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InvisibleLeastResistance
Camp Pink Onion
Male

Registered: 09/27/04
Posts: 808
Loc: Dairyland
Bob dylan + meme propaganda
    #5535201 - 04/19/06 08:09 PM (17 years, 11 months ago)

Dylan arrives in NYC after the Android Meme begins growing in 1960. The satellite environment is figure and black-and-white TV is becoming archetypal (McLuhan, ca.'62 article).

The old American radio/movie environment therefore becomes a new clich?-probe. Dylan the actor is going to instinctively provide a visual and auditory pun on this probe. Therefore, his image is a mixture of James Dean, Marlon Brando, Charlie Chaplin, Robert Johnson, Marian Anderson, and Woody Guthrie.

His first phase of the folkie image works because of the resonance of his and Joan Baez's Pre-Raphaelite, medieval troubadour echoing with the retrieval of the humanist public space via literate folk balladeers within the holeopathic mass-man, TV effect.

However, being a Gemini Sponge Bob, he can quickly create a new actor-role as the satellite pressures begin to evoke the global theater of mixed-media absurdity.

Last nite's Scorsese documentary ended with him moving ahead of Baez and developing his "completely new arena" of hyper-Symbolist, logocentric narratives. This is the first phase of the general flipping into post-TV "visual values", later to be upset by colour TV.

Meanwhile, Frank Zappa lurks off-stage preparing to present a more conscious quadrophrenia to grapple with the later psychedelic permutations of the Android Meme.

In one of the L.A. video interviews (1965) with Dylan we saw excerpts of
last night, he was asked what would provoke him to get "really
concerned/involved". Scorsese's doc does not include his answer: "... If
everyone disappeared".

It is apparent from the backstage footage of the '66 tour that Dylan is
becoming exasperated with the Menippean phatic nature of the exchange of his
image with the "media". The journalists were pretending to find a "point" to
his music, while Dylan (a literate "boomer" miming the strains of his
college-educated peers) was pretending that his music was "phat". The
reverse was the actual case so Dylan began to see the exchange as abusive -
the actual currency of the Android Meme's software economy increasingly
becoming "abuse value". (Warhol in the Seventies: "In fifteen minutes
everyone will be famous.")

By the time of his accident (July 29/66), the satellite environment was
about to be subsumed by the Android Meme (AM) as figure (beginning with the
instant replay) so there was no room for Dylan's Chemical Body (remember he
was a junkie, after all) to "create" (in the Western, literate sense of
secondary orality). He merged with the Global Theater for 8 years. By '74 (a
thousand years later in AM time), the increasingly human-scale
(user-friendly) services of the digital AM opened many new interior
(proprioceptive) spaces for Dylan's TV Body to holeopathically replay the
Ulyssean archetype ("going home") with a Gnostic refrain. He became a
conventional "artist".

So enter Frank Zappa, with the advantage of observing and learning from
Dylan's trouble-shooting "musical expedition", to present a strategy that
would consciously keep pace with the Android Meme and its seductive
xenochrony.

Here's Frank from the first biography (1972) of him by my colleague, David
Walley:

[While the Sixties was developing its own consciousness, body rock was
merging with folk music. Bob Dylan welded the two together, much to the
indignation of the folk purists. A serious message with a beat. Folk rock
itself was soon drugged up to produce acid rock - all the lines were crossed
and confused. The media monsters were uncertain: they could sell the new
product, but they didn't understand it. Frank Zappa was aware of its power
too: "Dylan's 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' was a monster record. I heard
that thing and I was jumping all over the car. And then when I heard the one
after that, 'Like a Rolling Stone,' I wanted to quit the music business
because I felt if this wins and it does what it's supposed to do, I don't
need to do anything. It sold, but nobody responded to it the way that they
should have. They should have listened to that and said, 'Hey, that record
got on the radio. Now wait a minute, we've got a chance to say something,
you know? The radio is for us to use as a weapon.' It didn't happen right
away, and I was a little disappointed. I figured, well shit, maybe it needs
a little reinforcing."

Cultural politics was the name of the game. How significant could an artist
be and still be commercial, or better, how much could an artist say and get
played on the radio? Pop idols lived with the emerging culture, making
judgments on taste, political allegiance, and lifestyle; music, instead of
an accompaniment, was becoming the focal point of a generation. The lyrics
were good, the energy was positive. But the ugly head of commercialism was
already raising its head in earnest."] - NO COMMERCIAL POTENTIAL: The Saga
of Frank Zappa, p.7

So, back then in that satellite environment of secondary tactility and
ersatz autonomy:

"Another paradoxical aspect of this change is that when music becomes
environmental by electric means, it becomes more and more the concern of the
private individual. By the same token and complementary to the same paradox,
the pre-electric music of the concert hall (the music made for a public
rather than a mass audience) was a corporate ritual for the group rather
than the individual. This paradox extends to all electric technology. The
same means which permit a universal and centralized thermostat in effect
encourage a private thermostat for individual manipulation. The age of the
mass audience is thus far more individualistic than the preceding age of the
PUBLIC." - Marshall McLuhan, Through The Vanishing Point, 1968, p.248


[Attitude of Gratitude:
For Great Phil Ochs,
Forgotten Un-Dylan

By Ron Rosenbaum

I know there?s a lot of Dylan in the air these days, and I?m happy about
that. But after seeing Scorsese?s No Direction Home, I found myself thinking
about someone else, an almost-forgotten contemporary of Dylan: Phil Ochs.

