New Dylan Album on the Way- and-the Oracle Gives another Interview

Who of us given some of the great tracks on Modern Times can resist another Dylan fix? Who can resist another glimpse into the musical worlds Dylan now so masterfully creates? Yes folks a brand new album (not one of those compiliations of outtakes and rejects that he likes to throw out from time to time) the title is intriguing enough--Together Through Life-- to be released in April 28. As expected there is a new interview out--designed to create the necessary "buzz"--in it Dylan delivers the same mixture of wry wisdom, humor and mystery as he prepares his audience for another musical reinvention. Asked why he doesn't "milk" his best selling Modern Times album and not change things around:

"I think we milked it all we could on that last record and then some. We squeezed the cow dry. All the Modern Times songs were written and performed in the widest range possible so they had a little bit of everything. These new songs have more of a romantic edge."
How so?
These songs don’t need to cover the same ground. The songs on Modern Times songs brought my repertoire up to date, and the light was directed in a certain way. You have to have somebody in mind as an audience otherwise there’s no point.
What do you mean by that?
There didn’t seem to be any general consensus among my listeners. Some people preferred my first period songs. Some, the second. Some, the Christian period. Some, the post Colombian. Some, the Pre-Raphaelite. Some people prefer my songs from the nineties. I see that my audience now doesn’t particular care what period the songs are from. They feel style and substance in a more visceral way and let it go at that. Images don’t hang anybody up. Like if there’s an astrologer with a criminal record in one of my songs it’s not going to make anybody wonder if the human race is doomed. Images are taken at face value and it kind of freed me up.

The last point is an important one--Dylan's supersensitivity to all aspects of his personae--including the prophet image that has stuck with him since the early days
must have been a burden. Now he has found, it seems, a way to work through it--to free himself artistically even more. So eager anticipation across the globe--this is a master setting an example for all of us boomers as to the possibilities of reinventing and reimagining ourselves..and we all should pay close attention.

First Beatles Masters Degree Offered--Mixed Reactions

Well it has finally happened--the first Masters Degree Program in Beatles studies--now hosted in the home of the Beatles at Liverpools' aptly titled "Hope University."

There are about six reactions I have--three vaguely negative and three a bit more positive--here are the negatives:
1) It is a bit of a leap--to study just one rock group--how about the entire phenom known as British rock circa 1960 -1975--perhaps more ripe for sociological explanations and less more iffy speculations based on personality and armchair psychology?
after all we don't do Wordsworth or Keats MAs --rather we study Romantic Poetry, the Late Victorian novel within the context of an established discipline.
2) As the New York Times op ed writer Allan Koznin also notes "what do you do with a degree in Beatles studies?"--be a Beatles tour guide? Aren't you setting yourself up for polite chuckles if you add this particular credential to your resume?
3) How do you do original research--Abbey Road/ Apple tapes--interviews with Paul and Ringo? Do you make the two surviving Beatles honorary professors?
On the positive side:
1) As Beatles books over the last few years have become more serious and interesting it is fitting that more academics move into this space concerning this remarkable band. We need to understand better the interplay between commercial pressure, individual artistry, audio engineering etc.
2) A degree program will encourage more scholars to cross the usual academic boundaries that the best Beatles criticism is able to straddle.
3) Understanding the popularity of the Beatles is a step towards understanding one of the unifying aspects of the boomer generation. The Beatles were our avant garde--leading us towards new forms of expression and experiences that had an important role, if we are honest in shaping the kinds of people we are today.

OK where do I really stand? What should Beatles study be all about? What is the "meat" in the sandwich? I think the meat is to understand the sixties which they mostly inhabited. Understand their social and historical background and the way that like the great artists they were--together they transcended their early influences. Studying the Beatles is different from studying someone like Dickens if only because you are taking on a larger range of social forces --ones that have not been properly absorbed into some of the usual disciplines like literature, sociology and history. The study involves musicology, sociology
and cultural studies (absorbing media studies) and semiology. It is also about the interplay of four very different personalities and their managers, record companies, studio engineers, agents, friends, girlfriends, wives, other artists, politicians and what can be losely called the 'temper of the times.'

Let it roll I say--let us all await a new generation of Beatles scholars--just as long as they keep a sense of humor about them--I won't mind too much and don't try to over interpret Yellow Submarine as some kind of answer to Freud's theory of the subconscious.