Music Banter - View Single Post

sisteraysays · 04-20-2007, 03:59 AM

Well thank you.
I understand what you are saying about Dylan and how people can over-hype him; but when it comes to folk music there isn't really much you can do to innovate it. Folk music is just a person with an instrument (usually guitar) who sing topical songs; there is nothing really innovative a folk artist can do, musically, that would gain them much attention unless you change the picking/strumming style like the Carter Family did way back in the 20's and 30's or go electric like Dylan did. Also Nick Drake and Vashti Bunyan came after Dylan and have said he was a big influence on them. You need to remember as well that the songs Dylan was writing in the beginning of his career were on very heated subjects, as Joan Baez says in No Direction Home: "The times back then were very cut and dry you were either for Dr. King or you hated ******s, you were for the war or against it" people found in Dylan a prophet, someone to speak there mind for the troubled times. I mean after only one original album he was awarded the Tom Paine Award by the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee and was being called the "Spokesman" of the Generation; he was under a lot of pressure to be something he felt he wasn't, a prophet. I mean sure you can say Conors lyrics can stand on their own against Dylan's, especially since he was younger than Dylan; but do you think Conors could stand on his own if people expected the same thing that they expected from Dylan?

corliss-lamont.org/dylan.htm
check out this site it is the transcript of the Tom Paine Award that Dylan received in 1963. It contains the infamous speech he made along with his very poetic response to the speech he made.

Also I hope we can have more discussions like this.

04-20-2007, 03:59 AM	#108 (permalink)
sisteraysays Groupie Join Date: Apr 2007 Posts: 21	my turn to repeativly ramble on 420, started at 4:20 am. Well thank you. I understand what you are saying about Dylan and how people can over-hype him; but when it comes to folk music there isn't really much you can do to innovate it. Folk music is just a person with an instrument (usually guitar) who sing topical songs; there is nothing really innovative a folk artist can do, musically, that would gain them much attention unless you change the picking/strumming style like the Carter Family did way back in the 20's and 30's or go electric like Dylan did. Also Nick Drake and Vashti Bunyan came after Dylan and have said he was a big influence on them. You need to remember as well that the songs Dylan was writing in the beginning of his career were on very heated subjects, as Joan Baez says in No Direction Home: "The times back then were very cut and dry you were either for Dr. King or you hated ******s, you were for the war or against it" people found in Dylan a prophet, someone to speak there mind for the troubled times. I mean after only one original album he was awarded the Tom Paine Award by the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee and was being called the "Spokesman" of the Generation; he was under a lot of pressure to be something he felt he wasn't, a prophet. I mean sure you can say Conors lyrics can stand on their own against Dylan's, especially since he was younger than Dylan; but do you think Conors could stand on his own if people expected the same thing that they expected from Dylan? corliss-lamont.org/dylan.htm check out this site it is the transcript of the Tom Paine Award that Dylan received in 1963. It contains the infamous speech he made along with his very poetic response to the speech he made. Also I hope we can have more discussions like this.