The Last Temptation of Dylan- Watching the new documentary.

slate ^ | Posted Friday, Sept. 23, 2005 | David Yaffe

[Kay Syrah]

Steyn the whippersnapper on Dylan

[battlegearboat]

LOL!

[nuconvert]

"We'll take it gratefully, of course."

David Yaffe certainly doesn't sound grateful

[nuconvert]

pong

[Clemenza]

As opposed to the fine compositions written by such "artists" as Toby Keith or the countless lame-o Christian bands that I occassionally see while channel surfing on Sunday Mornings?

[q_an_a]

using your logic, because I don't know President Bush or members of baseball and football teams that lead prayers in the clubhouse, I can't know a person of faith. You have a strange way of reaching conclusions.

[WorkingClassFilth]

Did I say this?

[WorkingClassFilth]

You have a stranger way of ascertaining faith if you take a person's claim - or more correctly - if you take their publicist's claim.

You speak strangely, friend. Are you of the body?

[rhombus]

Nobody but aging boomers will recall this man in the not too distant future.

Too bad if true but I rather doubt it. In fact, I've met many a 20-something who listen to Dylan.

Here's a little advice for the Cindy Sheehans out there who wrap themselves in protest and can't understand why their sons and daughters re-enlisted to fight the war on terror:

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'

If you think Dylan is just about the 60's, you might want to listen harder.

[WorkingClassFilth]

Like, wow! You mean he's saying that kids rebel? Far out, man. I guess he really was a prophet.

The more times change, the more they remain the same.

[siunevada]

Except when they die - then everybody is usually found to have been gay.

LOL!

They were always "openly gay". Everyone who was anyone knew that. It's only the hoi polloi that was fooled.

[Skooz]

Pete Townsend once called Dylan "the fulcrum of modern music." Some of the finese albums ever recorded are his. Even his latest, "Love and Theft," is a freaking masterpiece and among his best.

Just because someone was born in the 1940s does not mean they will be forever forgotten soon after their demise.

[norwaypinesavage]

I am a contemporary of Dylan. I grew up near his hometown. I lived a block up, on 5th street, while he wrote "Positively Fourth Street". I loved music; I bought all of the Beatles albums. Yet, as for as I'm concerned, Dylan was an irrelevant whiner. And, BTW, he sounded terrible. To call his noise 'music' is really a stretch, in my opinion.

[ozdragon]

He might better be described as a born again Jew. Subsequent to his flertation with Christianity he spent two years with the Lubavitch Rabbi in Brooklyn and Israel.
I don't know what he considers himself today.

[Churchjack]

I used to enjoy songwriting myself. Keith Richards talked about the experience of creation in similar terms, comparing himself to an antenna just picking up the signals that were out there floating around.

I'm an X-cusper myself. Didn't get into Bob Dylan until my thirties (right after my Steve Earle phase--bet that curls hair on this forum! LOL). I don't even pretend to "get" his strange and absurdist works, but he has also written love songs and simpler, plainspoken songs that are unbelievably tender and beautiful.

Finally saw him in concert this year, and was blown plum away by his band and their arrangements. Fantastic. I'd go again.

I'm sure the Slate lib is disappointed about the documentary being Dylan-managed, but, I didn't expect any less. Dylan's a capitalist, not a hippie poster-boy.

[Skooz]

Actually, many Christian bands are far from "lame-o." Some are quite excellent and innovative with superlative musicianship.

[Northern Alliance]

the "Blood on the Tracks" alblum was his best.

I couldn't rate one as best - they are all so different. The first was my favorite, though. I remember listening to it over and over and over (stoned on grass of course) for hours on end the first day a friend brought it over. I just could not grasp that anyone could paint pictures with words like that; capture feelings and emotions like that. So stark, yet so rich and beautiful.

Tambourine Man is the most impressive, remarkable and memorable poetry that I have ever heard. That's just my personal feeling and opinion of course. I'm not saying it is the greatest ever written.

Oh, Joan Baez should be compared to Karen Carpenter or someone like that - not a poet like Dylan. Did she even write anything?

[WorkingClassFilth]

I remember feeling gay as a child. Then, when being gay became being gay, I fought against gay impulses and never mentioned that I occasionally felt gay. Even today, with a family, I still feel gay every once in while. Finally, through a lifetime of inner struggle, I now know for a fact that what I feel when gay is not what gay people feel.

What we really need is fewer "poets" and a better dictionary.

[50sDad]

Dylan spent three highly unprofitable years flogging Christian music to his old-line fans who found it interesting but didn't invest much in the albumns. For what it is worth, have you ever given three years of income to the church?

[50sDad]

All hail Landru!