Bob has recently mentioned that many of his concert-going fans are younger in age -- part of his newer audience. To confirm this, here are some responses I've been getting after I asked for his younger, newer fans & followers to respond to a post I made on "Expecting Rain" recently:
"At a recent Dylan concert a sixteen year old kid stood next to me in the queue before the show. He had just discovered Dylan through "Modern Times", which kind of proves Bob's point. It's so refreshing to talk to young fans who do not give a s**t about the 1960s and simply love Bob's current work. At the general admission shows there are usually lots of young (16–18 y.o.) fans down the front."
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Howdy Barry,
I’m 26, male, Irish, became a fan when I got high and heard HW61, my fav album is Time out of mind, what does Bob mean ? Read on:
After the incredible disappointment of the corporate takeover of youtube and the loss of rankflv’s channel I attended my first show last night at the Marquee in Cork, Ireland. I was prepared for disappointment having followed the forums and having heard the uploads. It seemed from the moment he went on that he wanted to be there. I’m positive that he wanted to perform. I have no idea what it must have been like in the second or third row of the ’66 tour but Bob was incredible.
I have never seen a performer who owned a stage like Bob. He fitted into his songs. The sound system was incredible. Stu never came across for me until I saw/heard him. I watched the footage and wondered how the hell he got the gig until I heard the show. His solos were actually better than Charlie’s Donny (sic) the banjo player, mandolin and lap steel player was turned down in the mix to the point that I was baffled as to why Bob’s people have him on tour. Tony and George were the highlight of the whole gig. Tony changed “times have changed” in the middle of Bob harp solo. He reacted to Bob in a way that was so beautiful. It was happening in front of me. They started jammin’. Bob started to react to Tony’s bass with gestures that were real reminded me why Dylan is Dylan. Tony also did an incredible solo on “when the levee’s gonna break” on the double bass. Bob left him rip and everyone knew that Bob was letting him rip. Also in between every song it sounded to me like Tony was dictating the tempo of the next tune on a tambourine – something I’ve never heard on the bootlegs or on youtube. The reason I’m posting here as opposed to the tour forum is as follows.
- I had no idea that this type of level of performance existed
- ye probably knew this already but he is drawing from an energy I didn’t know existed
- this man is a sorcerer
From a very confused newbie who was annihilated yesterday by a very very powerful performer – I went looking on the web and found your post - feeling like I was born decades too late, BG
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I'm Scott, Canadian and 16 years old.
I discovered Dylan in October 2009,at age 15. I'd been a huge Beatles and Who fan, then got into a Led Zeppelin-mad phase. I read a lot about musicians I like. I read about the Beatles listening to Freewheelin' for a month straight after it came out. I read about the Beatles getting high with Bob. I read a story about Dylan getting introduced to Led Zep's manager Peter Grant at a party, Grant starting off with, "Hi, I'm Peter Grant, and I manage the Zeppelin." Dylan's laconic response: "Wait, so am I supposed to come to [i]you[/i] with my problems?" I heard the Who lyric, "I asked Bobby Dylan/I asked the Beatles/ I asled Timothy Leary/ And he couldn't help me either." I read Rolling Stone's '500 Greatest Songs Ever,” listing Like a Rolling Stone as number 1, and wondered why it wasn’t Strawberry Fields Forever. I never really thought about Dylan much though. I dismissed him as a protest singing folkie.
I first heard Like a Rolling Stone in October 2009. I listened to it for maybe half an hour, again and again. I couldn’t quite bring myself to say that this was the greatest song ever written (at the time), but I knew it was different from anything anyone had ever written. I never really noticed his voice as being irritating or even weird. It worked perfectly with the song – there was simply no other way to sing it. “You’re invisible nowwww, you got no secrets ....to conceeeeeaaaal – how does it feeeel?” I couldn’t get over it. I downloaded the rest of Highway 61 illegally, and listened to it at once. Only “Ballad of a thin man” and “Desolation row” really jumped out at me, and so I kept listening. With other artists, this wouldn’t happen. I would forget about them if there were only 3 good songs on an album, but I wanted to figure out what this was. How could the other songs be so forgettable if the album opened with Like a Rolling Stone? I listened and listened, and downloaded more Dylan, and eventually I got to enjoy most of his albums. I liked Before the Flood and At Budokan first, and those got me into Bringing it all back home, then Blonde, then Blood on the Tracks, then John Wesley Harding, Desire, Freewheeling, Another side, and so on. It was hard at first to get into a lot of the acoustic material, but Blowing in the Wind did that for Freewheeling. I never remember hearing that song before then, but it seemed like something I had always known.
