Gerald Finley, baritone
Julius Drake, piano
Update: 2 Comments
Wednesday, November 11, 2015
Ned Rorem - The Real War Will Never Get In The Books
Gerald Finley, baritone
Julius Drake, piano
Update: 2 Comments
2 comments:
"To the Editor:
ReplyDelete
As one who has always found Dylan the singer charmless and rasping, Dylan the poet sophomoric and obvious, and Dylan the composer banal and unmemorable, I did not have my feeling changed by Jonathan Lethem's review of Christopher Ricks's book ''Dylan's Visions of Sin'' (June 13). Lethem's complicity with the author in equating Bob Dylan with Blake and Picasso, no less, must embarrass even Dylan.
Yet assuming he is right (though what is ''right'' in such matters?), Lethem has not one word to say about the music; when he says ''music'' it's as a synonym for ''lyrics.'' Since ancient times songs sink or swim on the quality of the music to which the poems are set; but Lethem has no opinion, much less an analysis, of how the tune and harmony and instrumentation relate to the text. As for the giggly postscript by Lucinda Williams (''Love That Mystic Hammering''), she does refer to Dylan's ''sweet beautiful melodies,'' as well as to his influential ''sweet-ass attitude,'' but such notions are meaningless in responsible criticism.
Ned Rorem
New York "
Ned Rorem = large idiot.
Seriously -- what a maroon. What a tarara goondeeyay.
OK, tell me what's wrong with the song? Or do you think Walt Whitman = large idiot - maroon (sic) and whatever a tarara goondeeyay is, too?
ReplyDelete
I, by the way, have never disliked Bob Dylan's singing or his music and think it does, at times, rise to memorable poetry. So much so that I paraphrased one of his best lyrics to make a point about snobs like you.
"If I could, I would require anyone who advocates the commodification, use, harm and destruction of other people, in almost ever case poor people, people without power, people who are vulnerable and desperate, be required to be subjected to the actual conditions which they advocate for those other people. When it's something like porn or prostitution or mining, or back breaking, dangerous and dirty work of any kind there is no nice way to say it to nice, clean people who never dirty their nails or high market clothing in a day. To paraphrase the line from Bob Dylan, their souls are dirty though their hands are clean. The stink of it is something you can't smell with your nose but it's there and pervasive and it spreads over the entire world, choking out anything good. I'm not going to spray a bit of perfume and ignore that it's poisonous"
The only other mention of Bob Dylan that appears in a word search of my blog archive produces this answer to a lie you told about my opinion of Bruce Springsteen.
"What I said was about rock and roll, it wasn't about Bruce Springsteen. As I recently posted links to The Guess Who that proves I can like some rockers without necessarily liking the genre. I also have linked to The Band and Motown artists as Simels mocked, I suspect because they're insufficiently white-bread and middle class enough for his usual taste. Or maybe insufficiently tied to the greater NYC area, his hub of the universe, he being at its epicenter. It's all of, by, for and about HIM in the end. I think Springsteen is a superior song writer whose performance style is his own choice. I think a lot of his songs certainly transcend the confines of surfer turned acid dropper rock that was the origin of the brawl. I would put him in the same category as Bob Dylan and The Band."
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As one who has always found Dylan the singer charmless and rasping, Dylan the poet sophomoric and obvious, and Dylan the composer banal and unmemorable, I did not have my feeling changed by Jonathan Lethem's review of Christopher Ricks's book ''Dylan's Visions of Sin'' (June 13). Lethem's complicity with the author in equating Bob Dylan with Blake and Picasso, no less, must embarrass even Dylan.
Yet assuming he is right (though what is ''right'' in such matters?), Lethem has not one word to say about the music; when he says ''music'' it's as a synonym for ''lyrics.'' Since ancient times songs sink or swim on the quality of the music to which the poems are set; but Lethem has no opinion, much less an analysis, of how the tune and harmony and instrumentation relate to the text. As for the giggly postscript by Lucinda Williams (''Love That Mystic Hammering''), she does refer to Dylan's ''sweet beautiful melodies,'' as well as to his influential ''sweet-ass attitude,'' but such notions are meaningless in responsible criticism.
Ned Rorem
New York "
Ned Rorem = large idiot.
Seriously -- what a maroon. What a tarara goondeeyay.
I, by the way, have never disliked Bob Dylan's singing or his music and think it does, at times, rise to memorable poetry. So much so that I paraphrased one of his best lyrics to make a point about snobs like you.
"If I could, I would require anyone who advocates the commodification, use, harm and destruction of other people, in almost ever case poor people, people without power, people who are vulnerable and desperate, be required to be subjected to the actual conditions which they advocate for those other people. When it's something like porn or prostitution or mining, or back breaking, dangerous and dirty work of any kind there is no nice way to say it to nice, clean people who never dirty their nails or high market clothing in a day. To paraphrase the line from Bob Dylan, their souls are dirty though their hands are clean. The stink of it is something you can't smell with your nose but it's there and pervasive and it spreads over the entire world, choking out anything good. I'm not going to spray a bit of perfume and ignore that it's poisonous"
The only other mention of Bob Dylan that appears in a word search of my blog archive produces this answer to a lie you told about my opinion of Bruce Springsteen.
"What I said was about rock and roll, it wasn't about Bruce Springsteen. As I recently posted links to The Guess Who that proves I can like some rockers without necessarily liking the genre. I also have linked to The Band and Motown artists as Simels mocked, I suspect because they're insufficiently white-bread and middle class enough for his usual taste. Or maybe insufficiently tied to the greater NYC area, his hub of the universe, he being at its epicenter. It's all of, by, for and about HIM in the end. I think Springsteen is a superior song writer whose performance style is his own choice. I think a lot of his songs certainly transcend the confines of surfer turned acid dropper rock that was the origin of the brawl. I would put him in the same category as Bob Dylan and The Band."