Tim Out Of Mind...
Whether this qualifies as Dylan's finest album or not is probably not important. What IS important is that, for me, this album contains all the wisdom and beauty in the world. I've probably listened to it once a week since its release back in 1997 and I'll be surprised if that pattern doesn't continue for at least another hundred and fifty years...
I don't really know what it is about this one. I won't say that it's without weakness (and when I heard the left-off cuts on Tell Tale Signs - especially 'Red River Shore' and 'Mississippi' - it was all I could do to resist making a mock-up album, just for the hell of it) but there really is something in amongst these tracks that hits every one of my many wildly swinging moods.
For me, 'Time Out Of Mind' is definitely the finest album Dylan has made since 'Blood On The Tracks', and if he hadn't already produced 'Blonde On Blonde' or 'Highway 61 Revisited' it might be the best he's ever done. Then again, maybe it's the best he's ever done anyway... I think this is one album that he really did pull out of the ether. He and Daniel Lanois achieve such a wonderfully rich and echoey sound, and then there is all the other stuff going on in the background too, not least all that haunted-by-the-ghost-of-Buddy Holly business. But in the end and through it all, it's his voice (fuelled by the best set of lyrics that he's written in an age) that does it. He sounds ancient on this, in the same way that Johnny Cash sounded ancient on the American Recordings albums, and he never fails to move me with these songs.
My favourite track on the album changes constantly, and on any given day it might be 'Tryin' To Get To Heaven' or 'Love Sick' or 'Make You Feel My Love' or 'Not Dark Yet'. Today though, it's Standing In The Doorway. I love how nostalgic the verses get and how far he lets them go before snapping them coldly back, bending them until they scream out and give with the biggest unspoken BUT that I've ever come across in either story or song. Time and again he does this, and yet the trick loses none of its sleight-of-hand magic.
Last night I danced with a stranger
But she just reminded me you were the one
(BUT) You left me standin' in the doorway cryin'
In the dark land of the sun. (bitch...)
That's the stuff of Hemingway or Raymond Chandler, in my opinion. Stripped bare but still dense with meaning. That does it for me every time...
Showing posts with label Bob Dylan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bob Dylan. Show all posts
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Friday, October 23, 2009
Christmas In The Heart
For the better part of a week now, I've been immersing myself in Bob Dylan's wondrous new release, Christmas In The Heart. Yes, a Christmas album. Now I know there are people in the world who would rather run barefoot over a mile of upturned plug tops than listen to three quarters of an hour's worth of syrupy crooning, but I am not one of them. I adore Christmas, and one of the things I adore most about Christmas is the tat. Give me glitter, give me fake snow and plastic trees and cheesy decorations, and I'm rolling like Porky in a chocolate bath.
But Bob Dylan making a Christmas album? Hardly seems real, does it? Some things are just plain right from the off, Bing with that pipe, for instance, but others seem about as stable as a souped-up cracker. Ole Bob has been rolling pretty well of late, rapturously received chart-topping albums, a hit radio show, a neverending tour that seems to be getting better by the day. But a Christmas album? We know (from the little that we really know of him) that he has always been a contrary sort, the sort who will gladly shatter your perceptions at the turn of a card. But we also know that he is someone who likes to do his own thing, blaze his own trail, as it were, and damn the consequences.
A Christmas album is a risk. Bob's voice has been going downhill for years and is probably fast approaching the bottom by now, and Christmas songs, tacky though they may be, and trite and sentimental and all the other cuss words that people without hearts like to throw at them, are undeniably well written. The have to be, in order to have survived for so long. The best of them have lain down challenges to even the very finest voices of the past hundred years.
Bob sounds great. He's grizzled, warbling, and he steps out of melodies like they are oncoming traffic, yet somehow, some impossibly how, he makes it work. The music is all that it should be, bright and shiny, full of fun, tight as November's jeans in January, but what makes the whole thing work is Dylan's deep and unwavering charisma. I've woken three days straight now with 'Must Be Santa' scratching at my throat and churning my blood to butter, and if I wasn't such a happy elf perhaps I would be reaching for the twelve-gauge by now. But happily for me, and for all those within buckshot's distance, that's not the case. I love it, LOVE IT!!! I am pleased, thrilled, overjoyed to report that Bob's still got it, whatever it is. If you like Christmas the way all good children, even the grownup ones, should, then you will surely love Christmas In The Heart. So go on, bolt out and buy it.
