@Aedes,
Aedes;39332 wrote:
And tell me that there isn't anger and rage -- perhaps even excessively -- in that verse.
Not at all. I just want you to realize that anger, rage, and even violence are hardly unique to metal and rap. And that even if you think metal is vapid, its main utility is as a political type of expression.
I never meant to suggest that anger or rage is only in metal or rap. Just that those two genres seem to be more fueled by this than others. Bob Dylan, and many other artists can express their anger and rage constructively-- we get a real picture of what's going on, some poetic descriptions of the emotions involved, lyrics that we can hear when he sings them. And of course he isn't limited by this theme (like many rap and metal groups), he lets it all out. As for "political expression", it might serve these groups to actually "sing" with some clarity if they are trying to make a political point. Otherwise, it is just noise.
Quote:But there is crap in every era.
Of course. And in my experience, most of our current era's crap falls within the categories of "pop", "rap"/"hip hop", and "metal". Of course this is the "pop culture" subforum, so it is not my goal here to try to objectively prove that any kind of music is better than another; it's all just what suits our own tastes. I have spent a lot of time listening to different kinds of music though, and I stand by my assessment.
Quote:It's just hard to generalize. If I took an uninitiated person and played him "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues" and "Desolation Row", he'd think that Dylan was nothing but hallucinogenic nonsense. You and I both know that those are two of his greatest songs, and it takes some concentration to really understand them, but this is because he challenges us.
Yea, and at least I don't have to lookup the lyrics online just to find out what words I actually was listening to when the song played. With some of Dylan's songs, you could interpret each of them a thousand different ways and still never know for sure what he intended to describe when he wrote it. But the emotion is there in the picture that he paints with his words, and this is the sign of a poet.
On this note, my standards for musicianship are pretty high. I wouldn't say Bob is a great
musician; somebody like Miles Davis would come to mind in that category. For the true masters, who I believe are in their own category as composers you go back to the likes of Mozart, Beethoven, or somebody like Rachmaninov, more recently. That is serious, contemplative, artistic expression...not like some hit rock songs that get composed on a napkin at the bar in a drunken haze. Bob Dylan's real mastery lies in his lyrics, and for this reason I would say he's a great poet, who might be one of the best in the last century. You also quoted lyrics from the Grateful Dead, but of course their songs were almost all written by the poet Robert Hunter, and then worked into the music by Jerry Garcia. Hunter was a great poet; Garcia was a pretty good musician and guitarist, but was singing someone else's lyrics.
Quote:By the same token, you cannot know how deep heavy metal and rap CAN be if the sound is what dissuades you from delving deeper. That's fine, but be honest with yourself -- it's the sound that's making you generalize about the content.
The sound doesn't dissuade me-- sometimes I AM in the mood to hear the sound of rap, or hard rock, and I turn on some GOOD musicians from these genres. We used to blast the violent, popular gangster-rap stuff, or heavy metal, in the hockey locker room before games, and I would listen to it while working out on the heavy bag. Because this "energetic noise" essentially serves one good purpose: getting you amped and angry (helpful in sports or working out, but doesn't qualify as an art form in my view).
I know how deep this music CAN be, as I am not saying that ALL of it is as I describe. Just MOST of it. For most of the popular rap out there, it only takes one album filled with insights like 'I smoke weed by the pound, drink vodka by the fifth', 'pulled out my nine, bust a cap in his dome', '99 problems but a b---h ain't one' to basically give me the gist of their message. You can only listen to so many songs about drug dealing, killing, sex, cars, clothes, etc.
