Bob Dylan does things on his own schedule. For a half century now, newspaper people and other media cretins have regularly parachuted into Bob Dylan Land, taken a confused look around, and then ran back to their typewriters or radio mics or television studios or laptops or, we guess, cell phones with the Twitter, in attempts to stir up some newsstand sales or page views or Facebook likes or other forms of venereal disease of the heart, by claiming Bob Dylan did this or that thing. In nearly every recorded instance, Bob Dylan didn’t do whatever people said he did, or he did something that could only be loosely associated with, say, some asinine column by Maureen Dowd, who spends a lot of time lamenting “the greatest generation,” meaning, “when she was a young person, in the 1970s.”
So, many months after a brief media flurry regarding Dylan’s never-ending musical tour making a stop in China, a statement has appeared on BobDylan.com. It is informative, if you care at all about whether or not Chinese government authorities “approved” the set list of a senior citizen and longtime Malibu resident with a long career in show business. But it is also very funny, especially the end:
As far as censorship goes, the Chinese government had asked for the names of the songs that I would be playing. There’s no logical answer to that, so we sent them the set lists from the previous 3 months. If there were any songs, verses or lines censored, nobody ever told me about it and we played all the songs that we intended to play.
Everybody knows by now that there’s a gazillion books on me either out or coming out in the near future. So I’m encouraging anybody who’s ever met me, heard me or even seen me, to get in on the action and scribble their own book. You never know, somebody might have a great book in them.
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Everyone should read Chronicles, Volume 1 at their earliest opportunity. It's amazingly good.
No can do. I’m currently in the basement mixing up the medicine to fix the media cretins.
I'm on the pavement, thinkin' 'bout the government…
And surprisingly snark-free.
Yes, yes and yes. Had no idea what it would be like but I couldn't stop reading it. Even when it ended! He's a good writer.
Which shouldn't surprise us. It was surprising to find him so self-effacing, kind to others, and willing to reveal less-than-flattering aspects of his life. At one point some musicians in New Orleans ask him, "Why don't you write songs like 'Masters of War' and 'Chimes of Freedom' anymore?" If only….
Suze Rotolo, Freewheelin Girl: She was the daughter of Italian Communists with her own ideas about life, art and politics
What boys will do to get laid: create great art.
She died a while back. Terry Gross replayed an interview with her. Here it is:http://www.wbur.org/npr/134158270/remembering-suze-rotolo-dylans-freewheeling-muse
Show us the long-form set list!
Next thing you know this smug self-righteous asshole will get invited to the White House on poetry day.
It's okay, though, he's white.
Steve Martin and his banjo bumped him for the smug self-righteous asshole slot this year.
Anything as long as it's not that America-hating fascist Mark Russell.
the Chinese government had asked for the names of the songs that I would be playing. There’s no logical answer to that
Well, "It's not your concern" comes to mind as a logical answer…perhaps Bob Dylan needs a weatherman after all…
That works real well with the PRC.
I know, but it would sure be nice to see *someone* not cave to censorship in China. Yes–I'm an eternal optimist, or incredibly deluded…
People have stood up – They are in prison now. Dylan simply wouldn't have been allowed to play.
I get your point though. Our media glosses over the censorship and repression because of the sweet, sweet $$$ being made by their owners/sponsors.
I do my best to boycott all Chinese made products, (getting harder all the time, as fewer and fewer products are manufactured anywhere the concept of 'workers rights' or even 'human rights' have taken hold.) It's my own futile little protest.
I also try to speak out about worker abuses, censorship, etc. It seems most Americans have no idea. The assume since trade has 'normalized', conditions must be okay.
When it comes to Dylan, though, he may have thought he could slip some subversive content through to his listeners that the censors wouldn't get. Or, maybe it was all about the benjamins. Given his entire life's work, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.
On the other hand, his guest stint on the Victoria's Secret show was inexplicable.
Keep your optimism. To accept the status quo is to surrender to the injustice.
(Sorry. Snark impaired at the moment.)
They weren't doing anything that ABC, CBS, NBC, or Fox wouldn't do.
Good point.
I'm pretty indifferent to this whole situation, but I would have thought that the logical answer would be "here's the list of songs I will be playing."
