Writes Sebastian Smee, in "The uncanny Bob Dylan song that inaugurated an era of dread/Dylan is the Picasso of popular music. His ‘Ballad of a Thin Man’ speaks more powerfully to what it feels like to be alive in 2025 than anything I can think of" (WaP0)(free-access link).
I wasn't going to read this article, because I didn't need The Washington Post to help me understand a song I've been listening to — very attentively — for 60 years.
But then I saw that it was written by Sebastian Smee, so I read it.
Posts
34 comments:
Finally watched, "A Complete Unknown." It was a crying shame that this latest tour didn't do the songs from the movie in the order they appeared in the movie.
The surname Smee is believed to be a variant of Smead, an English surname.
It’s great that he’s able to take time away from sailing with Captain Hook to be a critic.
JSM
Smee reminds me, if the writing sucks, it's going nowhere, even with two greats.
Curious, I clicked the "Sebastian Smee" link to see why he had his own tag. He seems to have cornered the "things misunderstood" market for columnists with a distinctive style.
The Firesign Theater did a Sherlock Holmes parody with a detective called Hemlock Stones. He would be mocked with the question, "Something's happening and you don't know what it is, do you Mr. Stones?"
Everything old is new again! I'm currently listening to a 1971 playlist. Donny Osmond at the moment with "Go Away Little Girl" -- I assume it's now about Kamala Harris.
In 2005 I was developing and expanding a huge commercial computer program, telecommuting at home, breaks for bicycle treks and dog training.
The never ending demand for new features without breaking anything already working. Mr. backwards compatibility.
Ballad of a thin man doesn't seem apply.
Imus used it as a bumper after Dan Quayle skits
60 years of experience with anything is rare these days. Althouse is no 27 year old reporter who doesn't know any history. I'm interested in knowing if her long experience with Dylan's music makes her dislike almost all reporting on that subject matter for its banality, or if still finds herself pleasantly surprised by valid and novel insights once in a while.
Is this another, "Everything stinks because Trump is POTUS" story? Because I'm seeing a lot of those. Its all part the MSM/Enterainment industry propaganda machine. The "Good times" and 'happy days" may exist in real life while a Republican President rules, but on Tv and in the media, its a horrible time.
Smore from Smee.
“Hi! I’m Bob Dylan… Remember the 60’s? Cream… Vanilla Fudge… Strawberry Alarm Clock… Lothar and the Hand People. Well, K-Tel Records has a collection of…”
But who is Mr. Jones of 2025? Do you know, Mr. Smee?
Ah yes, I remember it well. The Beat's gift to the (college-educated) Boomers: sneering contempt for any straight types. The birth pangs of the Bourgoise Bohemians--about a year and a half of enduring side-eyed looks for the long hair and freaky clothes, and then the whole culture capitulated. Easiest victory in a class war evah! The only price was having to cow-tow to every woke cause for the rest of your life, up to and including sacrificing working class boys' chances of a decent career path and subjecting your grandkids to puberty blockers and castration. But hey, I'm cool with that. But look who ended up wearing the earphones.
Dickensian (or Seussian) names: Benedict Cumberbatch, Rupert Grint, Sebastian Smee.
We used to live, for example, with the idea that, for all its flaws, the news media played a part in connecting individual citizens to wider social and political realities. All that is rapidly disappearing. The “self-publishing revolution” and the attention economy have stimulated an unslakable thirst for unfounded assertion and rampant conspiracy thinking: Alex Jones, Pizzagate, QAnon, and all their proliferating progeny.
Russiagate? Jan 6th? Wet market? Lies, conspiracy theories, and actual conspiracies are everywhere, not just in QAnon. But look, Sebastian, is this disconnected screed about a Dylan song and the cultural scene really any better than what a decent blogger or substacker can put out? It isn't.
Something is happening here,
but you are too pretentious and portentous to know what it is,
Aren't you, Mr. Smee?
