"The line it is drawn the curse it is cast. The slow one now will later be fast. As the present now will later be past. The order is rapidly fadin'. And the first one now will later be last for the times they are a changin'."
-accounting firm's commercial
Sell out? Hardly. When I first heard the news Bob Dylan had let one of his songs be used in a commercial I had no opinion one way or the other. I figured it was Bob doing what Bob has always done: exactly the opposite of what his fans expect him to do. Then people started asking me what I thought. So I quickly had my people put together an opinion statement.
"Drag isn't it?" I said, but in my heart I didn't mean it.
For those who take the integrity of art seriously, who felt the 60's were about something, the selling of one of the more important anthems is discouraging. Our culture seems to gobble up anything that once held any type of meaning whatsoever. All in the name of turning a buck.
At the same time, for a generation that sold its soul long ago, who now goes around sipping cappuccinos, wearing designer shades, dressing in black, and pretending to be dismayed at social injustices, it's hypocritical to think their designated spokesmodel violated some mythical line by commercializing a song that lost its meaning years before. The song was of the period, has dated poorly, and has been rendered merely as symbolic by countless lackadaisical, lackluster performances in arenas where cigarette lights flicker but the ritual has become a parody. To surrender the song as muzak doesn't change what it once was but simply admits over time it has lost all of its intimacy.
The myth is that any music is somehow inherently sacred. Every morning, I climb on to the elevator to Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik and the imagery that inevitably comes into mind is some slapstick scene with people falling over each other, screaming one liners at each other, the dog under foot woofing away, and wacky behavior seen as a form of entertainment. Amazing Grace brings to mind a Vulcan's funeral in a Star Trek movie. Sacred? Gimme a break, it's all entertainment.
It would be hard for even his harshest critics to say Bob Dylan wrote the song with money in his eyes. The hit potential, the accessibility of the song was deliberately calculated and limited. It's one of Dylan's weaker finger pointing songs, castigating the older generation, the establishment, to get out of the way and let the youth make their voice heard. These days it sounds painfully naive, painfully shallow (criticisms that can be applied for that time, for that generation) and that he still sings this song in concerts furthers a myth he has tried so hard to escape and is in itself an act of extreme cynicism. A sellout? There still isn't anybody out there with more to say. Folkie turned rocker, social conscious spokesperson turned judgmental born again, right wing fanatic. Hip to slurred.
Some would say the aim of an honest artist is to remain true to their work; to affect change, to encourage and challenge their audience to think and feel. But a true artist realizes life isn't that idealistic. Pure repetition and over analyzing, robs any work of its meaning. If you can make money off of something you wrote more than thirty years ago why not? These same people would say it would have been better if Dylan died in 1967 and hadn't fallen with such a resounding thud and become a parody of what he represented in their eyes. But the myth was just that, a myth. When you begin to see the eternal, the present loses some of its luster. The tragic part is that the way the process works the artist loses touch and becomes isolated from their audience, becomes disillusioned, disenchanted, and as they lose their way, the audience still blindly follows what once was. "Don't follow leaders watch a parking meters." A sign of the times unfortunately is that these days some of our better protest singers are accountants. 'Nuf said.
-accounting firm's commercial
Sell out? Hardly. When I first heard the news Bob Dylan had let one of his songs be used in a commercial I had no opinion one way or the other. I figured it was Bob doing what Bob has always done: exactly the opposite of what his fans expect him to do. Then people started asking me what I thought. So I quickly had my people put together an opinion statement.
"Drag isn't it?" I said, but in my heart I didn't mean it.
For those who take the integrity of art seriously, who felt the 60's were about something, the selling of one of the more important anthems is discouraging. Our culture seems to gobble up anything that once held any type of meaning whatsoever. All in the name of turning a buck.
At the same time, for a generation that sold its soul long ago, who now goes around sipping cappuccinos, wearing designer shades, dressing in black, and pretending to be dismayed at social injustices, it's hypocritical to think their designated spokesmodel violated some mythical line by commercializing a song that lost its meaning years before. The song was of the period, has dated poorly, and has been rendered merely as symbolic by countless lackadaisical, lackluster performances in arenas where cigarette lights flicker but the ritual has become a parody. To surrender the song as muzak doesn't change what it once was but simply admits over time it has lost all of its intimacy.
The myth is that any music is somehow inherently sacred. Every morning, I climb on to the elevator to Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik and the imagery that inevitably comes into mind is some slapstick scene with people falling over each other, screaming one liners at each other, the dog under foot woofing away, and wacky behavior seen as a form of entertainment. Amazing Grace brings to mind a Vulcan's funeral in a Star Trek movie. Sacred? Gimme a break, it's all entertainment.
It would be hard for even his harshest critics to say Bob Dylan wrote the song with money in his eyes. The hit potential, the accessibility of the song was deliberately calculated and limited. It's one of Dylan's weaker finger pointing songs, castigating the older generation, the establishment, to get out of the way and let the youth make their voice heard. These days it sounds painfully naive, painfully shallow (criticisms that can be applied for that time, for that generation) and that he still sings this song in concerts furthers a myth he has tried so hard to escape and is in itself an act of extreme cynicism. A sellout? There still isn't anybody out there with more to say. Folkie turned rocker, social conscious spokesperson turned judgmental born again, right wing fanatic. Hip to slurred.
Some would say the aim of an honest artist is to remain true to their work; to affect change, to encourage and challenge their audience to think and feel. But a true artist realizes life isn't that idealistic. Pure repetition and over analyzing, robs any work of its meaning. If you can make money off of something you wrote more than thirty years ago why not? These same people would say it would have been better if Dylan died in 1967 and hadn't fallen with such a resounding thud and become a parody of what he represented in their eyes. But the myth was just that, a myth. When you begin to see the eternal, the present loses some of its luster. The tragic part is that the way the process works the artist loses touch and becomes isolated from their audience, becomes disillusioned, disenchanted, and as they lose their way, the audience still blindly follows what once was. "Don't follow leaders watch a parking meters." A sign of the times unfortunately is that these days some of our better protest singers are accountants. 'Nuf said.
No comments:
Post a Comment