"To Bring You Back the Check Fat Off Of My Slenderness"

I face eight straight hours at work this afternoon/evening. On the one hand, this means plenty of money. On the other, it means sitting in this room for another 7 hours. At least I don't have to do the whole shift alone--others are working today as well, so I'll have people to chat with.

I also have stuff to do--I need to read for class tomorrow, I need to do two or three comics (so that I've got comics done for the rest of this week and next Monday, when I probably won't be able to update before Monday if I don't do it really early). I've got a book to read, I've got my GBA SP, and I've got lots of Bob Dylan to listen to.

And that's probably something that I need to do in the next few days--get myself ready for the Dylan concert. The man's released more albums than just about any other artist still alive (and recording), so there's a lot of material to familiarize one's self with. I know that he tends to play a very unpredictable set list--the concert I attended back in 2001 in OKC had a completely different set list than a concert he gave the next day in Little Rock (I was actually able to get a bootleg of that Little Rock concert via a friend of mine from Ozarks who happened to attend that show, and yes, the songs were completely different--I don't think there were any repeats between the two shows). While I knew a lot of the tunes he played back in 2001, I'm even more familiar with his work now, so I'm psyched about this show.

It occurred to me earlier today just how much Dylan I do have, though. I've got more Dylan than anything else--more than the number of Beatles, or Tom Petty, or ELO, or Pink Floyd, or Sting, or any of the other bands I've been obsessed with over the past decade or so. I think I have 18 official albums (including all six volumes of the Bootleg Series, though vol. 1-3 count as one "album" in this case), burned copies of the first two volumes of the Greatest Hits, and the bootleg (so about 21 different albums, all told). That's 29 discs of Dylan. That's a lot, and it's not even half of what he's recorded. Crazy, eh?

I still don't understand my fascination with Dylan. It's just...there, y'know? It simply is. He's a part of our cultural heritage, even if we don't always realize it. I mean, think of how many musicians and bands have recorded covers of Dylan tunes? Some of those covers are so amazing and well-known that we forget that they were written by Dylan--songs like "All Along the Watchtower" (the famous Hendrix version, or even the lesser-known versions by U2 and Dave Matthews...though Hendrix's cover will forever be the best), or the Byrds' "Mr. Tamborine Man" or "My Back Pages" or "All I Really Want to Do" (they were big Dylan fans). Peter, Paul, and Mary covering "Blowin' in the Wind." So many people have recorded his songs, it's sometimes hard to remember that he's the one who recorded those songs first, that they belong to him.

Maybe most of that is pretty garbled--I'm not certain I'm making much sense today--but you have to admire someone who has so captured a good portion of the population's mindset, who's been able to express those things we ourselves cannot express, to tap into our collective mythology so effectively. I think a good case can be made that Dylan is one of the most important and influential individuals in pop culture of the 20th century.

And he puts on a hell of a show.

~chuck

Song of the Moment: Bob Dylan, "Changing of the Guard"