Friday 27 May 2011

blind boy grunt

think what you like, say what you like, here are 70 reasons why. I don't agree with all of them, and you don't have to enjoy listening to him to agree with at least some of them.  Oh, you did know that Blind Boy Grunt is one of the many names Mr Dylan has used, hein?  And did I mention we have tickets to see him play in Hamburg in late June?  Where I have wanted to go ever since the Beatles played there when I was in primary school.  Only went up on his website a day or two ago but I have had tickets for weeks, and have booked the Deutsche Bahn Inter City Nightliner train, so there.  Not that I'm excited or anything. 

Unlike some of my readers, I can remember the late 60s and early 70s, when I was young and foolish, and I remember how the media used to say, when a new Dylan album was coming out "What is he going to do next?" When the Rolling Stones were bringing out a new one they said "Can they still do it?"

I don't like lists, but the best Dylan songs, some of them the best songs ever, in no particular order and definitely not exhaustive:
Visions of Johanna
Desolation Row
Like A Rolling Stone
Gates of Eden
currently listening a lot to Beyond Here Lies Nothin' (from Together Through Life)
oh, too many more to mention

some of the best lines
"Something is happening, but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr Jones?"
"If for just one minute you could stand inside my shoes, you'd know what a drag it is to see you"
"Jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule"
"Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot were fighting in the captain's tower, while calypso singers laugh at them and fishermen throw flowers" (that's really two lines, I know)
"Yonder stands your orphan with his gun, crying like a fire in the sun" (that's really two as well)

which songs are those from? (no googling allowed, they came out of my head so they can come out of yours)

and give me some of your favourite lines, maybe like "Here's your throat back, thanks for the loan" and I'll come back with some more.

Happy 70th birthday Bob

my summer project is to digitise all my music so EVERYTHING will be on my iPod.  I will be selling some 60s and 70s vinyl after that, but not my precious ones like my mono Sergeant Pepper, bought with my birthday money the week it came out and with my name on it in a 13-year-old's handwriting.  So if there's anything you fancy...

8 comments:

Derek said...

"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows"

and

"The pump don't work 'cause the vandals took the handles"

both from the same song...

janestheone said...

Subterranean Homesick Blues

Augustus Carp said...

Agree wholeheartedly with your first few choices, but I think I would include Tangled up in Blue in there somewhere.

Anonymous said...

Lucky thing that album happened have your name on it.

janestheone said...

wasn't it just! that's what I thought too.

GIDEON MACK said...

Each to his/her own. Personally I find Bob 'overdose' BGM.

Anonymous said...

By far his best song is Positively 4th Street.

Its regulated hatred is as fresh and relevant as ever - my targets for its sentiments increase with the years. But nobody - once ON that target list is ever taken off........

And similarly, as the years pass, I feel that I was not at all foolish in the late sixties and early seventies. Probably more sane and rational than I have been since - certainly more true to myself. I made a massive error of judgement in 1977 - truly foolish - and have been paying for it ever since.

Sex Badger said...

Just Like a Woman
Mighty Quinn
Make You Feel My Love
I'll Be Your Baby Tonight
From A Buik 6