Bob Dylan corner

[medjuck]

I can't find the quote but somewhere Allan Ginsberg said that he'd never written a line as good as "The Motorcycle Black Madonna, Two Wheeled Gypsy Queen.!"  

[felser]

3 hours ago, ArtSalt said:

The song sneers at its victim’s reversed fortunes but our uncritical, lazy sneering-along with it has prevented us from seeing that the song has come to applaud precisely what it denigrates. A rolling stone may gather no moss, but rolling stones were precisely what the sixties were bent on celebrating, and are what we so slavishly persist today in celebrating about them. We love Dylan because we want, like him, to be a rolling stone.

But the Ancient Greeks had another word for the rolling stone. That word is ‘idiot’. An idiot, according to the Ancient Greeks, is someone who stands aside from the political and cultural spheres, who cuts themselves off from critical participation in the world.

The Nobel Prize for literature, at long last, has been awarded to a complete idiot. As an image of excellence, nothing could be more fitting. A Western culture which has for decades prized idiocy above all other moral and aesthetic qualities and accomplishments has finally come clean. How does it feel, ah how does it feel? Long have we asked. Now we can answer. It feels, as idiots should, stupid.

For whatever else the sixties were or weren't about, they most certainly were NOT about standing aside from the political (or cultural) spheres.  The song was about the changing of the guard in society from the Eisenhower 50's, the individuals in the song were merely props to illustrate the cultural upheaval of the generations.  The woman wasn't an individual, it was a mindset.  The entire era was overshadowed by the Vietnam War and the draft.  The same dynamic has not existed since then, and will not again any time soon.  There was certainly a lot of hypocrisy and naivete, but idiocy?  Look around today and compare.

[danasgoodstuff]

3 hours ago, Teasing the Korean said:

I think Dylan deserves the Nobel Prize in Literature for the five album stretch running from Another Side of Bob Dylan through John Wesley Harding alone.

Agreed, good thing the're not grading right minus wrong though 'cause when he's good...

[danasgoodstuff]

3 hours ago, Teasing the Korean said:

I think Dylan deserves the Nobel Prize in Literature for the five album stretch running from Another Side of Bob Dylan through John Wesley Harding alone.

Agreed, good thing the're not grading right minus wrong though 'cause when he's good...

And the arguments against (here and elsewhere) are IMHO as much special pleading as the arguments for - just to take the most glaring fallacy is the Spectator article, since when do poets have to be nice people or even reasonable?  And the way it sets itself up for its conclusion is just cheap...

[Larry Kart]

15 hours ago, JSngry said:

My smile is my makeup I wear since my breakup with you?

I didn't say that speech-like word setting (which that line from "Tracks of My Tears" is a lovely example of) disappeared from pop music after the "Standards" era began to wither away/dry up/what have you, just that non- or less speech-like  word setting became more common because a lot of pop music had other fish to fry.

[danasgoodstuff]

https://www.acerecords.co.uk/search?query=songwriter+series  Post-standards songwriters are a varied bunch, not readily put all in one bag.  "Yester is/the prefix/that we fix/to things that have gone by/forever they say"  I thought JSangrey's Smokey quote was decidedly non-conversational in terms of where the accents fall...

[Larry Kart]

2 hours ago, danasgoodstuff said:

https://www.acerecords.co.uk/search?query=songwriter+series  Post-standards songwriters are a varied bunch, not readily put all in one bag.  "Yester is/the prefix/that we fix/to things that have gone by/forever they say"  I thought JSangrey's Smokey quote was decidedly non-conversational in terms of where the accents fall...

The accents in that line from "Tracks of My Tears" are certainly more dramatic/drawn out than they would be in normal speech -- all to marvelous effect -- but I don't hear them falling in PLACES other than where they would in normal speech, as was the case in the songs/recordings I mentioned.

Actually that line in "Tracks of My Tears" reminds me a bit of "There'll be no one unless that someone is you/I intend to be independently blue" from "Love Me or Leave Me."  

Or "I've got a house, a showplace/Still I can't get no place with you" from "I Can't Get Started."

