you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here

I remember a number of years ago having a conversation with a friend and both of us agreeing that if we never heard Bob Dylan again, it would be too soon.  It wasn't about feeling burned by so many lackluster records - though I'd like my money back for Knocked Out Loaded - so much as a rejection of, reaching the point of revulsion toward, any of his "classic" records.  I hate to admit it, but I've relented slightly in recent years, allowing three or four songs back into (light) rotation.  Still, I planned on ignoring WGBH's broadcast of Martin Scorsese's No Direction Home, until freakin' Denver put the beatdown on Kansas City in less than a quarter.  After that, I found my interest in the game dwindling and, with nothing much else apparently on offer, drifted on over to PBS to see a good chunk of the first installation.

It was not without its moments.  Hibbing, Minnesota looked not unlike a lot of older small towns, but the isolation of the place came through.  I'm not sure any other depiction of Dylan's life could bring home in quite such a rich and suggestive way both the scene of his beginnings and his feeling for entertainment traditions of a different America, even as he moved away and out of it.  Even better, the palpable enjoyment and pride that popped out of his usual reserve while  describing his return to Minneapolis after spending time in New York.  Before, he had been just another faceless guy on the scene; when he came back, after absorbing what was happening in Greenwich Village, he killed.  Dylan liked that, and it was hard not to share his pleasure, still alive more than four decades later.

But, oh, the music.  So much of it - so awful.  I'm not talking only about Bob, who often came across as the best of a bad bunch, but the folk music scene.  Horrible, horrible, horrible, to a point in which you wonder if that's not the point.  To be a bit fair, part of the problem stemmed from the need to rely on television performances for footage.  Given the governing conventions, these clips couldn't help but come across as stagey and false, whatever virtues the performers possessed.  But far too often, "stagey and false" described what the performers on view actually had to offer.  The hamming didn't help: in contemporary interview footage, Liam Clancy acting out the cliches of a poetic, or musical, or drunken Irishman, was an recurring irritant.   It can't surprise anyone, after viewing the show, that the folk scene grabbed hold of Dylan and his songs so quickly; however longwinded or tedious he ran, his stuff was tougher in spirit.  A movement in search of authenticity needed that.

And so at the end we see them all at Newport, warbling, with their absurd autoharps, rallying around their new star, singing his songs.  Most of which are too long and repetitive, but have a certain force nonetheless.  He'll move on, as we're reminded throughout by selected clips of fans irate over his electric performances, while they're consigned to the dustbin.  Or at least, to the fate of waiting a couple of years to figure it all  out and get with the times.  Most of the clips shown of the legendary UK tour with the Hawks disappoint; too many close-ups of Dylan's face.  Head held to the side, gazing upward, he looks stoned.  Or deeply bored.

Comments

[Jim]

Written with a snarl worthy of the great man himself!

"I'd like my money back for Knocked Out Loaded"

You and me both...

[JL]

Written with a snarl worthy of the great man himself!

I'm the new Dylan.

[Half Brother Clovis]

I got the impression that despite a sincere love of Woody Guthrie,
he probably despised the whole folk scene, if not at first then
pretty quickly. One might even suspect him of using them as as stepping
stone, since he couldn't have gotten a record deal as a pop musician
at that time, with such a terrible voice. They were quite right to turn on him. "Judas" might actually be a bit charitable, if needlessly anti-Semitic.

His cryptic lyrics are really tiresome. I don't expect or want everyone to
be like Jonathan Richman, but Dylan always acts like he's got something to hide - did he leave some dead hookers behind in Hibbing? That and the terrible voice. I think he was trying to sing like John Lennon during "Ballad of a Thin Man."

[JL]

That and the terrible voice.

I nearly linked to that in making the original post!

I'm sure you're absolutely right about how he felt regarding the folk scene. It's probably impossible to spend much time around Joan Baez without developing a certain level of contempt for it all, at the very least.

[mark]

How do you spell curmudgeon? did we watch the same program?

[Half Brother Clovis]

I don't like Martin Scorsese either.

[JL]

I don't like Martin Scorsese either.

Me neither. But then, I dislike movies as a rule.

[Half Brother Clovis]

Whatever you do, don't see Serenity, the new Joss Whedon movie, even if you get a free ticket like I did. I walked out, but not before I was totally traumatised. The theater was still full, so that's a few hundred people right there who have something seriously wrong with them.

[JL]

Whatever you do, don't see Serenity, the new Joss Whedon movie, even if you get a free ticket like I did.

Well, I wouldn't but: why are you getting free tickets to Serenity - you don't even have a blog! Also, I thought that the deal was that if they gave you a free ticket, they'd bought your opinion. You're going to ruin things for everyone.

So what was wrong with it? Aside from being a movie, and one by Joss Whedon, I mean.

[Half Brother Clovis]

It was just about the most nasty violent thing I've ever seen. And so noisy! Just pure hell, and intentionally so. Other than that, it still sucked. No redeeming qualities, you might say. And, well, I kept up my end of the bargain and started a blog last night for the purpose of trashing the movie and Mr. Whedon.