Bob Dylan's first song in 8yrs is about JFK

[Eldorado]

"Bob Dylan's first new song in eight years is a 17-minute rumination on the 1960s and the assassination of JFK.

""They blew out the brains of the king / Thousands were watching at home and saw the whole thing," he sings in the opening minutes of Murder Most Foul.

"But the visceral account of President Kennedy's murder in 1963 gives way to a rumination on America and music.

"The track arrived unannounced at midnight, with Dylan explaining it had been "recorded a while back"."

Full article at the BBC: Link

Murder Most Foul (16mins 56secs)

 

Edited March 27, 2020 by Eldorado

[Wistman]

It was worth the wait.

Thank you Bob Dylan to still be standing, gently holding the dark mirror of history up to our faces.

[SHaYap]

What's so needed or subtle about "murder most foul" ?

This ain't "Maggie's farm" no more... 

~

 

[SHaYap]

Just now, Tuco's Gas said:

My thoughts exactly. Those lyrics are as subtle and nuanced as a poem by Sid Vicious. LOL 

The subject matter makes the Poetics, here, the Poetics makes for the sobriety of the sobering sombre truth...

I've gone through the tune numerous times now... It's the principal One True Bob you're getting here, not the filters in between tracks... 

~  

[029b10]

4 hours ago, Eldorado said:

""They blew out the brains of the king / Thousands were watching at home and saw the whole thing," he sings in the opening minutes of Murder Most Foul.

The day they blew out the brains of the king
Thousands were watching, no one saw a thing
It happened so quickly, so quick, by surprise
Right there in front of everyone's eyes
Greatest magic trick ever under the sun
Perfectly executed, skillfully done

@ 01:30

https://genius.com/Bob-dylan-murder-most-foul-lyrics

 

 

[029b10]

Thousands were watching, and no one saw a thing,

One might think that by this point people would be running,

but eyes that can't see are like ears that can't hear, 

[Wistman]

2 hours ago, Tuco's Gas said:

Meh...It's no American Pie.

Is it me, or does Dylan sound like Tom Waits now?

Pretty banal lyrics. No subtlety.  Where is the great allegory and double entendre, the similes,  that Dylan was always known for.

The opening lines were actually so juvenile and non-poetic that I thought the post might be a joke. 

There's also no reason any song should have to last 17 minutes. McLean's far superior American Pie chronicled rock history in half the time and with five times better melody and poetry.

MJs "Sympathy for the Devil" did more history than Dylan's MMF in one-third the time, and again with superior imagery, metaphor, poetry, and arrangement. The difference in quality between Sympathy and MMF is equal to that of a high school book report and a Kurt Vonnegut novel.

And I grew up a huge Dylan fan. So spare me the rants from those who think that pos was up to par for the old Dylan. It pains me to write this, but Mr Zimmerman has long ago given us his best. It's time for him to be put out to pasture.

Well I disagree with everything you just said.    Seems like a lot of posturing on your part.  And don't bother with the declarations of your superior understanding and taste so long in the making.  Spare us.

Edited March 27, 2020 by The Wistman

[Wistman]

Your over the top scornfulness is a disproportionate reaction to the songwriter and the song itself.  Why so bugged?

Don Maclean grew up just across the Hudson River from where I live; he played around here a lot, is kind of a local celebrity, though not nearly as big a one as Dylan.  I like his music and his heartfulness, but he’s nowhere near the far ranging and catalyzing musician and composer that Dylan was and is.  For you to argue the opposite is laughable, sorry.  And I notice how you entirely sidestep the timing of this release and the particularity of its content.

Maclean’s youthful 1971 song is an upbeat, wistful foray into the cultural pauses and upsets that Buddy Holly’s and Ritchie Valens’s deaths represented and which signaled a shift in direction for the culture, a change that many people regretted.  It’s easy to listen to, enjoy, hell even dance to at times.  Notably, when he wrote it the country was still generally functional for the everyday American.  The war was coming to an end and people felt hopeful about the course ahead, though nostalgic for the fifties, which seemed less complicated and more harmonious an era in retrospect.  IOW, it fit the zeitgeist.

Now, Dylan, who had never written about the Kennedy assassination, though he was alive and active when it happened, has decided, as an old, wizened rocker and poet, to address the event from his eyes and this modern, crippled moment.  The assassination had shocked the nation, left the population confused, lost, but critically…unwilling to do anything about it except look for somebody to make it all go away.  Which Arlen Specter and the powers that be happily provided for them.  So nobody noticed the cancer that had been introduced into the body of our democracy.

Dylan writes an elegy, a dirge, because from his iconic perspective, that is the proper artistic response to the organized savagery of the Kennedy assassination and, looking at it from where we are now, what was the beginning of a series of shocks to the system meant to shake it apart and mold it into the configuration we currently experience in politics and society.  He foregoes the perfumery of catchy lyrics and rhyme schemes—which he demonstrated long ago he could manage quite well if he wanted to—and bypasses metaphors that skim the surface, and instead he simplifies the lyrics and metrics to give it power.  Dylan wanted his listeners to see the depth of the tragedy in its fullness because that is what our current zeitgeist demands, not make us want to dance or nostalgically swig a beer…with all due respect to American Pie.

One other thing.  Dylan is here harsh towards Texas as the bloody staging ground and for its erstwhile powerful Senator and then Vice-President, Johnson, because of the parts they played in the event.  I suspect many Texans would dislike this song for that alone.

.

Edited March 28, 2020 by The Wistman