My thoughts on Dylan & "Murder Most Foul"

(594 words)

So here’s my gut reaction to “Murder Most Foul,” Bob Dylan’s divisive new 17-minute song primarily about the Kennedy assassination.

• It’s like listening to four mediocre Bob Dylan songs strung together.

• Might as well call it “Pee Break Most Foul” because if he ever plays this live, every concert goer will at the first notes head straight to their designated restroom.

• The idea of riffing over an era with evocative phrasing has already been done and done better by Billy Joel with “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” only Billy scattered his observations over four impactful decades — and he only needed 4 minutes, 51 seconds to get it done! Even better, albeit more narrowly focused, is Don McLean’s “American Pie.”

Of course in 30 years, I might disavow this judgment, and declare the song utter genius, an essential stitch in the American fabric.

It is my contention that everyone who becomes a Dylan devotee starts out by mocking him. That’s how it started with me.

In fact, for me to begin appreciating Bob Dylan he had to cease being Bob Dylan and become some one else entirely.

He became Lucky Wilbury.

Yes, it wasn’t until I heard him with the Traveling Wilburys that a light went off. He didn’t take himself as seriously as every one else did.

And if you’re today having a bad day (welcome to the club!), realize that once upon a time Jeff Lynne, George Harrison, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty and Bob Dylan were sitting around and one of them said, “I have an idea. Maybe we should start a band.”

And they all agreed!

Petty said: “The whole experience was some of the best days of my life, really, and I think it probably was for us all ... The thing I guess would be hardest for people to understand is what good friends we were. It really had very little to do with combining a bunch of famous people. It was a bunch of friends that just happened to be really good at making music.”

Okay, enough sunshine. Back to disparaging “Murder Most Foul.”

Some of the rhyming is just lazy, and the song contains what to me is the single worth lyric he’s ever composed. Maybe worst in history.

Wolfman, Oh, Wolfman, Oh Wolfman Howl!

Rub-a-Dub-Dub

It’s Murder Most Foul!

This is not satire. It’s not a put on. This is factual.

This from the man who on “Thunder on the Mountain” managed to convincingly rhyme “Sons of Bitches” with “orphanages.” So I expect more from him.

I know many people disdain the idea of a 16:57 song (everyone feels obliged to round it up).

Not me. Some of my favorite Dylan masterpieces (“Desolation Row,” “Highlands,” “Brownsville Girl”) exceed 10 minutes.

This one just feels bloated. At least it’s a welcome reprieve from covering old Frank Sinatra tunes, a trend I’ve facetiously said was a factor in Petty’s accidental overdose.

So I don’t like “Murder Most Foul.”

But who knows?

Give me another two decades and I might change my mind and hail it as genius, just like I did with its composer.

Interested in spending roughly the equivalent time on three Dylan songs I contend are bound to break down the walls that separate mockery from appreciation?

Check out “When the Night Comes Falling from the Sky,” “Working Man’s Blues #2,” and “Where Are You Tonight?”

The songs are evidence of a transcendent artist who can be exasperating, tender, charming, infuriating and with every release volcanically compelling.

Just like a woman?

No.

Just like Bob Dylan.

Related …

My favorite Bob Dylan story

Bob Dylan’s the reason I’ll never remarry

Bob Dylan, multiple marrieds and me

Happy Birthday to Bob Dylan (& this blog)

Sound fathering at 22 mph

Dylan does Sinatra & why I'll never remarry

It was probably about 15 years ago when my wife asked the question every wife with access to Lifetime network movies eventually gets around to asking her husband:

If I die, will you remarry?

Her question prompted one of my own: how much would my answer factor into her eagerness to haunt me in her afterlife?

She said not at all. And I believe her because I’m pretty sure even basic cable in heaven includes Lifetime so she and other spousal begrudged wives will be content for eternity.

I told her I doubted it. I told her securing a future she’d want for our daughters would be my priority. And bringing the kind of woman I’d want for my second wife — a real hard-drinking floozy — would be disruptive to that primary goal.

“Besides,” I said, “I wouldn’t want to have to explain Bob Dylan all over again to another woman.”

That’s the main reason I’d never remarry.

It probably took a good 15 years to get my wife to appreciate Bob Dylan, and by “appreciate” I mean to not reflexively dry heave when some of his music comes on.

I tell everyone they don’t have to like Bob Dylan, but they do have to appreciate why so many of us think he’s wonderful.

That task, I believe, will become almost insurmountably more difficult in the next week when Dylan releases an interpretive album of old Frank Sinatra songs. Having to describe anything involving pop culture with the word “interpretive” means your work’s cut out for you.

I get it, too. I used to be on the other side of the bright Dylan divide. But, finally, some good friends whose tastes I trusted introduced me to his genius.

Their names were Nelson, Otis, Lefty and Charlie T. Wilbury.

Yes, The Traveling Wilburys. Dylan’s contributions to those indelibly fun records opened my ears. He had a fun, playful side I’d never detected, one that to me was most fully expressed in his delightful “Theme Time Radio” show that ran on Sirius XM Radio from 2006-2009.

I think he’s easier to appreciate if you think he doesn’t take himself as seriously as the rest of us do.

Then in 1997, he released the critically acclaimed “Time Out of Mind.” It’s fantastic. And still relevant.

Just ask my 14-year-old. Her very favorite song of the moment’s on there.

Now, I’ve written many times about my eagerness to brainwash my daughters on the kind of rock I think is important. But Dylan’s too high a hurdle. The ears of any child that’s been raised on Radio Disney are just too resistant to grit, even great grit.

