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View Full Version : Bob Dylan wins Nobel prize


hifi_dave
13-10-2016, 12:12
Bob Dylan has been awarded the Nobel prize for Literature.

Well deserved and long overdue IMO.
Sherwood
13-10-2016, 14:48
You're gonna make me lonesome when you go, Bob!
Infinitely Baffled
18-10-2016, 18:14
Hmm, hate to be contentious, but ... I think this award is a bit daft myself.

Don't get me wrong, I love Dylan's records. Got loads of them and never fail to enjoy them. In fact I'd go so far as to say that "Blood on the Tracks" is one of the best 45mins worth of musical entertainment you can buy. But with Bob, I think it's the whole thing put together that works well, rather than the individual elements: usually quite interesting lyrics plus simple but rootsy musical arrangements add great singing (yes, really, and I think anyone that rubbishes him as a singer is failing to understand the difference between having a nice-sounding voice and being able to really sing - two different things) and an almost unrivalled ability to communicate, and the total effect can be mesmerizing at its best.

But giving him an award for "literature" for heaven's sake! He has written some great song lyrics in the past - but better than Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, Lennon/McCartney even? I wouldn't say so. In fact I sometimes think that the lyrics to his later songs (say, "Modern Times" onwards) look and sound like they have been made up out of rhyming two-liners that he has jotted down sometime and stuffed in a drawer, and then pulled a bunch out a few years later and rummaged through in order to cut and paste a song together. Disjointed doggerel verse, but as I said, he often makes great songs out of it by adding it into the magical Dylan mix.

One of the all-time great folk/rock troubadours, yes; but he ain't no Gerard Manley Hopkins!
IB.
walpurgis
18-10-2016, 18:22
One of the all-time great folk/rock troubadours, yes; but he ain't no Gerard Manley Hopkins!
IB.

Is he in 'The Simpsons'?
Light Dependant Resistor
18-10-2016, 18:38
But he has been featured on South Park https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_H8XqA7WyLI
petrat
22-10-2016, 16:50
Hmm, hate to be contentious, but ... I think this award is a bit daft myself.

Seems Mr Zimmerman thinks so, too.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-37740379
struth
22-10-2016, 17:01
He likes to be contentious to the system, or at least appear to be so may well just ignore it.
Arkless Electronics
22-10-2016, 17:10
So we can expect next years to go to Elvis Costello after this precedent has been set?
narabdela
22-10-2016, 17:29
Hmm, hate to be contentious, but ... I think this award is a bit daft myself...

One of the all-time great folk/rock troubadours, yes; but he ain't no Gerard Manley Hopkins!

Agreed. Must've been a slow year for literature, or the commitee were desperately trying to be 'hip'. :mental:
struth
22-10-2016, 17:38
So we can expect next years to go to Elvis Costello after this precedent has been set?

Ive bagsied it for my literary contributions to AoS:eyebrows:
Arkless Electronics
22-10-2016, 17:40
Ive bagsied it for my literary contributions to AoS:eyebrows:

Eee well... the times they are a changin' :D
struth
22-10-2016, 17:48
Eee well... the times they are a changin' :D

alas for me, and fortunately for everyone else, they aint changin' that much ;)
Arkless Electronics
22-10-2016, 17:52
alas for me, and fortunately for everyone else, they aint changin' that much ;)

Don't let it take you to desolation row though Grant....
petrat
22-10-2016, 18:44
Well, I hope he does the right thing and donates the prize to a good cause ... it's around three quarters of a million pounds :eek: