The Friday Canon: LITTLE BOBBY DYLAN

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Little Bobbert has had a massive old career but only fifteen UK top 40 hits! You get to pick your top FIVE and argue about the ones that didn't make it in the comments. I'm off to put things in boxes, Depeche Mode canon results to come next week.

[Poll #987060]

Comments

What I didn't tick

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Never heard "Baby Stop Crying" or "Dignity". "Knockin On Heavens Door" is pretty bad, though not as bad as "Rainy Day Women" - both ruined for me by my schoolfellows. I got into Dylan the summer I left school - huge mental block removed and I spent about a month listening to nothing Greatest Hits Vol.2. So I have a fondness for "Watching The River Flow" but not enough to tick it - I like the kick-back on the porch 'vibe' though. "Times They Are A Changing" is too folk, "I Want You" is too pop.

Then it gets hard. "Lay Lady Lay" is less intense than "I Threw It All Away" but it's happier and I'm in a happy mood. Goodbye "Threw". Getting rid of "Maggie's Farm" agonising but I like the other rollicking stuff here more. "4th Street" is only as cruel as "Window" but ultimately less funny. And that leaves five.

Re: What I didn't tick

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Knockin On Heaven's Door is great! (altho' I hate the Guns N Roses cover)

I love that in Pat Garrett... ("Director's cut" version at least) they have the music to the song when Slim Pickens is bleeding to death by the river with 'Mama' looking on helplessly, but no vocal - so the point isn't laboured. You're left to join the dots yourself.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Obviously a Dylan cover versions canon is needed too (specially as I guess a lot of Poptimists are put off by his voice, not me though, nobody in the whole of pop phrases as well as Bob on form).

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

YES, OK, i only ticked "i want you" because it sounds like thestatethatiamin, WOT OV IT?

SHB is the best though, eh?

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

It's the Poptimist highpoint surely (in the absence of Highway 61 Revisited anyway)

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Hang on is this the same 'Highway 61 Revisited' on PJ Harvey's Rid Of Me??

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yes though ISTR that version is shit.

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

you recall wrong.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

It's never been one of my favourites on ROM but I don't hate it - I didn't know it was a cover at all let alone a Dylan one.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I like hardly any of ROM though - the lead single from it was OK.

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

it was one of those "leave it in the CD player for months and play nothing else" for me.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

It's probably my least-listened-to PJ album (didn't get it at the time - my introduction to PJ was To Bring You My Love) - whenever I'm in the mood for what ROM does well I tend to go for 4-Track Demos instead. I do think it's brilliant though.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

He's the meanest artist I love.

He might be the meanest artist full stop.

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

What flavour of mean do you mean, Tom?

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

"Positively 4th Street", "Could You Please Crawl Out Your Window", "Just Like A Woman", "She's Your Lover Now", "Idiot Wind", "Ballad Of A Thin Man" ect ect. Sure sure he's usually mean to himself at the same time! But so many amazing songs which involve quite vicious cruelty.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

Idiot Wind is also really funny.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

His recent stuff hasn't been so mean though. Gloomy sometimes of course, or vaguely apocalyptic, but often with a rough kindness. (I've started linking him with Robert Crumb actually, maybe just cos they're both curmudgeondly old geezers who like old-timey music)

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I don't think Bob Dylan is into arses quite as much though.

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

Meanest Bob Dylan song - Don't think twice, it's alright. Sometimes he's very sweet, though.

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

Elvis Costello's put up a fair fight for the belt as well.

[bengraham.livejournal.com]

Judas!

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

Most of my (current) favouritest Dylan songs are not in the list. (Which is not hugely surprising.)

WRONG LJ COMMUNITY

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

;_;

"The New Dylan"

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Even as a Dylan fan there are few words liable to strike more fear.

TS: "The new Dylan" vs "The new Pistols" vs "The new Beatles" vs etc etc

Re: "The New Dylan"

[koganbot]

Now that I've decided that Ashlee is really the new Carole King (meet the new King, better than the old King), Eminem holds the thrown as the best of the new Dylans. And like Dylan after the motorcycle crash, Eminem may have taken himself out of his greatest greatness, though we can hardly know this yet.