But I never fail to point out his monumental impact. It’s to American music what the Constitution is to our laws, a guiding charter.

So when she came waltzing into the living room singing, “I know you haven’t made your mind up yet . . .” I immediately followed up with, “but I could never do you wrong!”

It’s “Make You Feel My Love,” from “Time Out of Mind.”

She couldn’t believe I knew the words to her favorite chart topper by Adele.

“That’s Bob Dylan,” I said, and played her the original. She’s beginning to understand. Her curiosity is piqued.

Now, with any other artist, the next step would be to take her to see him live.

Not Dylan, 73. Never. He remains one of those rare artists whose shows are so erratic they can alienate even devout fans.

Just ask Ringo Starr.

I heard comedian Norm McDonald tell a great story about how bizarre Dylan can be live, something I’ve witnessed about a dozen times.

MacDonald said Dylan was about six songs into his set, marked by unintelligible mumbling, when he noticed the Beatle in the front row.

He said hello.

Sort of.

McDonald said Dylan just started saying, “Ringo! Ringo! Ringo! Ringo! Ringo!” And he kept saying “Ringo!” for about a full minute. MacDondald, by the way, said it was the first word Dylan spoke he’d understood the whole show.

When he was done he said something I’ve never heard Dylan doing before or since: He took a request. He asked Ringo what song he wanted to hear.

Ringo, pleased, said, “How about ‘Tangled up in Blue?’”

The title caused Dylan to glare. He then spoke with what MacDonald said was absolute clarity.

“We already played that one.”

Will I get Dylan’s new “Shadows in the Night” album?

Certainly.

But I’m going to make sure my first few listens are in broad daylight.

Something about the idea of Dylan doing Sinatra makes me think it would be even stranger in the night.

Related . . .

Bob Dylan, multiple marrieds and me

Happy Birthday, Jeff Lynne! The essential Wilbury

Happy Birthday to Bob Dylan (& my blog)!

Listening to classic rock with my senile Mom

Sound fathering at 22 mph

Life altering music for the needy & stupid

I can't even pretend to like rap

(745 words)

Val and I were thrilled to accept a special invitation to appear at the grand opening to Four Seasons Brewing Company, Latrobe’s exciting new craft brewery.

Any of the nearly 500 people who were there will recognize some obvious exaggerations in that first sentence, all of them designed to make me appear more cool than I am.

See, it was open to the public. Any strolling vagrant would have been welcomed in for some sips of free beer. Val read about it in the local paper and said, hey, this sounds fun. Let’s go.

And it was very cool and I’m glad we went.

The beers were great, the people friendly, and I imagine the owners must be thrilled to have such evident community support that looks like it’ll ensure they’re in for a good long run. I told all my Pond buddies we have to go back some afternoon for as long as it takes someone to decide our friendly neighborhood samplings have turned into cheap drunken freeloading.

But this isn’t about a great new brewery in the ancestral home of now-disgraced Rolling Rock beer.

This is about my efforts to remain cool in a world that seems determined to slap the cool right out of me. Appearing cool is for me a spiritual imperative.

Why else do you think I’ve never once introduced myself by saying, “Hi! My name’s Chris and I’m a blogger!”

So the lesson I learned Saturday is if I want to appear cool I need to grow a great, big bushy beard and learn to at least pretend I enjoy rap music.

Beards are becoming so popular I predict soon we’ll start to see enterprising single women massaging Rogaine into their chins.

The beard I can do.

Like clockwork, I grow a real scraggler once every four years when it’s time to renew my driver’s license. It is my custom to make my picture as repulsive as possible so any arresting police officer might see the clean-shaven difference between my photo and myself and think, “Hey, this guy might be driving recklessly, but clearly he’s turned his life around since this awful picture was taken. I’m gonna give the dude a break.”

Enjoying rap, however, is something that will be difficult for me to even fake.

And rap was all the DJ at the brew company played.

Seeing so many bearded white men in flannel shirts appearing to enjoy rap music struck me as being incongruous, meaning it defied reason -- not to be confused with being in congress, which means defying the will of the American people who wish they’d stop all their silly posturing.

The samples were too small to get me inebriated enough to storm the DJ table, seize the mic and shout, “What’s wrong with you people? This isn’t cool!”

Then I’d have played Ray Wylie Hubbard’s “Mother Blues.”

I think I’m doing a good job as a parent because my daughter’s probably the only 7th grader in western Pennsylvania who can name all five Traveling Wilbury’s -- and most of them by their Wilbury names (Nelson, Otis, Lefty, Charlie T. and Lucky).

I’d be a wealthy individual if I devoted as much time trying to earn money as I do ensuring my daughters grow up with an appreciation of great music.

But the music thing is way easier, more fun and I can do it just as effectively either drunk or sober so that’s a no-brainer.

So Josie and I have enjoyed many drives or spare time listening to lots of Beatles, Stones, Springsteen, Mark Knopfler, Tom Petty, Billy Joel and other enduring artists -- even Elvis.

That’s a strong base. Even better is she doesn’t get impatient when I play her some Steve Earle, Joe Ely, Todd Snider, Delbert McClinton and Texas artists who are making such compelling music, Hubbard especially.

I hope one day she’ll hear some of those songs and think of me the way I think of my own father when I hear some Frank Sinatra. It’s a warm nostalgia for a joyful old man I remember more and more fondly with each passing day. 

I just don’t ever seeing that happening with rap.

It’s a message I hope to impart next time me and Val or my buddies head over to Four Seasons for some fine craft beers.

In short, if you’re going to look like ZZ Top, you ought to at least listen to someone like ZZ Top.

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