In both those cases, the framework is that of normal speech, but the lyric makes room for some doubling back rhythmic/sound-alike byplay:
""intend to be/independently"; "showplace"/"no place" within the overall rhythm scheme -- a la "my makeup"/"my break up."

IMO, the genius of "Tears" is the placement of the words "I wear since."
 

 

[JSngry]

Point being just that 3 over 4 is a standard emphatic gambit, conversation and musically. Lennon's usage of it no more unorthodox than Smokey's than all the Spector uses of it, it's a common device, and we notice it because of the inherent mathematical tension, not because of of any breakthroughs of expression or anything like that. It's one of those things that seems to be intuitive, perhaps even hardwired. 

Literate songwriting does not make songwriting literature. Songwriting is music. I'm all for evolutionary synergism, and when we get to a time where people set out to and then achieve a sung novel, a work requires the melding of disciplines to exist instead of allowing a deconstruction of it's elements to present, hey, look, it's a pop song, but it also has poetic imagery and rhyme, gee, it's literature too!, then we can talk about it.

But this is not that time.

Larry, your premise seems to be linked to the notion that the words "strawberry fields forever" would be spoken in that order, together as a phrase, as a part of "normal speech", and...huh? Where does that happen?

[danasgoodstuff]

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

Point being just that 3 over 4 is a standard emphatic gambit, conversation and musically. Lennon's usage of it no more unorthodox than Smokey's than all the Spector uses of it, it's a common device, and we notice it because of the inherent mathematical tension, not because of of any breakthroughs of expression or anything like that. It's one of those things that seems to be intuitive, perhaps even hardwired. 

Literate songwriting does not make songwriting literature. Songwriting is music. I'm all for evolutionary synergism, and when we get to a time where people set out to and then achieve a sung novel, a work requires the melding of disciplines to exist instead of allowing a deconstruction of it's elements to present, hey, look, it's a pop song, but it also has poetic imagery and rhyme, gee, it's literature too!, then we can talk about it.

But this is not that time.

I must be in a different time zone; here it's somewhere between half past that time and quarter to the next thing.

[JSngry]

And the superior warm gun is being jumped by the happy mother. Overall, it's not a blue baby, so let it bleed, let it bleed, let it bleed yeah, let it bleed.

[Larry Kart]

2 hours ago, JSngry said:

Point being just that 3 over 4 is a standard emphatic gambit, conversation and musically. Lennon's usage of it no more unorthodox than Smokey's than all the Spector uses of it, it's a common device, and we notice it because of the inherent mathematical tension, not because of of any breakthroughs of expression or anything like that. It's one of those things that seems to be intuitive, perhaps even hardwired. 

Literate songwriting does not make songwriting literature. Songwriting is music. I'm all for evolutionary synergism, and when we get to a time where people set out to and then achieve a sung novel, a work requires the melding of disciplines to exist instead of allowing a deconstruction of it's elements to present, hey, look, it's a pop song, but it also has poetic imagery and rhyme, gee, it's literature too!, then we can talk about it.

But this is not that time.

Larry, your premise seems to be linked to the notion that the words "strawberry fields forever" would be spoken in that order, together as a phrase, as a part of "normal speech", and...huh? Where does that happen?

'Larry, your premise seems to be linked to the notion that the words "strawberry fields forever" would be spoken in that order, together as a phrase, as a part of "normal speech", and...huh? Where does that happen?"

Not exactly, but if one can imagine some sort of normal speech setup in which that phrase would occur -- e.g. "What sort of strange-looking reddish landscape is that?" "Strawberry fields forever." -- then the accents probably would not fall like this: "STRAW-berry "FI-elds for EV-er." I pretty much agree with "Point being just that 3 over 4 is a standard emphatic gambit," but I would excise "just" and perhaps "standard." The point that Lennon makes/is out to make  with this gambit in this song is not only emphatic but also (and I swore I'd never use this term) anthemic. The phrase is meant to be something like a flashing (somewhat psychedelic?) neon sign. "Toto," it more or less says, "were not in Kansas anymore." Which is just fine -- that's  the way the song needs to/has to be. Spector sure, but to me it seems to be a fair bit more unorthodox than Smokey's line. 
 