Re: "The New Dylan"

[koganbot]

Holds the throne, perhaps? (Though Dylan was thrown from his motorcycle, I believe, and Eminem was thrown by fame. As was Dylan.)

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Gosh, I was surprised at how relatively few hits BD had had, and decided to look up my own favoured 60s canon artist, and omg Joni Mitchell has only ever had ONE Top 40 hit in her own right!

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

Positively Fourth Street needs a lot more ticks as it is the best of those songs my some margin. It certainly needs more than a bland old school protest song like The Times They Are A-Changing.

[umlauts.livejournal.com]

I ticked SHB and nothing else. I hate Dylan. I don't mind "Tangled Up In Blue" but that's not on the list. And a couple of his songs are compositionally good but....

The reason I hate Dylan is that back when I was a wee tyke, my dad would sometimes get drunk and be abusive to my mother, and the rest of the family. After the end of the arguments or whatever it was (sometimes it happened behind close doors) he'd go downstairs and play Dylan songs (esp. Rainy Day women) on our old record player at top volume. So I think i associate his voice with, um, well, the excesses of alcoholism and being hit with a belt for daring to answer back.

At any rate, it's not just his voice, I find some of his songs are hideous lyrically too - trite folsky rub.

See, I'm not just racist, I'm oldist!

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I HATE HIM AND I HATE IT WHEN PEOPLE TALK ABOUT HIM AND I REALLY REALLY HATE HIS "SINGING"

I have to agree with the Lex here. But never let it be said that your humble moderator allows personal opinion to bias her canon choices!

I ticked SHB because the dropping bits of paper on the floor thing was a good idea & made the rub INXS single good twenty-odd years later. I ticked LLL because there was a decent cover version of it a few years ago that I liked a lot (and was horrified upon hearing how grating the original was).
Actually the worst thing about him is the harmonica playing.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

Important can Dylan sing poll here (http://ninebelow.livejournal.com/272083.html).

there was a decent cover version of it a few years ago that I liked a lot

Yeah, by Monster Magnet and Gemma Hayes. It works really well with a female vocal.

Actually the worst thing about him is the harmonica playing.

This equals fact.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Mariah beats Dylan in the having-soul department by a VERY VERY VERY long way! (and obv in the technical-skillz department by a VERY VERY VERY long way x a billion.)

[strange-powers.livejournal.com]

Oh you fools. While I concede that Dylan's high-faluting ideas are the roots of 'serious rock', for more than ten years he wrote catchy, melodic, weird, clever pop music. He gave the musical language to punk and indie, and while that might upset a few it means that I owe him my soul.

The personal experience of the likes of umlauts aside, I know why Dylan sounds horrible to neophytes, and it's this lack of immediacy that may ultimately be his undoing in the pop arena... Kind of like Akon, really. But for pure, cruel and adult pop songs I can't think of any better examples than Positively 4th Street and Like a Rolling Stone.

Dylan's best song

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

but first of all, let me just say he's not pop. just not, somehow. i remember buying blonde on blonde when i was a teen and thinking 'wtf' (and i'm not one of those people who can't stand his voice). eventually blood on the tracks brought me around.

except perhaps for 'mozambique' on desire, which is grebt.

Is Dylan the new Duff?

[koganbot]

I have never heard "Dignity." How does it stack up to Hilary's?

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

I feel like I should not hate Bob Dylan because I am a politics student (well, sort of, I'm actually International Relations which is a whole different kettle of fish in a lot of ways but still) and he is political innit. By the same argument, though, Hitler was quite political and there's nothing wrong with hating him.

I also feel I shouldn't hate him because the boyfriend is named after him. It's hard to say where the ethics stand on that one. That and my hate of him is strangely irrational and largely based on incredible feelings of rage whenever I hear his songs.

Nevertheless, I hate him and everything he's ever done. I sort of managed four ticks on the grounds of 'could I cope with listening to this in my dad's car?'