Let me explain. For some reason, I had the good fortune to watch a screening
of the Scorsese documentary up at PBS with one of my lit-crit faves, John
Leonard. I?d been a fan of his ever since college, when I read his
underappreciated black-comic novel, Crybaby of the Western World (somebody
should reissue it), and I?ve come to admire the way that his prose in The
Nation and The New York Review of Books has become, to use a Dylan analogy,
critical language gone electric. There was one stretch a while back when his
remarkable reviews of Pynchon, Roth and Bellow made them suddenly new for me
by the sheer force of his will and wit.

And when it comes to Dylan matters, I even admire his support for the
pro-folkie, Joan Baez wing of the culture that Dylan left behind (expressed
in Mr. Leonard?s beautiful NYRB essay on David Hajdu?s Positively 4th
Street)?even though I?m a pro-electric-Dylan guy myself and don?t see the
need to disparage one to appreciate the other. But it matters that someone
like Mr. Leonard cares about such things.

In any case, in the course of watching the three-and-a-half-hour, two-part
Scorsese Dylan documentary in the PBS screening room, it occurred to me that
I should express the gratitude I felt to John Leonard and tell him how much
his work?especially the way he opened up non-academic lit-crit writing to a
kind of inspired, allusive, pun-intensive playfulness?meant to me over the
years. Not that it should matter to him, but it mattered to me.

And I felt gratitude to Dylan, too. Even though the story?s been told over
and over (and over) again, Scorsese?s focus on how much Dylan persisted in
his electric vision despite its bitter unpopularity among his folkie base
was inspiring. He was onto something, he knew it, and he wasn?t going to let
go of it because of some envious carpers.

So there I was: leaving PBS, thanking John Leonard, walking down Ninth
Avenue, grateful to Dylan. In an ?attitude of gratitude? mode, as some
friends of mine might say. And I found myself thinking about someone else
who deserves my gratitude, props from us all. Someone on the folkie scene
who was probably burned for good by being too close to the wheel on fire
that was Dylan.

I was thinking of Phil Ochs. I was thinking of his beautiful, perfect song,
?There But for Fortune,? and how much gratitude I had for it. How it
probably changed my life, or my way of thinking about life. And I was
thinking about what I might have said to Phil at that dinner we?d had in
L.A. not long before he killed himself.

You all remember Phil Ochs, right? Anyone ? ? Bueller? (About half the
people I asked recently didn?t.) Back when Dylan was just becoming Dylan,
Phil Ochs was a rising star on the folkie protest-song scene before Dylan
eclipsed all other stars. His anti-war anthems like ?I Ain?t Marching Any
More? galvanized people at Vietnam-era rallies. He also did quieter, more
personal folkie ballads that showed considerable singer-songwriter
talent??Changes? and ?Pleasures of the Harbor,? for instance.

And then there was this one beautiful, perfect song which was, perhaps on
the surface, political?but on a deeper, far more primal and powerful level,
a song that was pre-political, even spiritual: ?There But for Fortune.?

?There But for Fortune?: It was a kind of ur-politics with a killer melody,
one of those songs that forever inscribed itself, melody and meaning, on
some deep level of the self?well, of my self when I first heard Joan Baez
sing it. But Phil?s version is, if possible, even more haunting.

I know that in some ways it shaped the way I think about politics more than
any written document, it carried such a powerful emotional truth.

By all rights, that song should have been enough to immortalize him and make him feel fulfilled forever, but things didn?t
work that way, what with the ?star-making machinery? of the nascent celeb
culture that came to bohemia looking for the ?next Dylan.?
One of the things that Scorsese?s documentary dramatizes, as well as one of
the best parts of Dylan?s Chronicles and what?s most appealing about David
Hajdu?s Positively 4th Street, is the cumulative picture you get of the
bubbling ferment of oddballs and geniuses that was the early 60?s Greenwich
Village. When everyone was unconventional, but not in conventionally
unconventional ways. You know the song ?I Was Country When Country Wasn?t
Cool?? (I was, by the way.) The early bohemians were unconventional before
unconventional was cool. They were just inventing what would later become
conventionally unconventional lives and works?commodified New York bohemia.
And you have the feeling from Scorsese?s film, and from Dylan?s Chronicles,
that no one really knew who was going to turn out to be a genius and who was
an imitator, who was a clown, who was Tiny Tim.

