MUSIC IN MY MIND (the 2nd best)

9. Highway 61 Revisited - Bob Dylan

There was this African named Terence who lived in Ancient Rome and said, "I am a man. I regard nothing that is human as alien to me."

And then there was this rock n' roll poet who, born hundreds of years after him, who said:

You know something is happening
But you don't know what it is
Do you Mr. Jones?

The poet is Bob Dylan, and the quote was from the song Ballad of a Thin Man included in Highway 61 Revisited which, to me, is the greatest rock n' roll album ever produced.
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The writer Alan Gurganus considered the human breath as one simple gauge in recognizing a masterpiece, where "if you hold your breath till a ravishing relentless emotional sentence's period says, 'you may breathe now'", you have a definite masterpiece before your eyes.

Gurganus wrote this to refer to a John Cheever story, Goodbye, My Brother - although he might as well have said that to refer to Dylan's astonishing 1965 cd. Of course I said before your eyes, and of course I referred to a cd; Highway 61 Revisited is a great read and if Pulitzer Prize were expanded to include song lyrics for selection, this could have given the 1965 winner in Poetry a stiff competition.
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Highway 61 is a long stretch of interstate that begins in Louisiana and runs all the way north to Minnesota. It is a major artery that somehow helped shape not just the economy of the Midwest but its demography - and culture - as well; a material example was the migration of African Americans from the South who moved up north using the highway in the 50's and 60's in search of industrial employment, and corollary to such move, a transplantation of African-American cultural wealth occured. And when we speak of Southern African-American wealth, we certainly have to include the American Blues.

And so the concept of this cd is about that journey, in a much broader sense, to include the existential angst of man in the midst of his diaspora (symbolical of his alienation) - which, again, is diametrically opposed to Terence's declaration of full awareness of man and the human condition. To top it, Highway 61 Rev is a blues album (how else could it be otherwise?) which was his own tribute to the roots of his music, and in revisiting that highway, he uses his musical influence to view what the highway (or human condition) has now become.
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My earliest memory of Bob Dylan was in 1st year in high school when, one morning in our literature class, we were welcomed by these beautiful words written by the teacher on the blackboard. It was the song Blowin' in the Wind which we read and then sang aloud, and out of that session we initially learned the "hows" of reading a good poem/singing a good song. The teacher said that an effective poem is known to have 6 central energies - rhythm, rhetoric, metaphor, story, emotion, and voice, but as proven by that song, she said that there must be a 7th, which is Us, the readers, (or singers) who must recreate the poem with a valid, fresh, and justifying interpretation.

I therefore knew Dylan, up front, as a poet more than as a singer, and I must admit that the first time I heard him sing his own songs, I considered him as a better read. "We did more justice in our literature class."

Then in college I had this classmate who later on became a famous dj. He told me what I now consider as truth: A good singer does not necessarily possess a great voice, and a great song need not necessarily be sung by a good singer to retain its quality. Expression and emotion, he said, are the singer's prime tools. Never the voice, he said, never the voice. And then he completed my education by lending me Highway 61 Revisited, and telling me why Dylan's music, and voice, should be admired in the same breadth as well.
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Highway 61 Rev contains all of 9 songs, and the 2 songs enveloping these - Like A Rolling Stone, and Desolation Row - are probably the singer's most discussed in his musical history. Like A Rolling Stone made it to VH1's 100 greatest rock n' roll songs of all time, and Desolation Row was included in the thick anthology Oxford Book of American Poetry (David Lehman, ed.) - one of only three songs to make the selection.

But now that I listened to this cd, in its remastered form, and in (my, hopefully) much wiser state, I have to admit to the following: Dylan has a great voice (it has tremendous attitude), and Dylan's songs not only have great poetry, they are of great music, too. And Highway 61 Rev proves us true: the songs are electric and electrifying, and the playful correlation between the drums and harmonica, the guitar and the voice, the piano and the organ, tells us that this cd is about rhythm, about meter, about image, about everything that a song must be - and not simply about poetry.
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As music, Desolation Row and Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues are my favorites - listening to them are like sitting around a bonfire by the beach while listening to a favorite philosopher ruminate, in great bluesy form, while you sway and find that life is just like the taste of your beer, bitter and sweet, and knowing that we certainly have to work our way to assess this life's many worries.

As modernist poetry, however, I am so mesmerized by Ballad of a Thin Man - the one song Dylan fans are having a hard time agreeing as to its true meaning. Some says Mr. Jones (the character referred to in the song) is The Intellectual, others consider him The Gay, others yet find him as The Everyman, and in the song Mr. Jones, Adam Duritz of Counting Crows referred to Mr. Jones as The Dream. My take? He is The Prior Generation, and he could be some African from Ancient Rome named Terence.