Usually they don't think farther ahead than going to lunch earlier.
I hate folk music and especially hippies so I don't give a shit about Bob Dylan. Frankly I think he's waaaaaaaaay over rated and wish that dude from the Jesus Lizard would kick the crap out of him.
(this comment is 100% snark free)
Gimme back my bacon.
Injun giver!
Yowza!
Dude……..What's With The Harshitude?
I think someone needs a hug.
but
don't forget, let alone the hippies; the 70s did give us Soouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuul Traaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiin
(I'm still kinda missing your old avatar I guess)
I'll have to find it for you mumble. I liked it too now I can find it anymore. I forgot what I googled.
When the Soul Train animation came on, it signaled that the Saturday morning cartoons were over. It was like hearing "last call."
I'm the least hippie lovin' guy there is, but Dylan is probably been even more influential than those long-haired Beatle boys in modern music. I urge you to take another look at some Basement Tapes/Blonde on Blonde action.
And if David Yow was as successful we'd be living in a much better world. Or at least more fucked up, in good ways.
Fuck yeah brother. I don't poo poo (tee-hee "poo") Dylans influence I just don't like him. I think David Yow has more poignant lyrics.
"Meow Meow Meow Beep Beep
Next time you kids run through my yard go around"
The poetry drips from you chin.
I have trouble explaining this to people too. He wrote great lyrics, I can recite them. I like his latest release. He sings drunk in concert way too much. hmmmm, no good explanation.
It is my understanding that the feeling is entirely mutual
(Zimmerman hates folk music and hippies, doesn't give a shit about you, and thinks he is way overrated.)
I dont like clogging, either.
I, too, avoid the complex. Don't think twice, it's all right.
(this comment is 100% snark free)
I still laughed though.
(this comment is 100% snark free)
Do you, Mr. Jones?
In this case, fiction is stranger than truth.
"awopundnnyaminaaannaianaihh alohjmmnnkis salua OHHH adcmmamamamaaama OHHHHH."
Wrap your head around THAT China!
They prolly just promised an autographed set list to Kim Jong Il in exchange for some kim-chee and three years of nuclear forebearance.
That's a classy way to respond to Dowd's stupidity; personally I would have just sang Idiot Wind to her (you're an idiot, babe, it's a wonder that you still know how the breathe).
Nice, a whole new generation of Mr. Joneses who know something is happening here but don't know what it is.
You never know, somebody might have a great book in them.
This does not apply to Sarah Palin. Unless she happens to eat The Sun Also Rises at some point.
No shoving?
There are other ways she could come to have a great book in her. Did anyone ever happen to publish a particularly jagged-edged edition of Ulysses?
I thought the way it was written is jagged-edge.
Joe McGinniss is all up in her shit workin on gettin a great book out of her at this very moment.
He'll have to write it himself and then stick it up her butt then extract it.
Yeah, well, if she does, I wanna see the long-form publishing certificate.
I'm startin' my book right now. I know he was talkin' to me personally.
Let's hope Dame Noonington doesn't think he was talking about her.
No, no – he was talking to Maureen Dowd.
Someone's got it in for me, they're planting stories in the press
Whoever it is I wish they'd cut it but when they will I can only guess.
They say I shot a man named Gray and took his wife to Italy,
She inherited a million bucks and when she died it came to me.
I can't help it if I'm lucky.
Alt-post: what comes out of Maureen Dowd's mouth.
e: damn it, SorosBot
I'd write about the time he showed up wearing a hooded parka to "Little Shop of Horrors," but I'm saving that for the book.
Now your dancing child with his Chinese suit
He spoke to me, I took his flute
No, I wasn't very cute to him, was I?
But I did it, though, because he lied
Because he took you for a ride
And because time was on his side
"asinine column by Maureen Dowd": that's what my junior high English teacher would have called a redundancy.
She takes just like a woman, yes, she does
She makes love just like a woman, yes, she does
And she aches just like a woman
But she writes just like a drunk old gossipy skank
on snap, bwhaaaahhahaha
Someday I hope to write a novel as good as "Tarantula".
Please give us your textual analysis. That could be a big help in answering my main question about the book, which was "Huh?"
