Monday, December 06, 2010

Positively Dead End Street

I was given a link to this fascinating Wall Street Journal article about old rockers, Bob Dylan specifically. It states what I've been saying for years. Bob Dylan is a national treasure. Bob Dylan is one of the most influential musicians in history. Bob Dylan is an arrogant old man whose voice is completely shot and is non -intelligible in any live performance. Bob Dylan should quit.

Here is the link: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704594804575648691223353352.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_editorsPicks_3


Don't hate me and this writer because we speak the truth. Everybody has a shelf life. The bottom line is, if you are a singer, songwriter, musician who HAS to sing songs...it is your JOB to sing songs and you can NO LONGER sing those songs, don't try to fool your fans by plodding along and touring relentlessly like nothing is wrong, when you sound like a smoked out, burnt up throat cancer survivor who can't hit any notes,  who sings in a mumbled monotonic rush of refashioned lyrics. We aren't hearing the songs. We aren't hearing anything.

Your legacy is intact.

Go back to gardening or even motorcycle riding. Unless your voice can heal, unless you give a shit about finding it again,  you've got to stop. And all of you critics who call Time out of Mind, Love and Theft or Modern Times masterpieces....c'mon now.....as you get older the ears are the first of your parts to go.

2 comments:

  1. Music appreciation is really in the "ear of the beholder" isn't it. I appreciate Dylan and his modern day singing. He tells a story with the way he forms words, his tonal quality and where he places inflections of phrasing. I know he is far from the singer he was as younger man, but he still has it in my opinion.

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  2. I agree with you. I saw him about five years ago and could not understand a word he sang. I would have enjoyed it more if they just played the old records and let him lip synch.

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