Dylan wins Nobel Prize in Literature


Awesome.   Best news I've read in a while.
128x128mapman
Mapman, I think you are right, but there must be something more than that. 
Tostadosunidos, this is not about me. As you said, Bob Dylan is in the minority. I would not be completely surprised if he refused the award. He will not feel comfortable among all those people who received this award in the past. Go, Bob, do the right thing !
****perhaps the biggest artistic impact on the world over his time****

"Over his time" being the key distinction. Thank goodness for moderation.  

****Absolutely and by a wide margin the most significant, influential, "important" artist of the 20th Century---bar none,****

Yikes!  Appreciate the appreciation (and the artist); but, really?

Congrats, Bob!
Simon's lyrics are of the "pretty poetry" type. Dylan's are profound, if you "get" them. ;-)
bd nice assessment and hard to disagree with.  his impact is huge perhaps the biggest artistic impact on the world over his time.
Inna like Johnny Cash, he understands and is able to relate to people. I think that’s what mostly matters and his style and technique are just a means to that end.  Also both are true to themselves and come across as humble.   It all adds up.
Inna,  I feel sorry for you if you find his lyrics "so-so" and not poetic.  I guess you realize you're in the minority here.  No other musician has ever received this award. 
Funny! Bob is drinking from a wine bottle, and sounds pretty drunk. He and John, discussing Johnny Cash and Barry McGuire. John sounds a little self conscious, and seems to be trying to appear cool to Bob.

Allen Ginsburg, upon hearing Dylan in 1962, was reduced to tears. He said he knew the torch had been passed from his generation to the next. Dylan single-handedly changed the world, not least of all by transforming John Lennon, who pre-Dylan was merely a Pop songwriter. Without Dylan showing him what was possible, John would not have become the writer he did (for better or worse ;-). He also introduced John and the other Beatles to Jazz cigarettes!

Dylan has had many "periods" (as they call them in the world of painting), changing styles without warning. The difference between 1966’s Blonde On Blonde and it’s 1968 follow-up John Wesley Harding (one of his most personal, with a lot of religious imagery) is absolutely staggering---it’s hard to believe they came from the same person. Both are amongst his best, but completely---and I mean completely---different from one another. On Blonde on Blonde he is wound tighter than a drum core snare drum head, sparks flying off him (he was pretty amped up on amphetamines in ’65-6), his Strat cranked up and running down the road at about ninety miles a hour, the rate at which the surrealistic lyrics are flying by. He has a pretty big band, with multiple electric guitars, piano, and organ. On JWH he is playing an acoustic Martin, about as relaxed as you can imagine, singing what sounds like theology discussions in a seminary. Really heady stuff, far, far beyond what anyone else had ever done, to this day, in Pop music.

Always over-looked is his "Born Again" period, during which he produced three solid albums, all having a Southern Gospel feel. Really good music, but the Christian lyrics are off-putting to atheists, which his traditional audience---the counter-culture baby boomers---mostly are. It was funny to watch their reaction to him becoming a "Jew For Jesus"!

His 1974 Before The Flood live double album with The Band, his best collaborators, is a good place to get a lot of great Dylan songs, played and sung with a lot of energy---Dylan absolutely spits out the words. It was recorded on his first tour since 1966, on which The Hawks (who became The Band upon the release of their 1968 debut album Music From Big Pink) were his, heh, band. The studio album they did together around the time of the live album, Planet Waves, is an overlooked little gem, a personal favorite of mine. It has recently been released on vinyl and SACD by Mobile Fidelity in great sound.

All his albums from Time Out Of Mind (1998’s Grammy Album of the year) forward are really good imo, having a number of hypnotically-entrancing songs ("Not Dark Yet" is a masterpiece) I can’t get enough of. You get sucked into the world Dylan creates, temporarily leaving your body and losing sense of time. Not many other "Pop" songwriters are capable of that, unlike Classical composers, who routinely do it.

Absolutely and by a wide margin the most significant, influential, "important" artist of the 20th Century---bar none, even for those who don’t particularly like him. It’s inconceivable what Pop music would now sound like had Dylan not been born. He alone changed Rock ’n’ Roll from teenage music to adult art. Some hard-core 1950’s Rockers I know wish he hadn’t!

I any case, he was given the prize because of his great influence not because he is a great poet - that he is not. But perhaps Peace Prize would've been more appropriate.
Congrats! Bob.

throughout his legendary career, so many phases, there is something to be learned from any singer/songwriter.

Happy Listening!
There is something in Dylan that resonates with so many people around the world. What could it be ? He is a terrible singer, his lyrics is so-so, his guitar playing skills are rudimentary, his melodies can be nice but nothing special. Hell, I too find something in there, don't know what.
Inna,
I see same way Leonard Cohen (also Jewish fella) who often is called by many Canadian Bob Dylan. To me Leonard Cohen is sort-of better 'version' of Bob Dylan.
Serge Gainsbourg is actually more new-wave artist than bard or songwriter.
highway 61 may have been the zenith of his songwriting, but blonde on blonde has always been my bitch--for my money it's his best-sounding, best sung and most organic. it's nice to be discussing him in the context of an honor as opposed to an RIP.
Oh I see, in his own way a lot like French bard Serge Gainsbourg. Both Jewish boys.
Mapman - with all due respect - a great list of albums from Dylan - but all you really gotta do is listen to two of those plus one more...

Time Out of Mind
Blood On The Tracks
John Wesley Harding

If you don't get it with those, you ain't gonna.




geoffkait
4,057 posts
10-13-2016 10:21am
As always the Nobel committee is right on top of it.

Especially when given prize to Yaser Arafat and Baraq Obama...
Freewheelin Bob Dylan
Highway 65 Revisited
Blonde on Blonde
Blood on the Tracks
Infidels
Oh Mercy
Together Through Life
Tempest
Love and Theft
Time Out of Mind

These represent better received ones overall. Most others worthwhile as well. Depends on what one is looking for and might enjoy. You can start with the more recent ones and go backwards or vice versa. Personally I like the musical variety shown in his more recent works but the older ones are still consdiered teh classics after many years.

Would you recommend couple of Dylan's albums, I only heard him once a long time ago?

 
mapman OP
13,766 posts
10-13-2016 11:18am
Geof from what I've read I suspect one thing we would agree on is admiration for Bob Dylan.

You probably need to watch Don't Look Back again.

;-)

I can´t believe this. 

The world upside down.

Mr. Philip Roth, you have to wait.

Mr. Jorge Luis Borges, you´ve waited for so long and see where you finally ended up.
Geof from what I've read I suspect one thing we would agree on is admiration for Bob Dylan.


Dylan music takes up the biggest shelf in my music collection. 50+ years, and still touring (at 75). Overdue, but well deserved. Congratulations!
"Now everything’s a little upside down
As a matter of fact the wheels have stopped
What’s good is bad, what’s bad is good
You’ll find out when you reach the top
You’re on the bottom"

RZ - Idiot Wind

Congrats, Bob.   (I think).

http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/13/world/nobel-prize-literature/

really surprising, but well deserved. whatever you think of his body of work in musical terms, he's our greatest lyricist by a wide margin. i still enjoy reading his "lyrics-1962-1985," which work as poetry on their own terms.