Bob Dylan broke from the old left wing because they got too stifling.

[skooooo]

I can see where he was coming from, cause some people are so left wing and dogmatic they seem as close minded as many rightwingers.

------------

Wikipedia:

"Dylan's 1965 Newport performance provoked an outraged response from the folk music establishment.<64> Ewan MacColl wrote in Sing Out!, "Our traditional songs and ballads are the creations of extraordinarily talented artists working inside traditions formulated over time... But what of Bobby Dylan?... Only a non-critical audience, nourished on the watery pap of pop music could have fallen for such tenth-rate drivel.""

-------------


In fact as late as 1987 I had a professor who absolutely wrote off anything Dylan wrote after 1963 because it wasn't in the Pete Seeger tradition of protest. Nevermind that Dylan wrote many, many things after that that questioned the status quo. Just because it wasn't done in a fashion that "hit you over the head" in an obvious dogmatic way, this professor WOULDN'T EVEN LISTEN to the idea that, for example, "It's Alright Ma," or "Hurricane Carter" were protest songs.

That's what keeps me from being a far-lefty, although I do think I have a bit of a Marxist strain.

It's Alright Ma - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bjqYPH7rAo
Hurricane - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohyQblkQ8fc


:evilgrin:

[tularetom]

1. I remember people having a shit fit early on when he had the nerve to use

-gasp - electric guitars in some of his songs.

[alcibiades_mystery]

3. What any of that has to do with the "far left," however, remains a mystery

:shrug:

[skooooo]

5. I can see how you'd miss it..

...if you didn't read my post.

:shrug:

The professor? Hello?

[alcibiades_mystery]

16. I did read your post

It's an extremely tenuous line of argument.

[skooooo]

18. Since you say it's tenuous that makes it so?

I don't think so!

:hi:

[speedoo]

20. I agree. Dylan was never a real leftie, and his views have not changed much.

He is just as passionate today as he was then about injustice and unnecessary wars.

But that does not make him far left.

[World Citizen]

6. I remember... 1968

1968. Academy of Music in Philadelphia.
He was tuning up his acoustic on stage and mocked those people with the remark " my lectric guitar never goes outta tune" (people actually booed)

The second half of the concert was with his electric guitar along with Mike Bloomfield and Al Cooper... Highway 61

[skooooo]

8. Paradigm shifts upset people.

And hopefully it's obvious that I'm not just talking about Dylan here.


:hi:

[World Citizen]

10. perhaps because...

it is
"he or she or them or it
That they belong to."

[skooooo]

11. ..

A self-ordained professor's tongue
Too serious to fool
Spouted out that liberty
Is just equality in school
"Equality," I spoke the word
As if a wedding vow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.

[RandomKoolzip]

106. That was 1965, not 68. Dylan didn't play any live shows, save for

a Woody Guthrie Tribute concert (using The Band as backup), that year.

Furthermore, Dylan only played one show with Mike Bloomfield on guitar - the famous Newport Folk Festival (which did NOT take place in Philadelphia) of 1965.

Dylan DID play in Philadelphia (where there was no venue called the Academy of Music - there WAs one in New York City, however; it later became The Palladium) in 1965 - March 5, 1965, at the Convention Hall, he played acoustically, with Joan Baez.

So MAYBE the show you're thinking of took place in either New Jersey or New York and happened in either October or November of 1965. However, Al Kooper (with a "K") had left Dylan's band by then (he was backed by the Hawks, soon to be The Band, on this tour.)

So, I'm honestly flummoxed. I don't understand how you could get so much of this information incorrect, especially if you attended such a landmark, historic concert in person. I mean, I know it was the 60's, but jeez....

(Sorry. You're talking to a hardcore Dylanologist here who also happens to be an obsessive fact-checker)

[alcibiades_mystery]

2. Nothing to do with far left

Unless wax record purists are also far left. Opponents of the designated hitter rule?

If anything, the issue was one of *conservatism* (in the true sense), because what Dylan faced was people who held that the tradition dictated particular norms. This is, in fact, the opposite of what you're saying. Far left has nothing to do with conserving traditions, so you shouldn't conflate the two.

[skooooo]

4. Well I guess left wing politics can get just as stale as

anything else then??

He wasn't "toeing the line," however you spin it and they refused to have an open mind about how he was expressing himself. Yes, I guess that's conservativism in essence, but it seems just as likely to come from the left wing as from the right wing - at least in this example, and in some of what I've seen in my lifetime.

[alcibiades_mystery]

14. Well, duh

Particular kinds of conformism can exist in any group. Tell us something we didn't know when we woke up this morning.

In this case, however, the conformism was coming from folk music traditionalists. The good argument you could make is that this conformism was informed by an understanding of organic communities as opposed to rank consumerism that had a general left wing tinge to it, but that, too, would be dubious. These debates were internal to the genre and its practitioners, and had largely floated free from their political content.

[skooooo]

17. Not sure I understand all of what you wrote.

No problem with the snarky putdown - got that.


Care to explain this??

"The good argument you could make is that this conformism was informed by an understanding of organic communities as opposed to rank consumerism that had a general left wing tinge to it, but that, too, would be dubious. These debates were internal to the genre and its practitioners, and had largely floated free from their political content."

