Bob Dylan Modern Times

[sal]

I think that I agree with king ubu on this one. How many jazz tunes "steal" the changes from other tunes that came before? If you apply the same mentality to jazz, that would cut out alot of great jazz from your life.

[bluesbro]

From Dylan's Rollin and tumbin:

"The night's filled with shadows, the years are filled with early doom

The night is filled with shadows, the years are filled with early doom

I've been conjuring up all these long dead souls from their crumblin' tombs "

"The landscape is glowin', gleamin' in the golden light of day

The landscape is glowin', gleamin' in the golden light of day

I ain't holdin' nothin' back now, I ain't standin' in anybody's way "

From Dylan's Someday Baby:

"I'm so hard pressed, my mind tied up in knots

I keep recycling the same old thoughts

Someday baby, you ain't gonna worry po' me any more"

"Well, I don't want to brag, but I'm gonna wring your neck

When all else fails I'll make it a matter of self respect

Someday baby, you ain't gonna worry po' me any more "

Just a sample. I think he can claim authorship to those 2 songs. Neither Muddy nor Robert Johnson nor Willie Dixon nor Lightnin wrote lyrics resembling that.

Edited September 6, 2006 by bluesbro

[Alexander]

From Dylan's Rollin and tumbin:

"The night's filled with shadows, the years are filled with early doom

The night is filled with shadows, the years are filled with early doom

I've been conjuring up all these long dead souls from their crumblin' tombs "

"The landscape is glowin', gleamin' in the golden light of day

The landscape is glowin', gleamin' in the golden light of day

I ain't holdin' nothin' back now, I ain't standin' in anybody's way "

From Dylan's Someday Baby:

"I'm so hard pressed, my mind tied up in knots

I keep recycling the same old thoughts

Someday baby, you ain't gonna worry po' me any more"

"Well, I don't want to brag, but I'm gonna wring your neck

When all else fails I'll make it a matter of self respect

Someday baby, you ain't gonna worry po' me any more "

Just a sample. I think he can claim authorship to those 2 songs. Neither Muddy nor Robert Johnson nor Willie Dixon nor Lightnin wrote lyrics resembling that.

Agreed. Moreover, Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, Willie Dixon, and Lightnin' Hopkins all "borrowed" lyrics and melodies from other musicians. There are whole books written on the sources of Robert Johnson's songs. I don't recall Johnson ever crediting anyone other than himself. Same goes for Muddy and Willie. This is not to say that they weren't artists of the highest order (they were) but that our standards of "originality" are unreasonable. Everybody has ears and other songs are going to find their way into original composition. That's why George Harrison was quite honestly able to claim that he didn't realize that he was "sampling" "He's So Fine" when he wrote "My Sweet Lord." Remember, in the Mississippi Delta there was no such thing as ownership of a song. All songs were in the air. It was only when (white) businessmen came along that questions of copyright and intellectual property became an issue. Did Muddy steal "Mannish Boy" from Bo Diddly? Did Jimmy Page steal "Whole Lotta Love" from Muddy Waters? Does it really matter?

[rostasi]

I find it fascinating that some posters on this board and also on Blindman's Blues board are quite passionate about defending Bob from these issues. What has Bob done to inspire such devotion?

I have been a big Dylan fan for over 35 years and have over 100 of his albums, but I do not feel that he is always right, that he must be defended and that his attackers must be vanquished. But some people seem to feel that way. I genuinely wonder why.

Reminds me a bit of the people who back the Chimp In Charge regardless of what truths are presented to them.

Like I've said before: Influence...sampling...chord changes...are one thing -

It's quite another to plagiarize another's work and call it your own.

[rostasi]

Just a sample. I think he can claim authorship to those 2 songs. Neither Muddy nor Robert Johnson nor Willie Dixon nor Lightnin wrote lyrics resembling that.

Post #41?

[Alexander]

I find it fascinating that some posters on this board and also on Blindman's Blues board are quite passionate about defending Bob from these issues. What has Bob done to inspire such devotion?

