This one is on the house. This one is better than ever.

There's another more, uh, sane-sounding post coming on this subject (thankfulness) soon, but I'd just like to say this holiday season that I am giving thanks because my friend John, one half of the (former?) sarcastro-noise hot-pants-wearing musical miracle Wolf Wolf, started these shenanigans. It promises to be fucking epic. I hope all of you mutants had wonderful Thanksgivings. I sincerely mean that. Each and every one.

The line it is drawn, the curse it is cast.

I love Bob Dylan. Not everyone I know loves Bob Dylan. The reasons are numerous and always interesting. 1) He can't sing. You've definitely got me there. He has more or less always sounded like a male goat in early adolescence, who has just been rejected from goat chorus at goat high school, because his voice is breaking and he is unbearably awkward. 2) His lyrics are nonsense. Well, yeah, he was usually pretty drunk. 3) His lyrics are too polemic. But he did throw Phil Ochs out of a cab one time, calling him a "singing journalist". 4) He should have stuck to folk and he never returns my calls. Is that you, Joan Baez?

Etcetera. The weirdest one though, and I've heard this from a few people, is He's not relevant anymore. As in, listening to Bob Dylan is anachronistic. As in, he no longer applies. As in, history has clearly pronounced its judgement on impassioned, outraged, hopeful folk music - hope lost, meaning lost, what's relevant now is Amy Winehouse. And I really like Amy Winehouse. But I think this is sort of silly. There are different kinds of art, that are called for in different situations. Sometimes art is fashion. Sometimes art is ego. Sometimes it's confession, or prayer, or plea - just, hear me, I want to talk to you, all of you, I need to say this, please. And sometimes it's prophecy:




I have been listening to this all weekend. Today Barack Obama spoke in my home state. Tomorrow night he will be president. It's true, there's still no such thing as a good political poem, and I am being way more earnest than usual, but isn't it funny how timeless this is, a song about how the times they are a-changin?

I will be back to my normal snarky self sooner or later. Just watch it and be moved, buttheads.