[alcibiades_mystery]

36. Folk was supposed to be about organic communities

Think of the Shire in The Lord of the Rings, or Star's Hollow in the Gilmore Girls: the music was produced in common as a response to real conditions. This is the dogma of folk, not leftism (indeed, the left had been beating up on such nostalgia for 30 years at that point, and could only be connected to it through its general anti-capitalist sense). What destroys organic community? Capitalism. Consumerism. Taking any community production and wrapping it up like it is product to be sold at auction. Takling the common property of a people and making it a shiny commodity on the market. Imagine, for example, pictures of your family - pictures of your kids taken in moments of real familial intimacy. These are the sentimental responses to a life together that belong to everyone in the family, and that are cherished by all. Now imagine somebody coming in and telling you, "Oh, we can mass produce and sell some of these pictures for $1.79 a piece." If you're thinking "Wow, jackpot!," then - from the folk perspective - you are utterly in the grip of market ideology, and you've lost any real connection to the essence of family life. Now, extend that to communities. Folk practitioners considered the mass production of folk music akin to selling the family portrait album to a local slick-haired producer. It was an abomination not because it violated some dogma, but because it changed the definition of what a community was and could be. Soon, your family starts taking pictures not because you love each other and exist together in the world, but because they sell for $1.79, and the really cute ones of the baby go for $2.50! Wow, snap a few more shots of the kid, honey!

The left, by 1963, had abandoned such cultural nostalgia in large part (see, for example, Raymond Williams' critiques of Leavis et. al). The left was saying, "Listen, it's all market now, so what do we do about it?" In other words, they'd accepted that the family as they knew it was nothing more than a picture taking industry (metaphorically speaking), and folk nothing more than a "record industry." So, what to do about it. It was the folk purists who held on to Star's Hollow, just as the LOTR fans today still pine for the organic communities lost in modern consumerism. It has very little to do with left politics, and much more to do with reactionary nostalgia.

[skooooo]

38. Could find it easier to agree with you..

...if Dylan wasn't writing songs that fueled (to some degree) the Civil Rights movement. That part was content. Otherwise, yes, I understand and agree with your other points.

[aspergris]

23. it's about orthodoxy

There is just as much in the left as the right. The more dogmatic and "wingier" out there people get, the more they tend to (for a # of reasons) band together, fear change, and mistrust "the other".

I realize many will disagree with this, but people are people. Beleaugured minorities will tend to have similar characteristics, and that holds for the far left and the far right.

[skooooo]

25. Hammer meet nail...

That's a nice way to sum it up.

[LWolf]

43. Irony

Do you see it?

You say, The more dogmatic and "wingier" out there people get, the more they tend to (for a # of reasons) band together, fear change, and mistrust "the other".

This, of course, applies to ANY DOGMATIC GROUP. They don't have to be outside the norm, on the fringes, beleaguered minorities, "wingy," to use your term.

It applies to dogmatic party purists. It applies to dogmatic Obama supporters. It applies to dogmatic centrists.

People are people.

[skooooo]

46. No, not at all...

The dogma comes in when one is not flexible. Flexibility pisses dogmatics off - just like in the Dylan example. Rigidity to dogma is a vice - unless your Buddha or something.

[fishwax]

50. good post

:thumbsup:

[aspergris]

51. yer analysis is off imo

the wingers (justifiably) recognize they are in a minority, and feel beleagured by the majority. It's a natural function of their small/isolated/fringe nature.

Centrists are many things - but fringe aint one of them.

[skooooo]

53. exactly.

[LWolf]

58. No, centrists aren't "fringe,"

but they are just as subject to dogma as minority groups.

[skooooo]

60. Maybe if you're talking about people..

..who cling to the fence on every issues, but that is rarely the case. The "center" is the position between extremes. The center isn't right more than any other side maybe, but it is more open people on the left and the right.

[aspergris]

66. it is also

a position where they are less likely to feel like everybody else is crazy/wrong/offbase and the world is out to get them, and/or see grand conspiracies everywhere, etc.

That's pretty understandable because IN GENERAL while they are not going to see eye to eye with "stuff" going on all the time, they are not going to go OMG at every policy because in general policy is usually not that far from their center.

[skooooo]

67. Good point.

Damn you're smart!

[aspergris]

70. Thx . warm fuzzies

I like you! :loveya:

Warm fuzzies all around!

[skooooo]

73. Aww!

:pals:

:headbang:

[LWolf]

83. I'm talking about dogmatic groups.

I hear just as much dogma coming from the center as I do from the fringes.

[fishwax]

85. I certainly don't buy that people in the center are inherently more "open"

or that the more open people on the left and the right generally wind up in the center. I think there are plenty of people on the center who aren't generally open to ideas outside the mainstream. Some people on the center are open-minded, of course--but then so are some lefties. And plenty of people on the left buy into dogma, to be sure, but the center is certainly not free of orthodoxy.

[skooooo]

90. The "center" is by definition...

...the "mainstream," or at least the average or of the "extremes." This is how our political system was set up - so that no one would be completely happy because everyone would have to concede something to get something.

If you're open-minded, then you're not dogmatic no matter where you consider yourself politically - left or right.

Where do you find dogma in the center?? As I said in another post, I think the center is about practicality. Maybe the trick is to swing the center to the left, because the "leftwing" will never be in a position to dictate ideology.

[fishwax]

95. of course it is, but it doesn't follow from that the people there are more open

or less rigid.

That someone is generally in the center does not necessarily mean that they won't have views on certain issues that are outside the mainstream. But I think there are plenty of people in the center who are simply closed off to anything considered outside the mainstream, which is why the right spent so much energy in the last couple of decades repeatedly claiming that various liberal ideas/politicians were outside the mainstream. Many who consider themselves moderates/centrists/"everyday" Americans will be turned off by anything perceived as outside that mainstream--the merits of an idea hardly matter if you can get such people to believe that it's outside the mainstream. For some people the center is about practicality, sure. And some people on the center are genuinely open to ideas from all sides and spaces. But there is also a great mass that is governed by a fear of being outside the mainstream. That is why great energy is invested in defining those edges and why so much is at stake in those discussions.

Maybe the trick is to swing the center to the left, because the "leftwing" will never be in a position to dictate ideology.

I pretty much agree with that. In order for that to actually happen, we need both those on the left who don't shy away from complaining about movement towards the center as well as those who are able to work in and articulate the center. The former--while it runs the risk of dogmatism or the appearance of irrationality--is important because it provides an anchor along the spectrum. The latter--while it runs the risk of giving up too much or too soon--is important because it has the chance to effect practical change in the present. Without either group, the center is unlikely to swing to the left.