[JSngry]

2 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

...if one can imagine some sort of normal speech setup in which that phrase would occur -- e.g. "What sort of strange-looking reddish landscape is that?" "Strawberry fields forever." -- then the accents probably would not fall like this: "STRAW-berry "FI-elds for EV-er."
 

If you can imagine a normal speech setup where that question would be asked, I think you have to then allow for any damn kind of an accentuation in the answer.

That & "I Am The Walrus" easily make my all-time fave LennonBeatleSongs list, but, to use one of my NOT all-time favorite McCartneyBeatleSong, let it be, right? It, and any other number of popular songs, do quite well on their own, they don't need any attempts to "distinguish" them by appealing to established notions of "literature".

As that pertains to Dylan, "Ballad Of A Thin Man", jeeeeeezuz, I love that one, went so far as to play a PaulIsDead game and apply it to the first wave of Jerry Jones/Dallas Cowboys collapse. I mean, that sucker hits every bullseye possible as a song,as a Popular Music song. But if you just saw that on a printed page, would it work? Really? If some hipster read it out loud at a slam/reading/etc without lapsing into some kind of song-y cadence, who would buy? And if they did, how much would they be willing to pay? Like, spare change, right?

But as a straight up song - words in consideration of music and vice-versa, WHOA, DUDE!!!!!

We're talking different things here, songwriting and literature, things that can compliment each other as they evolve, sure, gladly, but are not yet in any way the same thing. I think it's a vision blurrer to try to make them what they into some kind of equivalents,when the real appreciation comes from heightened discernment of their individual uniquenesses.

Valuing "diversity" means just that-  valuing differences. It is not the same thing as eliminating differences, if only because if you value the differences so much, why would you wish them to not be there? Hey, I value that, now get it out of here. Really? What, your brain doesn't have space for two, so you gotta shrink it down to one?

People are getting all bubble-headed about a shrinking world. Your mind gotta get bigger as your world gets smaller. If your world and your brain both get smaller, hey, shrinking brain, NE-ver a GO-od i-DE-a.

[duaneiac]

I wonder if there were similar controversies regarding playwrights who were awarded the Nobel Prize.  Plays, like lyrics, are not meant to be read; they are meant to be performed.  Plays, like lyrics, can be about an infinite number of topics:  love, war, family, idealism, struggle, conflict, heartbreak, adventure, cruelty, faith, mystery, self-identity, mortality, etc.  Yet plays are somehow considered literature and students from middle schools to universities are forced to read Shakespeare's plays (which has probably successfully turned more people off of theater than any other single action).

I would venture to say, very, very few people read plays for pleasure or enlightenment.  Our expectation is to see the playwright's words & characters brought to life on the stage -- even if it's only a select few who continue to go to the theater to see plays performed.  Would not a bad staging/performance of a play possibly undercut the playwright's intent/meaning?  Would that bad staging mean the playwright's work itself was substandard because it could not overcome the misfortune of a bad staging/performance?  If it were truly world class literature, would not the intrinsic merits of the playwright's words/meaning rise above all other factors?  A novel inhabits its own world on the page, but a play is trapped on the page until it can be realized, through an extensively cooperative effort, on the stage.  A bad play cannot be redeemed by even the most creative staging (musicals are a whole different category; many lame musicals have thrived due in no small part to unique staging or an outstanding performance), but a good play can be harmed by inept staging/acting.

If plays are considered literature, then why not screenplays?  Certainly movies are far more important to our cultural lives now than plays or even books.  The film version of a best selling/critically acclaimed book -- even one by a Nobel Prize winning author -- will very likely reach millions and millions more people than did the book upon which it was based.  I wonder how many people have actually read Doctor Zhivago over the decades vs. how many have seen the film version?

Perhaps the expectation for poetry is that, as literature, it is meant to live on the page.  However, people have always gone to poetry readings and sometimes hearing an author read his/her own work provides a new insight into that work -- maybe  a word or phrase is spoken with a certain emphasis or quietness by the poet which differs from how you yourself had read the poem on the page.  Many people attend slam poetry performances, wherein the poems exist only as spoken words, not as items on a page.  Should the artistic works of slam poets be considered literature even if there is no written documentation of their works?

