Deep Bob Dylan Theory 2012

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Dr. Medulla
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Re: Deep Bob Dylan Theory 2012

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"I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey-strong bowels were girded with strength, like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung." - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft

Flex
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Re: Deep Bob Dylan Theory 2012

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Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a bowl of soup
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a rolling hoop
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a ton of lead
Wiggle - you can raise the dead

Pex Lives!

Dr. Medulla
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Re: Deep Bob Dylan Theory 2012

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Hey, Dylan dorks, I'm teaching Marcus' Old Weird America tomorrow evening, and I'm curious whether any of you have read it, and, if so, any thoughts about it.
"I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey-strong bowels were girded with strength, like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung." - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft

Flex
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Re: Deep Bob Dylan Theory 2012

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Dr. Medulla wrote:Hey, Dylan dorks, I'm teaching Marcus' Old Weird America tomorrow evening, and I'm curious whether any of you have read it, and, if so, any thoughts about it.
I read it in college and don't remember much about it. I remember I thought it was neat, but wasn't really totally sure what the hell most of it had to do with the music being ostensibly discussed.
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a bowl of soup
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a rolling hoop
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a ton of lead
Wiggle - you can raise the dead

Pex Lives!

Dr. Medulla
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Re: Deep Bob Dylan Theory 2012

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Flex wrote:
Dr. Medulla wrote:Hey, Dylan dorks, I'm teaching Marcus' Old Weird America tomorrow evening, and I'm curious whether any of you have read it, and, if so, any thoughts about it.
I read it in college and don't remember much about it. I remember I thought it was neat, but wasn't really totally sure what the hell most of it had to do with the music being ostensibly discussed.
If I actually read this thread, I'd see I'd asked the question on the previous page. :rolleyes:

The gist of it is whether folk music is all the community and common cause of the early folk revival scene or conflict and betrayal and disaster, as the Basement Tapes suggest. Put another way, did Dylan betray folk music or did he get to its true essence? Is folk about a more ennobled but simple folk or of the disasters visited upon them, often by each other? More intriguingly, which I'll be asking students to consider, is this latter version of folk actually punk?
"I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey-strong bowels were girded with strength, like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung." - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft

gkbill
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Re: Deep Bob Dylan Theory 2012

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Dr. Medulla wrote:
Flex wrote:
Dr. Medulla wrote:Hey, Dylan dorks, I'm teaching Marcus' Old Weird America tomorrow evening, and I'm curious whether any of you have read it, and, if so, any thoughts about it.
I read it in college and don't remember much about it. I remember I thought it was neat, but wasn't really totally sure what the hell most of it had to do with the music being ostensibly discussed.
If I actually read this thread, I'd see I'd asked the question on the previous page. :rolleyes:

The gist of it is whether folk music is all the community and common cause of the early folk revival scene or conflict and betrayal and disaster, as the Basement Tapes suggest. Put another way, did Dylan betray folk music or did he get to its true essence? Is folk about a more ennobled but simple folk or of the disasters visited upon them, often by each other? More intriguingly, which I'll be asking students to consider, is this latter version of folk actually punk?
Hello,

Or rap/early hip-hop?

Dr. Medulla
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Re: Deep Bob Dylan Theory 2012

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gkbill wrote:
Dr. Medulla wrote:
Flex wrote:
Dr. Medulla wrote:Hey, Dylan dorks, I'm teaching Marcus' Old Weird America tomorrow evening, and I'm curious whether any of you have read it, and, if so, any thoughts about it.
I read it in college and don't remember much about it. I remember I thought it was neat, but wasn't really totally sure what the hell most of it had to do with the music being ostensibly discussed.
If I actually read this thread, I'd see I'd asked the question on the previous page. :rolleyes:

The gist of it is whether folk music is all the community and common cause of the early folk revival scene or conflict and betrayal and disaster, as the Basement Tapes suggest. Put another way, did Dylan betray folk music or did he get to its true essence? Is folk about a more ennobled but simple folk or of the disasters visited upon them, often by each other? More intriguingly, which I'll be asking students to consider, is this latter version of folk actually punk?
Hello,

Or rap/early hip-hop?
That too. (I said punk because the class has had to deal with that, but we don't get to hip hop till later.) I'm equal parts annoyed and intrigued by the book. I'm annoyed because Marcus futzes about with loopy hyperbole and the like, but there's still enough meat to chew on that makes it worthwhile considering. It's, like, 75-25, but the 25 is fascinating enough.
"I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey-strong bowels were girded with strength, like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung." - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft

Dr. Medulla
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Re: Deep Bob Dylan Theory 2012

