Saturday, April 13, 2019

Happy Birthday To You-For Bob Dylan-The Last Of The Classical Lyric Poets?- Bob Dylan’s 121st Dream-With Professor Richard Thomas’ “Why Bob Dylan Matters” In 2017 In Mind

Happy Birthday To You-

By Lester Lannon

I am devoted to a local folk station WUMB which is run out of the campus of U/Mass-Boston over near Boston Harbor. At one time this station was an independent one based in Cambridge but went under when their significant demographic base deserted or just passed on once the remnant of the folk minute really did sink below the horizon.

So much for radio folk history except to say that the DJs on many of the programs go out of their ways to commemorate or celebrate the birthdays of many folk, rock, blues and related genre artists. So many and so often that I have had a hard time keeping up with noting those occurrences in this space which after all is dedicated to such happening along the historical continuum.

To “solve” this problem I have decided to send birthday to that grouping of musicians on an arbitrary basis as I come across their names in other contents or as someone here has written about them and we have them in the archives. This may not be the best way to acknowledge them, but it does do so in a respectful manner.    


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The Last Of The Classical Lyric Poets?- Bob Dylan’s 121st Dream-With Professor Richard Thomas’ “Why Bob Dylan Matters” In 2017 In Mind    




[During the past several years, which has built up some extra stream the past couple of year, there has been a storm brewing among the writers who write for various departments in this space, for the American Left History blog (and the on-line Progressive American, American Film Gazette and American Folk Gazette websites with which we have fraternal relations including cross-publication of certain articles). Since a great deal of the storm has subsided after we have now reached agreement on some decisions about the road forward I feel it is appropriate as the about to retire administrator to let the reading public know what those decisions entail, what way we are heading. Over the past few years we have brought younger writers like Zack James, Bradley Fox, Jr., Alden Riley and the writer of the article below, Lance Lawrence, in to begin the transition away from writers, including myself, who were totally “washed clean” as one of the older writers Fritz Taylor is fond of saying by the turbulent 1960s, a watershed in American culture, politics and social arrangements.

While it has been entirely possible to read plenty of other material including older films, music and books over the years the strongest component, the subject that has held sway more often than not has been somehow involved with the growing up days in the 1950s and coming of age in the 1960s of the first wave of writers. That has tilted all have agreed, although I have dissented, vigorously dissented as to the degree and to the extent of my alleged role in the process,  the axis of the American Left History experience we are trying to educate people about and preserve too one-sidedly around experience from fifty or sixty years ago when we came of age as if nothing has happened since then beyond the long haul rearguard actions against the reactionary trends of the past forty or so years when we have taken it on the chin once the “60s” ebbed.         

Almost naturally the storm (what my old high school friend and low time associate here oldster Sam Lowell called a “tempest in a teapot” as he sided with the younger writers against the old guard, against my leadership casting the decisive vote against me) reflected the generational divide-the sensibilities of the old guard against the very different perspectives of the younger writers who were plainly way too young to have appreciated except second-hand all the tales and lies that we older folk have imposed on them. This whole dispute came to a head, although other similar disputes this year played a role, over the figure of Bob Dylan not what Lance will write about below but an earlier dispute over our tendency to have a music review on every one of the seemingly never-ending, seemingly never-ending to me as well, bootleg series volumes including Volume 12 which Zack had considered nothing but a commercial rip-off and composed of nothing but a million out takes and other crap and not worthy of giving review space here.

That dispute was the beginning of our awakening to the fact that not everything the man (our “the Man”) did was pure gold something which would have been blasphemy if one of older generation had uttered those words. The hard fact, as the younger writers were at pains to explain, younger writers who self-styled themselves as the “Young Turks,” Bob Dylan to the extent than any of them listened to him or saw him as anything but some old fogy who will probably die on the road doing his two hundred boring concerts a year, to draw anything from his music was something like our reaction to Frank Sinatra when we were young. Square, too square. That comment by I think Bradley Fox cut me especially to the quick.  In any case other writers can give their respective takes on what has gone on of late. Since I am headed for retirement which just this minute feels like some kind of exile that seems best rather than my going on and on in defense of various objectionable actions I have taken over the past few years. Soon to be retired administrator Peter Paul Markin]         

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By Writer Lance Lawrence 

I suppose if a man, if a man like Bob Dylan the subject of this short piece, has lived long enough, has been in the public eye, mostly in his case the public eye of a dwindling number of hard core folkie aficionados then somebody will write what he or she thinks is the definitive say on the subject. Especially some academic somebody like Harvard Professor Richard Thomas who has indeed written a treatise called “Why Bob Dylan Matters” where he regales the brethren, the devotees who will buy the book because they buy everything Dylan-etched including bogus Bootleg series volumes some of which are nothing but stuff better left on the cutting room floor. The good professor’s premise is that Mister Dylan is the second coming of Homer, Virgil, and Ovid, who knows maybe Cato and Cicero too in the “big tent” lyrical poet pantheon.     