P.S. - If you need further convincing, please note that all royalties go to charity. So not only will a purchase be filling your head with yuletide sounds (and in October, no less - who could ask for more than that) you will also be helping out some of the worthiest causes around.
Well done, Bob, on both counts, and here's hoping for a sequel next year!!!
But Bob Dylan making a Christmas album? Hardly seems real, does it? Some things are just plain right from the off, Bing with that pipe, for instance, but others seem about as stable as a souped-up cracker. Ole Bob has been rolling pretty well of late, rapturously received chart-topping albums, a hit radio show, a neverending tour that seems to be getting better by the day. But a Christmas album? We know (from the little that we really know of him) that he has always been a contrary sort, the sort who will gladly shatter your perceptions at the turn of a card. But we also know that he is someone who likes to do his own thing, blaze his own trail, as it were, and damn the consequences.
A Christmas album is a risk. Bob's voice has been going downhill for years and is probably fast approaching the bottom by now, and Christmas songs, tacky though they may be, and trite and sentimental and all the other cuss words that people without hearts like to throw at them, are undeniably well written. The have to be, in order to have survived for so long. The best of them have lain down challenges to even the very finest voices of the past hundred years.
Bob sounds great. He's grizzled, warbling, and he steps out of melodies like they are oncoming traffic, yet somehow, some impossibly how, he makes it work. The music is all that it should be, bright and shiny, full of fun, tight as November's jeans in January, but what makes the whole thing work is Dylan's deep and unwavering charisma. I've woken three days straight now with 'Must Be Santa' scratching at my throat and churning my blood to butter, and if I wasn't such a happy elf perhaps I would be reaching for the twelve-gauge by now. But happily for me, and for all those within buckshot's distance, that's not the case. I love it, LOVE IT!!! I am pleased, thrilled, overjoyed to report that Bob's still got it, whatever it is. If you like Christmas the way all good children, even the grownup ones, should, then you will surely love Christmas In The Heart. So go on, bolt out and buy it.
P.S. - If you need further convincing, please note that all royalties go to charity. So not only will a purchase be filling your head with yuletide sounds (and in October, no less - who could ask for more than that) you will also be helping out some of the worthiest causes around.
Well done, Bob, on both counts, and here's hoping for a sequel next year!!!
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Happy Birthday, Bob
My good friend Bob Dylan turns 68 years old today, so I will be celebrating by a chronological trawl through his great and vast pantheon of masterpieces. Close to fifty albums separate the eponymously titled first album (released in 1962) from his latest work (the recently released, Together Through Life, which grows more impressive with every listen), which will probably account for an entire week of pretty intensive listening.
As I write this, I am listening to 'When The Ship Comes In', from the 1964 album, The Times They Are a-Changin'. The song is just one of the many often overlooked gems in his incredible catalogue of work, one with a simple-sounding arrangement and melody that belies a rhapsody of startling imagery and immense drama. This is Bob in all his glory. Instead of the standard 1964 fare of cars and kisses, we are instead treated (or exposed) to a rainbow stew that melds Revelations with Kerouac, with Giotto, with Robert Johnson. And yet, even beyond the convoluted web-weaving of the words, what staggers me is the sheer animalistic power of Bob's voice. He is twenty-two years old on this record, but he manages to sound ancient, or eternal, all-knowing. Above sparse accompaniment, just a strummed acoustic guitar and a few puncturing harmonica wails, that voice rides waves and holds down the air. It delivers the words as Gospel, at once angry and hopeful. Magnificent, actually.
Whether he knows it or not (and whether he cares or not), Bob Dylan means an enormous amount to the lives of multitudes of people. In this life, worthwhile connections are difficult to make, but his art has a unique way of reaching out and working away on the senses until some important fuse is blown, and there is room, finally, for understanding. He is 68 years old now, and thankfully still as sharp as a bag of pins, still as good and as great as ever. There are not many like him. No, strike that. There is no one like him. Happy birthday, Bob, and here's wishing for many, many more.