Dylan was what made me stop filesharing official releases – these albums were so dear to me, I couldn’t justify stealing them. Somewhere I read, “what is your music worth to you?” and I realized Dylan was worth a lot more than nothing. Now I have about 20 different Dylan albums, with multiple copies of several - you know the deal, stereo CD, mono CD, mono LP, mono 1st pressing LP, etc.
Dylan’s best albums for me are Blonde on Blonde, Highway 61, and then a tie between Freewheeling, John Wesley Harding, Live 66, live 75, and probably others that I cannot think of now. To me, these albums are among the most precious things I own. Listening to Blonde on Blonde or Live 66 or Highway 61 is an event for me. I cannot help but devote my full attention to these albums when they are playing. One part that I like most about Dylan is how he can run circles around me with his words, nearly always in some way deceiving his listener, but his voice always sings/speaks in a completely honest tone. No matter how weird the lyrics are, no matter how much he tries to conceal himself, his voice always makes it seem as though he is speaking the absolute emotional truth. More Dylan songs make me cry than any other artist – the reason he put “Hard Rain” at the end of side 1 of Freewheelin is so that the listeners can have a chance to recover. I always end up missing half of “Don’t think twice” because I’m still getting over “And I’ll tell it and speak it and think it and breathe it/And reflect from the mountain so all souls can see it/And I’ll know my song well before I start singing/And it’s a hard...”
I love the certainty that he can express himself with. Chimes of Freedom reminds me of a musical Rimbaud. The poetry of Dylan’s lyrics, in songs like Hard Rain, Chimes of Freedom, It’s Alright Ma, or As I Went Out One morning got me interested in poetry. It took Dylan’s voice and his phrasings and his rhythms to get me to appreciate much more fully the power of words – ‘Language, Language!’ as Allen Ginsberg might comment. I’m now strongly considering going into English for a career, because of Bob Dylan as much as anything else.
Dylan is transformative for me. He takes me places, to other cities, to other minds. I love Blonde on Blonde because each song takes me to a new place, inside a new character. The transitions between Visions of Johanna to One of Us Must Know to I Want You to Memphis Blues Again to Just Like a Woman to – you get the picture. Dylan takes me into the minds of the characters of his songs, and as much as I love the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, The Who, the Velvet Underground, or even Robert Johnson, no one that I have ever heard can do this as well as Bob Dylan.
Hopefully this helps, and isn’t too rambling... It ended up a lot longer than I expected, but it certainly helped me come to terms with Bob a little more. Thanks, this was an interesting question to answer.
Re-reading the question, you mention his latest albums and how Dylan talks about people being there to hear new material at shows. Me, I’m not one. I count Time out of mind and Love and theft among his better works, but nowhere near Desire or Blood on the Tracks, let alone the mid-60s albums. Modern Times is middling for me, and I don’t much like Together Through Life. Though I must say that those albums are remarkably well produced. I don’t like the sound of many new bands, just the way they are recorded sounds too crisp. Modern Times sounds warm and tube-ey to me.
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FROM YOUNG DYLAN FAN IN AUSTRALIA!
