It's been years since I've seriously listened to Dylan, but I always love to hear your thoughts on him.
Yeah I also had a similar experience with A Complete Unkown in regards to thinking about that see saw speech a few days after finishing the movie. But I kinda had a wacky journey afterwards and since you're familiar with Seeger and Dylan you'll probably get the punchline before I finish my anecdote, but I'll tell it for whoever stumbles on this comment page in the next 50 years.
When I really thought about that speech I thought about how in the movie Seeger's politics are very simplistic "I'll share my song with you and you can sing along too." you know, but that brought to mind a much more radical folk song from that time.
A few years ago I read Hammer and Hoe and they told the story of Harry Simms and in it they wrote that someone wrote a song about him and I listened to it at the time and liked it. Then I looked it up just now and Pete Seeger wrote it, I listened to it again and it's fuckin Masters of War!
This might be greedy, but I want Masters of War, The Death of Harry Simms (THE SONG), Hammer and Hoe, Harry Simms, and the Alabama coal miners.
I know you’re not trying to make a value judgment but it’s definitely hard not to feel like maybe we should’ve been less enthusiastic to turn our backs on the Seegers of the world.
Dylan’s vision of what popular music should be - the elevation of the singular trailblazing genius instead of a collective, shared experience among ordinary people, won out pretty definitively and completely.
And the end result is that Dylan’s music doesn’t belong to the people, or to him either, but some faceless venture capital firm waiting for said trailblazing genius to keel over and die so they can profit off his work and image in perpetuity.
It's been years since I've seriously listened to Dylan, but I always love to hear your thoughts on him.
Yeah I also had a similar experience with A Complete Unkown in regards to thinking about that see saw speech a few days after finishing the movie. But I kinda had a wacky journey afterwards and since you're familiar with Seeger and Dylan you'll probably get the punchline before I finish my anecdote, but I'll tell it for whoever stumbles on this comment page in the next 50 years.
When I really thought about that speech I thought about how in the movie Seeger's politics are very simplistic "I'll share my song with you and you can sing along too." you know, but that brought to mind a much more radical folk song from that time.
A few years ago I read Hammer and Hoe and they told the story of Harry Simms and in it they wrote that someone wrote a song about him and I listened to it at the time and liked it. Then I looked it up just now and Pete Seeger wrote it, I listened to it again and it's fuckin Masters of War!
This might be greedy, but I want Masters of War, The Death of Harry Simms (THE SONG), Hammer and Hoe, Harry Simms, and the Alabama coal miners.
I really enjoyed this piece. The movie was amazing.
I know you’re not trying to make a value judgment but it’s definitely hard not to feel like maybe we should’ve been less enthusiastic to turn our backs on the Seegers of the world.
Dylan’s vision of what popular music should be - the elevation of the singular trailblazing genius instead of a collective, shared experience among ordinary people, won out pretty definitively and completely.
And the end result is that Dylan’s music doesn’t belong to the people, or to him either, but some faceless venture capital firm waiting for said trailblazing genius to keel over and die so they can profit off his work and image in perpetuity.