Bob Dylan is playing at the Kohl Center tonight, so I thought, in honor of the occasion, it would be appropriate to list... The Top Five Reasons Why Bob Dylan is the Coolest Musician Ever:
5. His Voice(s)
One thing I've always loved about Dylan is that as you progress through his extensive catalog of music, you can pick out his different voices. From the standard nasally Dylan we all know and love from his early Freewheelin' days, to the softer, tender voice of John Wesley Harding to the bizarre but attractive Kermit the Frog impression on Nashville Skyline. Not to mention the deeper, raspier voice he's developed in later life, such as on Oh Mercy or his kick-ass new album, Modern Times. No matter where you find yourself, though, you can always feel the same warmth and passion in those pipes. It's like getting to know all the sides of a really complex person and loving all of them equally.
4. His Cojones
There's a great story about a concert Dylan played in '66. In case you're not familiar with the history, Dylan started as a folk artist, covering traditional folk songs until he started recording his own folk songs. However, one of the tenets of traditional folk music is that it's acoustic—this was seen as sacred, like Abraham's covenant with God. So when Dylan decided to go electric in the middle of the '60s, a lot of fans' heads exploded. In the now famous incident of a concert at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, England, a heckler called out, ""Judas!"" to Dylan from the audience. In response to this, Dylan turned to his band and muttered, ""Play fucking loud,"" and then launched into a totally rockin' version of ""Like A Rolling Stone."" Like e.e. cummings defying grammar, or Galileo defying Aristotle, Dylan became an iconoclast, much to the dismay of many of his followers. But thank God he had the balls to go through with it—I think most fans would agree that much of Dylan's best stuff came from this early electric period.
3. His ""Meaningfulness""
While certainly not every Dylan song is a masterpiece of complex songwriting and profound lyrics, so many of them are. Even from early on, Dylan was tackling serious social and political issues—e.g. ""Masters of War,"" and ""Oxford Town,"" both excellent rebuttals to the social ills of Vietnam and racism, respectively, all the way up through the excellent ""Workingman's Blues #2"" on Modern Times, a celebration of and consolation for the modern proletariat.
2. His Influence
The Bobster, as he's now sometimes affectionately called, has also influenced generations of musicians that came after him. In fact, it would probably be easier to make a list of post-Dylan artists that weren't influenced by him. What Dylan did was revolutionary: He convinced a new generation of musicians that rock 'n' roll could be an outlet for intelligent songwriting. If someone wanted to write a song about the poor before Dylan, they wrote a folk song. But Dylan said it doesn't have to be that way, rock music can be about more than cars and girls and—well, cars and girls, really. All of a sudden, hot button topics like poverty, war, wrongful imprisonment and crime—anything really—were on the table.
And, of course, let's not forget the absolute coolest thing about Mr. Bob Dylan...
1. His Mustache
I don't quite know where this thing came from or when exactly he started growing it, but when you see a picture of Dylan now, it's the first and only thing you see. I love that he has it, despite the fact that it makes him look a little like a French bad guy in a vaudeville show.
Here's to you, Bob. Have fun tonight.
