The Post-Rockist

“Jesus Christ, that’s actually him. That’s…that’s…Bob Dylan!” said Post-Rockist Scotter, to himself, alone with at least 30,000 people at the Harry Grove Stadium in Frederick, Maryland on Saturday, August 20, at exactly 9:38:42 pm, as “him” entered the stage from the plastic-tarped shadows, stage left, sauntering slowly in full Opry duds and side-brim flipped-up cowboy hat.

I remember how I first got into Dylan. My Uncle George would pepper his conversation with profound folkisms occasionally, seeding the soil of banal “how’ve you been” family visits with words that surprised me into attention at the jaded age of 15. Now Uncle George is a smart guy, but these aren’t his own, are they? You don’t need a weather man to know which way the wind blows, but it’s nice to have someone to tell you that the wind exists, you know? That was Uncle George for me. Many an epithet can be tossed upon an insecure pimpled little teenager at his weakest and “unmanliest” of moments, but “the son’s [sic] not yellow, it’s chicken” might be the best. He didn’t so much play me any Dylan songs as he would recite them, word for word–and if you know Dylan you know what that awkward silence was like for everybody else since Uncle George would take his good old time elocutionizing the entirety of “Tangled Up in Blue” or “Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” monopolizing the conversation and throwing sharp dagger looks at anyone making a gesture to interrupt with conversation. Not me. I was enthralled.

So I bought Times They Are A-Changin’. Where else to begin? And it was revolutionary—in its time and in my time, for me. I couldn’t believe this existed. The title track will last forever, no matter how peaceable and democratic life might get (which, realistically, is an unthinkable probability at this point). It’s revolutionary because one’s adolescence is always revolutionary, the revolution all of us strike out into because we are finally becoming our own persons, developing identity on our own and for ourselves alone, no matter how reluctant we might be from fear of the unknown that is within ourselves. “Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command.” That lasts forever in every human being that makes it to puberty. That is the essential revolution, the essential uprising that begins our lives as real and authentic human beings (if it is possible to actually be authentic. But that’s Existentialism, I suppose. This essay is about the Bob Dylan show in Frederick, Maryland. Sorry about the tangent.).

“The Ballad of Hollis Brown,” “Restless Farewell,” and, Christ, “Boots of Spanish Leather”: all so complex and so simple. So obscure to my experience thus far but so completely about and for me. I never thought I would experience heartbreak like I experienced it in “Boots of Spanish Leather.” But I have since.

Dylan started the show with “Maggie’s Farm.” Ah, Bringing It All Back Home! Still my favorite Dylan album. It was the cross-over album from folk to rock, so punk because he did it backward. He could have begun the album with the solo guitar and harmonica acoustic songs, but he decided to begin by pissing off all of his die-hard folky fans. That driving acoustic guitar strum that begins the album certainly felt odd to the album’s first listeners in ’65, but the electric onslaught that charges apace at second 5 of the song certainly blew listeners back in their chairs upon first placing the needle so lovingly and hopefully upon the vinyl disc, expecting the folk hero to please so complacently again. Dylan shook the music world when he first started off, but he announces only later on Bringing It All Back Home that he not busy being born is busy dying, and Dylan has been busy being born again and again throughout his career.

About two-thirds through the show, Dylan played “Highway 61.” Uncle George’s particular favorite:

Well God said to Abraham, “Kill me a son.”
Abe said “Man you must be putting me on.”
God said, “No!” Abe say, “What??”
God said, “You can do what you want Abe,
But the next time you see me comin’ you better run.”
Abe said, “Where you want this killin’ done.”
God said, “On Highway 61.”

That’s the first time I ever thought about religion, really. See, I was raised Catholic, where we treasure the stories of the Bible without ever really reading them. Dylan read the Bible, knew it so well that he could do, over and over again, what all really thoughtful and brilliant artists do: use it and make it their own. The stories—so universally known in this oh-so-Christian nation—can become all of ours. They’re there for the taking. But no folk or rock musician or song writer has ever made them their own so much as Dylan has and still does. He’s always sacrilegious and devoutly true, no matter how much he mocks and mimics those tales, no matter how tall he exposes them to be.

Dylan, sadly, didn’t play any songs from Another Side of Bob Dylan at the concert. That’s probably my second favorite Dylan album. “Ballad in Plain D.” That song helped me through my first real breakup with a long time girlfriend. In reality, she didn’t have such a vicious sister, but in reality she did, because my reality became that song and its plot became my own. I didn’t really love her like I thought I did—had felt for years she was holding me back. But still, when my friends from the prison they asked unto me, “How good, how good does it feel to be free?” I answered them most mysteriously, “Are the birds free from the skyway?” That is what it was like, even thought it wasn’t. But not this time, Mama, ‘cause you’ve been on my mind.

Dylan encored with “Like a Rolling Stone,” that most archetypal of songs in his canon. He also played “Positively 4^th Street.” My father lived on 4^th Street in Monroe, Michigan, and he told me how much he treasured that song for that reason. Both songs are such eviscerating love-hate songs. They are hate songs obviously—revenge songs that Jacobian playwrights would have been in awe of. But vengeful, stabbing lyrics like that are impossible without love. Revenge really is a human reaction to love lost. You want to hurt the one you love because of the unbearable hurt from losing the beloved. Dylan, with all of his obfuscations, is possibly the most human of songwriters.

Most of Dylan’s set was rollicking rhythm n’ blues, but he softened up a bit half-way through the set singing “Girl from North Country.” Remember me to one who lives there. She once was a true love of mine. Dylan sings about true love so often. In his notes to the Biograph collection, Cameron Crowe makes the astute point that with all of the different forms that Dylan has explored, he has written more love songs than any other type of song. So true. Look at the albums. Blood on the Tracks and Desire and Oh, Mercy and Time Out of Mind, and even Freewheelin’. Full of songs of love won and lost. I’ve been listening to Blood on the Tracks a lot lately. Isn’t it essential to do so when you’ve lost love? Isn’t it very strange and almost wicked to listen to anything but Blood on the Tracks when love is lost? “Bird on a horizon, sitting on a fence. He’s singing his song for me at his own expense. And I’m just like that bird…”

Posted by Scotter

www.bobdylan.com

Zimmy’s new album, Modern Times, is out in stores August 29. Buy it because what else are you going spend your money on.