Going to Bob Dylan concert tonight - know nothing about him - what do I need to know?

Try to get drunk before hand and bring ear plugs.

ggilder wrote:

Agree on Desolation Row, and the Dylan legend, but everybody depicting Dylan as the "greatest" singer-songwriter should at least contemplate the works of Leonard Cohen, who is as old as Dylan and still writing unique and original songs and unlike Dylan even performing them effectively despite a similar deterioration of his voice.

_____________________________________________________________

Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Townes Van Zandt are my favorite (by far) singer-songwriters.

Not sure who I would put at the top...depends on the mood I'm in at the time.

"From the fool's gold mouthpiece the hollow horn plays wasted words proves to warn that he not busy being born is busy dying." BD

"As I lean from this window sill in some hotel I chose with one hand on my suicide and one hand on the rose." LC

"Your softest whisper is louder than the highways call to me." TVZ

Note: Dylan can still sing when he wants to...listen to his latest album Shadows in the Night (One Enchanted Evening or That Lucky Old Sun)

He had 5 good years. That is it. He is a biggest phony poser with a huge bank account built on being calculatingly "obscure" so that avg. people call feel like they're special because they "get" him. I don't know if he actually laughs at the morons that he is fooling or he has actually fooled himself into thinking special.

Jak Yuoff wrote:

He had 5 good years. That is it. He is a biggest phony poser with a huge bank account built on being calculatingly "obscure" so that avg. people call feel like they're special because they "get" him. I don't know if he actually laughs at the morons that he is fooling or he has actually fooled himself into thinking special.

One thing we know for sure is that you're special.

Pretty much what this guy said.Oh Mercy is a gem.Dylan is one of the very few musicians from anywhere near that long ago who still writes from time to time that's really, really awesome. Jeff Beck is the other (and I'll give the Stones a plug for "Rain Fall Down", off their last album, which is an absolutely killer groove).The music industry may have left Dylan behind, as they need to throw another hero up the pop charts, but he's written some amazing music over the last 30 years.And yes, Bad Wigins, anyone who pioneers a new style has he potential to become a legend .. as they should. That's what art is about, the difference between a cover artist and a composer. A new style is simply a new voice. And Cobain was a powerful musical presence. He virtually ended heavy metal in its tracks. That's an incredibly profound influence over music and music and music fans. As a write, he had a way of putting chords together that simply "don't work".

Dylan is one of the great American songwriters, but please he is not as poetic as most people think. He's an artist at being a professional musician much more than he is an artist of lyricism. He writes "folk" jingles. Hipsters have been mistaking his tone-deaf screeching for authenticity for generations now. He has also been accused of being a plagiarist. His greatest musical achievement is introducing the Beatles to pot.

wtfunny wrote:

And Cobain was a powerful musical presence. He virtually ended heavy metal in its tracks.

Which is still alive - Cobain, or metal?

Cobain was an MTV creation, an obscure, shitty musician exploited by the industry to repackage garage rock for quick bucks. They had already cast him aside when he killed himself. If he'd lived, he and his band would be no more legendary than Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, or Jane's Addiction - all of them far superior musicians and equally groundbreaking in style.

Dylan fans from the 60's can count on most people not having been around then and not knowing any better. But you don't get that luxury with Nirvana.

Every rock legend is way overrated. That's what being a legend means.

That's not what legend means.

Which influence continues to dominate popular rock music .. Cobain, or heavy metal?

Hint .. it's not heavy metal.

I used to think of Cobain as a 'shitty musician'. I was just out of music school when I first heard Nirvana, and they sounded like everything I'd been working hard to not be. sloppy, rudimentary, raw, etc. I wanted to play and sound like Larry Carlton or Michael Landau, etc .. and here was this guy who couldn't play a 7b5 chord to save his a$$ just churning up the charts.

Now I think he was a wonderful artist, a gifted musician who brought himself to his music in a way that very few people do.

I remember an interview with Dan Huff, a then ex-session guitar player who was touring with the metal band Giant; they asked him about Cobain and he replied that when Nirvana's album (I think it was Nevermind) came out, it ended their National Tour halfway through the tour. That's a pretty big influence. Huff's back in Nashville now I believe, playing his a$$ off on sessions there. Great player.

In defense of songwriting says: "but please he is not as poetic as most people think."