[skooooo]

96. Words of wisdom!

Question is whether it can be done effectively!

[aspergris]

63. But they are not

subject to feeling like a beleagured minority, which necessarily brings out self-defense mechanisms (mostly psychological).

[LWolf]

82. No, but they are dogmatic,

and they respond to perceived threat in the same ways.

[skooooo]

87. The center acts more out of practicality rather than ideology..

...so I don't think you can say the center is "dogmatic." The center is more likely to give to adjust to the political landscape to get what it can. The fringe try to bulldoze over the landscape with their ideology.

[LWolf]

91. The center is not dogmatic about issues.

The are dogmatic about the "give up anything and everything in the effort to 'win'."

They have their own standard brand of knee-jerk, automated responses to anyone that brings up taking a stance on issues.

[skooooo]

93. If that's what you think..

...and I don't agree because I think the "center" or a centralized position is created when some kind of workable balance is struck. It's all relative. When I say "center" I don't mean the center of American politics, I mean the center of where everyone is coming from.

[The Stranger]

49. Except that power (and its abuse) and privilege (that is unwarranted) are only on the Right.

The two are not the same or equivalent.

[aspergris]

55. your joking right?

Abuse of power is common on both the left and right. Anybody who argues otherwise is so ideological as to have complete blinders on.

To some extent, lefties and righties tend to do somewhat different things with power, for somewhat different reasons/justifications, but arguing that authoritarianism is only a product of one side of hte spectrum is a recipe for ignoring it when it comes from the other side.
There's always justifications, but the king is dead long live the king. It happens on both sides.

It's human nature.

You'd have to be completely dismissive of human nature and history to believe only right wingers seek power, abuse of same, and privilege. gawd.

[The Stranger]

100. Wrong. Not joking.

Take the current election. You have one party whose candidate is a member of the empowered, both in his socioeconomic status and his being a member of an privileged race. He has made perhaps catastrophic blunders in his campaign, including but not limited to his campaigning for campaign finance reform while fucking his lobbyist, and admitting that he will need to read what is essentially pulp fiction to learn about the economy when the economy is the single most important issue according to the polled populace, yet the corporate and elite-controlled media hardly exposes these.

The other party has a candidate who is not from an empowered socioeconomic status and is not a member of the privileged race. He states that he is going to "refine" his position, i.e., explore it in more concrete detail, regarding the most unpopular war and greatest foreign policy blunder in history, and the corporate and elite-controlled media "expose" him as a "flip flopper," never mentioning that the other party's candidate has declared that he will embroil the nation in its unpopular war for 100 years.

There is a power structure overlaid the election and, by extension, the people involved. It calls to mind White people claiming that African-Americans should "get over it" -- ignoring centuries of oppression and disempowerment. These are not two sides of the same coin. There is an empowered, and there is a disempowered seeking justice and equality. Why else be on Democratic Underground and devote ones politics to the Left?

Gawd.

[skooooo]

102. I want to respond to this..

...but won't get to til tomorrow probably.

[aspergris]

104. Still sounds like yer joking

I devote my politics to the left, because the ideas are better. I support (moslty) causes of the left because the ideas are better. I admit sometimes I disagree with the "left wing" side - such as gun control. In that case, I think the CW amongst the left is wrong. I also think a TRUE civil rights supporter supports ALL the civil rights, doesn't selectively exclude the 2nd amendment. But I digress.

But this is not about ideas. It's about people. People seek and abuse power. Ideas have no power without people espousing them, adopting them, or forcing them on others. And only a rah-rah my side is better the other side is evil (how ironic - that's what the right does too!!) type of person would believe that people on the left don't seek power, don't abuse power, etc. You are actually proof positive that people ARE people. I could do a cut and paste of your claims and substitute right for left and we would have a carbon copy of a rightwinger who only sees authoritarian threat from the left. How frigging ironic.

I think you are seriously just so enraptured with ideology that you fail to understand human nature, or history. You cannot understand politics, or government without understanding people. That in fact was the fundamental error of marxism - it misunderstood the most critical element - people - their motivations, desires, and true nature.

Despotism, authoritarianism, and abuse of power is a human thang. The idea that it is limited to the right is dangerously naive.

I seek liberty. And those who seek to abuse power - whatever WING they come from - are a danger to liberty.

[The Stranger]

111. "Yer" still wrong. Not joking. But "liberty," huh?

Well that's great. At least try to see what Marx and others have revealed about power structures and the struggle for power. It is inevitable.

Sure. People are corrupt. That's real enlightening. The question is how you afford the disempowered -- and all people -- the liberty you claim to seek.

[aspergris]

122. Considering that marxism has been a miserable failure

Marx revealed his own ignorance more than anything else.

Marxism is based on fundamental misunderstanding of society, and human nature. That's why it DOESN'T work. And surprise surprise nearly inevitably results in desperate power mad scum controlling every aspect of other people's lives.

Which proves my point about power and the left AND right.

And disproves yours. Not that there is any difficulty in that :)

[The Stranger]

140. You're revealing a real ignorance when it comes to Marx.

But I like your cute little posts and smilie faces and all.

[Oregone]

7. Bob Dylan broke from the folk elite crowd, not the left wing.

Music isn't politics, and his was most certainly art, above all else.

Here was Dylan--an artistic, free minded young man who dreamed of being a rock star as a child--among st a bunch of rigid minded, purest, elitist, pretentious folk music intellectuals who were confining and defining where he was supposed to take his art and where he was not to tread. Dylan needed room to grow, not a centrist to vote for, as you suggest.

"A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit to satisfy
Insure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not fergit
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong to."

- Dylan, Its Allright Ma

[skooooo]

9. That's not what Pete Seeger and Singout! thought.

Obviously what you say is true in a real sense, but for people that were too close to what was going on, DYLAN WAS A TRAITOR TO THE LEFT!