Hey, i saw your post on ER and i thought i would respond.
i'm 17 and i've been listening to Bob for the last 3 years or so, and i've been a huge fan for the last 2. i listen to stuff from the span of his career, but i'd say my favorite periods are the electric mid sixties stuff, the mid seventies RTR period and the 1997-2003 NET period. these three are my super favourites and i listen to this stuff all the time, but i listen to a really wide variety of bob's stuff. i like a lot of older music, and some very old stuff like the delta blues. bob's radio show introduced me to a whole world of old music of various styles.
however in general i listen to a wide variety of music, new and old. i go to concerts of new local bands all the time in all sorts of styles, not all traditional rock/blues sort of stuff but experimental electronic stuff as well. i listen to a lot of different music to suit different moods and situations. generally when im at home relaxing, i like to listen to Bobby but when i'm out at a party i love to listen to whatever the latest thing my friends are into is.
i have a small handful of friends who are really into Bob, but only one who is into him as much as I am. we drove 1000 kilometres north and again back earlier this year to see him at a festival. we then saw him twice in our hometown of sydney. all the way up and back we listened to NET boots and generally had a great time. we loved seeing him so, so much and we both agreed that he put on a fantastic show all three nights. however we also both thought that the best of the three was the first night, at the festival, because of the incredible atmosphere. the audience at the festival was largely composed of young people, who were all really really into it and Bob reflected that energy right back. the contrast between this and the atmosphere at the sydney shows was huge - it was nearly all seated and also mostly older people who were less enthusiastic. for the first show we were right up the front on the rail, as they had allowed people to stand up. we had an incredible view of the show - i was slightly to the left so i had a straight on view of Bobby behind the organ. he was less than 10 metres from me and at one point he looked at me. the whole show was really really great but i could really see the difference in bob's performance when he was performing for a more static audience. the first show he was absolutely on fire, the second two he was fantastic but at some points it seemed like he was just on autopilot.
the younger audience also seemed to respond much better to the shows i was at, which struck me as pretty strange at first. the oldies were complaining about the usual stuff, "his voice is gone", "you couldnt make out the songs" blah blah blah. however the younger vibe was summed up pretty well by something i heard on the way out from a young dude, who said "Man his voice was a bit croaky, but that was fucking fantastic!" they also responded greatly to songs that are generally regarded as a bit dull among Bobcats - on the first night big cheers went up at the beginning of The Levee's Gonna Break and Tweedle Dee, of all things. the big songs like LARS and Thin Man were also greeted very very warmly.
i don't think bob is lying or exaggerating at all when he says he has a big young audience, and also not surprised he thinks this is a great thing. i also think that his songs are still genuinely relevant to the younger generation...maybe not just the civil rightsy protest songs but also his songs in general as a protest against taking things for granted.
so yeah. i'm young and i love life and i love bob! hope that's helpful in some way.
Re: The ”My Bob DylanStory” website:
hey man, i think it's a really great idea and i really dig it! sometimes i get sick of all the more serious 'critical' writing about bob and i wish somebody would write a book of stuff his fans have to say about him...i've always been surprised by the insights regular people have been able to offer about various things, and probably more so than clinton heylin etc. keep it up! dig it
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I'm 20 now. Got into him when i was 18. Like most younger fans i think you start out just having his stuff from the 60s. I don't know why that is. You say you love dylan yet you only know him up to Blonde on Blonde. It's sad. They're missing out on such greatness. After time i think they find the other.
Though i remember being 15 and hearing "Working Man blues" on the radio and remember digging it. I never knew who it was and was suprissed to hear such an old song on the radio. (turns out it was brand spanking new) So i'm sure there could be kids who listen to radio and find him that way never hearing of the 60s.
Yet i met a 21 year old waitress the other night who saw my dylan shirt and we sparked a conversation and she went to the same concert i did and enjoyed his newer material more than the other. So there is hope. IT's just that the gooffy "hippster" kids like his protest stuff, who happen to just like indie music (which stealls from the 60s) is such a larger group that maybe it puts it off.
I don't know. bobs music is like having a conversation with yourself. it's refreshing, real, truthful, vast, and inspiring in any kind of way. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi Barry. I'm Angus, 17, from Scotland. I shall be seeing Bob for the 3rd time in a little over 2 years on the 17th of June.
