Rolling Stone has this thing at #4. Say what you will about Rolling Stone, or about Bob Dylan, this is the kind of album you know even if you don't actually know.
That's been my experience, anyway. Until April I hadn't listened to these songs as an album, front-to-back. I'd only met them on Greatest Hits collections, in documentaries, and in sundry disparate circumstance. It was like I'd been letting other people get my kicks for me. Listening now makes me wonder, if I had grabbed this album instead ofGreatest Hits Vol. I when I was at Record Express before a cello lesson some afternoon, would I have gone to law school?
Bob Dylan played Hartford with Paul Simon on July 24th, 1999. Matt, Jay and I had GA tickets on the lawn at the new half-covered amphitheater. My girlfriend also attended. She got her ticket through her Dad's Audi dealership on the morning of the show. It came with a parking spot and a free buffet. She preferred Paul Simon's set. So did the Hartford Courant's reviewer. Neither had appreciated the drunk people shouting, how does it feeeeeeeeel?
Of course I preferred Dylan's set. (I had just read this now-archived New Yorker article and I had been excited to hear him "make a mess of the songs.") My girlfriend and I had this only-half-imaginary conversation after the show:
Tom's Girlfriend: I did not like the Bob Dylan.
Tom: Really? I thought some of those guitar parts were cool.
Tom's Girlfriend: That wasn't him. That was his guitar player.
Tom: Hmmm. Something is happening here but you don't know what it is.
Tom's Girlfriend: And the Bob Dylan's voice isn't very pretty.
Tom: You should be made to wear earphones.
This album makes me feel like, whenever you can muster the energy to say "fuck you", you should always and definitely say "fuck you." Or, as Dylan explains on the back of the album, "if you do not know where the Insanity Factory is located, you should hereby take two steps to the right, paint your teeth & go to sleep." (Here he is making similar sense with John Lennon in the back of a cab in 1966.)
More than anything else, this album makes me think about what is possible and what is chosen. We are, today, concerned about next generations and whether they will appreciate the right influences; whether there are iconic albums or books to which they just will not relate. Dylan's musical innovations on Highway 61 today need contextualization. His lyrical sneer does not. This is the only Dylan album my high school music fans even know. I asked them, then what's mine?
They told me, where, what is?
(And also, I hadn't realized that "Deslolation Row" describes actual lynchings that took place in Duluth in 1920.)
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