I like Bob Dylan. I think I own twelve or thirteen of his albums. I enjoy listening to them. I think his lyrics are overrated (some border on ridiculous), but the music is good. I’ll even go so far as to say I don’t mind hearing Al Kooper tell the same stupid story about his organ playing on “Like a Rolling Stone” during every Dylan documentary ever made. Now that I feel I’ve done my job in prefacing the rant I’m about to go on, I’ll proceed with said rant.
I was reading (gasp!) this interview from Rolling Stone (boy, talk about irrelevant publications!), and I take umbrage at some of the retarded things good old “uncle Robert” (see: MTV’s The State) says.
Por ejemplo:
“The records I used to listen to and still love, you can’t make a record that sounds that way. “
You’re a little out-of-touch Bob. There are plenty of people making stark recordings that are AAA or AAD, are anything but “overproduced,” and that capture the live-in-studio feeling that you now attribute to you and your peers’ records (even though it was the norm back in the ’60s and ’70s). Some albums that come to mind include: Ryan Adams – Heartbreaker, Songs: Ohia – Axxess & Ace.
“Brian Wilson, he made all his records with four tracks, but you couldn’t make his records if you had a hundred tracks today.”
No. See, you could make a record like that today, there just aren’t many artists who are nuts and brilliant enough to make Pet Sounds. Brian Wilson is a completely unique entity and there hasn’t been anyone as ambitious (and nuts) since him that could attempt such a grand feat. Of course, some bands have since recorded four-track albums with immense instrumentation, multiple-part harmonies, and fucked-up sounds going every which way. See: The Olivia Tremor Control.
“We all like records that are played on record players, but let’s face it, those days are gon-n-n-e. You do the best you can, you fight that technology in all kinds of ways, but I don’t know anybody who’s made a record that sounds decent in the past twenty years, really. You listen to these modern records, they’re atrocious, they have sound all over them. There’s no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like–static. Even these songs probably sounded ten times better in the studio when we recorded ‘em. CDs are small. There’s no stature to it. I remember when that Napster guy came up across, it was like, ‘Everybody’s gettin’ music for free.’ I was like, ‘Well, why not? It ain’t worth nothing anyway.’”
Sorry Mr. Zimmerman, now you just sound like a crotchety old baby boomer. I’m not even quite sure I understand your argument. You miss vinyl, you’re weary of modern recording techniques, CDs sound bad because they’re small, “it’s too loud!” and new albums do not contain real music.
Right.
First of all, if you think it sounds better in the studio than it does on playback, it probably means you shouldn’t have left the duty of recording your album in the hands of the guy who engineered Ice Cube’s AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted. Second of all, you’re Bob Dylan, you should be looking outside the mainstream for albums that aren’t totally compressed and digitized and generally overblown with studio trickery. Sure, if you only listen to Top-40 radio it sounds like white noise, but why would anyone willingly subject themselves to that? You’re basically admitting that you’re too old and too self-absorbed to walk into your local indie record store to buy something that isn’t “static.” Woe is you, Bob. I feel your ‘boomer pain and I empathize. Things have changed. Kids these days listen to bad music. It’s too loud! Blahblahblahblah…I don’t know, I just have a hard time taking you seriously when you’ve gone from the guy who was booed for playing electric guitars in ’65 to the guy who harps on today’s “atrocious” music. All of your releases since ’75 were varying degrees of “atrocious.” That’s thirty fucking years of garbage. And yet you’re depressed by the current state of music? Fuck off.
PS: Shave the Dali-stache, for the love of God.
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