22-02-2014, 04:59 PM
http://lookingglass.blog.co.uk/2014/02/1...-17763505/
I miss a lot no matter how hard I work at it, the events of the world, because one has to make choices and I very often choose not to expose what's left of my mind to the horrors of commercial television.
Accordingly, things get by. I wrote a column on the Superbowl, sort of, without having watched more than a few minutes of it, relying on comments and articles of others for indications of what I'd missed, and I didn't know that Bob Dylan had confirmed his final renunciation of everything he once stood for. For money, I guess.
"Disillusioned words like bullets bark as human Gods aim for their mark, make everything from toy guns that spark to flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark, it's easy to see without looking too far that not much is really sacred…"
Dylan shilling for a corporation is nothing new, unfortunately. In 1996, he sold the rights to Times They Are A'Changin'' for use in a bank commercial. Some people called him on it at the time and he responded, "I never meant it to be a protest song."
The Super Bowl ad ran two minutes. It's likely to be used as Exhibit A for the prosecution at his trial in artist heaven.
On the surface, it's a promotion of Chrysler, which is of course cheesy, but at least it wasn't Monsanto although if he keeps going along these lines he'll no doubt get there. But that's only the surface. The deeper message could not have been more clear. It is America, Dylan now pushes, America and its exceptionalism,' its superior culture, its militarism, its corporate decadence, its shattered values.
The first line of the ad runs, "Is there anything more American than America?"
Well, Bob, that's hard to say. For one thing, the car company you're whoring for is a wholly-owned subsidiary of an Italian corporation.
The commercial ends with a montage of shots, German beer, Swiss watches, assembly of cell-phones by a vast army of Asians, mostly women, who we know are being paid a few cents an hour while Apple and the other manufacturers create obscene wealth for a few from their labors. These things are produced elsewhere, evidently, but, in Dylan's voice, "we will build your car."
Most Americans are too young to remember when Bob Dylan and his music meant something. Maybe Dylan will explain that his other songs sold to the highest bidder also were not protest songs.' He was just being a good capitalist, snagging a piece of the market, I guess. The songs were written because that's what sold back then.
As in so many other things, the late Bill Hicks speaks for me on the subject of Bob Dylan:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tp4l7eASeOk
I didn't see the Super Bowl but a world-record audience apparently did. All the millions, stocked up on Doritos and Cokes and Budweiser horse piss, celebrating America.
I don't know what Dylan's problem is but I am deeply sorry for him. Those songs, he meant them when he sang them, once upon a better time. Now, nothing is left of his heart and soul, and nothing is seen or heard except the clanking of his marketing machine. Some of those songs were brilliant. Nothing he can do now will destroy that, but he's cheapened himself. He is now unworthy of his own material, and that's something he surely knows.
"For them that must obey authority that they do not respect in any degree who despise their jobs their destiny speak jealously of them that are free, do what they do just to be nothing more than something they invest in…"
I miss a lot no matter how hard I work at it, the events of the world, because one has to make choices and I very often choose not to expose what's left of my mind to the horrors of commercial television.
Accordingly, things get by. I wrote a column on the Superbowl, sort of, without having watched more than a few minutes of it, relying on comments and articles of others for indications of what I'd missed, and I didn't know that Bob Dylan had confirmed his final renunciation of everything he once stood for. For money, I guess.
"Disillusioned words like bullets bark as human Gods aim for their mark, make everything from toy guns that spark to flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark, it's easy to see without looking too far that not much is really sacred…"
Dylan shilling for a corporation is nothing new, unfortunately. In 1996, he sold the rights to Times They Are A'Changin'' for use in a bank commercial. Some people called him on it at the time and he responded, "I never meant it to be a protest song."
The Super Bowl ad ran two minutes. It's likely to be used as Exhibit A for the prosecution at his trial in artist heaven.
On the surface, it's a promotion of Chrysler, which is of course cheesy, but at least it wasn't Monsanto although if he keeps going along these lines he'll no doubt get there. But that's only the surface. The deeper message could not have been more clear. It is America, Dylan now pushes, America and its exceptionalism,' its superior culture, its militarism, its corporate decadence, its shattered values.
The first line of the ad runs, "Is there anything more American than America?"
Well, Bob, that's hard to say. For one thing, the car company you're whoring for is a wholly-owned subsidiary of an Italian corporation.
The commercial ends with a montage of shots, German beer, Swiss watches, assembly of cell-phones by a vast army of Asians, mostly women, who we know are being paid a few cents an hour while Apple and the other manufacturers create obscene wealth for a few from their labors. These things are produced elsewhere, evidently, but, in Dylan's voice, "we will build your car."
Most Americans are too young to remember when Bob Dylan and his music meant something. Maybe Dylan will explain that his other songs sold to the highest bidder also were not protest songs.' He was just being a good capitalist, snagging a piece of the market, I guess. The songs were written because that's what sold back then.
As in so many other things, the late Bill Hicks speaks for me on the subject of Bob Dylan:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tp4l7eASeOk
I didn't see the Super Bowl but a world-record audience apparently did. All the millions, stocked up on Doritos and Cokes and Budweiser horse piss, celebrating America.
I don't know what Dylan's problem is but I am deeply sorry for him. Those songs, he meant them when he sang them, once upon a better time. Now, nothing is left of his heart and soul, and nothing is seen or heard except the clanking of his marketing machine. Some of those songs were brilliant. Nothing he can do now will destroy that, but he's cheapened himself. He is now unworthy of his own material, and that's something he surely knows.
"For them that must obey authority that they do not respect in any degree who despise their jobs their destiny speak jealously of them that are free, do what they do just to be nothing more than something they invest in…"