As I write this, I am listening to 'When The Ship Comes In', from the 1964 album, The Times They Are a-Changin'. The song is just one of the many often overlooked gems in his incredible catalogue of work, one with a simple-sounding arrangement and melody that belies a rhapsody of startling imagery and immense drama. This is Bob in all his glory. Instead of the standard 1964 fare of cars and kisses, we are instead treated (or exposed) to a rainbow stew that melds Revelations with Kerouac, with Giotto, with Robert Johnson. And yet, even beyond the convoluted web-weaving of the words, what staggers me is the sheer animalistic power of Bob's voice. He is twenty-two years old on this record, but he manages to sound ancient, or eternal, all-knowing. Above sparse accompaniment, just a strummed acoustic guitar and a few puncturing harmonica wails, that voice rides waves and holds down the air. It delivers the words as Gospel, at once angry and hopeful. Magnificent, actually.
Whether he knows it or not (and whether he cares or not), Bob Dylan means an enormous amount to the lives of multitudes of people. In this life, worthwhile connections are difficult to make, but his art has a unique way of reaching out and working away on the senses until some important fuse is blown, and there is room, finally, for understanding. He is 68 years old now, and thankfully still as sharp as a bag of pins, still as good and as great as ever. There are not many like him. No, strike that. There is no one like him. Happy birthday, Bob, and here's wishing for many, many more.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
John Prine
Where did John Prine come from? What planet, I mean, or what heavenly plane. For some years now, I have been preaching the Gospel according to John to any who might care to hear. And I know that the converted will eagerly clamour to back me up.
I am not exaggerating when I say that I have yet to find another writer, poet or lyricist (with the admitted exception of Dylan), another artist of any kind, in fact, with such a delicate and dexterous turn of phrase. John Prine's songs don't merely ache with humanity, they bleed the stuff, and they are a gift that has gone tragically unnoticed or ignored by a world obsessed with airhead glitterati and hollow fantasy. Maybe he is simply unlucky to have been born a man out of his time, or ahead of it, maybe he crash landed on the wrong planet, but the fact is that he has just too much substance for most people to bear.
Actually, John Prine, equal parts acerbic and self-deprecating, might be the ultimate folk poet, the true voice of the everyman. No pomp, no swaggering faux-intellectuality, no ego inflated to popping point. He leaves the fireworks for others, knowing perhaps that even if fireworks do reach impressive heights, the burn out far too quickly. Prine's songs don't burn out, they smoulder with an nearly untouchable majesty. In common with the likes of Merle Haggard and perhaps Gordon Lightfoot, he lays down words that sound and seem simple but which are devastating in their honesty. He watches the world, and he lives, and when something moves him just right he turns it into a song.
And what a song... I dare anyone to listen to 'Hello In There', 'Far From Me', or 'Mexican Home', or my favourite song of all time, the sublime 'Souvenirs', and not feel their soul shifting clear across their bodies; I dare them to wallow in 'Fish And Whistle' or 'Dear Abby' or 'That's The Way The World Goes Round' without cracking a smile that's all teeth and gums.
As a writer, I don't feel envious of John's ability to turn a phrase or to craft a simile. I merely drink them in and gasp in awe. And I reserve my envy for those incredibly fortunate people who have just discovered, or who are just about to discover, this massive wealth of genuinely astonishing music (music that, along with the collected writings of Dylan and Hemingway, comfortably stands alongside America's finest bodies of artistic work). My envy is well spent too, because I know that there are few experiences in life as transcendent as hearing for the very first time the harrowing and poignant 'Sam Stone', or the life-in-a-stolen-moment perfection of 'Angel From Montomery, or the eight-minute novel, 'Lake Marie', a genuine bone-fide masterpiece for our times, as good, truly, as anything ever ever written in any form.
If you only know John Prine by name, or if you have never heard of him at all, then do yourself the favour of a lifetime and educate yourself to the music industry's best kept secret. You won't regret it for a single minute, I promise. And if, with this paltry blog entry, I manage to open even one reader's mind to the beauty of John Prine then I will consider this day a very good one indeed.
For a quick leg up the ladder, check out the indispensable website, www.jpshrine.org.
I am not exaggerating when I say that I have yet to find another writer, poet or lyricist (with the admitted exception of Dylan), another artist of any kind, in fact, with such a delicate and dexterous turn of phrase. John Prine's songs don't merely ache with humanity, they bleed the stuff, and they are a gift that has gone tragically unnoticed or ignored by a world obsessed with airhead glitterati and hollow fantasy. Maybe he is simply unlucky to have been born a man out of his time, or ahead of it, maybe he crash landed on the wrong planet, but the fact is that he has just too much substance for most people to bear.