I have been a big Dylan fan for over 35 years and have over 100 of his albums, but I do not feel that he is always right, that he must be defended and that his attackers must be vanquished. But some people seem to feel that way. I genuinely wonder why.

I don't think that Dylan is "always right" and must be defended at all costs. I just think that this particular issue is one in which Dylan is not wrong. Check my posts in the past. You'll see that I've always maintained that copyright laws are out of date and incapable of dealing with the realities of the creative process. The idea that every new composition is wholly original is laughable. Mankind hasn't had a wholly original idea in a millenia (if not longer). Everything is derived from something else. I'm not saying that Dylan has the right to plagerize, but rather that Dylan isn't doing anything that's different from what anyone else has done.

[JSngry]

i don't have the energy for the primary issue here BUT...

what is w/the endless cumshots for Blood on the Trakcs?

Hell if I know either. I'll take Planet Waves any day of the week, and twice on holidays.

[jazzbo]

i don't have the energy for the primary issue here BUT...

what is w/the endless cumshots for Blood on the Trakcs?

a fine record but

1) not his "best"

2) & there's plenty of stuff as good or better even YOU think it is, '75-'95, tho' with ups & downs (more ups then you think if you follow studio stuff he didn't release)

3) A LOT OF WORDS, like BOTT has, doesn't mean all of 'em are great

4) i sentence all of you BOTT loyalists to a Jerry Garcia "Tangle Up In Blue" weekend & don't get me wrong, I like Jerry, a lot, but still...

5) Modern Times is on a par w/Street Legal-- take that as you will

c

It's personal preferrences Clem, and I don't like a lot of stuff you do, and I like BOT best of all the Dylans I have, just because.

[jazzbo]

i don't have the energy for the primary issue here BUT...

what is w/the endless cumshots for Blood on the Trakcs?

Hell if I know either. I'll take Planet Waves any day of the week, and twice on holidays.

Honestly, I like Planet Waves, New Morning, and Self Portrait nearly as well as BOT.

[jazzbo]

Planet Waves is amazing. I like all his collaborations with The Band, but that one is. . . special.

[Hot Ptah]

It is my personal opinion, which no one needs to agree with, that Dylan went beyond borrowing, sampling and using influences here, and that one or more old bluesmen should be given songwriting credits for at least the music, if not the lyrics, of at least two songs on Modern Times. The music is indistinguishable from old recorded and copyrighted blues songs.

Because Muddy Waters did not fight Phil and Leonard Chess in 1952 and gain control of the copyright and publishing process at Chess Records away from the owners of the company, and then credit others besides himself for the composing of "Trouble No More"--to me this is no excuse at all for Dylan to steal the music of two old blues songs in 2006 with no credit to anyone.

Dylan has great knowledge of older music; virtually unlimited resources at his disposal; teams of attorneys, accountants and publishers working for and/or with him; and the clout within the industry to insist on a change in his CD booklet. There is no comparison in my mind between his situation and that of old bluesmen from the 1930s and 1940s recording old songs and having the record come out with their name on it (frequently with the owner of the record company as "co-composer.") Dylan does not deserve to be cut so much slack on this issue, in my opinion. He is hardly a naive bumpkin.

[Neal Pomea]

i don't have the energy for the primary issue here BUT...

what is w/the endless cumshots for Blood on the Trakcs?

a fine record but

1) not his "best"

2) & there's plenty of stuff as good or better even YOU think it is, '75-'95, tho' with ups & downs (more ups then you think if you follow studio stuff he didn't release)

For the period from 75 to 95, I liked Slow Traing Coming, Shot of Love, Infidels, and Biograph the most. I sort of lost track after Empire Burlesque, until Time Out of Mind.

[md655321]

Oh Mercy from 89 is a fantastic record. His best since Desire (and probably better.) Very much like time Out of Mind

[Neal Pomea]

I have something called the Genuine Basement Tapes, http://www.punkhart.com/dylan/reviews/basement_tapes.html

Is that considered part of this set?

I love Genuine Basement Tapes a whole lot, though the sound is hard to take at times.

