A friend writes:
"Ok. I give up. I don't really like Bob Dylan at all. Not the singing. Not the invention of a whole genre of performers, the odious singer-songwriters. Not the Christianity or the whole 'voice of a generation' thing. The manufacture of a persona famous for being famous. I dislike his celebrity and his unease with being a celebrity. I dislike his sincerity and his insincerity. I dislike the fact that he is considered a 'poet' by many. Did he write some good songs? Sure, but so did a hundred other people that don't have that sort of mystic aura around them. Give me Lorenz Hart or Johnny Mercer.
This dislike is not a badge of cultural superiority. I'm sure a lot of people that like Dylan are 'superior' to me culturally, however one might measure such an absurd concept. It is simply my own private ressentiment."
5 comentarios:
Wasn't Johnny Mercer a singer/songwriter?
everybody's so solemn with these confessions.
My mother felt no such guilty compunction. About most pop stars, she used to say, "Oh, he's just another of those Pied Pipers".
Isn't this more about people who like Dylan than about his music? He didn't invent the singer-songwriter or brand himself voice of a generation. Record companies and the media did all that. As for "influence", aren't Garrison Keiler or Billy Collins much more oppresive than Bob Dylan's music? I mean come on. If poets don't "need" Dylan, what music or other media do they need?
Without people who like Dylan there would be no Dylan.
And yes, I hate Garrison Keillor too. And Billy Collins.
And no, Mercer is not a "singer-songwriter."
I dislike the fact that Dylan stole folk records from a collector friend in the name of being "a musical expeditionary."
-Phil
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