Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Highway 61 Revisited - An Epiphany... and not the one you probably think it is


3/1/11 – Highway 61 Revisited (Bob Dylan)

Just because you like my stuff doesn't mean I owe you anything.
– Bob Dylan

            I’m still trying to figure out what I think of Bob Dylan.  I’ve never been a huge fan of his, but ever since I kept running across his stuff on the infamous Rolling Stone Magazine list I’m pulling most of the mainstream stuff off, I question whether I dislike Bob Dylan or just the caricature his portrayal has become since the heyday of his popularity.  This CD’s been in the car for a few days now and I’m coming to the conclusion that I may have been right in the first place.  I don’t particularly like Dylan.  I mean, I don’t hate it, but it just doesn’t appeal to me.
The theorist can try to rationalize it, the writer can get into the text, and the composer can take apart the layers musically, but none of them make a difference sometimes.  I like what I like, and I don’t like what I don’t like.  I know this will be an unpopular statement with some of the people reading this, but I’m also coming to peace with the fact that I really don’t have to like everything.  Be it Coltrane, Rolling Stones, Wagner, early Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, or Britney Spears (whose name probably doesn’t even belong in the company of the others,) they just aren’t my tastes.  And I don’t have to keep justifying it.  I’d like to for my own sake, but if I can’t, I can live with that now too.
I’m not quite ready to write off blues rock or folk rock categorically yet, but I’m starting to lean that way.  This seems like an extension on what I wrote on the Stones’ Exile On Main Street, but musically, there’s nothing much here.  Not that I need commercialized, mainstream manufactured hits, but there’s nothing wrong with a catchy guitar hook either.  Three-chord rock doesn’t grab me.  Or one chord blues, like “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry.”  Not that I dislike blues either, but someone like Stevie Ray Vaughn or B. B. King I feel take the basic blues structure and use it as a vehicle for great playing, both technically and emotionally.  I don’t get the same virtuosic connection from Dylan.
Part of me wants to appreciate this album for what it was when it was, but I can’t.  I wasn’t there in ’65.  Dylan is as much history to me as Stravinsky, and part of me objectifies him as such.  I appreciate Stravinsky’s contributions to music as a whole and I like his music.  I could take or leave Dylan.  More likely leave him.  On that note, I’m contemplating the first round of edits to my year-long schedule.  Should I go through and preemptively cut albums I think I’ll be predisposed to dislike?  (At this point, mostly Dylan and the Stones, because there’s a lot of them on the list.)  Should I push through them because they’re supposedly influential?  Or move them aside in favor of some of the many great albums I can’t fit into a single year?  Let me know what you think.  Right now, I’m pretty happy with the list until late April, but Blood on the Tracks is currently scheduled for then…

Next week –
Abbey Road
(The Beatles)

1 comment:

  1. You don't like the stones or Dylan, you've already given them a fair trial, and they fail. Bump them off your list and go for other groups who deserve a chance.

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