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The discussion tonight, uh, did not go great. Grand and significant points—rather, the whole point of my assigning the book—went over heads. Crickets chirped, tumbleweed blew by, vultures circled overhead. :(
"I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey-strong bowels were girded with strength, like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung." - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft

Flex
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Re: Deep Bob Dylan Theory 2012

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This has been posted for a few weeks, but here's a decently lengthy interview Bob did in advance of his new record: http://bobdylan.com/news/qa-with-bill-flanagan/

The new record is great. The best of his American Songbook albums to date. He's totally captured the inflections and intonations of the classic crooners, and his four piece band rules the material.
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a bowl of soup
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a rolling hoop
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a ton of lead
Wiggle - you can raise the dead

Pex Lives!

Inder
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Re: Deep Bob Dylan Theory 2012

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Flex wrote:
09 Apr 2017, 12:50am
This has been posted for a few weeks, but here's a decently lengthy interview Bob did in advance of his new record: http://bobdylan.com/news/qa-with-bill-flanagan/

The new record is great. The best of his American Songbook albums to date. He's totally captured the inflections and intonations of the classic crooners, and his four piece band rules the material.
For The New Basement Tapes, T Bone Burnett put together a group with Elvis Costello, Rhiannon Giddens, Jim James, Marcus Mumford and Taylor Goldsmith, to finish songs based on old lyrics of yours. Did you hear any of those songs and say, “I don’t remember writing that?”

Did you say Taylor Swift?

Taylor Goldsmith.

Yeah, OK. No, I don’t remember writing any of those songs.

Flex
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Re: Deep Bob Dylan Theory 2012

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Yeah, I (actual) LOL'd when I read that.
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a bowl of soup
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a rolling hoop
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a ton of lead
Wiggle - you can raise the dead

Pex Lives!

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Re: Deep Bob Dylan Theory 2012

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Shit, I forgot about Dylan. He can't even sing.
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Flex
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Re: Deep Bob Dylan Theory 2012

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I missed this when it was published last year, but very excited about the prospect that the next bootleg series installment will cover Dylan's Gospel years: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/ ... es-w444677
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a bowl of soup
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a rolling hoop
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a ton of lead
Wiggle - you can raise the dead

Pex Lives!

Dr. Medulla
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Re: Deep Bob Dylan Theory 2012

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Just learned that Prefab Sprout's "Mysterious," a fine song off a typically fine album, is about Dylan.
"I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey-strong bowels were girded with strength, like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung." - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft

Dr. Medulla
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Re: Deep Bob Dylan Theory 2012

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This could be quite promising.
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A double and linked biography of two of the greatest songwriters, Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie; a history of labor relations and socialism and big business greed in the U.S in the 20th-century; a murder mystery solved—GROWN-UP ANGER, years in the making, is a tour de force of storytelling and reimagined American history.

The book starts with a 13-year-old Daniel Wolff first listening to Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone, so beginning a life-long obsession with the sneering anger of our greatest songwriter. Eventually, Wolff would hear an early Dylan song called Song to Woody, a piece dedicated to Dylan’s hero Woody Guthrie. Feeling closer to finding the fuel behind Dylan’s honest anger, Wolff followed the trail further, sifting through Guthrie’s records until he found a song called 1913 Massacre. That song-the tune for which Dylan used in Song to Woody--tells the story of a union Christmas party that took place during a strike in Calumet, Michigan, in 1913. The party ended in disaster-someone yelled Fire! and in the stampede that followed, seventy-two people, mostly children, were trampled and smothered to death. The lies about what happened started almost immediately.

By following the trail from Bob Dylan to Woody Guthrie to the unsolved murder of seventy-two people 100 years ago, Wolff discovers the history of an unforgiving anger that has been passed down over decades. In Guthrie’s parents’ generation, the nation had been newly industrialized. There had been an epic battle over the country’s direction: bosses versus workers, big business versus the labor movement. Industry won, and, as Guthrie saw it, proceeded to cover up all evidence of the struggle. The 1913 tragedy in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula was just one example of a larger, lost history, and the truth of what really happened there was buried.

Until now. In Grown-Up Anger, Daniel Wolff unveils what happened in Calumet, and in this literary high-wire act, pulls the strings of the seemingly unrelated strands—socialism, Guthrie, Dylan, Calumet—until, breathtakingly, at the end he lets them all fall into place to tell a new history of twentieth-century America. These interconnected mysteries come together to chronicle the effects changing labor relations had on industrial America, and the way two musicians have used their resulting anger to try and expose injustice.
"I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey-strong bowels were girded with strength, like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung." - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft

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