A New Hope

Disclaimer: This is one of those posts where I take something seriously, even though it’s fairly trivial. I do these sorts of things because I think it’s fun. You probably know that if you’re reading this, though. You probably also know that I’m not really taking any of this that seriously.

One time I was at a party where the host was letting Pandora DJ. A Bob Dylan song (Forever Young) came on. Before the first chorus, it was gone. A guest near the computer gave it a thumbs down and said, “Nobody our age takes that seriously any more.”

I like Bob Dylan. I grew up listening to Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde On Blonde will always be in my top 10. In college I experimented with the “bad” albums that came later, but I never got into it. My roommate, on the other hand, was deep into Dylan; he owned Under The Red Sky, and said it had some redeeming tracks. He got me into a few albums I’d written off as not worth it, but I never reached his level of fandom. I could never listen to the abysmal, multi-tracked cover of “The Boxer” and not laugh.

After graduation and a few months of not living with a Dylan apologist, I thought I lost interest in further experimentation. When Dylan released a Christmas album last year, I wanted to avoid it. But my old ways got the best of me. The album’s existence ate away at me and I ended up streaming a few tracks. I thought of my former roommate and tried to find something redeeming in the songs, but there was nothing for me. Even if all the proceeds were for charity, Christmas in the Heart didn’t sit right. Dylan had been on a hot streak since Time Out Of Mind; he was touring and making great albums, plus his satellite radio show was consistently great. But then there were the Pepsi ads and the Christmas songs. How can Dylan’s output be so dramatically unbalanced? It’s not for a lack of a filter or editing, because he’s producing music slower than ever. (Of the 17 years in his career that he didn’t put out at least one album, more than half of them are in the last decade and a half.) It seems like Dylan puts out tracks he thinks are good, but record buyers and critics only agree with him at certain times.

Take for example, this:

This track was done for a children’s charity compilation, and it doesn’t seem like something Dylan tried to knock out in between rounds of golf or whatever it is that he does in his spare time. Compared to the classic records, this sounds downright slick. There’s a glaring tape editing error on the vocal track for “Stuck Inside of Mobile,” and the early acoustic albums sometimes sound like they were recorded in an empty office during lunch hour (Another Side of Bob Dylan probably was). But those classics sound good to me. I think they’re good records. The mistakes work. This cover of “This Old Man” sounds ridiculous, but it probably sounds just as good to Bob as anything off of Freewheelin’.

Thinking of that, I can’t help but wonder if my roommate was right. Maybe there is something redeeming about every Dylan album. Maybe I’m the one who can’t get it right. To test this theory, I’m going to listen to every Bob Dylan album ever. Forty-eight years of music and more than 30 albums; from Bob Dylan to Christmas In The Heart. Here are the rules:

1. Every album must be obtained legally, or as legally as possible. I own about half of them (this was surprising, because I don’t think I’ve ever listened to Planet Waves, but there it is in iTunes, where it’s apparently been since March 2007). I bought a few of these (probably Planet Waves) out of the used bin. To keep my bank account healthy throughout this new project, I’ll look for used copies first. This will also keep me from supporting the production of terrible records. If I buy a new copy of something that ends up being bad, I give the record company (and Bob himself) money for a product all the other customers tried to return.
2. I will listen to bootlegs, live albums and greatest hits if I can find them.
3. I will listen in chronological order. Maybe I can make some sort of chart based on trends in the music.
4. I have to listen to every song all the way through.

This may reek of the Weekly Records project I started last year. I’m still doing that, but it isn’t very interesting to write about anymore. I’m not reconsidering Dylan because it might be interesting to tell people about. I’m doing it because I want to see if there are any gems I’ve overlooked. It might be pretentious to say I like “Self Portrait,” but isn’t it just as elitist to say something a great musician worked hard on isn’t worth my time?

I’ll have to consider the opposite, too. Dylan may never have changed from the smart-alec he was in Don’t Look Back, and he’s taken strange turns not because he thinks it’s wise, but because he thinks it’s funny. Maybe some of his albums were meant as a prank on over-zealous critics and a test for fans who called Dylan America’s greatest poet. (If this sounds a bit far out, consider the scene in Don’t Look Back where a young English fan asks about the meaning of the Highway 61 Revisited cover photo. Dylan says there’s no meaning, but the fan says he’s spent an extensive amount of time studying it. It doesn’t seem implausible for anyone to want to step away from that kind of adoration.)

Or maybe there is no plan. Dylan’s work could just be hit or miss. The kind of circular logic I walked into in the last paragraph could be the makings of a pop music conspiracy theory, or it could be the clue to appreciating a lot of albums that I always thought were terrible. The only way for me to get to the bottom of it and be satisfied is to investigate and listen.

Stay tuned.