Bob Dylan - Tempest, Sept. 11, 2012

lex has made it abundantly clear he has no interest in musical history

in reduced-price format or otherwise

I feel that we are not entirely communicating here.

And anyway that's not true - he's just not that interested in a lot of the canon. Things that inform music that he actually enjoys is different, I believe.

xp yeah I'm joking, I dont know enough about early 20c indigenous American musical forms to be able to elucidate any kind of point with clarity, but my kneejerk reaction is that anyone trying to trace a lineage of folk tradition through the latter part of last century and the start of this one and ending up with late Dylan is not really doing it right

I do like lex's article which sort of my sort of prima facie assumption about late Dylan--mainly, that you get out of it what you put into it.

I also am amused about how everyone is shocked and appalled by his review, considering that the dude didn't just foreground his review in his utter distaste, but actually admitted on a widely-read national publication that he was confused a few years back as to whether Dylan was still alive or not. #1 great thing about lex is the self-effacing, almost cheerful willingness to confess his limitations and allow them to undercut the authority of his withering dismissals

which sort of supports my prima facie assumption

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbTBk4pDIHA

no shit shakes

comedy xps

right on, sorry

cardboard characters

Weird criticism imo. These are songs, not movies or novels. You're not going to get Madame Bovary. I love it when a character in a song seems to live and breathe (like, as it happens, a ton of earlier Dylan songs) but I don't expect it.

it's weird that lex doesn't grasp that DYLAN is the character that's important. (does Lex parse Rihanna songs for their in-depth characterizations? idgi)

xp a lineage that can trace itself back to a 1970 Grateful Dead song

Haha, I thought of that too after I posted it. Though there are obviously earlier versions of "Casey Jones", I'm not claiming it as the earliest or best example of this tradition, just the one that first came to mind (and one that's probably pretty well known to people who aren't folk musicologists). Whether or not it should even count as a "disaster song" is also debatable since I believe only Casey himself dies in the crash. Some better examples might be Dylan's own "Talkin' Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues" or even songs about the Titanic itself like "When That Great Ship Went Down".

this set is highly recommended
http://www.tompkinssquare.com/images/PTWcover.jpg
http://www.tompkinssquare.com/people_take.html

tompkins square is such an awesome label

For a recent example, there's also Frank Black's "St. Francis Dam Disaster".

Thanks Tyler! This is a good round-up too, incl some stuff might've influenced D.'s lyrics--"World's Biggest Metaphor Hits Iceberg" an' all:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/04/16/120416fa_fact_mendelsohn

Weird criticism imo. These are songs, not movies or novels. You're not going to get Madame Bovary. I love it when a character in a song seems to live and breathe (like, as it happens, a ton of earlier Dylan songs) but I don't expect it.

idk i DO expect a character to be brought to life in a pop song because otherwise why are they there? i expect a songwriter to delve into the complexity of their emotions and their motivations and not just describe them in stock phrases. if they're acting in a certain why or feeling a certain thing i want to know why, because that's part of making the connection to me as a listener in order for it to resonate with me.

(does Lex parse Rihanna songs for their in-depth characterizations? idgi)

i've criticised them for their lack of it! the video for "man down" is a really powerful piece of storytelling in which a party girl flirts with a man, who rapes her, and she subsequently takes murderous revenge. it's a pity how little of that ended up in the song. conversely "fire bomb" is an excellent piece of songwriting which conveys the thrill and the horror of being in a mutually destructive relationship amazingly well.

I love it when a character in a song seems to live and breathe (like, as it happens, a ton of earlier Dylan songs) but I don't expect it.

The character who lives and breathes in pretty much all of Dylan's music is Dylan. He is his own protagonist/anti-hero even when he's singing about other people. This is true of a great many songwriters, maybe all of them in one way or another. But I think especially in his later albums, he has been really honing this perspective -- this grizzled, unreliable, taunting figure who has deliberately disengaged and is just watching things happen. Not judging, except to poke fun here and there, mostly happy to keep on keeping on. That's the perspective of the last several records -- "Things Have Changed" is pretty much the late-Dylan mission statement -- and so to engage with them it helps to have some sense of who it is you're engaging with. For me some of it comes through in the words, and much more in the singing. But I can also understand people not hearing it, the same way plenty of people didn't hear what he was doing the first, second, third times around.

