I already critiqued Mathis' ideas on the Manson Murders yesterday. While we agree on many things, my view is a bit different, though for all I know Mathis could be correct.
I pretty much agree on this one by Mathis. I've always had very mixed feelings about Dylan. I'd never collected any Dylan albums until a couple years ago a friend insisted I listen to the MFSL pressing of his Blood On the Tracks, by many accounts Dylan's best. I did and it's a fantastic album as well as being very well played and recorded.
Mathis accounts for the excellence of this album compared to most of the others. Sometimes the deep state works very hard to help get an album out. (Mathis believes the best songs here and elsewhere were actually written by Leonard Cohen.)
Joni Mitchell called Dylan a fake and a plagiarist. And that's probably true. But Dylan typically has very tight bands (the best than money can buy I guess) and somehow pulls together better music than more "real" and original musicians can.
I was shocked to hear how good Dylan was in live performance in 1999. He way outperformed the highly original and real musical genius Paul Simon that night when they were both in the same show. Long a fan of Simon, I'd expected the opposite. Dylan had just a few backing musicians, and yet the music had more soul and punch. He's not without some kind of talent.
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