[jazzbo]

I could care less whether rock critics liked BOTT or whatever. What I love about it is two-fold. First, the stories of most the songs have a reality and a mundaneness that is moving to me, and lacking in a lot of his other works. All those songs in Desire about boxers and gangsters, yah yah yah. Turns me off. But "You're a Big Girl Now," "Tangled Up In Blue," "Next Time You See Her," etc. That's stuff I can hear again and again. Planet Waves has those sorts of tunes as well.

Secondly, BOTT has excellent musicians and arrangements and sound and flow. It really is genuinely pretty and well-executed and flowing. I just marvel at the atmosphere and mood and beauty. A sort of pinnacle of that sort of Dylan material for me. (Just as Planet Waves is a sort of a pinnacle of the rock sound, texture and execution that was started in the sixties).

There are other really good albums after these, but none of them really hit me in the same way. Don't seem as realized or "real." I have favorites (including Under the Red Sky and Real Live and Time Out of Mind) but BOTT means the most to me.

[montg]

Generally I have a preference for Dylan albums that have a rough, sort of impromptu quality to them--an 'in the moment' feel. The mid sixties stuff, John Wesley Harding, street legal, shot of love (perhaps may favorite) all have this quality. It's always astonished me that someone as famous as Bob Dylan would allow himself to be overwhelmed in the studio by a slick-sounding producer (Arthur Baker's automatized hand claps on Empire Burlesque perhaps being the nadir). Even though stuff like Slow Train and Oh Mercy is 'critically acclaimed', it has never connected with me, it just sounds too slick. Modern Times is produced by Dylan and is all the better for it.

Sorry Lon, I'm usually right there with you when it comes to likes and dislikes in music, but BOTT, though not overproduced perhaps, sounds a little too note-perfect and pretty and a little unreal to me (I know most think just the opposite--that BOTT is very real, reflecting the marriage breakup and all). To each his own, at least when it comes to music

Edited September 8, 2006 by montg

[Neal Pomea]

I like the ragged but right Basement Tapes, especially the unofficial ones mentioned in my earlier post. Kicking My Dog is just hilarious.

[GregK]

I never liked Slow Train, Infidels, Empire Burlesque but I think Planet Waves, Oh Mercy and Street Legals are among his best. Right up there with Blood on the Tracks and Love and Theft

[Matthew]

I like the ragged but right Basement Tapes, especially the unofficial ones mentioned in my earlier post. Kicking My Dog is just hilarious.

Young But Daily Growing is one of my favorite Dylan cuts.

[Alexander]

I like the ragged but right Basement Tapes, especially the unofficial ones mentioned in my earlier post. Kicking My Dog is just hilarious.

"Every time I go to town

The boys keep kicking my dog around..."

[Alexander]

I never liked Slow Train, Infidels, Empire Burlesque but I think Planet Waves, Oh Mercy and Street Legals are among his best. Right up there with Blood on the Tracks and Love and Theft

I love Slow Train, Infidels, Planet Waves, Oh Mercy, Love and Theft and Street Legal. Don't really care for Empire Burlesque...

[chris olivarez]

What little snippets I've heard of this I liked. Will check it out more in the future.

[Elissa]

It seems that Henry Timrod contributed some influence here.

No Doubt about it, there has been some borrowing going on,” said Walter Brian Cisco, who wrote a 2004 biography of Timrod, when shown Mr. Dylan’s lyrics. Mr. Cisco said he could find at least six other phrases from Timrod’s poetry that appeared in Mr. Dylan’s songs. But Mr. Cisco didn’t seem particularly bothered by that. “I’m glad Timrod is getting some recognition,” he said.

Henry Timrod was born in 1828 and was a private tutor on plantations before the Civil War started. He tried to sign up for the Confederate Army but was unable to serve in the field because he suffered from tuberculosis. He worked as an editor for a daily paper in Columbia, S.C., and began writing poems about the war and how it affected the residents of the South. He also wrote love poems and ruminations on nature. During his lifetime he published only one volume of poetry. Among his most famous poems were “Ode Sung on the Occasion of Decorating the Graves of the Confederate Dead at Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, South Carolina 1866,” and “Ethnogenesis.” Mr. Cisco said he could not find any phrases from these poems in Mr. Dylan’s lyrics.

