Unresolved. The ultimate creative path.
Is that Dylan in an Apple commercial or Apple in a Dylan commercial?
Let me get this straight. Dylan is in an iPod commercial? Can you actually put the words Dylan and commercial in the same sentence? Is that allowed?
I was kind of young to appreciate how different Dylan was when I first realized who he was. For me, first he was a folkie. My older sister listened to folkies. Yuk! And this folkie sorta’ couldn’t really sing.
It wasn’t until he plugged in that I heard Dylan for the genius he is.
Most of his songs were defined by the lyrics (still are), not so much the melodies. In some cases it hasn’t always been particularly clear what the melodies are until you heard someone else sing them, i.e. The Byrds’ Mr. Tambourine Man, Hendrix’s All along the watchtower or, for that matter, the entire HBO Dylan Tribute at Madison Square Garden.
But when I first heard Positively 4th Street, then I got the genius of Dylan in a way that set asunder every preconception I’d ever brought to music or anything.
Verse 1:
You got a lotta nerve to say you are my friend
When I was down you just stood there grinning
You have to hear it. In this case it’s not the words. It’s the melody.
The “ing” on “you just stood there grinning” is supposed to go down, not up.
Supposed to according to whose rule book? The music rule book.
Every verse in this song - which also kinda broke a few other rules* by not ever having the title in the lyrics, by not having a bridge and by not having a chorus, you know a refrain, a thing that gets repeated, “the hook,” as record label A&R people preach to young artists, the part that defines the song - every verse in this song ended on an up note, not a down note. Every verse. Musical blasphemy.
When I first heard this song I waited for each verse to resolve. Musically. None ever did.
Then with the last verse:
I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes
You’d know what a drag it is to see you
I was waiting for the song to resolve. And it didn’t. To use an expression of that time, “it blew my mind.”
And from that point on in my life down was up, in was out, fast was slow. Everything was possible. And impossible.
If you read Dylan’s autobiography, Chronicles, it explains it all. More than the genius, it’s the contradictions of the man that define him creatively.
It’s why he’s been able to stay fresh after all these years. His current CD, Modern Times, debuted on iTunes at #1. Or was it Dylan’s endorsement? Or, the Apple endorsement?
Clearly, Dylan’s career has yet to resolve. I suspect it never will. Clearly marketing practices will never resolve. At least not as long as Apple and other companies keep surprising us.
Lobotomy files: If this man’s entire existence isn’t an example of 180° Thinking, what is? Not to mention his *use of untributes in song writing.
© 2006 Tom Monahan, all rights reserved.
