Love and theft is a pot-boiler of an album
Sheila Bird
Get on down the road, you aint got no brains know-how.
dylanstubs
the way home from buying it. Not as vast as TOOM, but a great album.
Jim (Guitar Centre Records)
Dylan is a thousand steps ahead of you and as you take your next breath he's
a hundred more.
Love & Theft is as great as any record Dylan has made. Period.
Jim
"Sheila Bird" <sheil...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:9acca241.04081...@posting.google.com...
Alan Fraser
wrote:
>Only question is: is it pretending not to be?
>
>Get on down the road, you aint got no brains know-how.
My dictionary defines "pot-boiler" as "a literary, artistic, or other
work produced simply in order to earn a living". I don't think Bob's
been a position since the early 1960s when he needed to do that, and
he didn't do it this time. Personally I think it's an album of
exquisite richness.
From Stephen King's "Song of Susannah" (2004):
Susannah looked at her with mounting excitement. "It's another
twin-thing."
"Do you say so?"
"Yes. Only this time Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee are science and
magic. Rational and irrational. Sane and insane. No matter what terms
you pick, that's a double-damned pair if there ever was one."
Alan
beppe
> From Stephen King's "Song of Susannah" (2004):
Alan, the spoiler space, for goodness' sake!
SoS is next book I'm reading!!!
:-])
--
ciao
beppe
Lone Pilgrim
> Only question is: is it pretending not to be?
>
> Get on down the road, you aint got no brains know-how.
Funny, I didn't think Bob needed to make an album to bring in a few
bucks. I would describe it more as "Post-Modern", if I didn't find
"Post-Modern" such a non-entity sort of word that leads us nowhere but
makes a whole lot of academic types and cultural dilettantes feel like
they're actually saying something.
To me the album feels like a rhythmic historic journey through
American culture, stopping off at different times and in different
places, with some really fine and some really unpleasant characters.
It's filled with irony and glimpses into backyards, strange hotels,
farmyards, kitchens, peculiar and sometimes dangerous relationships,
reminiscence and longing. I'd say it was also pretending to be
pretending, with a wink.
Alan Fraser
wrote:
>
>> From Stephen King's "Song of Susannah" (2004):
>
>
>Alan, the spoiler space, for goodness' sake!
>SoS is next book I'm reading!!!
>:-])
Somehow I don't think one quote will spoil it for you!
I've just received a review copy of book 7, "The Dark Tower". I'll
search that for Dylan quotes too!
Alan
beppe
> Dylan is a thousand steps ahead of you and as you take your next breath
he's
> a hundred more.
wow, this perfectly to me.
Doesn't for you, too, when all is sais and done?
:-])
This is not the point.
The point is if Dylan is ahead of Hawking, Levi Montalcini or Frank Zappa,
who have never had the luck of *getting* Dylan.
> Love & Theft is as great as any record Dylan has made. Period.
And this, Jim, does nothing but spoil any greatness form any Dylan's record.
If all works seem equally great, none is really great.
--
ciao
beppe
beppe
> >Alan, the spoiler space, for goodness' sake!
> >SoS is next book I'm reading!!!
> >:-])
>
> Somehow I don't think one quote will spoil it for you!
There was a smile, Alan, I was just kidding.
(and I don't mind spoilers, anyway, I go to see movies after reading
synopsis, go figure!)
.-)))
> I've just received a review copy of book 7, "The Dark Tower". I'll
> search that for Dylan quotes too!
:-)))
............and if you want, I'll tell you how the story ends.
It's being discussed in:
http://www.thedarktower.net/
beppe
> wow, this perfectly to me.
> Doesn't for you, too, when all is sais and done?
I meant:
this *fits* perfectly.........
...............................
doesnt' it for you.......
sorry for the mispelling
--
ciao
beppe
Alan Fraser
wrote:
Which would make indeed make it post-modern, to my understanding.
Before "Love and Theft" was released my son wrote his Film Studies
degree thesis on "Quentin Tarantino: Plagiarist or Post-Modern
Auteur?" His argument essentially was that extensive reference to and
quotation from popular culture is a feature of post-modernism. This
obviously pleased his tutors, as he got a First!
Authors like Stephen King and Salman Rushdie now also work in a
similar jackdaw vein - I mention these two because both of them quote
Dylan!