Well said. To examine Tempest in isolation, as Lex has done, is to miss a lot of Dylan's latter-day role as macabre, mischievous narrator - to focus too much on the tale and not enough on the teller.

"this album is much better than it sounds", #1 on ILM's rmde list for 12 years running!

some of these songs are basically like folk lungfish

"this album is much better than it sounds", #1 on ILM's rmde list for 12 years running!

Not so much that as, it sounds different depending on who's listening. Like everything! What we're talking about is just the specific ways that a Dylan album sounds different to people who know/like/get Dylan and people who don't.

DYLAN is the character that's important

principle #1

To examine Tempest in isolation, as Lex has done, is to miss a lot of Dylan's latter-day role as macabre, mischievous narrator I can't unhear all the Dylan I've heard, but I *think* I would hear Tempest this way, even if I'd never heard him before. Like I said, it's the Dylan Show, as much of it as we ever get in the studio. Hear the assertive riffage keep getting blissed out with another round of "Pay In Blood" (next stop, dead ahead: "Scarlet Town"). Sounds like he might be running for, from, with that "Duquesne Whistle," but already mentioning to his longtime companion, "You'ew like a timebomb in my heart"--hey another 9/11 release! Aleaady getting close to Carnegie hall '64, "It's Halloweeen, I got my Bob Dylan mask on." Not to suggest all of this is only for effect. No doubt the mask is armor, but the muse etc. seems like his actual ol' lady too, somewhere. He may be trying to keep her and us at a safe distance, but not out of earshot.

I agree that "Dylan" the character is always part of the context of any Dylan song (a point that Todd Haynes made perhaps a bit too forcefully in "I'm Not There"). Others on this board have done a good job of describing the latest "Dylan" manifestation on other threads. I like to imagine a sort of irascible riverboat gambler figure in a bolo tie and sharp-toed shoes who's lived too long to say anything other than exactly what he means but still likes the ladies and if you play cards with him, keep an eye on the deck.

I dunno that description sounds like a cardboard cutout

Though these tracks might work best of all, as several of his 90s/00s have, on various artists soundtracks. As tracks, that is, not however they might morph on tour.

Feel free to substitute whatever mental image works best for you - what would Dylan be without some ambiguity. xp

yeah that's the main thing.

Sorry to distract with more prosaic matters, but.... could anyone give some info on the vinyl edition? It's a single LP, right? The sticker says the package includes the CD. Is the CD packaged in any way?

idk i DO expect a character to be brought to life in a pop song because otherwise why are they there?

I think the characters in Dylan's songs sometimes are more like figures in a Hieronymous Bosch landscape.

i think it is a double album. the first six songs on the first lp, the other four on the second.

i think it would be physically impossible for this to be a single album

What we're talking about is just the specific ways that a Dylan album sounds different to people who know/like/get Dylan and people who don't.

I'm sort of wondering whether a part of some of the burt-hurtedness around here is because in 2012 there really isn't a reason to assume that someone reading a review of the album in the Guardian is someone who knows / likes / gets Dylan.

people are butthurt?

The revelation is more that in 2012 there really isn't a reason to assume that someone writing a review in the Guardian knows / likes / gets what they're talking about.

perfect timing for an example of the butthurt

xpost yeah in 2012 it's highly unlikely that any bob dylan fans read the guardian. erm what?

I know you don't "get" comedy but boxall's post was what they call a "joke"

xp

in today's uncertain world we can no longer assume human beings inhale oxygen

xpost Thanks. I haven't got this yet. Wondering whether to shell out for pricey vinyl.

Dude, come on, you can read.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/advertising/demographic-profile-of-guardian-readers

I see more comedy zings than butthurtedness

xp

"Social Grade"? lol Britishes

comedy zings tend to indicate deep-seated butthurtedness ime

(prob related to how comedy always indicates self-loathing)

really? cuz half my funny ones i don't even care about really it just seemed like something funny to say + barely suppressed narcissitic desire to be excelsiored + supposed to be proofreading at work

(prob related to how comedy always indicates self-loathing)

― lex pretend, Monday, September 17, 2012 3:31 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hmm this seems objectively true...hrmmm...why yes

what does loathing others always indicate? self-love?