[Oregone]

12. And maybe the could be the problematic thinking right there...

Associating those folk people as the political left. Wasn't the political left so much more than some musical movement? You think Dylan, an artist, wanted to be confined in a political box (which demeans his art and existence as nothing but a dogmatic expression of political thought)? You notice how Dylan only played at a single "political" event in his entire career, which was not announced and done in as little political manner as possible (an event regarding civil rights)?

I honestly didn't think that man wanted a damn thing to do with politics. He says he wrote songs because they needed to be sung. There were words, ideas, and images in his head (like a big painting), and he just got them out there for the world (Like Visions of Johanna, for example, which is a verbal masterpiece, similar to a painting that evokes emotion without grounds). I'm finally in his corner regarding this. I honestly don't think he was trying to change the world...he was merely expressing these songs he had inside him. And something else Ive finally come to realize...not all his songs mean something or tell any kind of coherent story. They are words, ideas and concepts arranged from his mental palette just as a painter arranges their colors on a canvass.

[skooooo]

13. Pete Seeger was definitely part of the political left...

And I do know that Dylan sung at many more than just one political event - just to name a few, the March on Washington, civil rights rallies in the South including one in Greensboro, and others if you care to look them up.

They did pressure him to keep playing and singing in a certain vein that promoted their agenda - not that their agenda was "wrong" necessarily, but there was a sense of coercion that he dealt with.

And I agree with pretty much the rest of what you wrote.

My greater point is that I think Obama is in the same situation. I think he's going to break the paradigm and piss off people who are used to working within a certain political framework.

That's what I was getting at.

[alcibiades_mystery]

22. It had nothing to do with his lyrics

The problem was one of form.

Seeger and others considered themselves to be in a folk music tradition for two reasons.

1) Their songs were "jointly developed and owned" by a community, and therefore didn't really exist as commodities to be traded on the market. This is a "left" position to be sure, but is also shared by reactionaries on the right with respect to various cultural traditions (see War on Christmas, for example). The beef was with the commodification of everything, and it's a valid critique of both Dylan and any other "folk" art practitioner from the perspective of "folk," traditionally conceived. This issue, killed with the real development of the music industry 1930-1980, has reemerged with a vengeance in the form of music file sharing controversies. If you understand the arguments around file sharing, you much better understand the arguments about Dylan's departure from the folk music tradition that Seeger and others were criticizing.

2) They used traditional instruments. This was an extremely reactionary position that fell back on tradition without any adequate political theorization, with the possible exception that "plugging in" to any one outlet (literally) meant that you were plugging in to the totality of the (anti-people) system (metaphorically). But really, it was just "that's not the way we do it," and Dylan was quite right to break from such stifling traditionalism.

Either way, the whole notion of "conformity" and "innovation" is pretty pointless by now: we're all supposed to be "non-conformist" now in order to conform to the norm of non-conformity. It's a tired and reactionary game to celebrate supposed non-comformity in such an environment.

[skooooo]

33. The 3rd leg was content...

I agree with your two premises. They are definitely part of what happened. Content, however, was also a concern. This professor I had knew Seeger quite well, and I take him at his word. Too bad he couldn't shut up and let students talk. In the end, we sat around watching Oliver Stone movies, which I'm sure the professor thought was indoctrinating enough, but no true discussion happened. Very sad.

[regnaD kciN]

34. No...

They used traditional instruments. This was an extremely reactionary position that fell back on tradition without any adequate political theorization, with the possible exception that "plugging in" to any one outlet (literally) meant that you were plugging in to the totality of the (anti-people) system (metaphorically). But really, it was just "that's not the way we do it," and Dylan was quite right to break from such stifling traditionalism.

...they used "traditional" (which is to say "acoustic") instruments because most of them started out, at least, as solo performers accompanying themselves on guitar. And, with all due respect, and acoustic guitar makes a better accompanying instrument for a solo performer. Once you start getting into electric instruments (whose processed sound is much more bandwidth-restricted), you practically need to have a backing group instead of being a solo singer/songwriter. Dylan himself is the proof of it -- when he "went electric," he also went to having a band (eventually The Band) backing him.

[Oregone]

24. I understand what you are trying to do but: Dylan is a musician, Obama is a politician

And further, Folk music was more that an extension of the political left, though there was most certainly overlap, but in reality, it was merely a style (bolstered again at the time by a reaction against the corporate controlled music industry and the DJ scandals).

I just don't think it was a great comparison, or at least, it was obfuscated by saying Dylan peeled from the "left" rather than the Folk scene.

Otherwise, if you are simply comparing the response of a purest base to a figure who is exploring other trends, then I can see that.

But, another thing I just thought of that is important. Dylan moved from Folk (and basic blues), to electric rock. He change genres to express his artistic sense. Can a politician change their political spectrum, and still efficiently express their goodwill, altruism, and desire to help the world? Is Joe Lieberman every bit the effective politician on the right as he was on the left? We aren't talking about music here, where there are 100s of genres that have equivilence and greatness in their own rights, but rather, we are talking about politics, where policies either have positive or negative effects on our lives (or none at all). If we on the left operate under the premise that the libertarians, republicans and fascist all have an equal road to a better society, it sort of undermines our ability to have any type of moral authority or take a stand on any issue.

[skooooo]

30. Paradigms and generational shifts..

I think that's partly what's going on here. I think it fits Obama, and I think it fit Dylan.

I think there are many who are tired of kind of political bickering that has gone on between the left and right for the last 40 years, and some of those frameworks are breaking down. I see that when older feminist post on DU and complain that younger women are more conservative and don't understand what the feminist movement did for women. Of course, they are correct in a very real sense, but it becomes a question of -- so what? Times change, and I think many people who came up after these "left" - "right" lines were established don't see them in quite the same way.

