Dylan of the Week, Mk. 2

"All You Have To Do Is Dream"
Bob Dylan
1967



This is the music that never dies. The type of music that is resurrected but never dead, never really needing anything. Something that exists without intervention. Something more like a form than an instantiation. Its confusing. Its because of the way its reckless, because of the way the guitar is far too loud at the beginning of the solo. The way that they just can't manage to stop singing the song at the end. Because the song tumbles into itself, like its already going when it starts. Does any of this make sense? What's it about? A DREAM! A nothing. Conceivably a something, but definitely not real. This shit can't die because its never born, or maybe stillborn. And what the hell is a “floorbird” anyway? Whatever it is, its gotta be American. “...because in America the fantasy of the country sells everything else and everything else on sale sells the country:

ALL YOU
HAVE
TO DO
IS DREAM!”


(Of all the communal, secret, everything music that Bob Dylan and the Band made in their houses in Woodstock, this has to be one of the gems. And that's saying something. We've got a selection here ranging from “I'm Not There (1956)”, “Tears of Rage”, and “Lo and Behold!” to “You Ain't Goin' Nowhere” and “Baby, won't You be my Baby”. Anything that was ever said by an American (and I'm even talking about the politicians and shysters) is spoken of here. And what a song to record! An Everly Brothers hit at the time of the end of the revolution of rock n' roll, when pop was consumed by the radio and spit out to the masses (sound familiar?). Little girls listened to this music! Jerry Lee Lewis was daily exorcising demons from his piano, Little Richard was baptizing in the name of Ripin' It Up, and Gene Vincent had some strange complex which resulted in an overactive libido which resulted in crotch guitar. And here were the Everly Brothers crooning “gee whiz”? Although time has rightly justified the song as wonderful, it was scary pop at the time. And here comes Dylan in '67, rebooting the thing as a song of the real, abandoned America that doesn't care about anything but gettin' down. Because “restriction causes damage / And damage causes lust”. Subversion. Che Guevara had some things to learn here.)