11. Modern Times Bob Dylan

and now for something COMPLETELY different, as Monty Python would say…

Growing up as such a Prog Rock, AOR junkie, I just didn’t understand Dylan. The voice, the ragged (awful) recordings, the look… all beyond me.

Then I heard this record recently...

I’m not even sure why I bought it… maybe because of the copious quantities of positive press. But I’m glad I did. Another life changing moment for Joe.

It sounds like everyone was in the same room, at the same time, simply playing music together. Musically it’s the equivalent of an old jalopy going down a dirt road. In our supremely edited and computerized music world, it was incredibly refreshing!

It’s great driving music. It’s great work music. It’s incredibly deep. And it’s REALLY funny.

“I’m gonna raise me an army, some tough sons of bitches… I’ll recruit my army from the orphanages” -Thunder on a Mountain

There are so many weird lyrical moments that only Dylan can deliver that I find myself quoting this album out in public to my music buddies, even if they have no idea what I’m talking about. It will just occur to me, in the middle of lunch, or a conversation or other normal part of my day how totally off the wall a lyric is, and crack up.

This album is really the supreme course in lyrics, if you are a songwriter. Yes, he rewrote some old folk songs, added tons of lyrics to them, changed them around, and then called them his own. So What!

If you were a painter, and Renoir started augmenting one of your paintings, it would become a RENOIR.

And so it goes for our modern day lyrical Renoir. NO ONE paints a phrase like Dylan.

“Modern Times” opened up the world of Dylan to me, and I now can’t get enough. There is mucho Dylan in my ipod now. This audiophile even can stand to listen to Biograph, the box set of truly miserably quality old Dylan recordings.

  ¶ 7:02 PM