of the greatest songwriters of all time, but that comes together with faults that would overwhelm any lesser talent. It makes a lot of sense to me that the extreme gift and the extreme flaws tend to go hand in hand.
What else was John going to say? It was nasty, and can't come back except between the two of them personally. To say it's about both of them sounds like a real bs cop out. I take Bob's work less personally than you do. i don't see as many hatchet jobs. If BIPD is the worst, and LARS is a scathing one, is ther really a list of them? He was a nasty character to people, ochs among them. But Thin Man is poetry. So his nastiness and his poetry matched up. He never says the thin man is grossman or anything.
Disagree..... so was the answer really blowing in the wind? Hope someone grabbed it before it blew away!
" This song 's pretty long / but I don't think it'll bore ' em Eighty pages strong on the Steve Hoffman forum "
Again, when I was young, I really got off on “Thin Man.” I really got off on “My Generation,” too. “Hope I die before I get old.” “Why don’t you all just f-f-fade away.” That spoke to me when I was sixteen. Now it doesn’t. I still think “Thin Man” is one of Bob’s most genius musical tracks, but the six-minute mocking of square Mr. Jones who doesn’t get it simply doesn’t appeal to me like it did when I was sixteen. The passion of Bob’s vocal delivery is still pretty thrilling, as it is in “Positively Fourth Street” and other Bob put-down classics, but I’d rather hang out with Mr. Jones than with the one-eyed midget who dismisses him as a cow.
Bob Dylan is just a man mate! He’s my favourite writer of all time, but he’s as flawed as anybody else! Don’t take it personal that he’s a human being. From the pages of posts you’ve made on this thread I would have never taken you for a fan. You’re pulling Bob up on songs he wrote from his early twenties. Maybe it’s time to let it go?
We’re talking about a bad song, which has led me to relate it to other bad songs in the canon. If we were talking about “Red River Shore,” “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine,” or “Million Dollar Bash,” rest assured that I’d have plenty of positive things to say.
It’s like PhilBorder was talking about: the anthemic, celebratory quality of LARS, as a song, is a completely different experience to just reading the lyrics. IMHO that works for LARS because it’s a song about being on your own and celebrating personal freedom. But, do all of the references work in MMF, and what is all of the mixed-up imagery trying accomplish? I don’t want to listen to a song, where all of a sudden the narrator says: “take me to the place Tom Dooley was hung.” I don’t want to go there. That’s not what the rest of the seventeen minutes of this song are about. Where is the context for mentioning Tom Dooley and the Confederacy? People could say, well, effectively they’re the people who murdered JFK. The conspiracy-Confederacy killed him. They are those same types of people, throughout generations, that have perpetuated a sort of cold Civil War in the US. I can see Bobs line of thinking there. But my question is, why put that imagery into this song? There’s someone on another website who took their internet screen name from Bob’s reference to “the leader of the klan” in “Tin Angel.” He must’ve heard a dog whistle. And he goes on posting, and nobody says anything negative to him.
You ve been trolling for quite a bit now. who are you fooling LOL 'bob could shoot someone on the street and get cheered for it'
Why are you trolling me? 'bob could shoot someone on the street and get cheered for it' There was a context for what I wrote. You just erased the context by isolating this one sentence.
'context' is that what you call it? LOL who are you kidding you be been building it up. first that other one then the political one.
There may be hope and redemption for you yet! I’m as much a Dylan fan as you seem to be but admittedly I don’t take it to heart when I dislike a song. I sort of get it; you’re heavily invested and you’ve lived with this artist you’re entire life. Personally I’m just happy that he’s still creating and working at this point in his life. Anything after the 60’s is a bonus! The best thing that ever happened to The Beatles is that they split up!
I grew up in the '60s, as well, and my memories of that day, and the weeks that followed, are similar to yours, with teachers crying, parents shell-shocked and weepy. Very confusing events. Five years later, everyone went through it again with MLK and RFK. Is it really any wonder that people are still questioning the "official" findings about those killings? When I got to see Dylan live in 1974, and he sang "even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked," the crowd erupted at the apparent prescience of that line, which had originally been interpreted as being about JFK as a vulnerable assassination target, but could now also be used to describe the exposure of Nixon's nefarious activities in the White House. (He resigned later that year.) The assassinations of JFK, MLK and RFK were as defining to that time period as the murder of John Lennon and the horrors of 9-11 became in later years. With respect to the discussion of this particular song, it doesn't seem like anyone here is trying to *deify* John Kennedy, the man, as other posters seem to be implying. (He's certainly been the subject of character assassination for more than fifty years now, and if every elected official had to undergo a similar level of scrutiny about their private lives, somewhere north of 75% of them would probably have to resign and hang their heads in shame, although many of them are clearly shame-less.) As I hear Dylan's lyrics for MMF, he's certainly not eulogizing JFK, or offering up an *Ode to The Late, Great Camelot Hero* or showing any admiration for him whatsoever. He seems to be acting as neutral bystander/narrator, just throwing pieces of the puzzle on the table, with lines like "The day that they killed him, someone said to me, 'Son, the age of the Antichrist has just only begun'," instead of "the age of the Antichrist began the day they killed him." Through free association, as opposed to parsing the lyrics and imagery of MMF as an epic poem, the song reminds me of a piece Dylan did back in 1961, "Hezekiah Jones (Black Cross)," which he picked up from Lord Buckley: "You don't believe nothin'," said the white man's preacher. "Oh yes I do," said Hezekiah, "I believe that a man should be beholdin' to his neighbor Without the reward of Heaven or the fear of Hellfire." “Well, there's a lot of good ways for a man to be wicked!" And they hung Hezekiah as high as a pigeon, And the white folks around said, "Welllll...he had it comin' 'Cause the son-of-a-bitch didn't have no religion!" Also, this just in: MMF: "I'm just a patsy, like Patsy Cline...never shot anyone from in front or behind..." After his arrest, Oswald denied being guilty, telling reporters: “I didn’t shoot anybody, no sir … I’m just a patsy!”
LOLLL no. IF bob shot someone in the middle of the street not that he has of course...but.. IF bob was racist not that he is of course but.... dude you are transparent.
