After a week's hiatus, we're revisiting 1969 again this time from a perspective across the Atlantic. Bob Dylan's so-called country album, Nashville Skyline.
It starts with a haunting, lonesome version of his "Girl from North Country", sung with Johnny Cash. It takes the playful courting of the original and turns it into a ballad of loss and longing. L starts to wish into her martini we were listening to Johnny Cash's Live At Folsom Prison instead.
But what the hell is Johnny writing about on the liner notes? "This man can rhyme the tick of time. The edge of pain, the what of sane." The hyperbole wasn't just Cash. The Rolling Stone review of the time includes comparisons to Kafka, Jean-Paul Sartre and Jean-Luc Godard.
Nashville Skyline Rag is an instrumental ragtime piece, moving into the boppy To Be Alone With You. One reason we love this album is that it sounds like Bob and his musos having fun. This album is perfect to relax and just listen to. It's not rocking, it's not challenging, it's just a bunch of great tunes. There are no statements. All the songs are about girls. We love protest music as much as the next white, middle-class, young professional. But all great art is about girls. Period.
And the love songs are beautiful, even with Bob's bloody annoying voice. Lay Lady Lay is like a sombre plea for somebody to stay in your bed. Tonight I'll be Staying Here with You is Bob's best song. It's the song every girl wants her man to play for her. This has been on many a mix tape.
So if you're looking for an album while you pour your lady a drink and try to seduce her, this is it. Bear in mind though, your charm, or the drink, better work fast because you've got a little over 25 minutes until the finale Tonight I'll be Staying Here with You helps you seal the deal.
For me, four words immediately spring to mind when it comes to Bob Dylan. I don't get it.
ReplyDeleteIt may be uncool, it may be uncultured, and it's almost certainly going to be unpopular, but I just don't understand. What it is about this guy, with a voice like a helium-infused dying camel, that makes people go weak at the musical knees?
While I must admit to not having listened to Nashville Skyline, I have heard enough of his other stuff to know that I don't get it, and I don't like it. Except for "Hurricane" that is, but that's most likely because of Denzel's efforts in the movie of the same name. So there's some more unpopular for you.
Yes, he's written some amazing songs. Well, probably more than "some". That's no excuse for sounding the way he does though. Springsteen can do it, so he does. Taupin had to the good sense not to, so why can't Bob? Call me Judas if you must.
Perhaps his popularity stems from the knowledge that if you sing along to any of his songs, you're guaranteed to sound better than he does. Just ask the Whitlams.