Bob's latest

[oh oooh]

Greetings to my fans and followers with gratitude for all your support and loyalty across the years.

This is an unreleased song that we recorded a while back that you might find interesting. Stay safe, stay observant and God be with you.

It's doing something for me, I have to admit.

Someone on CaB said it's reminiscent of Blackstar, but as it's an old track maybe we don't need to worry about that. Yet.

You enjoy?

[Charlie O.]

It's fucking dreadful!

[oh oooh]

😀

[Charlie O.]

An exchange from a - ahem - 'nother board I've been known to contribute to:

Charlie O. said:

Mike Boom said:

Charlie O. said:

I'm only a couple of minutes in, but so far it's bewilderingly bad.

I found it strangely moving , like an elegy for the death of the idealism and hope of the early sixties that America has been looking to find again ever since - from Woodstock to Altamont if you will.

That's clearly what he's groping for, but there's no real focus to it. And so many of the lines/verses are just dumb, dumb, dumb; he seems at times to be deliberately dredging up every hackneyed phrase and cultural readymade he can think of, particularly in those opening minutes.

I mean... led to the slaughter like a sacrificial lamb... shot down like a dog... The poet of our generation, folks!

[loveless]

I loved it.

FWIW, I've also had Bob on mute for a good 15 years or more. So, maybe I was ready to hear his voice last night.

There was a gravity to the whole thing that I found myself really responding to, his delivery, the piano and strings treatment.

It's not going to replace "It's Alright, Ma..." in my personal pantheon, but...nothing was.

[Charlie O.]

arrgh

[daveythefatboy]

He sure as shit is laying something big down. I don’t know how you get around it.

It is an ‘art film’ of a song - disjointed, abstract, insistent. I like art films, and I’m pretty sure this song is gonna keep working on me.

[Deleted]

I'm with Charlie 100%. Really bad.

[Deleted]

The first minute could've been written by David Brent. Does it get better?

[oh oooh]

Yeah, I think so. It's an old man's story and it grows and grows. I mean, I've never bought into any of the 'America's Greatest Living Songwriter' shit or any of that - in fact I've always thought of him as an overrated windbag - but I listened to it all the way through and it moved me. There are subtle things in the arrangement that pull you in, as well as his rambling.

[jeffk]

Mar 28, 2020 10:22:55 GMT oh oooh said:

Yeah, I think so. It's an old man's story and it grows and grows. I mean, I've never bought into any of the 'America's Greatest Living Songwriter' shit or any of that - in fact I've always thought of him as an overrated windbag - but I listened to it all the way through and it moved me. There are subtle things in the arrangement that pull you in, as well as his rambling.

I'm not a big Dylan fan either but I happen to agree with John. There's something about it. 

[fange]

That kind of gentle piano-led poetic stumble through melancholy verses can't help but sound nice. Waits built a career out of it.

[oh oooh]

Yeah, that came to mind too.

[Sneelock]

Mar 27, 2020 21:53:30 GMT loveless said:

I loved it.

FWIW, I've also had Bob on mute for a good 15 years or more. So, maybe I was ready to hear his voice last night.

I think his voice might be the best thing about it. I hope this means his emphysema period is behind him.

the most interesting thing about the track to me is the laundry list of pop-culture in the lyric. I mean, Bob seems like a guy who doesn't really keep up with stuff like that but I guess he does. who knew?

I think he wrote it on a bet.

Bob's Friend:"I'll bet you that you can't write a 15 minute song about JFK and sing it in an understandable voice"

Bob: "I'lltakethatbet"

[oh oooh]

Dear Douglas, David, Emilia and Annie,

Many other people have also written in about Bob Dylan’s new song, ‘Murder Most Foul’ — and the interest is justifiable. It is a perplexing but beautiful song and, like many people, I have been extremely moved by it.

At the heart of this seventeen-minute epic is a terrible event, the assassination of JFK — a dark vortex that threatens to pull everything into it, just as it did in the USA back in 1963. Whirling around the incident Dylan weaves a litany of loved things — music mostly — that reach into the darkness, in deliverance. As the song unfolds he throws down lifeline after lifeline, insistent and mantra-like, and we are lifted, at least momentarily, free of the event. Dylan’s relentless cascade of song references points to our potential as human beings to create beautiful things, even in the face of our own capacity for malevolence. ‘Murder Most Foul’ reminds us that all is not lost, as the song itself becomes a lifeline thrown into our current predicament.

The instrumentation is formless and fluid and very beautiful. Lyrically it has all the perverse daring and playfulness of many of Dylan’s great songs, but beyond that there is something within his voice that feels extraordinarily comforting, especially at this moment. It is as though it has travelled a great distance, through stretches of time, full of an earned integrity and stature that soothes in the way of a lullaby, a chant, or a prayer.

As for whether this is the last time we will hear a new Bob Dylan song. I certainly hope not. But perhaps there is some wisdom in treating all songs, or for that matter, all experiences, with a certain care and reverence, as if encountering these things for the last time. I say this not just in the light of the novel coronavirus, rather that it is an eloquent way to lead one’s life and to appreciate the here and now, by savouring it as if it were for the last time. To have a drink with a friend as if it were the last time, to eat with your family as it were the last time, to read to your child as if it were the last time, or indeed, to sit in the kitchen listening to a new Bob Dylan song as if it were the last time. It permeates all that we do with greater meaning, placing us within the present, our uncertain future, temporarily arrested.

Annie, I was reading a poem today which very much resonates — it is by the beloved English poet Stevie Smith, who has given me much pleasure over the years.



I Do Not Speak



I do not ask for mercy for understanding for peace

And in these heavy days I do not ask for release

I do not ask that suffering shall cease



I do not pray to God to let me die

To give an ear attentive to my cry

To pause in his marching and not hurry by



I do not ask for anything I do not speak

I do not question and I do not seek

I used to in the day when I was weak



Now I am strong and lapped in sorrow

As in a coat of magic mail and borrow

For Time today and care not for tomorrow



Much love, Nick

www.theredhandfiles.com/bob-dylans-new-song/