[G_j]

32. "the left" ? perhaps the "old left", what about the

newer wave of lefties like Abbie Hoffman, or Timothy Leary?

[skooooo]

37. Not sure what you're asking..

Dylan didn't like any of it, I don't think. He didn't like the "hippies," and he wasn't into the kind of drug taking that Leary espoused. After his crash, he lived a pretty "conservative" (for the time) existence.

As for me, I find Hoffman interesting. It's easier to read and agree with his words maybe than how he tried to transfer words to action. Leary was..well...lol..intersting.

I like the Beats myself because they are more left-wing-existential. Keruoac, though, was a right-wing reactionary. So...lol. I guess we all pick and choose what we like.

[G_j]

44. it seemed you were trying to show a link between the "left" of past and present

I brought up those examples to show that the Left is fluid and diverse.
How about Kurt Vonnegut, Lenny Bruce, Jello Biafra, Micheal Franti, Ani Defranco?
Are/were any of these people notably dogmatic to your knowledge?

The Dylan story does not work for me, to demonstate that "lefties" are dogmatic.

[skooooo]

48. It's not even about lefties..

...so much as it is about dogmatics. Of course the left wing has always had a wide array of writers and artists offer a range of ideas and approaches. I'm talking about when there is a lack of approaches, and one approach is being thrust up on you.

[Iris]

15. because someone didn't like they style of Dylan's songs?

Far left does not always equal dogmatic.

[skooooo]

19. It's not "style"

It's content. If you don't know a bit of the history, it might be difficult to understand.

When Dylan veered away from constantly writing songs like "Medgar Evers" the left-wing music establishment wrote him off.

[aspergris]

21. Born Again

He also inspired sputtering fits when he got all born again n stuff. A lot of people got pissed off at that, too.

Frankly, I think it gave his music an added dimension, as well as the man himself

[skooooo]

29. Nothing rocks out more than..

SHOT OF LOVE!

[Romulox]

56. Slow Train Coming is an awesome record

I don't care what you think about christianity...

All that foreign oil controlling American soil,
Look around you, it's just bound to make you embarrassed.
Sheiks walkin' around like kings, wearing fancy jewels and nose rings,
Deciding America's future from Amsterdam and to Paris
And there's a slow, slow train comin' up around the bend.

[skooooo]

62. Oh my god, I forgot about that line!!!

Prophetic (or not so) :(

[aspergris]

69. Walk Hard

The comedy with John Reilly has a hilarious bit when his character goes through his "dylan'esque" phase.

The riffing on Dylan's (brilliant but) obscure lyrics is very funny

[regnaD kciN]

26. I saw footage of Dylan at Newport 1965 -- it WAS "tenth-rate drivel"...

Not because of using electric instruments nor of incorporating rock music, but because he and his backing band were so ill-rehearsed and badly miked, the whole thing came across as a rushed mess. A rock audience would have booed just as loudly at such a sloppy performance.

[skooooo]

31. Did it make you feel like shouting, "Judas?"

:rofl:

[regnaD kciN]

35. No, but if I'd been there, it would have made me feel like shouting...

..."Turn that fucking noise off, and don't come back until you've learned to play together!"

[Hannah Bell]

79. oh, please.

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=dylan+newport+1965&hl=en&sitesearch=#q=dylan%20newport%201965&hl=en&sitesearch=&start=20

[SidneyCarton]

27. Some in the Counterculture at that time were looking for a leader

A driving charismatic force, perhaps almost a messiah. Many forces tried to push Dylan into that role, not just from the Counterculture, but from the MSM as well, who tried to pigeonhole him into somehow being the voice for his entire generation.

Dylan didn't want the role, and ultimately he turned it down entirely. This same grasping for a leader, a guru, etc... had both harmless and darksides to it, after all the Manson Family was also a group of flower children who went looking for a leader to make sense of the world, and found something much worse.

[elocs]

28. I sometimes think that the far opposite ends of the political spectrum bend toward each other.

Both the far left and the far right are convinced that they are each absolutely right to the exclusion of any compromise. Both seem to have a my way or the highway attitude. Both always seem to be spitting mad about something. Both seem to be sanctimonious and preachy and both feel they have every reason to feel that way. I have always considered myself to be a Liberal, but I no longer identify with the far left who so often seem to have no trouble in biting off their nose to spite their face as long as they can feel noble and righteous in doing it, condemning those who do not believe as they do.

[skooooo]

40. I agree..

..the price is too high to be that convinced yours is the only way.

I've been reading the Art of War, which says the first thing you need to do is to assess the layout of the land - in other words get a sense of what IS before you decide how to act. Ideology without practicality is useless.

[elocs]

42. "Ideology without practicality is useless."

I like that. It has such a ring of truth. Too many are unquestioning slaves of blind ideology.

[madrchsod]

39. dylan was never political untill this election

one of the reasons that he and joan broke up was that she wanted to go political and he did`t.

he questioned everyone and everything. his music meant different things to different people...

[skooooo]

41. Any ideas on why he spoke out now?

Of course, age may have something to do with it....

[speedoo]

61. I have a few...

first, I would not say he "spoke out" on this election.

As I understand it, he had a very recent interview with someone who had interviewed him before (a Eurpean, I am pretty sure), which means that Dylan and the interviewer already understood one another. This is important, because many of Dylan's early interviews turned out to be confrontations because Dylan sensed that the interviewers were clueless about what Dylan was about.

So the interiew was a good one, and toward the end, the question came up about the political situation in the US. I believe Obama had just secured the nomination, or was close to it. Dylan said he thought it was a very positive thing for a black man to become the Democratic nominee, that it suggested the promise of a lot of much needed change.

My thinking is that Dylan is far more pleased with a black man becoming the nominee than he is with comparing a democrat to a republican. One of Dylan's lifelong passions is about injustice, particularly racial injustice in the US.

So I would say he responded to a question that he deemed very worthy of response, more than that he "spoke out".

