“Heart of Mine” and “In the Summertime” deal with the problems and pleasures of man-woman love, I guess, though who can tell with Dylan anymore? In the former, the artist counsels against letting the woman know that you love her and need her (great advice that: I suppose it’s called resisting temptation), while in the latter, he goes on and on about a precious “gift you gave” but can’t seem to grasp the details. Hear Bob Dylan Break Out The Grateful Dead’s ‘Truckin’’ at Tokyo Concert There was a context that made some sort of sense, an idea that big battles - both personal and political - were being fought.) Dylan could cut your throat with “Positively 4th Street” and “Ballad of a Thin Man,” but at least he didn’t wield the knife under the guise of God’s martyred messenger. (Even the rants were better in the old days. While the earlier LPs may have lacked the Biblical benefits of Dylan’s certified salvation, they certainly served up ampler portions of real Christian charity - not to mention the milk of human kindness - than do the K rations of the last three. I’m ready to believe in the mystery of a higher power and willing to hope that God exists (if He does, He’s got an ungodly sense of humor), yet Slow Train Coming, Saved and Shot of Love are a whole lot more sinister and secular to me than, say, Another Side of Bob Dylan, Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde, John Wesley Harding, The Basement Tapes, Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, Blood on the Tracks and Desire, albums that hit hard but with a purpose. Sinning against God and sinning against Dylan are two different things. Therefore, each and every one of us can go to hell. We’re barely alive (“Dead Man, Dead Man”). Our love is no damn good (“Watered-Down Love”). Dullards that we are, we can’t understand God. By not appreciating the genius of Bob Dylan’s current material, we’re supposedly crucifying him, even though he’s awfully handy with the hammer and nails himself. Instead, they’re choked with anger, rife with self-pity and so swollen with self-absorption that the singer often seems to think that he and Jesus are interchangeable on that mythic cross. Most of the time, Dylan’s still beating the same annoying drum he did on Slow Train Coming and Saved (which, between them, produced one passable - and believable - cut, “Pressing On”), and if a recognizable portrait does emerge, it’s probably an unintended one, since it’s filled mainly with hatred, confusion and egoism.īeing reborn changed the world for him, Dylan claims, but his Christian compositions rarely praise God in any conventional religious manner (praise the Lord and pass the ammunition, maybe). Unfortunately, except for “Every Grain of Sand,” Shot of Love seldom gets any more interesting than that first listening. Truth be known, my initial reaction was just another example of the old and familiar Bob Dylan syndrome: i.e., because the man’s past achievements have meant so much to so many of us, we tend to give his newest work the benefit of every doubt.
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