In lieu of oldies this Saturday night, a taste of Bob Dylan's latest, Tempest. Duquesne Whistle. Sampler. 1962 version of "Roll on, John" 50 years of assimilation and creative reworking of musical Americana by the unlikely Jewish kid from Hibbing, Minnesota.
Jody Rosen's New Yorker review. Insightful:
The hunt for Dylan in Dylan songs is a mug’s game. Dylan is a genius; he’s also the greatest bullshitter and jive-talker in popular-music history. He began laying boobytraps for his exegetes before he even had any, and they—we—have never stopped taking the bait. Today Dylanology is a midrashic enterprise rivaling Talmudism and Shakespeare Studies, and it’s worth remembering its origins: it started with the hippie gadfly A .J. Weberman, who took to “reading” toothbrushes recovered from garbage bins outside of Dylan’s MacDougal Street townhouse.
[. . .]
The original Dylanological sin is to focus too much on the words, and too little on the sound: to treat Dylan like he’s a poet, a writer of verse, when of course he’s a musician—a songwriter and, supremely, a singer. “Tempest” reminds us what a thrilling and eccentric vocalist he is.