[MedleyMisty]

45. Umm - I don't know any of his songs except the everyone must get high one

and I'm not too impressed with that.

I do like Josh Ritter, though, and people say he's sort of our generation's Bob Dylan.

But seriously - who bases their moral and political decisions on what some random folk singers and a professor thought decades ago?

Stuff like that happens in every group you could ever imagine - I can tell you that it even happens in the community that has sprung up around making stories based on user created gameplay challenges in Sims 2, and I heard national news stories a while ago about it happening in the scrapbooking community. It's not a "far left" thing. The conflicts between conforming to community standards and doing your own thing is a human group thing that happens every time humans get together.

And really, if as some posts in this thread lead me to believe this is some sort of code for shut up and sit down and be okay with pandering to the right, within this group you're in the position of the folk singers who got upset with Dylan for not conforming.

[skooooo]

47. Um..you're really out of touch with what's being discussed here..

...so I'm sure you have something better to do with your time if you don't want to read and figure it out?

[Romulox]

52. When did this board become dedicated to CONSTANT attacks on the Left???

And Jesus H. Christ, using Dylan name in service of right-wing apologia is disgusting.... :puke:

[skooooo]

59. It's not about the left, it's about strict dogma.

[Individualist]

99. Ever since DLC supporters increased in number

They're still a small minority but very vocal.

[skooooo]

103. make assumptions much?

Obviously you don't read more than headlines, or you'd know there was some interesting and constructive discussion going on here. And I hate the DLC.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

54. Well, he's supporting Obama now. Who is hardly of the "old" or "new" left.

But, Dylan was, and is, still a fine songwriter. Whereas, Obama seems to be turning into just a another politician.

[Hannah Bell]

57. "Dylan's 1965 Newport performance provoked an outraged response from the folk music establishment.

watch the concert & look up pete seeger on the subject.

the "dylan pissed off the folkies by going electric at newport" is an urban legend.

[Taverner]

64. Dylan was cool, but I still think Lou Reed defined Urban Poetry in Rock

[skooooo]

65. Looouuuu!

I saw him play in NY a few years ago. Love Lou.

[mitchum]

101. Dylan made it possible for Reed to have a forum and a chance to take risks...

but Reed surpassed him. And everyone else.

[Hannah Bell]

68. The story is a myth. The OP uses it to present another BS myth about "the left"

http://buffaloreport.com/020826dylan.html

"The July 25, 1965, audience, the story goes, was driven to rage because their acoustic guitar troubadour had betrayed them by going electric and plugging in. The booing was so loud that, after the first three electric songs, Dylan dismissed the band and finished the set with his acoustic guitar.

There's a host of other associated narratives about goings-on in the wings: Pete Seeger and other Newport board directors were so repulsed and enraged they struggled to kill the electric power; Pete was frenetically looking for an axe to chop the major power line; people were yelling, screaming, crying, beating breasts, rending garments. Griel Marcus tells some of those stories really well at the beginning of his 1998 Dylan book, Invisible Republic.

Great stories. But not one of them is true.

I was one of the directors of the Newport Folk Festival and I was in the wings during Dylan's Saturday night performance. Every time I heard those stories retold, I'd say, to whoever was talking,"That's not how I remember it. Nobody made a move for the power. Nobody took a swing at the sound man. It wasn't Dylan the audience was booing."

After Dylan's August 3, 2002, concert occasioned all those retellings of the Legends of 1965, I decided to check both the legend and my memory: I took down the original tapes made from the stage microphones during that performance."

* * *

Pete Seeger wouldn't be likely to take ax axe to anything but kindling. He liked all kinds of music, performed with all kinds of musicians, & has been supportive of musicians as a community his whole career.

[skooooo]

71. I'm not "attacking the left"

I'm attacking dogmatic viewpoints.

[madfloridian]

76. There are LOTS of dogmatic viewpoints here....

[Hannah Bell]

77. the story is mythological. so whatever you're trying to do based on

a mythological story is irrelevant.

steve butterfield & howling wolf also played electric in newport 65.

newport jazz & chicago blues had been electric for years.

watch the concert for yourself - nothing happened, & pete seeger had no beef with dylan.

[skooooo]

78. Ok...got your point already.

:hi:

Don't agree with you. Sorry.

[Hannah Bell]

81. the footage is online. they probably cut out all the booing, & cut in cheering.

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=dylan+newport+1965&hl=en&sitesearch=#q=dylan%20newport%201965&hl=en&sitesearch=&start=20


but go on & make specious points about dylan, "the left", & those "elite" folkies, so resistant to the new & creative.

what a load.

butterfield OPENED the festival in 65 - electric.

[fishwax]

86. pete seeger admitted he cried at Dylan's performance, but said he did

so because the performance was so amazing, not because (as is so often reported/assumed) Dylan was disgracing the festival and folk music in general. I wish I could remember the exact quote and location--I think it was in his book "The Incompleat Folksinger."

[skooooo]

88. If you want examples of Seeger and company..

...running Dylan down for changing his lyrics and style, I can look them up for you. You don't have to "interpret" Newport 1965 to see what happened.

[Hannah Bell]

92. You're the only one interpreting. Look at the footage.

yarrow asks the crowd if they want another tune. they cheer.

dylan had already played an acoustic set. you can verify by looking at the footage, available on you tube & google video. his later electric set wasn't scheduled. the festival directors ok'd the unscheduled set, i.e. they did him a favor.

pete seeger is nowhere on record dissing dylan, except in the annals of myth.

paul butterfield opened the 65 festival, electric. howling wolf played there, electric. dylan had already released a 1/2 electric album. newport jazz was electric, & people like muddy waters were playing electric.

your storyline about pete seeger & other "folk elites" being offended by dylan is a freaking invention.

