I've been listening to Bobby Dylan this month. Probably to a greater extent than since I was 18, it's been entirely Bob, constantly - decades of albums, Bootleg Series, Biograph etc. I've also watched A Complete Unknown and have (re)read the first volume of Clinton Heylin's biography, and am gearing up for the second volume. I'll get to writing about the film and the books another day.
One might almost think I was a fan.
Apart from Bob, I have also, before and after Garth Hudson's death, been watching and listening to The Last Waltz... which is also Dylan, of course, but also Neil Young, Mavis Staples, Joni Mitchell, Muddy Waters etc and, with the greatest performance of all time. Van Morrison, doing 'Caravan'.
How to describe it if you've not seen it.
So this little chubby balding guy in a tight sparkly purple jump suit and a vest shambles on like a black sheep uncle at a rural wedding, so drunk he can hardly stand up, doesn't say a word, shouts into the microphone, makes up some words, does some scat singing, the backing band make faces at each other, he almost lifts himself off his feet kicking imaginary footballs into the crowd, then wanders off again before the end of the song ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44wDwMQVqCc&ab_channel=BastiVineta
See, yes, that is an accurate description of the best thing ever.
Anyway, the main five players of the band are all gone now, with all their brotherhood and poison, as well as a few others, though it is striking how many of the cast of The Last Waltz are still going, considering it was a valediction - Dylan, Young, Mitchell, Morrison, Mavis, Clapton, Neil Diamond, Ringo and Ronnie Wood, Emmylou Harris, Stephen Stills. It really was an incredible, unrepeatable line-up.
There's only one other song I've deliberately listened to this month - 'Love It If We Made It' by The 1975.
It doesn't have much in common with Dylan. No, in fact, it does. It's a protest song, a newspaper song, a finger-pointing song, a topical song, a mathematical song, it's really quite a lot like a Dylan song.
I had vaguely kept up with the 1975, and knew this song somewhat before, but really I just knew the hook, which is a good hook. I hadn't really listened to it properly, or understood why people like it so much.
Matt Healy, up to a year or two ago, was a fairly famous and fairly notorious minor rock star, known for saying things and having some quite good songs - his fame went up many notch because of his brief association with Taylor Swift and the album that followed. It's funny, actually, because they had both, previously, in different ways, reminded me of Robbie Williams.
Swift's best songs are much better, but a lot of her less good songs have that knowing, aren't-i-a-wag, me-and-fame thing lyrically which i always found the most annoying with Williams.
With Healy, it's that showbiz kid, sad-clown, can't help myself, love me hate me, pop/rock, look to camera thing, which is also pretty annoying, but again, at their best, the 1975 are a lot better.
This song, I must say, I've found really moving this month. I've watched a few live versions ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGce7jiqIUk&ab_channel=thrskls
and, rather like I talked about with Suede's She Still Leads Me On, I'm really impressed by the oomph of the vocal performance. There is a deliberately stagy fury to it that Healy carries off. Written in the first Trump era, using tabloid headlines and news stories as lyrics, its relevance multiplies. It is one of the best popular songs I've heard at saying "jesus, this terrible world, what happened" in a dramatic, crowd-pleasing way.
Maybe next month, I'll listen to all Bob Dylan and a different song.