Actually, John Prine, equal parts acerbic and self-deprecating, might be the ultimate folk poet, the true voice of the everyman. No pomp, no swaggering faux-intellectuality, no ego inflated to popping point. He leaves the fireworks for others, knowing perhaps that even if fireworks do reach impressive heights, the burn out far too quickly. Prine's songs don't burn out, they smoulder with an nearly untouchable majesty. In common with the likes of Merle Haggard and perhaps Gordon Lightfoot, he lays down words that sound and seem simple but which are devastating in their honesty. He watches the world, and he lives, and when something moves him just right he turns it into a song.
And what a song... I dare anyone to listen to 'Hello In There', 'Far From Me', or 'Mexican Home', or my favourite song of all time, the sublime 'Souvenirs', and not feel their soul shifting clear across their bodies; I dare them to wallow in 'Fish And Whistle' or 'Dear Abby' or 'That's The Way The World Goes Round' without cracking a smile that's all teeth and gums.
As a writer, I don't feel envious of John's ability to turn a phrase or to craft a simile. I merely drink them in and gasp in awe. And I reserve my envy for those incredibly fortunate people who have just discovered, or who are just about to discover, this massive wealth of genuinely astonishing music (music that, along with the collected writings of Dylan and Hemingway, comfortably stands alongside America's finest bodies of artistic work). My envy is well spent too, because I know that there are few experiences in life as transcendent as hearing for the very first time the harrowing and poignant 'Sam Stone', or the life-in-a-stolen-moment perfection of 'Angel From Montomery, or the eight-minute novel, 'Lake Marie', a genuine bone-fide masterpiece for our times, as good, truly, as anything ever ever written in any form.
If you only know John Prine by name, or if you have never heard of him at all, then do yourself the favour of a lifetime and educate yourself to the music industry's best kept secret. You won't regret it for a single minute, I promise. And if, with this paltry blog entry, I manage to open even one reader's mind to the beauty of John Prine then I will consider this day a very good one indeed.
For a quick leg up the ladder, check out the indispensable website, www.jpshrine.org.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Bucket Lists
I quite like the idea of a Bucket List. It's a simple enough concept: you take a sheet of paper and jot down all the things you want to do before the old grim reaper comes a-knocking, and then you try to strike off as many of those goals as you can in the time you have left. I suppose it offers a kind of focus if you happen, as I do, to suffer from wandering-aimlessly-through-life syndrome.
As I am thirty-four years old and have ambitions to live to at least my late nineties, my Bucket List will probably run to several hundred pages. And it would be full of the usual things too: visit the South Seas, crack time travel, criss-cross America in an open top Cadillac, write the book that I know I should write but somehow can't, get to outer space, shake hands with Bob Dylan, discover the perfect pickle, master the penny-whistle, maybe even learn how to juggle. On my deathbed, I'd like to be able to say my goodbyes in twenty-seven languages.
The problem is actually writing down such hopes and dreams. They glitter in my mind but on paper they seem staid. And writing them down seems to carve them in stone. What am I really saying, and what are these longings saying about me? Supposing I can't achieve all the goals, supposing penny-whistles drop out of circulation or I develop some sort of inner ear problem that effects my balance in a way that makes juggling out of the question. Suppose I do meet Bob Dylan and he simply refuses to shake hands. Will that mean that my life has been one great failure? No, writing a Bucket List seems like too much of a commitment, I think. Besides, I'm thirty-four now but who knows what I will want at forty-four, or ninety-four? Maybe at ninety-four the extent of my dreams will stretch to a comfortable rocking chair and a bladder that works only when it should. Our goals change all the time. The achievement, I think, is in accepting what we have and who we are ...
As I am thirty-four years old and have ambitions to live to at least my late nineties, my Bucket List will probably run to several hundred pages. And it would be full of the usual things too: visit the South Seas, crack time travel, criss-cross America in an open top Cadillac, write the book that I know I should write but somehow can't, get to outer space, shake hands with Bob Dylan, discover the perfect pickle, master the penny-whistle, maybe even learn how to juggle. On my deathbed, I'd like to be able to say my goodbyes in twenty-seven languages.
