November 15–22, 2001

music|rock/pop

I Have Something Important to Say About Bob Dylan

Is Bob Dylan "an old man who lives in your neighborhood, drinking away his days as if they were bottles"¹ ? Or is he a classic Gemini, "far more skilled at communicating love than giving it… [tending] to favor the dispossessed over the privileged, but …[guarding] against sarcasm and harsh criticism of their friends and also against their own fanaticism and zealotry"² ? Is he channeling a "narrator — or narrators, it’s hard to tell — who descends into the hell, or purgatory, or limbo, of America’s mysterious rural past, which seems to be located mainly in the south"³ ? I could go on. As I write, grad students young and old are competing to find the most spooky Sept. 11 premonitions on Bobby’s compelling Love and Theft (whose release date was that day). But… duh. It’s not like it’s the first time Dylan has re-emerged from his enigmatic personal fog still relevant. And like all great Dylan, Love and Theft is more than one thing. It’s prescient, yes; it’s also funny and probably the hardest rocking album that’ll get put out this year. If nothing else, all this sociological guff hopefully remind people to never, ever count him out. No other rock geezer — hell, few living musicians —are fit to even root through his trash. And the poor old guy — genius, saint, jerk — is just doing his job.

—Michael Pelusi

Bob Dylan, Sat,. Nov. 17, 8 p.m., $35-$45, First Union Spectrum, Broad St. and Pattison Ave., 215-336-2000.

¹ Greil Marcus, "Sometimes He Talks Crazy, Crazy Like a Song," The New York Times, Sept. 2, 2001

² Greg Tate, "Intelligence Data," The Village Voice, Sept. 26-Oct. 2, 2001

³ Ellen Willis, "The New Talking World War III Blues," Salon, Oct. 6, 2001