The Titans, Part 1: Dylan

15. Bob Dylan - Blowin' In The Wind (1963)
(File under: Hope I Buy Before I Get Sold: Baby Boomer Bullshit & (The Myth Of) The '60s)

All right, let's get this out of the way: I don't hate Bob Dylan. I'd even go so far as to say he's got, in his catalogue, at least a CD's worth of really good-to-great songs, which is more than can be said of 95% of recording artists. But he's not somebody I'd ever want to have a conversation with. And it annoys me to no end to hear the "genius" label applied to him, when, near as I can reckon, he never did anything remotely groundbreaking his entire career, unless you consider lazy vocalizing in a tuneless nasal whine and never bothering to play your instrument(s) above a rudimentary level revolutionary. I sure as hell don't. But, remember, I don't hate Bob Dylan. He can't help the fact that so many people projected so much onto him that wasn't always there. Though he should be held accountable for coasting on his rep for damn near 4 decades now. Not that he will be, with the stranglehold the Love Generation has on the perception of what signifies as cultural currency in the popular imagination. Sure, every new "youth" trend in music has its criminally overrated contingent. But how many critical exegeses have been written about Nick Cave's lyrics? I trust you see my point.

Anyway, early Dylan, to me, is the worst (except for post-60s Dylan, of course - I'm dealing mainly with the legend here, not the "survivor"). In my opinion, he did his most valuable work when he went electric - I'm talking the '65-'66 stuff (and, no matter what Dylanologists will have to believe, he got more from the Beatles [if not necessarily the Byrds] than they got from him). On his first albums, he wanted to be Woody Guthrie more than even Woody Guthrie wanted to, and he succeeded somewhat - albeit minus the humor and big heart. And I think that's what grates on me more than the voice (yeah, I've read plenty of critics yammer on about how he was a "real" slash "honest" singer, untrained [code for "can't sing worth a fuck"], blah blah blah, but there have been hundreds of better "honest" singers, from Lou Reed to Brian Eno to Joey Ramone to Paul Westerberg to Peter Garrett of Midnight Oil - who, by the by, was a much more dynamic stage presence, as well as a much more dynamic protest-song writer) or the crap lyrics (which I'll get to in a moment, but special dumb-shit award has to go to "Masters Of War", which is almost entirely stupid, but deserves special mention for the line "You that turn and run farther when the fast bullets fly" - yep, no point in anybody running from slow bullets, I guess, is there, Bob?) or the musical ineptitude, which are all qualities I'm happy to overlook in others: the guy has no sense of joy. He comes off as hopelessly bitter - ever notice how he seems to save all his passion for putting people down? - and also, like most joyless beings, smug: what really translates in these songs (and in his voice) is not his concern for humanity and its pain, but his conviction that he is absolutely right about everything, and hence smarter than us fools in the audience (never mind that we're there to listen to him in the first place) and, especially, those fools not in the audience. It's the perfect psychological recipe for a born-again Christian (which he later became) or any other type of zealot, and it also goes a way toward explaining his unwillingness to put much effort into his singing or playing, and also his aforementioned coasting on his reputation for so long. Of course, he was smart enough that he managed to overcome these limitations on many occasions anyway. This is not an example of one of those occasions, however.

This is basic old-timey protest folk of no discernible consequence, the title being the answer to a string of mostly naive and/or idiotic rhetorical questions (some of which aren't as rhetorical as he thinks - it's just that their answers don't fit into his worldview, and therefore can't exist). It's supposed to be deep, I assume, but the depth it aspires to is undercut by the lyric's utter obviousness. At least he left the jokers and queens and thieves out of this one (maybe he was so popular because nerds didn't have heavy metal at the time to help them indulge in their medieval fantasies), but he did include another Lenny Kravitz-level bonehead line: "How many times must the cannonballs fly before they are forever banned?". Hey, I didn't know there were still any cannonballs flying in '63, Bob! Why will critics put up with this guy's anachronisms while dismissing Iron Maiden et al. for doing something similar? Oh, oh, and there's also "How many times must a man look up before he can see the sky?". I'm gonna go with one, Bob. A man has to look up one time to see the sky. That is my final answer. Oh, wait - unless he's indoors. Then he'll have to look out the window. You have to get up a lot earlier than that to put one over on me, Zimmy.



In any case, if you want some good old-time folk music, stick with Woody Guthrie. Or Pete Seeger. Or the Anthology of American Folk Music box set. If you want some good electric folk music, however - well, still search out something else before digging into his work. The first Clash album, perhaps. Or Entertainment! by Gang Of Four. Really, there's way more vital stuff in the genre out there than this guy's records, and you've probably heard the best of Dylan's songs a billion times by now anyway. And if, like me, you didn't get the big deal, maybe that's because it wasn't really there to be gotten in the first place.

Still, I don't hate Bob Dylan.