Year In Review: Dylan Themes Continue to Top the Top 10 Blog Posts for 2017

Well something's lost, but something's gained 
 In living every day. 
-- Joni Mitchell

The year 2017 is winding down and as in years past I've decided to see what topics have most connected with my readers. The most recurring theme, writing about our vibrant local arts scene, has the most regular volume. Occasionally various subjects hit a nerve, but in years past the numbers always jumped when I wrote about Dylan, and this year was no different. Since Dylan is one of many interests for me, and because so many people have produced more in depth coverage of his music and career, I am not really interested in having to sacrifice all my other interests simply to convert this to a Bob Dylan blog.

Alas, my interest in Dylan has not abated, and I continue to feel enriched by his work, his words, and the words of others who attempt to interpret the meaning of what he has produced.

All that being said, here were my top ten blog posts of 2017 in terms of visitors....

10
Marketing the Dylan Machine and Leveraging His Latest Achievement
Having spent half a lifetime in marketing, it's hard not to look at anything (from ideas to politics to holidays) without it being filtered through the marketing filter. Dylan and his team are masters.

9
Joe Cocker's Dylan Covers Continue To Reward Listeners
Like Dylan, Joe Cocker inhales a song and breathes it out as his own. Here are a number of Dylan covers that I especially liked.

8
An Inquiry Regarding Bob Dylan's Guitar Collection
A magazine editor asked me what I knew about Bob Dylan's guitar collection. I had to admit, "Not much." So I did a little digging and found something worth sharing.

7
Origins of Bob Dylan's Never Ending Tour
I did some speculating about how early in his career Dylan imagined a never ending tour.

6
Trepanier Hall Being Renamed to Honor Dr. Robert Powless at AICHO Fifth Anniversary
The American Indian CommunityHousing Organization (AICHO) in Downtown Duluth has become a vital center for a lot of culturally rich experiences.

5
Shooting Star: Bookend on Dylan's Monumental Oh Mercy
Reflections on a great song from a great album.

4
Scott Warmuth Weighs In On Dylan's Latest Appropriations
Some have accused him of plagiarism. Others call his intertextual wordplay genius, an approach to songwriting that borrows from tradition and interacts with it in new ways. Dylan's Nobel Speech seemed to raise the another rhubarb.

3
Dylan and Mavis Makin' Their Way Home. Tom Petty Tribute Is A Knockout.
The NET Fall Tour passed through Bob's home state of Minnesota again this year. Shortly after Tom Petty's passing Dylan tipped the hat to his friend with a rendition of "Learning To Fly."

2
It's All Over Now, Baby Blue: From Whence Comes the Power of This Song?
In March I took a reflected on one of Dylan's classics.

1
Photos and a Note from Glasgow as Dylan's Never Ending Tour Leaves Fans Warmed in the British Isles
In May, as we were preparing for this year's Duluth Dylan Fest, fans in the British Isles were relishing the last leg of Bob's Spring European Tour. Some fans who had been with us in 2016 sent photos from Glasgow.

* * * *

Word on the street is that a theme is taking shape for the 2018 Duluth Dylan Fest in May. The event will run from Saturday May 20 (Armory Concert) thru to the Zeitgeist Farewell Brunch with Jim Hall on Sunday May 27, with music galore as well as art, music and memory-making. In 2016 Dylan's 75th birthday took center stage. This past spring the Nobel Prize added a measure of electricity. In 2018 Bob will be 77, so the theme of Twins is being nurtured. Dylan is a Gemini (The Twins) with a nod to the pair of Sevens for his age. Learn more. Visit BobDylanWay.com

Meantime, life goes on all around you. Get into it.

It's All Over Now, Baby Blue: From Whence Comes the Power of This Song?

Don't Look Back

Every time I listen to Bringing It All Back Home it has an effect of me, especially the culminating sequence of songs beginning with Mr. Tambourine Man, which is followed by Gates of Eden, It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) and this one, It's All Over Now, Baby Blue. Here's the feeling I get when I reach the end of the CD: it's that same feeling you get at the end of A Day In The Life after it crescendos then drops onto that sustained chord which fades into infinity.

It's the feeling that I get when I listen to this last portion of Bringing It All Back Home that I'm trying to describe here. It's Alright, Ma is such a literary spectacle, a literary variation of the Beatles' orchestral mashup. And then, Dylan drops us into this aftermath of a song about the aftermath of a relationship. It is truly and wholly and devastatingly all over now.

