Now I awoke this morning with the refrain going through my head of
“I set my monkey on a log and ordered him to do the dog, he waged his tail and shook his head and turned and did the cat instead . . . he ’s a weird monkey, pretty funky!”
and of course in the moments as I emerged from sleep I struggled to place precisely which Dylan song it actually was so googled it and of course found it from Another Side of Bob Dylan as ‘I Shall Be Free No.10’ and in googling found the article from Far Out Magazine that puts forward the thesis that there are Bob Dylan songs that should never have seen the light of day and indeed should be consigned to the dustbin heap of time!
Such a humourless po-faced piece as this belongs of course with the book burners and fascists who would ban the written word in whatever form and censor for censorship’s sake! Now I grant you I too struggled when first I bought my [vinyl] 'Under a Red Sky’ album from the bargain bins discovering Wiggle Wiggle Wiggle which I quote quite often (sic!) and yet . . . . .somehow I would rather it existed than not! I certainly think the early humorous songs of our Bobby deserve better treatment and this peculiarly humourless article is so severely lacking in depth and study it is almost laughable (sic!)
This song is in a strong tradition from the left wing of nonsense songs and silly ditties that goes back to vaudeville and an even stronger tradition of Jewish humour dare I say it!
Wherefore Pete Seeger’s execrable 'Little Boxes' with it’s sophomoric wit? Why Woody was known to spears a humorous ditty or two and it is a a strong tradition!Wash-y Wash Wash (Warshy Little Tootsy) anyone? Riding in My Car? Presumably Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream doesn’t derive the same derision
read an academic paper on Bob’s 115th dream here https://www.exhibit.xavier.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1008&context=library_prize
The Bob Dylan lyrics that deserve to be deleted from history: “I set my monkey on the log”
"It’s hard to talk about lyrics and the very art of poetic pop musings without dangling our fingers over Bob Dylan, one of the most accomplished lyricists of his day. But he also had a stinker or two.
Trying to find the worst lyric of your everyday artist is usually something enjoyable to do. Despite our best intentions, as humans, we enjoy revelling in the worst parts of the creative spectrum just as much as we do celebrating the finest.
In fact, there’s a good argument – one found in the collection of algorithms located within our pockets – that diving into the unpleasant waters of our favourite artists can cleanse us as neatly as bathing in their more beautiful work. However, things get a little tricky when the artist in question is Bob Dylan.
At this point, it seems a little redundant to speak on the huge impact Dylan had on lyric writing as a whole. The troubadour was a convenient spark for the counter-cultural revolution who was able to carry the burning embers of poetry into the pop world and create a collection of folk songs that would soon transcend their homestead in the smoky coffeehouses of Greenwich Village, New York, to become worldwide hits that would inspire not just contemporaries like The Beatles, Leonard Cohen or Joni Mitchell but pretty much every artist you love today, too.
Few pop singers have been awarded a Nobel Prize for literature for their magnetic songs and
Dylan’s position as perhaps the greatest lyricist of all time is guaranteed because of this. He has delivered over 600 songs in his time as one of the icons of the music world, and his hefty back catalogue also netted him $300million when he sold it to Columbia recently. But with every expanse of work like Dylan’s, there is undoubtedly a spectrum of quality to dive into.
That’s the strange paradox of someone like Dylan. The higher the pedestal, the more noticeable the cracks become. When an artist spends so much of their career redefining what lyrics can achieve, even the smallest misstep feels magnified. It’s not just about a bad line here or there, it’s about how those lines sit alongside some of the most revered writing in popular music, creating a contrast that’s almost impossible to ignore.
At the same time, those weaker moments offer a glimpse into the sheer volume and freedom of his output. Dylan was never the kind of writer to self-censor into silence, and that willingness to follow an idea wherever it led is part of what made him so vital in the first place. Not every experiment was going to land, but without that openness, the brilliance wouldn’t have existed either, leaving behind a catalogue that feels as human as it does legendary."
“I got a million friends"
No comments:
Post a Comment