The foreign sun, it squints upon
A bed that is never mine
As friends and other strangers
From their fates try to resign
Leaving men wholly totally free
To do anything they wish to do but die
And there are no trials inside the Gates of Eden.
Also too.
Totoro!
Very few people realize that Dylan wrote the lyrics to Totoro:
Totoro, To-to-ro!
Totoro, To-to-ro!
It's on Highway 61 Revisited.
Geez, Louise, I can't feel my knees…..
The press don't work 'cause the vandals pimp the scandals.
Was that from his concept album about the Mexican Pig-Flu Pandemic Plague?
Hey Maureen:
I hope that you die
And your death'll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon..
Just Kiddin'!
Love, Bob
Should have dispatched the lyrics to "One Headlight" to the inquisitors.
All that and a good Dad to boot.
So it was just the wife he didn't speak to "for weeks at a time"?
Love him or hate him, you gotta admit it really was a turning point in music when Dylan went techno…
I dunno if I admit it when I just don't even GET it. But by then, I had turned a point and was listening to newer (and older) stuff.
She writes a decent column about one in every ten. That latest one on Osama made no sense to me at all. I think she's on acid trying recapture those magic vibes.
to be fair, maureen dowd was probably really hot in the 70s.
# NEED MOAR LIQUID LSD-25 TO IMAGINE THAT
So was I, but I thought we were the worst generation.
No, I ain't gonna work for Triggy's ma no more.
Who is Bob Dylan? Has he worked with Bieber, Bristol or Gaga?
He wrote Sarah Palin's resignation speech.
He prolly will work with Bieber & Gaga.
Another side of…
If you ever try to interfere with me or cross my path again
You do so at the peril of your own life
I’m not quite as cool or forgiving as I sound
I’ve seen enough heartaches and strife
(Floater)
Released 9/11/01
Dinkeytown !
Sound Opinions had Al Cooper on talking about Dylan…a LOT of the crap written about Dylan was just that…CRAP per Al, someone who was in the room.
I happen to like Dylan, but here was the report from my niece, who went to see Dylan in Shanghai — her Chinese husband is a big fan. She said it was better than the first Dylan concert she'd seen (in the U.S.) a few years ago, cause she didn't fall asleep.
I tried to get tickets to hear Faye Wong when she played Vegas. Can I get an advance on the book I'm planning to write about it?
Jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule
But these words from Maureen make her seem
Like a tool
"Everybody knows by now that there’s a gazillion books on me either out or coming out in the near future. So I’m encouraging anybody who’s ever met me, heard me or even seen me, to get in on the action and scribble their own book."
I like this particular bit because just a little while ago I was at my local bookstore and noted that the number of different books about Bob Dylan outnumbered (by 10 to 8) those on anything related to the 5+ centuries of 'classical'/composed music that came before him.
Can't you imagine Maureen Dowd – laying on her big brass bed as a teenager, listening to "She Belongs to Me" and thinking "He's singing about meeeeee……"
And wearing a leopard-skin pill-box hat, no doubt.
I bet she wears an Egyptian ring that sparkles before she speaks and everything.
No.
Jesus, what kind of shit was Maureen Dowd smoking to think the 70's were in any way great? That decade was immediately disqualified by Seals and Crofts.
Making lemons out of lemonade, 70's music was so cringe-worthy it drove me to jazz, blues, world/folk, classical, anything but Top 40.
"When life gives you lemons, just say 'fuck these lemons' and bail." Forgetting Sarah Marshall
I think I spent (wasted) a full year of that decade listening to Stairway to Heaven, Freebird, and 2112.
What was wasted? You or the year? If the answer is both, then well played.
Dylan understands the Chinese bureaucracy, which doesn't care what he puts on the form they give him, so long as he fills out the fucking form. I think Confucius said that in one of his anal-lects.
I'll point out that on Dylan's website, where this was posted, his Christmas album receives the same four star fan rating as The Times They Are A-Changin'. Don't know what that means; just putting it up there.
That Christmas record is great, that's what it means. And if you happen to host your family's Christmas eve get-together, it can help chase the in-laws and their children out the house when you just want them to leave already.
clare and renaldo
I guess now's the time to recount the story of the early days, when it was just me and Zim and our guitars. Of course that was before he stole all my songs.