The problem is actually writing down such hopes and dreams. They glitter in my mind but on paper they seem staid. And writing them down seems to carve them in stone. What am I really saying, and what are these longings saying about me? Supposing I can't achieve all the goals, supposing penny-whistles drop out of circulation or I develop some sort of inner ear problem that effects my balance in a way that makes juggling out of the question. Suppose I do meet Bob Dylan and he simply refuses to shake hands. Will that mean that my life has been one great failure? No, writing a Bucket List seems like too much of a commitment, I think. Besides, I'm thirty-four now but who knows what I will want at forty-four, or ninety-four? Maybe at ninety-four the extent of my dreams will stretch to a comfortable rocking chair and a bladder that works only when it should. Our goals change all the time. The achievement, I think, is in accepting what we have and who we are ...
Friday, May 8, 2009
Magic In The Night
On Wednesday night, in Dublin's O2 Arena, Bob Dylan finished the latest leg of his 'neverending' tour with a performance ridiculous in its sublimity. Too lavish a buttering of praise? Well, not to these eyes and ears. Not to this heart.
I have learned over the years that the things you see from ten feet away really make all the difference. You catch it all from here, the nuances in phrasing, the lowdown smirks, the wandering one-legged dance steps. Everything. Others understand this too, others who bother to get in line six hours before the kick off just so that they can snag the best position, right on the rail, front and centre (or preferably, a few feet to the right of centre). It is like perching on the edge of a tornado, static intensity comes at you in waves, and all you can do is hold on for dear life.
Ten feet away on Wednesday night, and there was Bob, cringing and smirking his way through a stomping set, decked out in dapper black and yellow and looking like some outlaw stray from a flea bitten cowboy flick. Doing it his way. And the converted lapped it up.
He hit the ground at a fast canter, a Wicked Messenger indeed, and sustained the intensity through eighteen songs and two and a quarter hours, all the way through to the spun-gold
harmonica solo to close out a savagely mutated Blowin' In The Wind that was inspired in its reinvention. All the way through, his singing was right there, on the money, and he toyed with the phrasing as if every utterance was a game of Blind Man's Bluff. Highlights? How about a gentle guitar-performed Girl From The North Country, or a brooding Man In The Long Black Coat? How about a word-perfect and meticulously enunciated Desolation Row, Bob's facial expressions pantomiming every line, or a banjo-laden Blind Willie McTell, or the nastiest, angriest Ballad Of A Thin Man that you are ever likely to hear? And if that is not enough, how about a song from the new album, the Midnight Special-esque 'If You Ever Go To Houston', perfromed for the second night in a row and for the second time ever?
The hand grenade for me, though, was a mammoth rendition of that often-creaking old warhorse, Highway 61 Revisited. Based around a stomping blues riff that churned the band to a frenzy, Bob pushed for more and more and always always more, until finally you could feel the music in your bones, churning your marrow to mud. On and on it came, until Bob was no longer just a tornado now but a black hole. He had cast his spell, struck up a wild vortex, and was sucking in everything in sight and beyond. And then, just as the song neared its crescendo, a bar or two from the end, he stepped away from his keyboard, turned his back on the dumbstruck band and raised his chin in a high profile pose. The moment froze solid, for me and perhaps for everyone, and I believe in magic now.
So much happened that night, so much to savour, but my overwhelming and enduring memory will be the way he held that pose, while the band stormed along behind, proud face raised, the famous Oscar glinting before him from the stinging footlight sheen. The noise closed in from everywhere, the band a runaway train now, the audience applause tumultuous, and then, with comical absurdity, Bob reaches up and pats the back of his hair.
If Dylan still throws down gauntlets these days, then this could have been just such a moment. Let them all come, he might have been saying. And let them even dare to try rocking half as hard as that. Tonight, Highway 61 Revisited was nuclear blues. Everything was tight, everything impossibly right. It doesn't get any better than that. And throughout the entire show, not a word was wasted, not a single word even uttered, in fact. No pandering here, no 'Hello Dublin', no between song thank yous, not even a band introduction. If there was any concession to, or even acknowledgement of, the audience, then it was to be found in that one peculiar moment of posing, and then, at the very end, a quick line-up with the band, before they traipsed off to go their separate ways, another leg of the tour ended, another job done, and done well. Tonight, the songs were left to do the talking, and really, isn't that just as it should be?