But then, suddenly, Dylan broke out and broke though with ?Blowin? in the
Wind? and ?The Times They Are A-Changin?,? and a whole new typology emerged.
There was Dylan, and then there were what we might now call the alt-Dylans
(Dylan contemporaries and rivals like Phil Ochs and Eric Anderson), and then
the ?New Dylans? like John Prine, the future Dylans, the un-Dylans. Suddenly
everything in that once-fractal world had a Copernican center. There was
Dylan and there were the planets rotating around him, judged,
identified?defined?by their distance from the sun.

Phil Ochs inevitably, against his will, became one of those planets. There
but for fortune, perhaps, a star. Instead, he had the misfortune to be a
?Dylanesque figure? without being Dylan, always defined by, in the shadow
of, Mr. D.

And then when Dylan turned his back on the folkie world, when he ?went
electric? and abandoned politics for irony and surrealism, Phil Ochs became
the anti-Dylan, the one who stayed true to acoustic folkie lefty politics,
you might say, still writing protest songs, seeming to those of us who liked
the sneering punkiness of the electric Dylan a little?I?m ashamed to say
it?uncool.

For a while, I was part of a small circle of friends or friends of friends
that included Phil, and when we ran into each other in the Village now and
then, we?d sometimes hang out. I liked the guy, but his bitterness at being
the not-Dylan clearly rankled him, and his critical attitude toward Dylan
turning his back on the folkie world?not just by taking up the electric
guitar, but by putting down those who played acoustic and stuck to politics
(see ?My Back Pages? with its ecstatic preaching against preaching)?was
rarely absent when the subject came up, and it often did.

Still, I respected the guy, and when I was out in L.A. one time, I gave Phil
a call and we got together for a meal in the hotel dining room. As things
turned out, it was the last time I saw him.

Oh yeah, he was out there in L.A. because he was almost persona non grata in
New York for a misconceived?or misunderstood?Dylan-goes-electric type of
move. He?d given a concert dressed in a gold lam? suit, playing electric
guitar and sort of posing as Elvis. And giving a quote that ?if there?s any
hope for a revolution in America, it lies in getting Elvis Presley to become
Che Guevara.? (He?d actually gotten Nudie, Elvis? tailor, to make him the
suit.) Either way, it didn?t seem like a compelling argument to many,
although, looking back, it spoke to the Left?s difficulty in connecting with
popular culture.

Well, to be kind, let?s say it was a miscalculation. Perhaps it?s true, and
it was pretty much a way of saying that this country is never going to have
a revolution, because Elvis is never going to become Che Guevara. Rock may
be revolutionary, but rock stars are not?let?s face it.

Anyway, almost everybody hated it. Pro-Dylan types hated it because they
thought it was a hostile parody of Dylan going electric. And anti-Dylan types hated it because they thought Phil
was ?selling out? by making a Dylan-type rock-star move. Political types
rejected its ?analysis? of the revolutionary situation. It was universally
proclaimed a fiasco.
So that?s why, the last time we met, Phil was in L.A. He was, in a way,
hiding out, doing a lot of drinking, claiming not to be able to write. As I
recall, I was kind of hiding out, too: I was supposed to tape an interview
with a fugitive on the run, one Abbott Hoffman, so in a way I was on the
run, trying to keep a low profile while awaiting secret phone-booth
rendezvous messages.

Actually?and this is not the digression it might seem to you?in one of the
big arguments I had with Abbott Hoffman (whom I?d come to like while
covering him for The Village Voice), I invoked Phil?s song, ?There But for
Fortune.?

You know it at all? Maybe?and this is not a digression within a digression?I
should give you a feeling for it. Here?s the second verse:

Show me an alley, show me a train,
Show me a hobo who sleeps out in the rain,
And I?ll show you a young man with so many reasons why,
And there but for fortune may go you or I ?.

You have to hear it, of course; you have to hear its aching Blakean
simplicity and urgency. In a way, it has a classical purity?and when I say
?classical,? I mean a going back to basics, back to Sophocles and the role
that fortune and character play in man?s fate. As a song, it?s a sentiment
that serves as a kind of Rorschach test, a defining revelation about how one
views the unfortunate of the world. And the panhandler in front of you.

It?s a big subject, fortune. No wonder the post-Sophoclean debate about it
consumed not just classical and medieval thinkers: Are we where we are
because of who we are, and thus ?deserve? to be there? Or are we where we
are because of the cruel whim of fortune, fate?

So back to this argument I had with Abbie Hoffman: We were walking around
Soho, and we passed this panhandler who?d kind of adopted me, because I
almost always gave him a dollar bill when our paths crossed. He seemed like
a nice guy down on his luck?there but for fortune ?.

