About Bob Dylan

A currently popular model for online content is what I call “I went” journalism, in which a cultural product (a stage play, a theme park, a restaurant, you name it) is covered in the form of a narrative, in which the writer’s own personal experience takes precedence over any explicit critical engagement. So the banausic details of the evening (how easy it is to park, the variety of ice creams available in the interval, whether there was someone unusually tall in front of the writer) get equal billing with such trifles as acting or direction or the provenance of the hispi cabbage. 

Consider, for example, Kayleigh Cantrell’s piece about Bob Dylan’s recent gig in Liverpool. Yes, she gives some idea what it was like. The band “performed elegantly”, assisted by “stage lamps, which simply added to the classiness”. And, fear not, Bob “played his signature harmonica”. Kayleigh does namecheck several songs, and observes that Dylan played them differently from the way he did them on his records, but doesn’t explain how, nor does she ever venture an opinion as to why.

Because if she did that, she wouldn’t have had time to reflect on her excitement at going to her first phone-free gig. (“It added so much more to the experience” – OK, but what exactly did it add?). Or indeed for an extended coda about a busker playing Dylan tunes outside the arena, who appears to have made lots of money from the punters and Kayleigh’s wondering how much he made. (So why didn’t she ask him? Like a journalist might?)

Let’s not heap any opprobrium upon Kayleigh, though. She’s just giving readers what they want, a bare description of what happened, alongside how it made her feel. Nothing to frighten the horses. No analysis, no inference, no theory. After all, more people watch Gogglebox than read what’s left of the music press, let alone anything with “CULTURAL” in the title. And what she’s doing is far from new, of course. Think back to 2012 and Marilyn Hagerty’s legendary appreciation of a new branch of Olive Garden. Keep it up, Kayleigh. Never mind what might be going on inside the head of the Nobel-winning harmonica-blower. Just remember the breadsticks.

PS: If you’re one of the half-dozen people who still give a toss what old-style critics think, here’s David Thomson interviewing Greil Marcus.

PPS: I suppose this week I should have been musing about what’s happened on the other side of the Atlantic. I’ve got form, haven’t I? But then, all the success of the populist right appears to be based on surface observation and gut reaction rather than anything deeper or more intellectually testing, so maybe Kayleigh in Dylanland and four more years of Trump are just two manifestations of the same thing.

PPPS: Ah, another one of those old-fashioned music hacks – in this instance Richard Williams, formerly of Melody Maker and Time Out, and the original presenter of Whistle Test – also reviews a Dylan gig, this time putting the experience in some sort of context, and even going so far as to suggest that he wasn’t all that great, actually. And he doesn’t mention a busker, or what happened to his phone. Or, indeed, breadsticks. That said, Williams, his own track record notwithstanding, is reduced to putting the review up on his own blog. One-nil to Kayleigh, I reckon. 

PPPPS: Yet another oldie weighs in, this time Toby Litt. And he actually mentions history. The very nerve...