Another elaborate exegesis of Dylan’s vapid gibberish. Nowadays even the most peurile of rap “songs” get the same respectful treatment. It’s like looking for meaning in tea leaves, or seeing Jesus’s face in a potato peel.
Also, it’s probably the most irritating-sounding of Dylan’s songs. Not even Joan Baez could save it.
Love this line, I never noticed it before.
You have many contacts
Among the lumberjacks
To get you facts
When someone attacks your imagination
But nobody has any respect
Anyway...
Sometimes I think he just masterfully surfed the rhymes, like Don MacClean did in American Pie, but he had more control over where it was taking him. I think making those impossible connections was a big part of his genius, and his wit.
But sometimes critics of Dylan sort of put me to mind of a color blind judge at a necktie - suit color harmonization competition.
Bob - a song and dance man.
There was a program on Cinemax that aired a DVD of Dylan’s “Slow Train” tour and a song on that album that had Dylan singing sans guitar where he did a few dance moves more reluctantly than exuberantly…
Wish I could find it. It left me chuckling.
I dunno, did Mr. Jones drop acid?
The article is all over the map and never seems to prove whatever point it's trying to make. Also, the album is Highway 61 Revisited and not Highway 61. Some comments here are as dumb as this article, which serves to prove, one more time, that Dylan's "message" can't be nailed down.
If it's '...what it means to be alive in 2025...' and WaPo it's some kind of anti-American screed, so shove it, raisins...
Taunting Mr. Jones about his homosexuality. Very 1965
Iman mentioned some 60s bands, including Lothar and the Hand People.
They played the Atlantic City Pop Festival early August ‘69. Theremin rockin’ fun best heard live.
A long-debated Dylan question: Who is "you" in his songs? Specific persons (Suze, Joan, Edie, Sara)? His audience? Dylan himself? All of the above?
Two specific contenders in Ballad of a Thin Man: (1) Jeffrey Jones, an intern for Time who questioned Dylan at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival (and was later a film professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology) or (2) Max Jones, a writer for the British magazine, Melody Maker, who first interviewed Dylan in 1964.
"Two specific contenders in Ballad of a Thin Man" Watch the section in Don't Look Back where he reacts to questions from Horace Freeland Judson. Could be him, and I think it was thought to be him for a while. Now, who knows?
At a Bob show about 25;years or so.ago when he still played a lot of his hits and deep cuts (Back in Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again, etc) for his fans. After about the 3rd song one our younger teenagers turned to us and said: "Were you guys on drugs?"
I always liked Dylan, for a complicated human he seemed to always just rely on his desires, instincts and talent and not the spotlight. He just did what he did…and we loved it. The meanings. Well they are apparently my own to chew on. I liked that he gives us that latitude.
Another facet of Dylans brilliance is his inquisitive nature.
He has the unusual ability to be a spectator to his own curiosity, mirroring back, through music, a perfect reflection of thoughts, situations set to poetry.
guitar joe said...
Watch the section in Don't Look Back where he reacts to questions from Horace Freeland Judson. Could be him, and I think it was thought to be him for a while. Now, who knows?
https://expectingrain.com/dok/who/j/judsonhorace.html
Aw, you've been with the professors
And they've all liked your looks,
With great lawyers you have
Discussed lepers and crooks,
You've been through all of
F. Scott Fitzgerald's books,
You are very well read
It's well known.
But something is happening here
And ya' don't know what it is,
Do you, Mister Jones?
Enjoyed the song - still listen to it on occasion. But I also like the Talking Head's "Mr. Jones" - a little bit of a rebuttal.
Post a Comment
Please use the comments forum to respond to the post. Don't fight with each other. Be substantive... or interesting... or funny. Comments should go up immediately... unless you're commenting on a post older than 2 days. Then you have to wait for us to moderate you through. It's also possible to get shunted into spam by the machine. We try to keep an eye on that and release the miscaught good stuff. We do delete some comments, but not for viewpoint... for bad faith.