Do a search on the Nobel Prize for Literature and you'll see that Dylan has been a consistent favorite for the prize.

Darkness at the break of noon

Shadows even the silver spoon

The handmade blade, the child’s balloon

Eclipses both the sun and moon

To understand you know too soon

There is no sense in trying

Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn

Suicide remarks are torn

From the fool’s gold mouthpiece the hollow horn

Plays wasted words, proves to warn

That he not busy being born is busy dying

Temptation’s page flies out the door

You follow, find yourself at war

Watch waterfalls of pity roar

You feel to moan but unlike before

You discover that you’d just be one more

Person crying

So don’t fear if you hear

A foreign sound to your ear

It’s alright, Ma, I’m only sighing

As some warn victory, some downfall

Private reasons great or small

Can be seen in the eyes of those that call

To make all that should be killed to crawl

While others say don’t hate nothing at all

Except hatred

Disillusioned words like bullets bark

As human gods aim for their mark

Make everything from toy guns that spark

To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark

It’s easy to see without looking too far

That not much is really sacred

While preachers preach of evil fates

Teachers teach that knowledge waits

Can lead to hundred-dollar plates

Goodness hides behind its gates

But even the president of the United States

Sometimes must have to stand naked

An’ though the rules of the road have been lodged

It’s only people’s games that you got to dodge

And it’s alright, Ma, I can make it

Advertising signs they con

You into thinking you’re the one

That can do what’s never been done

That can win what’s never been won

Meantime life outside goes on

All around you

You lose yourself, you reappear

You suddenly find you got nothing to fear

Alone you stand with nobody near

When a trembling distant voice, unclear

Startles your sleeping ears to hear

That somebody thinks they really found you

A question in your nerves is lit

Yet you know there is no answer fit

To satisfy, insure you not to quit

To keep it in your mind and not forget

That it is not he or she or them or it

That you belong to

Although the masters make the rules

For the wise men and the fools

I got nothing, Ma, to live up to

For them that must obey authority

That they do not respect in any degree

Who despise their jobs, their destinies

Speak jealously of them that are free

Cultivate their flowers to be

Nothing more than something they invest in

While some on principles baptized

To strict party platform ties

Social clubs in drag disguise

Outsiders they can freely criticize

Tell nothing except who to idolize

And then say God bless him

While one who sings with his tongue on fire

Gargles in the rat race choir

Bent out of shape from society’s pliers

Cares not to come up any higher

But rather get you down in the hole

That he’s in

But I mean no harm nor put fault

On anyone that lives in a vault

But it’s alright, Ma, if I can’t please him

Old lady judges watch people in pairs

Limited in sex, they dare

To push fake morals, insult and stare

While money doesn’t talk, it swears

Obscenity, who really cares

Propaganda, all is phony

While them that defend what they cannot see

With a killer’s pride, security

It blows the minds most bitterly

For them that think death’s honesty

Won’t fall upon them naturally

Life sometimes must get lonely

My eyes collide head-on with stuffed

Graveyards, false gods, I scuff

At pettiness which plays so rough

Walk upside-down inside handcuffs

Kick my legs to crash it off

Say okay, I have had enough, what else can you show me?

And if my thought-dreams could be seen

They’d probably put my head in a guillotine

But it’s alright, Ma, it’s life, and life only

Copyright © 1965 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1993 by Special Rider Music

Read more:

http://www.bobdylan.com/us/songs/its-alright-ma-im-only-bleeding#ixzz3X9uip6nX

[quote]Carl Spackler wrote:

Some of his "contemporaries" as great American singer-songwriters are Neil Young......

if neil young ran a 209 marathon it would be a canadain record

You need to know that your taste in music sucks.

Try wikipedia - should give you what you need.

Hey chilhowee,

Thanks for posting the lyrics to "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding"

Anyone who has ever tried to write poetry can appreciate how difficult it really is. Sometimes the simplest lines can be the hardest to come up with.

When you read something someone else has written it looks easy, but start with a blank piece of paper and an idea and see how hard it really is.

Dylan wrote "It's Alright, Ma" when he was 21 or 22 years old. To have that insight at that age, let alone communicate it in a song is mind boggling.

Mr. Jones wrote:

Listen to Live 1966 (the bootleg series), Blonde on Blonde, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blood on the Tracks. That was Dylan in his prime. If he did nothing else, he'd be a legend. Even his second rate stuff from 1965 to 1980 or so is the stuff of greatness. His more recent writing is less accessible to me, but maybe that says more about me than him.