I have learned over the years that the things you see from ten feet away really make all the difference. You catch it all from here, the nuances in phrasing, the lowdown smirks, the wandering one-legged dance steps. Everything. Others understand this too, others who bother to get in line six hours before the kick off just so that they can snag the best position, right on the rail, front and centre (or preferably, a few feet to the right of centre). It is like perching on the edge of a tornado, static intensity comes at you in waves, and all you can do is hold on for dear life.
Ten feet away on Wednesday night, and there was Bob, cringing and smirking his way through a stomping set, decked out in dapper black and yellow and looking like some outlaw stray from a flea bitten cowboy flick. Doing it his way. And the converted lapped it up.
He hit the ground at a fast canter, a Wicked Messenger indeed, and sustained the intensity through eighteen songs and two and a quarter hours, all the way through to the spun-gold
harmonica solo to close out a savagely mutated Blowin' In The Wind that was inspired in its reinvention. All the way through, his singing was right there, on the money, and he toyed with the phrasing as if every utterance was a game of Blind Man's Bluff. Highlights? How about a gentle guitar-performed Girl From The North Country, or a brooding Man In The Long Black Coat? How about a word-perfect and meticulously enunciated Desolation Row, Bob's facial expressions pantomiming every line, or a banjo-laden Blind Willie McTell, or the nastiest, angriest Ballad Of A Thin Man that you are ever likely to hear? And if that is not enough, how about a song from the new album, the Midnight Special-esque 'If You Ever Go To Houston', perfromed for the second night in a row and for the second time ever?
The hand grenade for me, though, was a mammoth rendition of that often-creaking old warhorse, Highway 61 Revisited. Based around a stomping blues riff that churned the band to a frenzy, Bob pushed for more and more and always always more, until finally you could feel the music in your bones, churning your marrow to mud. On and on it came, until Bob was no longer just a tornado now but a black hole. He had cast his spell, struck up a wild vortex, and was sucking in everything in sight and beyond. And then, just as the song neared its crescendo, a bar or two from the end, he stepped away from his keyboard, turned his back on the dumbstruck band and raised his chin in a high profile pose. The moment froze solid, for me and perhaps for everyone, and I believe in magic now.
So much happened that night, so much to savour, but my overwhelming and enduring memory will be the way he held that pose, while the band stormed along behind, proud face raised, the famous Oscar glinting before him from the stinging footlight sheen. The noise closed in from everywhere, the band a runaway train now, the audience applause tumultuous, and then, with comical absurdity, Bob reaches up and pats the back of his hair.
If Dylan still throws down gauntlets these days, then this could have been just such a moment. Let them all come, he might have been saying. And let them even dare to try rocking half as hard as that. Tonight, Highway 61 Revisited was nuclear blues. Everything was tight, everything impossibly right. It doesn't get any better than that. And throughout the entire show, not a word was wasted, not a single word even uttered, in fact. No pandering here, no 'Hello Dublin', no between song thank yous, not even a band introduction. If there was any concession to, or even acknowledgement of, the audience, then it was to be found in that one peculiar moment of posing, and then, at the very end, a quick line-up with the band, before they traipsed off to go their separate ways, another leg of the tour ended, another job done, and done well. Tonight, the songs were left to do the talking, and really, isn't that just as it should be?
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
A Small Damascus Moment
I listen to Bob Dylan when I write. He's always there, and he always seems to know exactly what to say. Today I spent five hours working on a section of my novel-in-progress, with "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands", the breathtakingly beautiful closing track on Bob's sublime 'Blonde On Blonde' album, locked in a continuous loop. Like so many of Dylan's lyrical masterpieces, this song astonishes me, more so with every listen, in fact. I adore the way I never fully feel as if I have a full understanding of his songs, even though I have lived with them virtually my entire life. It is their mystery that intrigues, I think.
There are plenty who dispute Dylan's status as a poet. I would never claim to be an authority on poetry but I have to say that no other writer's words have ever moved me quite as much as Bob's do. So maybe he is not a poet, but if not then he is something deeper than that.
It has long been my experience that when it comes to appreciating his songs slow ingestion is best. He writes them and sings them, and they are out there for us, to grow into when we are ready.
