“I’m A Poet! I Know It! Hope I Don’t Blow It!”; A Proper Introduction To Bob Dylan

As Aaron mentioned in his introduction of me, I am quite knowledgeable in the areas of The Beatles, Bob Dylan, and US-Canadian Relations. For my second Enough Cowbell article, I considered writing on the precarious relationship between John Diefenbaker and the Kennedy Administration, focusing on the hesitant cooperation of “Dief the Chief” during the Cuban Missile Crisis; however, I decided such a nuanced report would have to be crafted when I had more time for detailed research.

Instead, I decided to try and tackle a far more ongoing issue: listening to Bob Dylan.

No matter who an individual is on the spectrum of musical preferences, it is rare to encounter someone that does not recognize the pure excellence of The Beatles, or at a bare minimum someone that respects and appreciates what they accomplished. The same does not hold true with Dylan, where one sees far less unified praise. Of course you have your terrifying obsessive fans, (“Should I go for the 8-CD Live 1966 set or the 26-CD set? Those extra Australian radio broadcasts would be pretty sweet!” – Billy Clark), but to the same extreme you have people who will confidently state: “I could sing better than Bob Dylan” – a former friend of Billy Clark).

Within that vast middle area, I believe there is a large portion of people that truly would appreciate the brilliance of Dylan’s music if they could get a foothold on his domineering catalogue: 32 studio albums and a staggeringly stupid amount of bootlegs. And even I will admit how inconceivably awful some of these albums are; for every Highway 61 Revisited there is a Down In The Groove. To these lost souls looking for deliverance, I offer myself to you as your folk-rock Moses, guiding you to a land of milk, honey, amphetamines, occasional fundamentalist Christianity, and earth-shatteringly great songs. Here are three paths by which to enter the Promise Land.

1) The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963)

Freewheelin’ was the album that launched Dylan out of the coffee houses and into the pop music scene, as it has some of his most well known and revered songs (Blowin’ In The Wind, A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall). The beauty of the album in its cross generational synthesis of the form of traditional folk songs with the words of startlingly poignant political critique just at the start of the civil rights movement. Unifying all of Freewheelin’ is the youthful vibrancy and passion of a twenty-two year old who was still sleeping on couches and living off cheeseburgers in Greenwich Village. This is where the legend began and it is a great place to begin one’s appreciation of his art.

2) Bringing It All Back Home (1965)

Bob Dylan in 1965 was the supposed voice of the young generation, appointed by everyone but himself. He was the leader of the folk revival movement, the genre of revolution for what was assumed to be years to come. All he needed to do was toe the line as the marketable rebellious acoustic troubadour. This is not what he does. Instead, with a newfound pulse of screaming Chicago blues side-by-side with wistful echoes of MacDougal Street, Bringing It All Back Home proclaimed itself as a stunning calamity of genre defying genius. We see Dylan waving farewell to his past and embracing his future, all the while holding the match to light the world on fire

My final path is a mix I have painstakingly organized to highlight his entire career. It is a collage of defining themes and ideas, the central one established by the opening track “Last Thoughts On Woody Guthrie”. Whether spitting his whispered wisdom to the still silence of an overflowing hall or bleeding his drowned words to the cursing screams of mutinous devotees, Bob Dylan is a poet of the highest order.

A Proper Introduction To Bob Dylan: Muxtape

Bob Dylan Intro Mix:

1. Last Thoughts On Woody Guthrie (Live 1963) -The Bootleg Series Vol. 1

2. It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry (1965) -The Bootleg Series Vol. 7

3. Simple Twist Of Fate (1974) - Blood On The Tracks

4. Bob Dylan’s 115^th Dream (1965) - Bringing It All Back Home

5. Blood In My Eyes (1993) - World Gone Wrong

6. Visions Of Johanna (1966) - Blonde On Blonde

7. You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere (1971) - Greatest Hits Vol. 2

8. The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll (1963) - The Times, They Are A-Changin’

9. Not Dark Yet (1997) - Time Out Of Mind

10. Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right (1963) - The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan

11. Like A Rolling Stone (Live 1966) - The Bootleg Series Vol. 7

Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically each day to your feed reader. If you don't have a feed reader, you can always have these articles delivered to your email inbox every day. Click here to sign up.