Smiles
One of my teenage sons provided the ultimate smile when he called from college and said, “Dad, I’ve been getting into Dylan lately, what do you recommend?”
His call has kept me smiling, especially when he followed up with, “I’m liking Dylan because it reminds me of the country/folk/blues rock of the Zac Brown Band.” I barely know who the Zac Brown Band is, but more critically, after a lifetime of study, I still don’t think I hardly know who Dylan is.
So, my task is to strategically sherpa my boy into becoming a Dylan fan and hopefully an aficionado. Where should I start? You have to understand, Gen Z doesn’t know albums. So I can’t recommend “Blood on the Tracks,” “Blonde on Blonde,” “Highway 61 Revisited,” or one of the astounding Bootleg Series releases like “Rolling Thunder,” “Trouble No More,” “The Basement Tapes,” or the more recent “Springtime in New York.”
Gen Z listens to songs. Disaggregated ones at that. It would be natural to start with “Like A Rolling Stone,” perhaps the greatest song ever recorded. But you’d have to be visiting from Mars to have never heard that track. I could go with the late '80s resurgent Dylan “Oh Mercy,” which I feel deeply because the bard was living in my Uptown New Orleans neighborhood when he recorded it with Daniel Lanois and the Neville Brothers. Initiating my son with the Rolling Thunder material could be highly confusing to him: Why is David Bowie’s guitarist from the Ziggy Stardust years playing with Dylan? Why is Dylan wearing a makeup mask while performing? What does Allen Ginsberg have to do with it? For that matter, how would a teenager today understand Dylan’s conversion from Judaism to Christianity and back to Judaism and the impact it had on some of
his greatest music? How do I explain The Band?
Of course, Dylan’s catalog is sprawling across musical genres. Some of the best Bob Dylan material is subtle and elusive, making recommendations all the more challenging. Is “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You,” the closing track of “Nashville Skyline,” filler or is it one of Dylan’s greatest tunes? Then again, on “Nashville Skyline,” Dylan’s voice sounds different from everything else he ever recorded. The list of conundrums goes on.
As I ponder Dylan’s many mysteries, it occurs to me that his music is like anyone else’s in the sense that what gets your toes tapping is what resonates. I still don’t know exactly how I’m going to recommend Dylan to my son—I usually create a Spotify playlist for him, which is a platform Gen Z digs. Creating a playlist is also complex. Do I open it with “Tangled Up In Blue,” a live version of “Tombstone Blues,” or launch with “Subterranean Homesick Blues?” I think I may send him this video which is one of the more mesmerizing Dylan performances. Every single time I watch it, my toes are tapping, and I wonder if there has ever been a musician with more presence or one so in command of his craft.
|