In 2007 I hear 'All Along The Watchtower' on the radio and it was like I'd struck some ancient vein of truth that had been forgotten by the world. The thing about Dylan that most alluring to me was that I'd never heard of him before, not even just his name in passing. My dad had always played the Beatles and the Stones around the house and in the car ect so I was pretty well of them, but I seemed to have managed to avoid Dylan up until that point. Then, as is the case for most of my generation, the next step to find out more was youtube - a step that is no longer available thanks to Sony's ill-devised policy. I was entranced by a video Mr. Tambourine man at Newport. Then I watched Like A Rolling Stone live 1966 and the world forever looked and sounded different. I had never heard anything remotely like it. As Bruce Springsteen said, it was like a door being blown open in my mind. These songs still sounded relevant to me as a 15 year old, they sounded fresh and honest.
So I then got a greatest hits compilation for Christmas and proceeded to buy, and wear out, the 60s and 70s albums. At some point I must have found, via google, expecting rain and with it bootlegs. With this, and a copy of 'Time Out Of Mind' that I got on sale for £2, I was exposed to a new Dylan sound, the sound of the NET. What may be a surprise to some is that the sound of a 70 year old Dylan still sounded as relevant to me as a 16 year old as the 25 year old Dylan not following leaders and watching parking meters. Modern Day Dylan still has the same energy which young fans can connect with. he still has that unstoppable drive and that rebellious rock and roll sound which endears him to the youth. So with that, I find myself about to embark on a costly journey by plane to Cork to see Bob live for the third time.
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23/M/Connecticut, USA
It's not in me right now to tell you what Bob means to me.
But this is what I can tell you: there are 39 artists in total on my IPod currently. I average about five records per artist. But when it comes to Dylan, I have 37 official records and 57 unofficial bootlegs. I've been to 7 Dylan concerts since 2008. This is a simple way to indicate to you how important Dylan's work is to me without having to sit down and try and unravel my feelings about the work.
Dylan is with me today based on the strength of his most recent work. In particular, Time Out of Mind, Love & Theft, and Modern Times. The early records I discovered later. I feel strongly people know this.
Bob Dylan's recent work is to me as vital as his earliest. Many people who grew up with Dylan like to disparage his later work. But it will not be their generation who have the final say in deciding Dylan's artistic worth; it will be mine. It will be the generation after mine, those who have the advantage of distance and the fairness distance affords.
As well, Dylan has almost single-handedly expanded my musical horizons by covering other artists in the studio and in his live performances. In doing so, he has saved the work and lives of dozens of other artists by passing them on to me and other young people like me. Without Dylan, I would not know about Blind Willie McTell, Buddy Holly, Hank Williams, Howlin' Wolf, John Coltrane, John Lee Hooker, Leonard Cohen, Levon Helm, Elvis Presley, Fats Domino, Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, Elizabeth Cotton, Ralph Stanley.
He is as vital today as he was yesterday. My hunch is he will be even more important tomorrow.
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I'm 26 (does that count as "young" still?) and i always thought dylan's comments about his young fan base were interesting. i've been a fan for 10 years now and will soon be attending my tenth and eleventh dylan concerts.
i've seen and met other young dylan fans and while i think it's safe to say that probably most people my age or younger still get into dylan through his earlier material, there is something very refreshing about people only discovering his music now and perhaps not being aware that, you know, it's not "cool" to like New Morning or Slow Train Coming. I mean, it's great that there's such a strong and widespread Dylan community, most of which are wonderful and generous people, but I do think dylan also lends itself to fans becoming quite elitist and snobbish about his music. it's just that there is so much to know, obviously one thinks it's not enough for someone to only know the albums from the 60s. but the next step is to say that it's not enough just knowing the studio albums. i've seen younger people being patronised by older dylan fans, i myself have been patronised numerous times and it's just unnecessary. for what this younger generation might lack in experience, in memories of dylan through the decades, they make up for with the enthusiasm of having the opportunity to discover it all at once, to delve into the wealth of his material.