Alan
Lone Pilgrim
robertandrews
>Which would make indeed make it post-modern, to my understanding. Before
"Love and Theft" was released my son wrote his Film Studies degree thesis on
"Quentin Tarantino: Plagiarist or Post-Modern Auteur?" His argument
essentially was that extensive reference to and quotation from popular
culture is a feature of post-modernism.
I view the excessive referencing as the sign of an exhausted art form or
artist.
Ken Wilson
I think Postmodernism indicates an exhausted, uncertain and rudderless
culture. Still, I've seen nothing to make me think that Bob buys into the
radical skepticism at the heart of postmodernist thought. I think he's
standing -- well . . . standing, shuffling, scowling, scratching his nose
and waiting for Larry to break formation --in the folk and blues tradition
that formed him.
Ken
rankflv
Disputing universal Truths. Complex and winding leading to dead-ends.
Somewhere outside of time. Like a Pynchon novel.
Yes, I do feel the term 'Post-modern' is overused and dispite loving
'Love and a Theft' and 'M&A' I wish post-modernism would disappear. In
a Post-911 world it seems antiquated. There seems to be Light and Dark
again, Right and Wrong. Things just seem different. Odd actually, One
would think that TERROR would fit nicely into a post-modern theme. Of
course Love and Theft was released on 911.
Sheila Bird
this question of sneaking in allusions, postmodernistically (if there
is such a word), is a rather gray area. And gray matter. Sorry you
dont pick up the allusions. But then Dylan doesnt stick in explanatory
notes to the effect of: I'm desperate for you to get it, this is the
background. He almost did with utrs, but then he changed his mind
leaving everyone else at Columbia in the dark about where the 'rumor'
had come from.
"robertandrews" <robert...@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<EjKSc.10019$EQ5....@nwrddc03.gnilink.net>...
Lone Pilgrim
That's close. "Modernism" as it is understood as a cultural form, is
at the end of it's rope, so to speak, and has been for quite some
time. One of the most striking features of Modernism is it's use of
the "new" and ever changing forms of the Avante Guarde. At a certain
point, or points, in the latter half of the 20th century, the Avante
Guarde could not abstract anymore. We couldn't move beyond the
Conceptual and other reductionist approaches because there literally
was nowhere to go, no more reducing to take place and it was clear
that nothing was 'new' anymore but just a remaking of the 'old'.
The other side of the Modernist is the Neo-Traditionalist, so we have
a large percentage of the population looking to the past to find
meaning and substance again, in primitivism, medieval understandings
of faith, returning to nature, nostalgic collections of cultural
forms, etc. In my mind "Post Modernism" can go either towards a sort
of Nihilist/Relativist place, which my somewhat wacky brain likens to
falling off the edge of the earth (rekindled by recent RMD posts...),
where monsters dwell where we to believe in them, or by turning, in a
sort of 'summing up' way to the past, which can take on various and
sometimes interesting forms, depending on the perspective of the
person or people involved.
There is, most likely something brewing underneath in our collective
unconscious that will move us to a not new, but different place, but
right now we're in the dregs of the Modern. What do we do after the
After the Modern? Stay tuned...
robertandrews
>There is, most likely something brewing underneath in our collective
unconscious that will move us to a not new, but different place, but right
now we're in the dregs of the Modern. What do we do after the After the
Modern? Stay tuned...
Reality TV.
Lone Pilgrim
Reality TV is Post-Modern. Vicarious living in a world with little
meaning where the real and the unreal are not well differentiated.
I solved that particular issue by simply not owning a TV. New issues
arose when I became addicted to the internet and began developing
friendships with people I only knew on my computer screen.
Like it or not, we're still in the midst of the Post Modern.
don freeman
>
> Reality TV is Post-Modern.
And Queen for a Day was pre-Modern?
Lone Pilgrim
> >
> > Reality TV is Post-Modern.
>
>
> And Queen for a Day was pre-Modern?
What's "Queen for a Day"? A TV show? Um.... pre-Modern was ending in
the 1800's... The Industrial revolution kicked in the Modern era.
Early Modern is most likely marked by the Impressionists and the
development of Photography, at least in the visual arts. Post-Modern
elements began coming into the culture in the late 50's, and hit
stride by the 80's, though different art forms develop at different
times, and vary from place to place, for instance, the Italian
Renaissance developed about a 100 years before the Northern
Renaissance.
History is messy and rarely linear, which is sometimes disconcerting
to historians and people who like things neat and orderly.