blowin in the wind

I'm a bit of a student of Bob Dylan myself, meaning I have read a few books.  Books, ahem, not videios, just kidding.  When he was in high school he had his own little rock and roll band,  His favorite musician was Bobby Vee.  He went to the University of Minnesota he wasn't interested in very much, kind of drifted, he was a dropout.  Remember college dropouts kind of romantic figures of the sixties?

One time he was left alone in a house full of folk music records.  It was one of those moments when you kind of stumble on something, and it's like holy shit was is this stuff?

Or so he says, this is taken from his book Chronicles.  To me there has always been a bit of a flim flam man in Bob, a guy who will never give you a straight answer if he can think of a crooked one.  This may sound like a criticism, but I rather like that about the guy, the flim flam thing.

And there was certainly a bit of a flim flam when Bob hit the New York folksinging scene.  Very good movie about that time, Finding Llewellyn Davis, just giving it a plug.  He told a whole passel of lies at the time including his name and his background and he threw in all these hobo references because hobos were kind of revered in folk music at the time.

He hit it big ladies and germs, was at the top of his genre, was seen by many as the spokesman of his generation.  But according to him, it made him a little uneasy, you gotta be kind of careful what you say when you are the spokesmen of your generation,

And Bobby wanted to be free, and maybe the world of folk music was too small for him, and maybe he still had that hoodlum Debil's music, rock and roll in his veins because then he hauled out the electrical equipment at that music festival.


Dylan did write some poetry, some of it was on his record albums.  How sad that we no longer have liner notes.  And there was a book, Tarantula that never got read much.  Probably the music that most impressed the Noblists was his early folksongs,  When he went electric he began getting into surrealism, pretty words, nice phrases, but when you put it all together, what the hell is he talking about?

I think Old Dog is shorting Bob on his music.  I was recently listening to Blood on the Tracks and Tangled up in Blue and Simple Twist of Fate are still rolling through my mind.  Another thing I read about in those books is he is not interested in playing a song the same way twice.  When he records an album he gathers together a bunch of musicians, who sit around waiting for the plans and the Bob just bursts into song and they have to scramble to catch up, so there is an air of spontaneity to the whole thing.