Let me state for the record that Bob Dylan was the shit.

Disagree or agree as much as you like, but I think Bob Dylan was f'in awesome. I've always known this and listened to Highway 61 Revisited ever since I can remember, but I've been reading his book lately and it's been like a breath of fresh air - it's the only time I've ever really related to a "music legend's" creative process probably since reading about Frank Zappa or discovering The Melvins in the early 90s... sort of the "no one else is doing everything I like all in one package, so I guess I have to!" sort of approach. We've all heard Rainy Day Women 12 & 35 (you know.. the "everybody must get stoned" song) a zillion times, but if you listen to everything else that was out there at that time and picture hearing that come out of the radio for the first time, you can imagine it likely tickled an ear or two in a strange way.

Yesterday I was watching bits and pieces of the show on PBS about him and a particular piece of old concert footage made me very happy. It was in 1964, methinks, during his electric/backup band crossover point where he was pissing a lot of his folk fans off. The second he hit the stage, the fans saw the electric guitar and band, then started booing like crazy (I guess this was an ongoing thing at most of his shows at that time). He turned to the band and mumbled something like "play it fuckin' LOUD" and busted into Like A Rolling Stone - and they's was loud. You could tell the microphone on the movie camera was having a tough go at it trying to digest the volume they were playing at. That was one of the most bitchin' things I've ever seen, hands down. Hi, I'm Bob Dylan, and if you don't like what I'm doing, feel free to stick it straight up your arse and go home.

One of my earliest memories when I was a wee lad was staring at album covers in my parent's record collection. I was prollee around 4 or 5 at the time and the Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits cover was one of the most peculiar sights to me. Not unlike Juliette Lewis, it gave me a severe case of the heebie jeebies but I couldn't keep myself from looking at it.

Here, check it out:

Yikes! At that same time, I had a stuffed animal that was a buffalo (I still think it's at Mom and Dads to this day), and for whatever reason it reminded me of Bob Dylan's blurry head on that record cover. I would stare at it as I fell asleep and then have nightmares that this blurry Bob Dylan head/buffalo was rolling after me in our kitchen and my legs wouldn't move. Thankfully I'd always wake up before anything happened, but cripes. That album cover pretty much ruined it for me and stuffed buffalos. Better that than Bob Dylan, I reckon.

I digress. I always respected the guy and his music tremendously, but now after learning more about him and his attitude, I truly "get" what he was doing now and all of his other music suddenly makes complete sense to me. He gets mocked and made fun of a lot, but he was a pretty bold badass mo-fo in his day, and seeing stuff like that keeps a fire lit under my butt to write music that I want to hear.