I guess the question comes down to what is literature today.  Is literature something that is academically and critically lauded while it gathers dust on library shelves, largely removed from everyday lives of 99% of the world's population?  Or is literature something which tries to engage people to think about some "big ideas" by using the communication means and vernacular with which they are familiar.  I'm not arguing for the "dumbing down" of literature.  Shakespeare wrote his plays using the communication means and vernacular of the people of his time and his work seems to still be well regarded.

Bob Dylan is a writer who is very concerned with words.  I'm not saying every song of his is a literary gem, but what writer can claim that his/her every work was a masterpiece?  His best writing creates vivid images of characters, settings and experiences which, for me at least, ultimately fall within the realm of poetry.  Whether it should be considered some of the best poetry in the world, I have no idea.

[Larry Kart]

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

If you can imagine a normal speech setup where that question would be asked, I think you have to then allow for any damn kind of an accentuation in the answer.

That & "I Am The Walrus" easily make my all-time fave LennonBeatleSongs list, but, to use one of my NOT all-time favorite McCartneyBeatleSong, let it be, right? It, and any other number of popular songs, do quite well on their own, they don't need any attempts to "distinguish" them by appealing to established notions of "literature".

As that pertains to Dylan, "Ballad Of A Thin Man", jeeeeeezuz, I love that one, went so far as to play a PaulIsDead game and apply it to the first wave of Jerry Jones/Dallas Cowboys collapse. I mean, that sucker hits every bullseye possible as a song,as a Popular Music song. But if you just saw that on a printed page, would it work? Really? If some hipster read it out loud at a slam/reading/etc without lapsing into some kind of song-y cadence, who would buy? And if they did, how much would they be willing to pay? Like, spare change, right?

But as a straight up song - words in consideration of music and vice-versa, WHOA, DUDE!!!!!

We're talking different things here, songwriting and literature, things that can compliment each other as they evolve, sure, gladly, but are not yet in any way the same thing. I think it's a vision blurrer to try to make them what they into some kind of equivalents,when the real appreciation comes from heightened discernment of their individual uniquenesses.

Valuing "diversity" means just that-  valuing differences. It is not the same thing as eliminating differences, if only because if you value the differences so much, why would you wish them to not be there? Hey, I value that, now get it out of here. Really? What, your brain doesn't have space for two, so you gotta shrink it down to one?

People are getting all bubble-headed about a shrinking world. Your mind gotta get bigger as your world gets smaller. If your world and your brain both get smaller, hey, shrinking brain, NE-ver a GO-od i-DE-a.

My point is simply that the accentuation Lennon chose  for that phrase was not "any damn kind of an accentuation" but was meant to stick out/be (again, I hate this term) anthemic. That is, its rather lunging divergence from speech-like accentuation in general, whether or not that actual phrase would/could ever be spoken in any setting, is part and parcel of why it is what it is. No problem with that, but I think it is and aims to be unorthodox in effect. If it were not, I don't think the song would be the song it is.

 

[JSngry]

But is it literature?

[Larry Kart]

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

But is it literature?

I wasn't involved or particularly interested in that part of the discussion.

[JSngry]

"for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition".

So...there should be a Noble Prize for songwriting? Or composition? Or anything musical? Or Dylan is some kind of literary philanthropic who has gifted songwriting with his literary genius (in which case, where's the body of non-musical literary genius that stands apart from that which is gifted to songwriting?)? Or Dylan is some kind of literary stalker/predator who just put his literary seed into songwriting willy-nilly and now is being glorified as This Year's Top-Shelf Baby Daddy?

There is not a Nobel Prize for music, of any kind. Why is that? In science they have three separate prizes - Physics, Chemistry, and Medicine. They have one for Economic Sciences and another for Literature. And none - none - for music, classical, popular, folk, real, imagined, or any other type of music. No prize.

Would they give James Watson the same prize they gave Niels Bohr? Don't be silly.

But they will give Bob Dylan the same prize they give William Golding. Go figure that.