I remember when his late-90s masterpiece, 'Time Out Of Mind', was released. I listened to the album incessantly, and I remember thrilling over so many of the songs, such as "Not Dark Yet", "Standing In The Doorway" and "Trying To Get To Heaven". Lost in the mix, or somehow overlooked by me, was what had seems a lightweight number, "To Make You Feel My Love". Cover versions of the song were getting some heavy airplay, by big hitters such as Billy Joel and Garth Brooks, but for some reason I just didn't get it. That was my failing, of course, not the song's. And then, about three years ago, I was listening to the album for the umpteenth thousand time, and suddenly it was as if the noise of the whole world stopped. It's rarely anything tangible, just some inner shifting of rusty cogs, and there it is, the magic, unfurling in all its mysterious glory. More than words, more than melody, the entire thing just gets into your bloodstream. I think I didn't get the song because I wasn't yet ready to get it, my life hadn't yet reached the necessary point in its trails. It was a small Damascus moment, and one that left me wondering what other songs in Bob's vast pantheon of work have yet to properly reveal themselves to me.
A new album is always an event. Since 1997's 'Time Out Of Mind', critical acclaim for Dylan has been absolute, with 'Love and Theft' and 'Modern Times' both receiving lavish praise. Now we have another album of new material, 'Together Through Life', to ingest. The reflex action is always to love the latest work or to be disappointed that, in your mind, it falls some way short of his best stuff, 'Blood On The Tracks' or 'Bringing It All Back Home' or 'Freewheelin', or whichever album it is that turns your wheels. I try to be more cautious. For me, 'Love and Theft', initially, was a letdown, but now I understand that the weakness was mine, not the songs. So when Amazon (finally) delivers to my door, I will sit and listen, over and over and probably over again, and I'll take what Bob has chosen, for now, to give. But I won't rush anything, because I'll know that there are years worth of detail waiting to be discovered, in these songs and in all the others, but only when the time is right.
I can't help it if I'm lucky...
There are plenty who dispute Dylan's status as a poet. I would never claim to be an authority on poetry but I have to say that no other writer's words have ever moved me quite as much as Bob's do. So maybe he is not a poet, but if not then he is something deeper than that.
It has long been my experience that when it comes to appreciating his songs slow ingestion is best. He writes them and sings them, and they are out there for us, to grow into when we are ready.
I remember when his late-90s masterpiece, 'Time Out Of Mind', was released. I listened to the album incessantly, and I remember thrilling over so many of the songs, such as "Not Dark Yet", "Standing In The Doorway" and "Trying To Get To Heaven". Lost in the mix, or somehow overlooked by me, was what had seems a lightweight number, "To Make You Feel My Love". Cover versions of the song were getting some heavy airplay, by big hitters such as Billy Joel and Garth Brooks, but for some reason I just didn't get it. That was my failing, of course, not the song's. And then, about three years ago, I was listening to the album for the umpteenth thousand time, and suddenly it was as if the noise of the whole world stopped. It's rarely anything tangible, just some inner shifting of rusty cogs, and there it is, the magic, unfurling in all its mysterious glory. More than words, more than melody, the entire thing just gets into your bloodstream. I think I didn't get the song because I wasn't yet ready to get it, my life hadn't yet reached the necessary point in its trails. It was a small Damascus moment, and one that left me wondering what other songs in Bob's vast pantheon of work have yet to properly reveal themselves to me.
A new album is always an event. Since 1997's 'Time Out Of Mind', critical acclaim for Dylan has been absolute, with 'Love and Theft' and 'Modern Times' both receiving lavish praise. Now we have another album of new material, 'Together Through Life', to ingest. The reflex action is always to love the latest work or to be disappointed that, in your mind, it falls some way short of his best stuff, 'Blood On The Tracks' or 'Bringing It All Back Home' or 'Freewheelin', or whichever album it is that turns your wheels. I try to be more cautious. For me, 'Love and Theft', initially, was a letdown, but now I understand that the weakness was mine, not the songs. So when Amazon (finally) delivers to my door, I will sit and listen, over and over and probably over again, and I'll take what Bob has chosen, for now, to give. But I won't rush anything, because I'll know that there are years worth of detail waiting to be discovered, in these songs and in all the others, but only when the time is right.
I can't help it if I'm lucky...
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