Relevance

In a carrer that spans half a cenutrey it is amazing how a many can stay so relevant. Although Dylan has had his rough patches in his carer he always seems to find himself in the front of the music world. Just recently i was reading an article about the best albums of the decade by newsweek and it voted Love and Theft number two album. Also in a similar article in RollingStone it voted Love and Theft number 11 and Modern Times number 8 making him the only artist to have two albums in the top 15 of the decade. In an era were popular music seems to be manily hip hop, rap, and form of pop rock Dylan has been able to make great albums that people take notice. Not only did he albums included in the best of the decade but he won two Grammys for his work he did for Modern Times. Its not everyday you see a 65 year old staying relevant in the music world, but Dylan is the one that can do it. And he does it better than anyone else. The Rolling Stones and The Who have tried hard but the music is flat and the only way they keep relevant is by touring and playing their hits. As someone who saw Dylan a couple years ago I can say that he only played four songs that werent from Modern Times and one was the encore i would like to see the Stones do that. Not that i do love the music of those bands but they just havent had the success that Dylan has been able to have in the studio the past couple of years. In an industry were the biggest name in music can all of dissapear just a few years later Dylan has been able to prove why he is the greatest artist of all time because he is the one that can stay relevant to fans new and old.

Dylan to Play at the White House

Dylan has been invited to play at the White House "In Performance at the White House: A Celebration of Music from the Civil Rights Movement" it will be aired February 11 of this year. Along with Dylan will be great artist like Smokey Robinson, Queen Latifa, Jennifer Hudson and John Mellencamp just to name a few. In a situation like this I can not think of a better man to play at event like this besides Dylan. The songs that he has written about unfair treatment of blacks like; Only A Pawn in Their Game, Hollis Brown, and Blowing in the Wind have truly captured the unfair treatment of blacks at the time. Dylan has been instrumental in terms of music for Civil Rights. I truly think that Dylan was able to bring the truth of the Civil Rights to people that may not have been able to see it before. Through songs like Emmit Till you can feel the inequality that was felt through out the nation at this time. In terms of songs about Civil Rights there are very few non Dylan songs that I would include, maybe songs like Southern Man by Neil Young, but nothing compares to the catalog of songs that Dylan has written during that time. I think it is a great honor for him, and the fact that many young artists like John Legend will be there to see what a small Jewish boy from Minnesota can do for such an important movement in US history. “How many roads must a man walked down before you can call him a man” is a line that moves me today and I'm sure moved thousands in the 60’s.

Dylan to enter the art world

The man just seems to keep on amazing me. He has done just about everything from music, to movies, to books, now Dylan is trying his hand at conquering a new project. That of the art world. As if we thought Dylan could do anything else to shock he comes out with this news. His new art, called “Bob Dylan on Canvas, can be seen in Halcyon Gallery in London with 12 pieces starting February 13. When he is done with that his show will move to Copenhagen in September at the National Gallery of Denmark. It is news like this that makes me wonder where his next step is. I’m sure that Dylan’s mind will be expressed through his art just as it was through his words. He truly is a man who seems to have no limitations. It seems that no matter how hard you try you cannot keep this man down. Now I'm not saying that he is going to have artwork that of Picasso but I think that people will be impressed with what he has done. It makes me wonder what it is the Dylan could want to do next. He has seemed to conquer just about everything. He has even had a successful radio show. If music, art, and so much more aren’t enough for Bob well than maybe he will try at a new sitcom or a reality TV show, nothing would surprise me these days, besides id probably watch it.

Subterranean Homesick Blues

This certain song is one of the fist songs of Dylan's that I memorized. At the time being in junior high I thought it was cool that some song written in 1965 had certain similarities to the rap songs that the rest of my friends were listening to. Although they did necessarily think the song was very good they humored me and agreed that it was cool. Not too much later I was able to see the music video for this song, it was so simple but at the same time just drew me in. This was a time when TRL ruled the school, so again I went back to my friends and tell them about how the video, again they were uninterested. It’s been almost a decade now, and the things that the rap they use to listen to are dead, TRL is long gone and now a majority of them are fans of Dylan. I have a tendency to remind them of their errors. One of more memorable times listening to this song was in an English class, my teacher wanted to show us some sort of rhyming technique or something I can't quite remember, I just now that it was cool to hear Dylan in class. The English teacher ended up becoming a big fan of me because when he often mentioned references to Dylan I knew them. Such as "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall" being based off the ballad of "Lord Randall", and the importance of Dylan Thomas, whom Dylan took his name from. By the end of the year I ended up getting an A, and I'm almost positive it was because I was a Dylan fan. So the song has always been a favorite not because the pure fact that I like it but also because I can rub it in my friends face about their old silly ways, and the fact that it was the start of me getting an A in English class, either way the song is still a classic song to listen to.

Me and Bobby D

Just thought I would give the short story about how I started to listen and love the music that Dylan has written over his half century of work. It all started one day when I was in sixth grade. I always knew who Bob Dylan was and like the songs that I knew by him, but I was not very diverse in his work. A couple of years earlier I had bought my father a Dylan greatest hits CD, the Essential Bob Dylan to be exact. One habit that I have that helps me listen to a lot of music is that for almost an hour every night I but listen to music. One night I was bored of the CD I had in the CD players so I went through some of my dads CDs to look for one I would like. I came across the Essential Bob Dylan. It was a two-disc collection and the only song that I really knew was like a rolling stone. So I would listen to that song about four times in a row and go to bed. This would happen for about a week. Then I slowly started to listen to more and more songs. Before long I had memorized that whole CD and moved on to disc two. Every since then I have been trying to learn and hear as much Bob Dylan as I can but even more than ten years later I still haven’t even scratched the surface. The thing that I tell most people is that it is easy to listen to an artist as he comes out with new material and follow release, but what I have done is discovered something I like and its going to take me awhile to make up 50 years of lost time but God knows I'm trying. Since then I have bought myself a handful of what I think are his best albums, I have watched movies and documentaries based on his life. I have read books and I have even seen him in concert twice. Overall I may have just scratched the surface but I'm looking to dig deep!

Intro

My name is Mike and I am doing a blog and a website for a college project. My teacher asked me to pick something that we are really interested in and I could not think of a better topic than Mr. Bob Dylan himself. As we all know Dylan is more than just a musician, he has been an inspiration to many famous people, actors, world leaders, other musicians and all around everyday people such as my self. Through out the rest of the semester I will be continuously writing about Dylan. Although he may not always be in the news I always have something to say about him. So i look forward to blogging about him the rest of the year.