From: ajw@cbnews.cb.att.com (andrew.j.whitman)
Subject: Re: Bob Dylan
Organization: AT&T
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 13:40:43 GMT

In article <1992Oct8.145714.6208@medtron.medtronic.com> kr11615@yugoslavia (Kent Roessler) writes:
>Does anybody have an opinion about dylan's christian music?
>
>This is my first time in this group and I didn't see any references to
>his music!
>
>The guy is one of the greatest song writers of our time and writes
>beautiful music too.  His christian albums: SAVED, SLOW TRAIN COMING,
>SHOT OF LOVE and various tracks from his other albums really kick.
>
>I just recently seen him live in mpls, and he did a great version of
>IN THE GARDEN and LITTLE MOSES. His new album is coming out this fall
>so all you Amy Grant fans put down your TOP 40 christian queen (whose
>songs are so trivial and gutless) and have a listen to his bobness.

Okay, I'll bite.  

First, I think comparing Amy Grant to Bob Dylan is like comparing apples 
to orangutans.  Don't see the connection?  Hey, maybe because there isn't 
one.  Amy Grant writes dance-oriented pop music.  Bob Dylan writes rock and 
folk music where the focus is on the lyrics.  If you're going to criticize 
Amy for writing trivial music you might as well criticize Dylan because 
he can't do Michael Jackson spin moves.  They're writing for two very
different audiences and striving for two very different goals.

Second, I think Dylan's Christian music is wildly inconsistent (just
like the rest of his career over the past twenty years), and ranges
from sublimely beautiful and insightful to painfully banal and 
inane.  When he's good he's very good - on almost all of the "Slow
Train Coming" album, on "Every Grain of Sand" and "I and I" and 
"Lord, Protect My Child" and "Foot of Pride" and "Blind Willie McTell."
When he's bad he's atrocious - on almost all of the "Saved" album, on
half of the "Shot of Love" album, and on every single Christian song
on "Knocked Out Loaded" and "Down in the Groove" and "Oh Mercy" and 
"Under the Red Sky."  I'd throw "Empire Burlesque" in there too, but
"Dark Eyes" salvages an otherwise completely forgettable album.  

No, I don't hate Bob Dylan.  I have more of his music in my collection
than any other artist, and I've seen him in concert more than a dozen times 
over a twenty year span.  I buy all of his albums, read lots of books 
about him, study his lyrics, pay outrageous sums for bootleg recordings, 
and swap concert tapes with other fanatics - the whole Dylan groupie scene.  
I think he's the finest songwriter rock music has ever produced, and 
the *only* songwriter in rock music whose lyrics can legitimately stand
on their own as great poetry.  But I'm also disappointed in him because
he's prodigiously talented, and because Christianity, of all subjects,
should inspire great lyrics, and because Dylan doesn't even try most 
of the time.  

The bane of Christian music is triviality:  tired cliches, reciting
Bible verses instead of interpreting how those verses apply in 
people's lives, an insistence on the upbeat and on warm, fuzzy
feelings instead of on the cross where Jesus died and the cross
that we are to take up daily in following him.  So yeah, it bugs
me that the same guy who wrote "Inside the museums infinity goes
up on trial/Voices echo this is what salvation will be like after
a while" as a non-Christian is content to churn out "I've been
saved by the blood of the lamb" as a Christian.  The entire "Saved"
album is one big cliche - from the title to the cover art to every
single song inside.  And when Dylan adds to the cliches by writing
sexist tripe like "Covenant Woman," wherein he prays for a nice
Christian girl to stay home and bake his bread for him, my own
offensometer (TM - thanks, Jerry) goes off the scale and I'm tempted
to consign the whole mess to the outer darkness of my garbage can.
This album stinks.

Fortunately there's an up side too.  Except for the stupid "Man Gave 
Names To All The Animals," "Slow Train Coming" is uniformly good, and
works equally well as a scathing indictment of our society and as 
a confessional document of Dylan's own spiritual need.  And three of the
Christian songs on the recently released "Bootleg Series" boxed set
are superb - "Lord, Protect My Child," "Foot of Pride," and "Blind
Willie McTell."  Dylan still does a ranting Old Testament prophet 
imitation better than anybody else in music.  

But I'd like to see him do better.  He *can* do better.  I'll commit
the ultimate Christian Dylan Fan sacrilege of asserting that Dylan's
non-Christian music from the sixties is far superior to anything
he's released as a Christian.  And if I could only take three Dylan
albums with me, I'd still take "Bringing It All Back Home" and
"Highway 61 Revisited" and "Blonde on Blonde."  Sorry, but "Saved"
would not be saved.

>"We all gotta serve somebody, It may be the devil or it may be the
>lord but in the end we all gotta serve somebody"...Bob Dylan, 1980

Andy Whitman
AT&T Bell Laboratories, Columbus, Ohio
att!cblpn!ajw  or
ajw@cblpn.att.com

"There up on the stage they'll be 
tryin' to get water out of rocks/
A whore'll pass the hat, 
collect a hundred grand and say "Thanks."/
They like to take all this money from sin, 
build big universities to study in/
Sing "Amazing Grace" all the way to the Swiss banks."
  -- Bob Dylan, "Foot of Pride"