Originally this piece was going to be written by I think Bart Webber, one of the older writers who would probably like a number of the older writers in this space, on this American Left History blog drool on and on in agreement with the good professor. (This is nothing personal against Bart which has pulled me out of more dead-ends on stories than I care to count but he unlike the more thoughtful Sam Lowell who was like a breath of fresh air in the dispute Markin mentioned above in that quasi-introduction was his most rabid supporter.) Would have make up a laudatory piece which according to my archival research on this site has had over four hundred Bob Dylan-related articles almost all of them “soft-ball puffs” like Dylan was the King of the world and not the nightshade of the old guard. Looking over the archives nobody except Leon Trotsky, who after all was a world historic revolutionary, led a real revolution, and was a key historic figure even if he seemed to have been snake-bitten in his struggle to keep the faith in the Bolshevik future when old “Uncle Joe” Stalin bared his fangs in public has more entries.

Markin, I might as well say it since we have all been given the go ahead to give our respective takes on the internal fight now that the smoke has apparently cleared, mercifully soon to be retired Markin, or is it “purged” like his buddy Trotsky, started the whole madness early in his regime on when he wrote a ton of his own stuff rather than just run the site and hand out assignments as he was supposed to do. He lashed together extensive 3000 word reviews of Dylan’s five or ten first albums and then went over the top when he decided several years ago to write a series entitled “Not Bob Dylan.” That series seemingly endless series about the ten million or so it seemed male folkies who had not been dubbed by Time magazine to be the “King” of the 1960s folk minute (and it was only a minute despite all the hoopla here making it seem like some world-historic event like Trotsky’s Russian Revolution which even I could see had some merit for that designation rather than a tepid passing fad) and who had gone on to something else or who still inhabit the nether-world of the backwaters folk venue world.

I swear Markin must have written up the employment bios, resumes, and fates of every guy who knew three chords and a Woody Guthrie song learned in seventh grade music appreciation class with the likes of Mister Larkin at my middle school who walked into a coffeehouse back then. Even guys I had never heard of in passing like Erick Saint Jean who was supposed to be big in Boston and New York and Manny Silver who was supposed to be the greatest lyric writer since Woody (and probably if Professor Thomas took a whack at it probably since Milton or somebody like that).  If I hear one more word about those guys, hell now that I think about it he also added insult to injury by doing a series on the ten million folkie women who were “Not Joan Baez” Dylan’s paramour and the queen of that 1960s folk minute (according to omnipotent Time).           

But enough of taking cracks at the folk aficionados wherever they are who saw Dylan as a god, a guy who wrote lyrics better than he could sing. Frankly the guy was a has-been by my time, a leader of the folk minute that had passed mercifully away. We used to laugh at the graying long-haired guys guitar in hand in the subway still singing covers of his songs while the trains roared by. Would drop a dollar in the guitar case if they DID NOT sing Blowin’ In The Wind or The Times Are A-Changin’ one more freaking time remembering Mr. Larkin that music teacher in seventh grade, another guy from the 1960s line-up, trying to get us to sing that crap since the words were so meaningful, so important to know and remember according to him.     

Finally since I am supposed to be an objective reporter of sorts, supposed to give all sides a short at reasoned opinion let me take Professor Thomas’ thesis at face value. Now my take on Homer is that he wrote pretty good stories made up of whole cloth no crime and created quite an oral tradition. Same with plenty of Greeks and Romans we read about in high school and college. They survived the cut, they represented some pretty high standards for the lyric form. Got quite workout by Miss Laverty my high school English teacher who was crazy for those guys and the way she read their words out loud you could see why they lasted. Literary comparisons aside about who was the king the lyrical poetic hill who except those guys like Markin and Sam Lowell, despite his honorable part in our internal fight, and who I do not believe know one song later than maybe 1972 which everybody will admit is a long time to be stuck on an old needle even listens to Dylan anymore except for old nostalgia trips.        


For those three people who may be interested in exploring Professor Thomas’s ideas, see what makes him tick, see why he seemingly a rational man is a Dylan aficionado who probably one of the two guys who bought that dastardly Volume 12 which started this “revolution” here is a link to an NPR On Point broadcast hosted by Tom Ashbrook where the good professor holds forth:

https://www.npr.org/2017/11/21/563736161/a-classics-professor-explains-why-bob-dylan-matters
  


[Although Professor Thomas’ thesis about Dylan’s place in the pantheon was not central to the recent disputes among the coterie of writers who ply their trade here Dylan did figure in the mix when all hell broke loose the day Zack James refused to write a review on Volume 12 of the never-ending Bootleg series. I would still be surprised if going out the door Pete Markin will let my “venomous” words see the light of day. As is. If he does then maybe we will have new day after all.]   


The Answer My Friend Is Blowing (No Clipped “G”) In The Wind-The Influence Of Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’” On The “Generation of’68”-The Best Part Of That Cohort



Link to NPR Morning Edition 'The Times They Are A-Changin" Still Speaks To Our Changing Times  https://www.npr.org/2018/09/24/650548856/american-anthem-the-times-they-are-a-changin

By Seth Garth
No question this publication both in its former hard copy editions and now more so in the on-line editions as the, ouch, 50th anniversary of many signature events for the “Generation of ‘68” have come and gone that the whole period of the 1950s and 1960s had gotten a full airing. Has been dissected, deflected, inspected, reflected and even rejected beyond compare. That is not to say that this trend won’t continue if for no other reason that the demographics and actual readership response indicate that people still have a desire to not forget their pasts, their youth.
(Under the new site manager Greg Green, despite what I consider all good sense having worked under taskmaster Allan Jackson, we are encouraged to give this blessed readership some inside dope, no, no that kind, about how things are run these days in an on-line publication. With that okay in mind there was a huge controversy that put the last sentence in the above paragraph in some perspective recently when Greg for whatever ill-begotten reason thought that he would try to draw in younger audiences by catering to their predilections-for comic book character movies, video games, graphic novels and trendy music and got nothing but serious blow-back from those who have supported this publication financially and otherwise both in hard copy times and now on-line. What that means as the target demographic fades is another question and maybe one for a future generation who might take over the operation. Or perhaps like many operations this one will not outlast its creators- and their purposes.)    
Today’s 1960s question, a question that I have asked over the years and so I drew the assignment to address the issue-who was the voice of the 1960s. Who or what. Was it the lunchroom sit-inners and Freedom Riders, what it the hippies, was it SDS, the various Weather configurations, acid, rock, folk rock, folk, Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda, Abbie Hoffman, Grace Slick, hell the Three Js-Joplin, Jimi, Jim as in Morrison and the like. Or maybe it was a mood, a mood of disenchantment about a world that seemed out of our control, which seemed to be running without any input from us, without us even being asked. My candidate, and not my only candidate but a recent NPR Morning Edition segment brought the question to mind (see above link), is a song, a song created by Bob Dylan in the early 1960s which was really a clarion call to action on our part, or the best part of our generation-The Times They Are A-Changin’.    
I am not sure if Bob Dylan started out with some oversized desire to be the “voice” of his generation. He certainly blew the whole thing off later after his motorcycle accident and still later when he became a recluse even if he did 200 shows a year, maybe sullen introvert is better, actually maybe his own press agent giving out dribbles is even better but that song, that “anthem” sticks in memory as a decisive summing up of what I was feeling at the time. (And apparently has found resonance with a new generation of activists via the March for Our Lives movement and other youth-driven movements.) As a kid I was antsy to do something, especially once I saw graphic footage on commercial television of young black kids being water-hosed, beaten and bitten by dogs down in the South simply for looking for some rough justice in this wicked old world. Those images, and those of the brave lunch-room sitters and Freedom bus riders were stark and compelling. They and my disquiet over nuclear bombs which were a lot scarier then when there were serious confrontations which put them in play and concern that what bothered me about having no say, about things not being addressed galvanized me.
The song “spoke to me” as it might not have earlier or later. It had the hopeful ring of a promise of a newer world. That didn’t happen or happen in ways that would have helped the mass of humanity but for that moment I flipped out every time I heard it played on the radio or on my old vinyl records record-player. Other songs, events, moods, later would overtake this song’s sentiment but I was there at the creation. Remember that, please.   

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