But Abbie launched into this lengthy denunciation of giving money to
panhandlers?because, he said, it only postponed the confrontation with ?the
system,? which needed to be changed entirely so that there would be no more
panhandlers. For him, it was ?There but for the system goes that guy.?

Now I have to say this surprised me, because I?d often found Abbie a
generous guy, one of those Falstaff types whose excesses could be forgiven
because he was both witty and the cause in wit in others. (Read Murray
Kempton on Abbie some time.)

But I somehow felt that this panhandler probably could use a cup of coffee
and a roll or something the dollar would buy him now. And to make him bear
the weight (and the wait) until the overthrow of ?the system? was unfair:
Why also deny him the comfort of the moment?

?There but for fortune.? If it separated me from some radicals, it has also
separated me from some conservatives, who tend to react against the idea
that one?s position in life is the result of mere good or bad luck, or
anything but hard work and proper values or lack of same. That bum is not
there because of fortune, but because he deserves to be where he is, and
they deserve to be where they are.

It?s not true of all conservatives, of course, but just recently I was
telling one of my more conservatively inclined friends about the sort of
gut-level pre-political effect ?There But for Fortune? has on me (and, I
imagine, others). And we ended up in an argument.

I think it?s the line that precedes ?There but for fortune,? the one that goes ?I?ll show you a young man with so many reasons why.? It seems to
strike conservatives as some excuse for people?s stupid and immoral choices.
That, under a meritocracy, the guy merits being out on the streets.
It implies explanations, excuses, the ?evils of dependency,? and before five
minutes of our argument had passed my friend had raised the subject of
?school vouchers.? If only the education system were better suited to
inculcating better values, the guy wouldn?t be a panhandler.

But maybe some people, even with good education and the right attitude about
the system, fall down on their luck: There but for fortune ?. Perhaps it?s
my own low self-esteem speaking, but I always feel I?ve been a couple of
lucky breaks away from being the other guy. (I know: ?Once upon a time you
dressed so fine / You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn?t you???B.
Dylan.)

I suppose I could have told Phil Ochs about how much his song meant to me at
that last dinner we had together. How powerful that single, simple song was
and how it would last. But, knowing Phil, he might have been thinking of
another song of his: ?Love Me, I?m a Liberal.? He spared no one. And knowing
him, there was one thing I knew I couldn?t do: make him Dylan.

He was certainly depressed that evening we had dinner. He drank a lot and
seemed obsessed with boxing. He was determined to go to some old Hollywood
arena for the fights that night. Don?t ask me why a pacifist folkie loved
boxing, but he was, as they say, a man of contradictions. Or maybe he was
still angry about a lot of things. But not being Dylan was at the bottom of
it all. The subject of Rodney Crowell?s recent song, ?Beautiful Despair,? is
the despair every songwriter feels at not being Dylan. I think that on some
level it afflicts us all.

Anyway, as it turned out, I turned down Phil?s invitation to accompany him
to the fights that night. I had my secret contacts to worry about, and I
never liked boxing anyway, so I declined, and he went off into the night.

And then, less than a year later, he hung himself in his sister?s house.

So it?s too late. And not that it would have made any difference even then,
but: Phil, I?ll always be grateful for ?There But for Fortune.? And it won?t
be forgotten, and it will change people?s hearts for a long time to come.]


--------------------
"Weaving Spiders Come Not Here"

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InvisibleLeastResistance
Camp Pink Onion
Male

Registered: 09/27/04
Posts: 808
Loc: Dairyland
Re: Bob dylan + meme propaganda [Re: LeastResistance]
    #6582194 - 02/18/07 04:46 PM (17 years, 1 month ago)

this need to be seen


--------------------
"Weaving Spiders Come Not Here"

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OfflineLaurabelle1546
Gemini
Female User Gallery


Registered: 09/24/21
Posts: 192
Loc: Deep South
Last seen: 9 months, 12 days
Re: Bob dylan + meme propaganda [Re: LeastResistance]
    #27707388 - 03/24/22 07:36 PM (2 years, 4 days ago)

... reminder to read post when have time. I love Dylan

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InvisibleFiery
Sword of Fire
Other User Gallery

Registered: 12/24/12
Posts: 36,574
Re: Bob dylan + meme propaganda [Re: Laurabelle1546]
    #27707594 - 03/24/22 10:17 PM (2 years, 4 days ago)

Wow, this thread has almost 1000 clicks but only three replies! Gonna check it out myself
:fuckyeah:

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InvisibleModularMind
M.P.F.
Male User Gallery


Registered: 02/09/10
Posts: 7,902
Re: Bob dylan + meme propaganda [Re: Fiery]
    #27707616 - 03/24/22 10:35 PM (2 years, 4 days ago)

Sum it up when you can.
I can’t do question mark apostrophes.

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