Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Reductionism

Am going through agony at the moment trying to decide which of the Bobster's songs to include in my talk on His Bobness due in early May. The time's so short I reckon I can only fit in comments on 3 or 4 at most. So which is it to be?

Like A Rolling Stone, or the first verse at least, makes the impossibly cruel cut since I'm intending to use it to illustrate the necessity of hearing Dylan's lyrics sung (by Dylan, preferably) to experience of the totality of the 'text', if that word makes sense here. But as for the two (or just maybe three) others? I change my mind everyday.

Today it's Isis (partly because I can illustrate it with the storming live version that featured in Reynaldo & Clara) (but, doh!!!, that misses the first verse.) And Everything Is Broken for almost late period minimalism and a great 'list' song (but I'm conflicted as to which version to use, and it's not exactly really late so it hardly does justice to the magnificent run of albums starting from Time Out Of Mind and continuing to this day) (and what about the early protest songs?) (and what about the foolishly neglected 'born again' songs?) (and, and, and?)

This is impossible. But sort of fun.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Would love to listen to ones like Don't Think Twice, It's Alright or Mr Tambourine Man. Just the sheer listening pleasures are enough to seal the deal for me!

Brian Connor said...

'Sheer listening pleasures' aptly sums it all up. It doesn't get much more sheer than the two songs you mention.