[Hannah Bell]

94. dylan did an interview in sing out as late as '68. sing out printed

a variety of opinions on dylan.

pete seeger is widely known as a mensch & stand-up guy, & dylan appears lauding him in his biofilm.

but this is really about seeger's association with the communist party, isn't it?

seeger also served in ww2. he lived in voluntary poverty most of his life, though he could have made better money. he donated hundreds of hours to the labor movement, the civil rights movement, & the environmental movement, & endured the blacklist. he helped organize newport & supported music & musicians all his life.

[David Zephyr]

72. Dylan was never a "protest singer"; he is an artist.

Bob Dylan never was just a "protest singer". From his earliest days, he was working at his art at crafting songs, putting melodies to lyrics in simply magical ways.

His music draws, obviously from folk music, but protest music, electrified folk and rock music, country and blue grass and more and with every lick, it's signature Dylan.

Bob Dylan was never a wind-up doll for academic lefties or a monkey for record company organ grinders. He is as original as it comes.

And, skooooo, I agree with you that nothing can be more stifling than dogmatic people and causes. Art is anti-form and, in many ways, anti-intellectual.

To those who felt Dylan betrayed the Left, they are just idiots who know nothing about socialism and less about art. Fuck them all and give me Bob Dylan any day of the week.

[skooooo]

75. ..

:yourock:

[KT2000]

108. Exactly!

Good comments!

Bob Dylan is truly one of the few great artists of our time. He was a student and seeker who was so open he was able to produce something true.
People who looked to him for "political purity" did not get him at all.

[H2O Man]

74. "Hurricane"

Though the lyrics are listed as "by Bob Dylan & Jacques Levy," the majority of the words were from Levy. Dylan is responsible for the music. It's a great song.

[rucky]

80. Hurricane is "hit-you-over-the-head"

Desire's a pretty solid album, though.

Time out of Mind has some good soul-searching tunes, but not a direct political bent.

[Hannah Bell]

84. Dylan's electric set on video: yarrow asks the crowd "do you want to hear bobby do another song?"

Do they boo & shout "throw the bum out?"

No, they cheer vigorously, i.e. they want more. at the end of "like a rolling stone".

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=dylan+newport+1965&hl=en&sitesearch=#q=dylan%20newport%201965&hl=en&sitesearch=&start=20

[stimbox]

89. And you centrists are so open minded and easy going.

:eyes:

[mitchum]

97. I find his early "protest music"to be obvious, strident, and cringe inducing...

give me the electric, self-absorbed, bitter pur down artist Bob Dylan any day. THAT'S the man who invented rock music.

[skooooo]

98. ..

:yourock:

[RandomKoolzip]

107. Right on, except for the part about "inventing rock music." That's Ike Turner you're thinking of.

[mitchum]

123. Ike Turner invented rockandroll...

or maybe that was Willie Johnson
or maybe that was Blind Lemon Jefferson
or maybe that was Son House
I can hear compelling arguments for any of those gentlemen :)

I just think of rockandroll and rock as being somewhat different (but suspect they are really not) and if they are,
Dylan is without a doubt the father of the latter.

[ConsAreLiars]

105. What a pure example of blind dogmatism at work!

You start with your ideological agenda. You offer some fictional account of some "good guy" endorsing your view. When it is proven that that story was totally false, you say the evidence is irrelevant to your ideological point. At the same time you accuse those who are based in reality of being dogmatic, and when it is shown that you are just making baseless ideological accusations with no basis in fact, you argue that only those you disagree with can be called dogmatic. Can one get any further divorced from reality without voting Republican?

[skooooo]

109. ...

:rofl:

That's just funny.

[ConsAreLiars]

110. Your response is no surprise.

What a blind fool, posting lies and believing them and then trying the "ha-ha" as a rebuttal when shown to be a liar. You will believe whatever pleases you. Good luck with that.

[skooooo]

116. That was a serious rebuttal..

Are you kidding me?

:rofl:

[ConsAreLiars]

138. I'm sure it was the very best you are capable of. Here's your sign:

Display it proudly. You earned it.

[mdmc]

112. I think this OP misses the point entirely

Dylan left the old folk school cause it had already been done. Woody and Pete and Phil Ochs did it right. Dylan took from them, and took it to the next level. Public Enemy and The Dead Kennedy's once again bumped it up another level.

Within the last 18 years Dylan has put out some super amazing public domain folk songs. Pete Seeger may have wanted to pull the plug on Dylan's Folk Fest Rock show, but he is down with all of the recent Dylan stuff.

Infidels and some of the older LPs are as Good as it Gets.

Dylan didn't move from folk cause it was disagreeable - he broke with the tradition to move to a whole other level.

And he did it.

[skooooo]

114. So agree with me.

You just left out the point that it pissed off the old guard....for a loooong time.

[mdmc]

120. Well, I know Pete Seeger is over it and pretty much on board

with the new musical culture.

Please put Seeger's opposition to Dylan in context - Seeger thought that Dylan had a shot of overturning the commie blacklist and moving America forward. Dylan did move us forward, but he wasn't able to save the old school. He did, however, teach Arlo Guthrie how to play music.

Pete has been busy with www.riverpool.org and www.clearwater.org .

Pete still protests the war almost every Sat. in Wappinger's Falls, NY.

Pete works hard for local democratic candidates, and helps support www.wamc.org . In his hometown, he is not villified. He is a hero.

It reminds me of a Jerry Garcia quote -
"It was obvious that someone had to do something. I just found it fucking pathetic that it had to be us."

[bemildred]

113. Bob Dylan never joined the "old left", or anybody else, whatsoever.

You have to stop taking this sort of media crap seriously.

[skooooo]

115. Never said he "joined" anything.

Time to take out the reading glasses!! :)

[bemildred]

117. He never "broke with" them either, he never gave a shit what they thought.

Certain control freaks got all upset about what he did or did not do, but that was always their problem, not his. Being low-wattage herd thinkers is not a particularly "leftist" trait either.

[skooooo]

118. Am I going to have to get my Dylan books out?

HMMM???