Oh great, a Dylan call to action: "So I’m encouraging anybody who’s ever met me, heard me or even seen me, to get in on the action and scribble their own book…" Just what we need more vanity press books??
At a stop light in my convertable. "Masters of War" on the player, volume at 11. Police cruiser pulls along side. Leave stop light, police cruiser follows me. Pull into A&P parking lot. Police cruiser pulls in behind me. I sit there with hands on top of steering wheel, officer calls me over. He's about 30 and says; "What's that song? A lot of the guys sing it in Iraq. It's great (or something)."
I had to meet someone for as dinner in Beijing recently. They suggested a location and we met in front of the "Workers's Sports Stadium" and there was Bob's picture up front. So I can confirm he played in Beijing.
As to his sucking up to the regime: there's an English language channel here in Beijing where any number of indigent journalists from the Anglo world make a good living spouting the government line. It's fun to catch the British and Aussia and Canadian and Yank journos all parroting approved lines and I hope they're paid well in this post GFC world where western news outlets are laying off staff. It's particularly heartneing for an ex Melbournian like me to see the former weatherman for the ABC Melbourne (ABC being the Australian version of the BBC) as the main anchor person – he was always such a witty weatherperson, now all he does is pronounce stuff well, but I'm sure they pay him well and I'm happy for him).
Anyway, if Bob had in any way sucked up to the CCP (ie said that the Dalai Lama was a paedophile or sang a song in praise of Chow Mein as superior to KFC) then they would have been all over it like a rash. But they weren't.
Still it's a bummer that I can't access Youtube,
Stay away from Beijing and you'll have a fine time in China.
Upfists for everyone in honor of Bobby.
Death to the fascist insect that preys upon the proletariat!
In my time listening to Bob Dylan, I heard him croon full faith and credit to (1) a psychotic racist Texas serial killer, (2) a vicious triple-murderer considered by some not guilty by reason of race, and (3) a brutal mafia hit man. At what point do I look to the troubled troubador to lead me in moral decisions of any sort? Plus he's one of the Jews for Jesus, and we are only the first…
Bob Dylan is a successful artist. Maureen Dowd is a would-be entertainer.
Inside the museums
Infinity goes up on trial
Voices echo this is what
Salvation must be like after a while
Mona Lisa must have had the highway blues
You can tell by the way she smiles.
–Visions of Johanna
Goddamn, but isn't that the best Dylan lyric?
Somehow I don't think he means that (encouraging everybody to write a book about him), but then, it's Bob Dylan so you never know.
I do remember being accidentally locked into a bathroom stall at the Houston Astrodome at some vastly historic, "final tour" Bob Dylan concert around 1977 and having to climb over the stall wall in my three-piece Yves St. Laurent suit, which I was wearing ironically to a Bob Dylan concert, and the rest of the toilet attendees scattering like cockroaches because, in 1977, only "The Man" wore a three-piece suit and it was obviously a bust. Good times, boozers, users and losers, good times.
I hope you still have that suit, my man.
Actually, I do. But, for some odd reason, it no longer fits.
You could stuff yourself into it and wear it any way. That would be way ironic. Especially if you went over the top of the stall to get in.
I think I see your point, but my stall partition-climbing days are jus' blowin' in the wind.
You know, I think that twenty or thirty years ago (maybe in the time of Raygun), Bob came to realize that his tunes weren't going to change the world any more than they already had, and he decided to become "just" a musician, and influence change more subtly.
I'm happy to see that he appears to have kept his sense of humor.
My own Dylan biography is soon to appear from Warton Press: "Dylan: Speaking the Voice of God. NOT!!"
I am happy to see that Our Editor found an opportunity to crap on Maureen Dowd, and I wish Our Editors would do so in almost every entry. It would make the hearts of real people soar. Hint, there.
Everybody knows by now that there’s a gazillion books on me either out or coming out in the near future.
I read this sentence and thought, "Bob Dylan is gay? I didn't know that."
Poor Bob. He hasn't been the same since Suze Rotolo died.
In his next life, Stephen Hawking will be booed for plugging in. Pete Seeger will be a famous General sporting sunglasses and a corncob. John Lennon will opt for the forklift.
The Bob will not be born again.
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