[Andrew Mandelbaum]

I like is stuff with the Red Road ensemble.
Here are a couple live links.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkVW...adio =1&t=211

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0ZJopZMQc4

[Tim McGrath]

One of my favorite lyrics from "The Basement Tapes"

Say hello to Valerie,
Say hello to Vivian,
Send her all my salary
From the waters of oblivion

[James Brancheau]

So we're back to discussing instagram poetry.

Terrible, but I never realized that my favorite Dylan was backed up by The Band. I blame video games. But that doesn't seem right to me. They were booing because Dylan went electric, right?

[Mark McDonnell]

Angry Dylan fans after a gig. Sheffield 1966

https://youtu.be/bkrauH07MjM

[Jim Moonan]

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That’s such cool footage, Mark. Folkies felt they had lost their lyrical, musical Messiah (shouts of “Judas”)

Me and my (stoned, trippy, hippy) friends turned on to Dylan only after he erupted into the artist that produced “Blonde On Blonde” and beyond (though in hindsight you could see it coming with “Another Side” and “Highway 61”). To this day, when I hear the opening notes of “Like A Rolling Stone”' something deep stirs inside me. (And “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” also blew me away.)

He has "erupted" into new artistic personas a number of times since then. My favorite is "Blood On The Tracks" though don't hold me to it : )

James, there has always been some controversy about the reasons behind the angry crowds of 1965-67, beginning with the Newport Jazz Festival. Some believe it had less to do with the changeover from acoustic to electric (folk to rock) and more to do with the inept tech that produced poor live performance sound from the stage. It was at times virtually unlistenable due to the bad sound-mixing, etc. Large chunks of followers never seemed to be able to accept a band playing with him. (The Hawks, Paul Butterfield, The Band, etc.) He was an individual entity that was whole and any additions were seen as subtractions.

But what I found so interesting in Robertson’s account of that stormy period when live performances by Dylan backed by The Hawks produced such visceral anger was the epiphanic event he describes when he, after trying to figure out what they were doing wrong to provoke such outrage, suddenly realized that “They were wrong. The world was wrong.” —Such arrogance!
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[Max Goodman]

Originally Posted by Jim Moonan

He articulates how critical it is for the artist to overcome the outside interference that doesn’t help and will likely stifle creative expression. Public opinion often gets in the way of artistic expression.

...

[i]“...And I said to the other guys in the Hawks, and I said to Bob, ‘They’re [the audience] wrong. The world is wrong. This [the music they were making] is really good’

I'm less impressed with RR's story. (I like his music.) If the story's strength is how RR depicts the relationship between writer (or performer) and audience, I don't find the story illuminating. And, as almost always happens in criticism of pop music, RR makes no effort to explain what he means by "good." What good is pop music if it doesn't please an audience?

(We could ask the same question about any popular form, including light verse. Any form whose primary purpose is other than to seriously explore topics of serious concern. Any argument that Dylan is a poet--as I know many consider him--won't, I'm pretty sure, include any of the stuff RR is talking about--as nearly as we can figure out what that even is.)

[Mark McDonnell]

Any argument that Dylan is a poet--as I know many consider him--won't, I'm pretty sure, include any of the stuff RR is talking about--as nearly as we can figure out what that even is.

I don't quite agree with this, Max. The change in Dylan as a performer from 63/4 to 65/6 wasn't just about him using a rock band. His songwriting style changed massively too. The early fans of his protest songs liked his clear messages of social justice and civil rights, saw him as this voice of righteousness. By 66 his lyrics had become much more chaotic, symbolic, insular and strange, as had his stage presence. And the lyrics were arguably more purely poetic, if one of the definitions of poetry is finding out what you want to say in the act of creation, rather than having a definite 'point' to make from the outset. The messages didn't seem so clear any more. The loud and chaotic sound The Band made behind him suited these songs. It was the combination of the two. But when some of his early folk music fans, often serious, idealistic young people involved in left wing politics, heard electric guitar, keyboards and drums all it signified to them was 'commercialism' and 'sellout'. These clips from 64 and 66 illustrate the change nicely.

https://youtu.be/IHfo7oyDxVc

https://youtu.be/bsLkfrgJ2QM

Or listen to the Times They Are a-Changin' album then Highway 61 Revisited which are only 18 months apart but seem worlds apart in style.

[Max Goodman]

Thanks, Mark. You make the case for those songs a lot more strongly than RR's story does.

[Tim McGrath]

The switch from acoustic to electric was a natural progression that seemed inevitable to me. What I couldn't and can't abide is what he did, in white face, on the Never-Ending Tour, turning his classic songs inside out. He changed their tempos, lyrics, and arrangements, making songs I knew by heart all but unrecognizable. Dylan has always been an "imp of the perverse," but this time, I think, he went too far and fell into perversion.

[Mark McDonnell]

The 'white face' thing was in the mid-seventies during the Rolling Thunder tour and those performances were great.

https://youtu.be/ujgqOgMIwfA

The so-called 'Never Ending Tour' started in the late 80s.

Sorry. I know too much about this stuff.