His voice is ragged now-I saw him with Merle Haggard at the Fillmore in Denver about 10 years ago. I'll never forget it. It's sad-Dylan barely filled two nights at a 1500 seat former roller rink a decade ago-and last month Garth Brooks filled the basketball arena in the same city for a week straight. 30 years from now, it will be Garth Who? But Dylan will be remembered and listened to in a century, like Stephen Foster, or Woody Guthrie, or Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Yeah, I love listening to classic S T Coleridge records.

chilhowee wrote:

Darkness at the break of noon

Shadows even the silver spoon

The handmade blade, the child’s balloon

Eclipses both the sun and moon

To understand you know too soon

There is no sense in trying

A fine example of Dylan's pseudopoetic style. Write a bunch of shit that makes no sense, and gullible people will think it's deep. All he's really doing is listing words that rhyme with "noon."

Even John Lennon started doing that crap in the late 60's, though at least his songs were good enough to make up for it. Dylan is just ballad after ballad of moaning, pretentious gibberish.

Bad Wigins wrote:

All that greatest-songwriter stuff is fanboy hero-worship. People overrate the music of famous people all the time, just because they're famous.

What made Dylan famous was playing folk music on electric instruments. That pissed off his folk fans but the sound was popular with mainstream people who bought his big "Like a Rolling Stone" song. It was the sound that made him stand out from the crowd, not the lyrics.

As time passed his music became legendary simply because it happened during the 60's. Ironically, with all the people who think so highly of it, only two or three of his songs are in the main rotation of classic rock radio, and one of them is performed by Hendrix, not Dylan.

Dylan is a notoriously lousy performer, even his fans don't deny that.

You're a truly amazing guy: no matter what the subject, you always have a loud, incredibly obnoxious opinion, and you always manage to say something astonishingly stupid.

You go ahead and keep wearing that snotty attitude like an albatross around your neck.

Me tbourine man wrote:

[quote]

Yeah, I love listening to classic S T Coleridge records.

Dylan's public political stance in the early 1960's was based more on Suze Rotolo's worldview than on his own.

The song Dylan says he should not have written:

"Ballad In Plain D"

I once loved a girl, her skin it was bronze

With the innocence of a lamb, she was gentle like a fawn

I courted her proudly, but now she is gone

Gone as the season she's taken.

Through young summer's breeze, I stole her away

From her mother and sister, though close did they stay

Each one of them suffering from the failures of their day

With strings of guilt they tried hard to guide us.

Of the two sister, I loved the young

With sensitive instincts, she was the creative one

The constant scapegoat, she was easily undone

By the jealousy of others around her.

For her parasite sister, I had no respect

Bound by her boredom, her pride to protect

Countless visions of the other she'd reflect

As a crutch for her scenes and her society.

Myself, for what I did, I cannot be excused

The changes I was going through can't even be used

For the lies that I told her in hopes not to lose

The could-be dream-lover of my lifetime.

With unseen consciousness, I possessed in my grip

A magnificent mantelpiece, though its heart being chipped

Noticing not that I'd already slipped

To a sin of love's false security.

From silhouetted anger to manufactured peace

Answers of emptiness, voice vacancies

Till the tombstones of damage read me no question but, "Please

What's wrong and what's exactly the matter ?"

And so it did happen, like it could have been foreseen

The timeless explosion of fantasy's dream

At the peak of the night, the king and the queen

Tumbled all down into pieces.

"The tragic figure" her sister did shout

"Leave her alone, God damn you, get out"

And I in my armor, turning about

And nailing her in the ruins of her pettiness.

Beneath a bare light bulb the plaster did pound

Her sister and I in a screaming battleground

And she in between, the victim of sound

Soon shattered as a child to the shadows.

All is gone, all is gone, admit it, take flight

I gagged in contradiction, tears blinding my sight

My mind it was mangled, I ran into the night

Leaving all of love's ashes behind me.

The wind knocks my window, the room it is wet

The words to say I'm sorry, I haven't found yet

I think of her often and hope whoever she's met

Will be fully aware of how precious she is.

Ah, my friends from the prison, they ask unto me

"How good, how good does it feel to be free "?

And I answer them most mysteriously

"Are birds free from the chains of the skyway"?