Post by Mike Scott RohanPost by C.Z.I would reply but have already covered most of what I would say in my later post of the same day. However, just to add, the expansion of subject matter beyond the limited range of prior popular songs which dealt only with infatuation and loss, into a whole new range of subjects, was more than merely influential -- it was a sea change. And the music that went with it was almost equally powerful .
As I have rather compromised eyesight at the moment (although much recovered, with thanks to wellwishers) for a moment I read that as "sex change".
Even apart from that, though, I must admit I'm slightly baffled by Dylan's importance in some people's lives. Which isn't a criticism, or any form of cultural snobbery; in his era I was listening to and playing folk, British and American, including associated artists, notably Joan Baez, and I still enjoy them. Dylan has always seemed rather manufactured by comparison. OK, matter of taste, and no doubt I'm missing something. But the original post compared Dylan to Wagner, and that I feel goes beyond any personal preference or assessment. In the 1960s elderly music critics were comparing Paul McCartney to Schubert, and I can't wear that either. The gulf in breadth and depth of creation seems self-evidently immense. Schubert's symphonies? Wagner's music-dramas? Against a relatively limited range of songs in a fairly restricted style, whether acoustic or electric? It doesn't make sense to me -- and doesn't have to, really. Time has better judgement than I do. But I do register disagreement, though amicable.
Cheers,
Mike
"Even apart from that, though, I must admit I'm slightly baffled by Dylan's importance in some people's lives. Which isn't a criticism, or any form of cultural snobbery; in his era I was listening to and playing folk, British and American, including associated artists, notably Joan Baez, and I still enjoy them. Dylan has always seemed rather manufactured by comparison. OK, matter of taste, and no doubt I'm missing something..."
Very possibly. Without intending anything pejorative, and trying to be amicable also, I bring up a classical fan I sparred with years ago on an online music forum, who loved Handel and thought Bach was exactly the kind of fussy pedagogue and second-rate composer he was mostly considered to be in the mid-18th century. Nothing would move his opinion a whit. Unlike yourself, he would never have admitted he was quite possibly missing something.
Whether Dylan is in Wagner's league is a question I leave to others and perhaps a poorly chosen subject for comparison. I do think along with many others that he is a major creative artist who virtually single-handedly founded a school. And 500 songs, many inspired, many blues, many ballads, many rock, many in other styles, is not to my ears exactly a limited range.