What is it that gives Baby Blue its power? Certainly the context on this album amps its clout. But context alone won't explain it, because he's been performing the song many hundreds of times in a range of settings and contexts, even as recently as November 2016. It's also been included on eight other CDs in various iterations.

Is it the imagery? Most definitely that is part of it. Phrases like "The carpet, too, is moving under you," speak on multiple levels.

But it's the manner in which the song is delivered that really knocks me out. He's not smiling. And it's because it's another sad farewell. The tone is... what? There's this feeling of weightiness, gravity, and not simply because the singer and his object are parting ways. Here's Dylan trying to get a message through, or Dylan's narrator in this case. There's something that is being conveyed, something he wants the hearer to hear.

The middle class college kids who were listening to Dylan's music had no idea of what life is really like out on the streets. Songs like Ballad of a Thin Man and Like A Rolling Stone are striking for their seriousness when contrasted with Top 40 pop singles like Love Potion #9 and Downtown. Dylan's message to Baby Blue is "wake up." Life is serious and this is not a game. Hence the tone of the song.

John Hinchey calls the opening to this song "truly one of Dylan's greatest single lines." It's packed.

Many of the images in the song are simultaneously vivid and ambiguous. An orphan with a gun. Seasick sailors. A vagabond. A painter drawing patterns on her sheets. A folding sky. All of it unified by a forlorn directness.

What strikes me most about Dylan's trio of albums during this post-folk stage is the mature nature of the subject matter. This was not bubble-gum music and was never intended to be.

It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue

You must leave now, take what you need, you think will last
But whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast
Yonder stands your orphan with his gun
Crying like a fire in the sun
Look out the saints are comin’ through
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue

The highway is for gamblers, better use your sense
Take what you have gathered from coincidence
The empty-handed painter from your streets
Is drawing crazy patterns on your sheets
This sky, too, is folding under you
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue

All your seasick sailors, they are rowing home
All your reindeer armies, are all going home
The lover who just walked out your door
Has taken all his blankets from the floor
The carpet, too, is moving under you
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue

Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you
Forget the dead you’ve left, they will not follow you
The vagabond who’s rapping at your door
Is standing in the clothes that you once wore
Strike another match, go start anew
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue

Copyright © 1965 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1993 by Special Rider Music

For more details about the song, Wikipedia offers a bit of background.

Tony Atwood's Untold Dylan provides additional information for those who want still more.

What follows here is a live 1965 performance that was filmed for D.A. Pennebacker's Don't Look Back. One is struck by the simplicity and poignancy. And, as I'm always reminded when I watch the solo portions of Dylan's 1965 tour, his ability to hold an audience captive always impresses me, especially considering his youth.

* * * * 

Duluth Dylan Fest Update

For the record, this will be a very special Duluth Dylan Fest. Last year we celebrated Dylan's 75th birthday. This year we'll also celebrate his Nobel Prize for Literature. There will be Dylan Trivia, Dylan-Themed Art, a noble Poetry event, our Singer/Songwriter Contest and the usual events unique to the Northland including the Blood on the Tracks Express. And lots of music.

FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK 
OR
Here at Duluth's Bob Dylan Way Page

It's All Over Now, Baby Blue

My art opening last night was very special, my fifth this year. Met many interesting people and had a good turn out of friends, old and new. Now, it's another day. Turn the page.

Songs that come to mind this morning include, After the Ball (Johnny Cash version), It's All Over Now (Rolling Stones) and Now It's Time to Say Good Night from the end of the Beatles' White Album.

And the winner is, It's All Over Now, Baby Blue, with a recent portrait of Dylan that I displayed in public for the first time last night. And on and on and on it goes, where it stops, nobody knows.


It's All Over Now, Baby Blue

You must leave now, take what you need, you think will last
But whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast
Yonder stands your orphan with his gun
Crying like a fire in the sun
Look out the saints are comin’ through
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue

The highway is for gamblers, better use your sense
Take what you have gathered from coincidence
The empty-handed painter from your streets
Is drawing crazy patterns on your sheets
This sky, too, is folding under you
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue

All your seasick sailors, they are rowing home
All your reindeer armies, are all going home
The lover who just walked out your door
Has taken all his blankets from the floor
The carpet, too, is moving under you
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue

Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you
Forget the dead you’ve left, they will not follow you
The vagabond who’s rapping at your door
Is standing in the clothes that you once wore
Strike another match, go start anew
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue

Copyright © 1965 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1993 by Special Rider Music