Bob Dylan doesn't need, nor particularly "deserve", a Noble Prize for his "literature", let's not be any more silly than we already are. Wherever you are on the scale of Dylan Fandom (and overall, I'm at a sold B, the best is dabombariffic for me, and the other stuff, I don't care, just don't care), if you feel that a Nobel Prize in Literature is in any way "deserved" or "justified" or any other word that translates to "hey, it's about time "We" got some Official Love", then that strikes me as kinda....let's just say that he who looks outside themselves for justification of self will never know the peace of actually having it.

Bob Dylan has created his own justification. Bob Dylan is his own prize.

Dig - Henry Threadgill got a Pulitzer this year - for real, actual, goddamn MUSIC. Pulitzer fucked Ellington while he was alive, but at least they fucked him in an appropriate arena.

Steve Coleman should get a Noble for Physics, if that's where it's at. Warne Marsh. Lester Young. Hell, Louis Armstrong, fuck it - the whole continent of Africa, hell yeah, the 2016 Nobel Prize for Physics goes to motherfucking AFRICA for demonstrating the real-life application of pretty much every goddam Quantum theory imaginable through their collective musics. The principle is sound and they need the money.

Make Reality Great Again!

 

 

[Larry Kart]

When you think about it -- and this has been the case with more than a few prizes over the years (I can cite some examples, though it might or might not be a first for the Nobel) -- Dylan more or less gave TO the Nobel the pre-existing "prize" of himself. That is, the Nobel people decided that it was in need of the cachet of someone such as Dylan.

[JSngry]

 

[Milestones]

Maybe it's time to add a couple more Nobel categories--cinema and music.  In music we could have had Miles, Trane, Ellington, etc.  

The literature prize has always been the odd one out among the Nobels.

As for Dylan, I remember finding a book of his complete lyrics back in 1978. At the time I had not heard much Dylan, but I read through just about all those lyrics--and they were, for the most part, fascinating.  As a songwriter/poet, they don't come any better than Bob.

 

[jlhoots]

I have no problem with Dylan & have listened to his music for over 50 years.

However, Philip Roth deserves the Nobel for literature & will probably never get it given the bias of the presenters.

[Milestones]

Not to mention that Roth is now well past 80, and the Swedish Academy is unlikely to award another American within 10-15 years.  

[ArtSalt]

Now they've opened the doors to pop rock singers, who'll be next? Bruce Springsteen, Leonard Cohen, Tom Russell, Pete Townsend, Shane MacGowan....

Dylan did write a novel, well "prose poetry" with Tarantula.

From our perspective now, the rock pop world as the most dominant cultural force of the late 20 the century has faded into novelty acts and a few big stadium rock bands. It has gone the same way as the big bands. It is no longer at the vanguard of popular culture. The idealism of the 60s was already having the proverbial taken out of it by the arrival of punk. Does Dylan seem important or relevant these days, as an artistic force of nature? No, but what rock pop singer song writer can, the world has moved on and the self centered baby boomer absorption in rock music that has been exposed for what it always was: an evolutionary dead end. Entertainment, as a cultural force it is spent.

 

 

[soulpope]

7 hours ago, JSngry said:

Bob Dylan doesn't need, nor particularly "deserve", a Noble Prize for his "literature", let's not be any more silly than we already are. Wherever you are on the scale of Dylan Fandom (and overall, I'm at a sold B, the best is dabombariffic for me, and the other stuff, I don't care, just don't care), if you feel that a Nobel Prize in Literature is in any way "deserved" or "justified" or any other word that translates to "hey, it's about time "We" got some Official Love", then that strikes me as kinda....let's just say that he who looks outside themselves for justification of self will never know the peace of actually having it.

Bob Dylan has created his own justification. Bob Dylan is his own prize.

Spot on ...

[John L]

There are actually quite a number of artists whose artistry falls through the cracks of literature and music - the bard (chanson) tradition in Europe, for example.  Like with Bob Dylan, the brilliance can be in the particular marriage of music, lyrics, and delivery, not literary enough for literature, not musical enough for "serious music" awards, not enough of a stage act for drama.  Bob Dylan inspired 1000s, including myself, and it is very gratifying for me to see him get a Nobel.