[bemildred]

119. Yes, do. Inundate me with knowledge.

I look forward to celebrating the results of your labor.

[skooooo]

124. It's Halloween, and I've got my Bob Dylan mask on.

Oh, I'm not going to "labor" or "inundate" you, but I will give you some facts, and in turn, if you wish to discuss this further, I will suggest you likewise dig out your books and provide documented statements to support your claims. If you don't, then I will surmise you are not too serious in discussing the issue.

From the book, _Chimes of Freedom: the Politics of Dylan's Art_, pages 97 and 98 discuss Irwin Silber's "open letter" to Dylan which was published in Sing Out! magazine. He wrote, "Your new songs seem to be inner-directed now, inner probing, self-conscious..." Still quoting the book - "As a socialist, Silber was concerned not only with the specific case of Bob Dylan but with the political questions it raised for the movement."

In 1968, the book continues, Silber reconsidered Dylan: "Dylan did desert us - not us but and outmoded style of values which had become unequal to the task of reclaiming America."

That's just one short blurb from a book that delves quite deeply into this issue of the left-wing feeling that Dylan had "abandoned" their cause because he rejected the far-left wing music and political establishment.

------

Next book, Anthony Scaduto's _Bob Dylan_ which contains a lengthy interview with Joan Baez.

Referring to the period of writing Dylan entered in 1964-65, the author asks Joan Baez..."But it was in that period that he was moving away from the protest songs?

Baez replies: "Oh, you see I'm sort of puritanical and stiff. I could never enjoy the things that he did that wasn't protest until a year later. I'm still like that with a lot of his stuff because I felt so abandoned by his saying, "I wont be responsible for those kids," in his music and in his words. I just felt sad, and so I was determined not to listen to the other stuff...he did leave a lot of us in the lurch."

For more confirmation that Baez felt that Dylan betrayed the "movement," you can listen to her song "Bobby," which was written in the late 70s I think.

----------

From the book _Like the Night: Bob Dylan and the Road to the Manchester Free Trade Hall_. Page 152 - 153 describe the audience reaction to Dylan's departure from the left wing orthodoxy. Author says, "Consider the people D.A. Pennebaker filmed in the foyer of the Free Trade Hall after the show. People said...Dylan should "be shot. He's a traitor."

Lonnie is still bitter to this day, "It was like, as if, everything we held dear had been betrayed. He showed us what to think, though I know that's a stupid thing to say. But there he was, marching with Martin Luther King and everything, and suddenly he was singing stuff about himself. We made him and he betrayed the cause."

-------------

In the book _Voice Without Restraint_, page 7 gives an account of the critics who panned Dylan's Newport '65 appearance which included many "folk purists." Again, because Dylan bucked the orthodoxy, people attacked him. A few authors defended Dylan, and you can tell from their defense of Dylan how strong the criticism was. Paul Nelson remarked that in the audience's preference for Pete Seeger over Dylan, the "....Newport audience had chosen the safety of wishful thinking rather than the painful, always difficult stab of art."

---

These are just a few examples. Similar attacks from the left wing orthodoxy broke out when Dylan returned to recording in the late 60's and put out John Wesley Harding, which was villified as some kind of celebration of red-neck America.

=======


Ok, you're turn. Like I said, once we go down the road of real research, I expect the same in return.
Otherwise, I'm not interested in "debating" you.

[bemildred]

127. Tell me what Dylan said or shutup.

I never said the "folk-left" didn't feel betrayed, I said Dylan didn't (Edit: ever) give a shit about it.

[skooooo]

128. I explained my point sufficiently

Although that's been debated as well, it really has nothing to do with my overall point, which is that when someone breaks from the rigidity of orthodoxy, those invested in the orthodoxy have a hard time seeing beyond their own noses at what's really happening.

[bemildred]

129. That's all very well, you are welcome to your point, but it is not my point.

Dylan never bought into the orthodoxy, it was always their problem. Dylan was always about Dylan, a kid from the north country, with ambition out the kazoo, and he was right to be that way.

[skooooo]

130. Well I guess that's right...

So we're both right I guess.

:rofl:

But still they had that perception (the old guard).

[bemildred]

132. It's an old story, more to do with egos than left-right politics.

I don't mind contemplating their bruised egos and orthodox outrage, I just object to the idea that it had much to do with Dylan or his intentions. A lot of orthodoxies got trashed back then.

[skooooo]

133. Right, orthodoxies...

...seem to be a dicey thing!

[bemildred]

134. Rigid. Simple minded. Inflexible. Conservative even. nt

[skooooo]

135. That can come from either side...

But yes, their quality is conservative.

[bemildred]

137. Do you remember "Do your own thing?"

I have long considered that the real political and social divide is between those who believe in personal liberty and those who believe in conformity to custom and habit. I do not have much use for the stuff about liberal and conservative, I think reasonable people can favor more or less rapid social change, even today the "conservatives" are all in favor of economic "progress". It is the question of personal autonomy that is most important, and Dylan was always on the side of "doing your own thing".

[NashVegas]

121. And Your Point Is ...?

What, exactly?

[skooooo]

125. Orthodoxy..

...is stifling and inhibits practical action.

[mix]

136. you're the one who is calling for "Orthodoxy"

in your demand post after post that people w/o question shut up and march, not progressives who call out Obama for moving rightward

[Hannah Bell]

126. he doesn't have one. the incident was fictional, & his vision of some

elite, dogmatic "far left" of musicians led by pete seeger, also fictional.

it's a winger fantasy.

[mix]

131. why not attack McCain & the Right

instead of "bashing" progressives or "far-lefties" for what you consider insufficient adulation? face it, Obama supporters have many styles...some more critical, some more deferential...

you're like a friggin' cop...What would Dylan do with someone like you? I don't imagine he held sycophants and yes men and women in high esteem...

[Joe Fields]

139. Evidently, you know very little about Bob Dylan