Saturday, December 29, 2012

NOTHING HAS CHANGED

I have always been a Bob Dylan fan, much to the chagrin of my wife.   During the mid 1960 I was in the military in a Navy special unit.    The Vietnam war was in it's beginnings and the counterculture seemed alien to me - out of step with my military commitment and programming.   But, the music haunted me.   As I got older and the concept of war soured, the protest songs of that era spoke to me in a deep resonance.  

We have a new car and it allows me to connect my small Sonsa music recorder to the car stereo    

Running numerous errands this morning (the wife at home) I  selected a Dylan album.  Dylan's gravel voice boomed through the six speakers with 'The Times They Are A Changing."   I played it again, and then again.   The power of Dylan is not in the music but in the words; and I couldn't help but reflect back some forty years to the hope for the future that was the basis of the protest generation.  

And I realized that nothing has changed.

 Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth saving’
Then you better start swimming’ or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changing’

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no telling’ who that it’s naming’
For the loser now will be later to win
For the times they are a-changing’

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside and it is raging’
It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changing’

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly aging’
Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changing’

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fading’
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changing’
Copyright © 1963, 1964 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1991, 1992 by Special Rider Music



We are still at war
The poor are still down trodden 
The government is dysfunctional
There is defacto-racism
And a drive to disenfranchise women and minorities.


The times did not change.

the Ol'Buzzard






3 comments:

  1. Actually, the times got worse. There was a minute there though when things did change and things got better, but then greed took over again and here we are. Dylan is a great poet!

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  2. What Rubye said. "...and the beat goes on", only worse. I realize that wasn't Dylan, but that Sonny and Cher duo.

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  3. Dylan is Dylan, he can be what ever he wants to be and it don't bother me...I actually like his latest work a lot. There is a long, long thread here. my wife actually taught him a 17th century Elizabethan era folk song which he adapted to write Masters of War. She introduced him to her best friend, who ended up as the girl on the cover of Freewheelin....He was always "the elephant in the living room" so to speak.
    If you ever get a chance, read the auto biography of Suze Rotollo, who was so much more than Dylan's ex muse....A Freewheelin' Time....She had to hide from Dylan to become what she really was...an incredible person and artist who we loved...really, I just spent a week in her husbands home in Perugia, Italy and Enzo is still my best bike buddy in NYC....Did you see the Todd Haynes film, I'm Not There? We saw it in Brive la Gaillarde in an empty theater with maybe 3 other people, There are some scenes with Charlotte Gainsbourg in a coffee shop...and my wife said that Charlotte really became Suze (Haynes arranged for Suze and Charlotte to actually meet) and it was the coffee shop she and Suze worked in back in 1963...If you ever saw the Scorcese documentary, No Direction Home, you can meet Suze....that's when she finally "came out" so to speak. She was an incredible wonderful and faithful lifetime friend. I will always miss her.

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COMMENT: Ben Franklin said, "I imagine a man must have a good deal of vanity who believes, and a good deal of boldness who affirms, that all doctrines he holds are true, and all he rejects are false."