...

This time around Scott Warmuth, a disc jockey in Albuquerque and a former music director for WUSB, a public radio station in Stony Brook, on Long Island, discovered the concordances between Mr. Dylan’s lyrics and Timrod’s poetry by doing some judicious Google searches. Mr. Warmuth said he wasn’t surprised to find that Mr. Dylan had leaned on a strong influence in writing his lyrics.

“I think that’s the way Bob Dylan has always written songs,” he said. “It’s part of the folk process, even if you look from his first album until now.”

Mr. Warmuth noted that Mr. Dylan may also have used a line from Timrod in “ ’Cross the Green Mountain,” a song he wrote for the soundtrack to the movie “Gods and Generals,” which came out three years ago. Mr. Warmuth said there also appeared to be passages from Timrod in “Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum,” a song on “Love and Theft.”

Mr. Dylan has long been interested in the Civil War: in “Chronicles: Vol. 1,” Mr. Dylan’s autobiography, published by Simon & Schuster in 2004, he writes about spending time in the New York Public Library combing through microfilm copies of newspapers published from 1855 to 1865. “I crammed my head full of as much of this stuff as I could stand and locked it away in my mind out of sight, left it alone,” Mr. Dylan wrote.

To Mr. Warmuth, who found 10 phrases echoing Timrod’s poetry on “Modern Times,” Mr. Dylan’s work is still original. “You could give the collected works of Henry Timrod to a bunch of people, but none of them are going to come up with Bob Dylan songs,” he said.

Article in NYTimes today.

[rostasi]

Timrod's been all over Dylan's work for decades now.

This, just from his Red Sails... ripoff on the new CD:

Henry Timrod (from the poem "Our Willie"):

"Which drowned the memories of the time/In a merely mortal bliss!"

Bob Dylan (from "Beyond the Horizon"):

"My memories are drowning/In mortal bliss"

Timrod's "Katie":

"And o'er the city sinks and swells

The chime of old St. Mary's bells"

Dylan: "Beyond the Horizon":

"The bells of St. Mary, how sweetly they chime"

[rostasi]

Some examples from an online forum:

When The Deal Goes Down" -

"More frailer than the flowers, these precious hours"

Henry Timrod's poem "A Rhapsody of a Southern Winter Night" -

"A round of precious hours/Oh! here, where in that summer noon I basked/And strove, with logic frailer than the flowers"

-------------------------------------------------

"When The Deal Goes Down" -

"In the still of the night, in the world's ancient light/Where wisdom grows up in strife"

Timrod's poem "Retirement" -

"There is a wisdom that grows up in strife"

-------------------------------------------------

"When The Deal Goes Down" -

"Well, the moon gives light and it shines by night/When I scarcely feel the glow "

Timrod's "Two Portraits" -

"Still stealing on with pace so slow/Yourself will scarcely feel the glow"

-------------------------------------------------

"When The Deal Goes Down" -

"You come to my eyes like a vision from the skies "

Timrod's "A Vision of Poesy - Part 01" -

"A strange far look would come into his eyes/As if he saw a vision in the skies."

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"When The Deal Goes Down" -

"Things I never meant nor wished to say"

Timrod's "Sonnet 13" -

"Things which you neither meant nor wished to say"

-------------------------------------------------

"Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum" -

"Well a childish dream is a deathless need"

Timrod's "A Vision of Poesy - Part 01"

"A childish dream is now a deathless need"

-------------------------------------------------

"Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum" -

"They walk among the stately trees/They know the secrets of the breeze"

Timrod's "A Vision of Poesy - Part 01" -

"And high and hushed arose the stately trees,

Yet shut within themselves, like dungeons, where

Lay fettered all the secrets of the breeze"

-------------------------------------------------

"'Cross The Green Mountain" -

"Along the dim Atlantic line/The ravaged land lies for miles behind" which are similar to

Timrod's "Charleston" -

"But still, along yon dim Atlantic line/The only hostile smoke/Creeps like a harmless mist above the brine/From some frail, floating oak."