but at the same time, of course the recent albums hold a dear place in my heart. love & theft was the first album i was looking forward to being released and it was so exciting. when modern times came out, my friend and i greeted it with the same glee that people perhaps greeted desire with. don't get me wrong, i'm not the biggest fan of rollin & tumblin or the levee's gonna break, but i don't get to see enough dylan concerts that i would ever feel in a position to complain about it. (on the other hand, i will never grow tired of the songs from love&theft.)
what i'm trying to say here is that i think if you become a dylan fan post 2000, then you know the basic facts of his career. you know all about the twists and turns, the good albums, the bad albums. At some point, one might even get dangerously close to calling him a living legend. But then he goes and does a Victoria's Secret commercial or records a christmas album and hopefully makes everyone realise that he's not perfect and not boring yet.
i'm not sure if this makes any sense, but i think it's really important to have young fans that not only receive the recent albums with the enthusiasm they deserve (well.. personally, I wasn't that big on Together Through Life apart from a few wonderful songs), but also to shake up the fan community and bring in some fresh opinions.
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I'm an 18year old lad from north england and have been into bobs music since i was fifteen which was weird because nobody apart from one of my teachers actually listen to him and appreciated what bob does like i do, it was strange to walk around a scum infested run down chav school listening to 'positively 4th street' and 'forever young' id thought id found a peice of truth or an answer to issues and of course i had.
I remember when the bootleg series 8 came out it was and i got a free download of 'dreamin of you' and laughed because of the first line, it is a great but what i find even more greater is together through life theres only 1track on that i dislike but i love all the rest, the productions great, its arranged/mix great, and bob voice is amazing.
I guess its the bluntness that attracts me to his music i used to get told im too much of a 'say it how it is c.nt' by friends and relatives so its only natural to want similar music.
I still get took back to the feelings ect from those days almost instantly when i hear them tunes and i hope it never stops doing that because its magical.
Also im amazed how many young folks listen to bob on here as i aint met any round my way or many old for that matter.
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I'm 18, from New England. I took a Film as Text class in high school. The second film we watched was I'm Not There. At first, I rather hated it. At that point I had always hated surreality and philosophy; it made me feel uncomfortable. I tended to just shove it under the rug and try to forget about it.
I got home after we finished it and couldn't explain to my parents how weird it was, so I rented it to show them what the heck I was takling about. This time, I was attempting to explain to them what was going on, so it started to make more sense to me and I paid more attention.
As I am a wikipedia nut, I looked Bob up there. Read a bit about him. Then I watched the movie again and it totally clicked. All of a sudden it was amazing. I realized it wasn't just 'weird', it was artistic. It revolutionized my idea of art. Before then I viewed it as something technical you worked at to get perfect, not that much more. But then I listened to Bob and realized it was all about the Muse. I started reading and writing poetry. I started drawing again. I finally broke away from the residuals of my nervous breakdown. It changed my life. Not to be cliche but Bob is my hero and my inspiration.
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I'm 17 and from Germany. I also got into Dylan through the movie "I'm not there". I like art films and biopics so I thought I'd like the film though I knew very little about Dylan. I knew he wrote "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "Quinn the Eskimo", but I had never consciously heard him perform any of his songs himself. I don't think I even knew what he looked like.
The movie was fantastic. There were lots of great songs in it and the one that stuck with me was "Ballad of a Thin Man".
A couple of weeks later I bought the album "Highway 61 Revisited" for a cheap price while browsing through the CD's in a multimedia store. I wasn't blown away by the music at first. It was very blues-heavy and I didn't like that at the time.
The second album I listened to was "Desire". One day I was bored and looked through my dad's record collection and found this album. He wasn't a big Dylan fan and bought the album back in the seventies because he really liked the single "Hurricane". It's his only Dylan album. With this record I really started to get into Dylan's music. Especially emotional melodic songs like "Sara" connected with me.
Maybe his songs are easy to relate to because they are often rather abstract. "Ballad of a Thin Man" doesn't make a whole lot of sense when you look at it in a literal way. But certain phrases and combinations of words remind you of feelings you once had. I think a whole lot of his songs are really not about anything in particular but merely a series of words or sentences inspired by certain feelings. His song "Desolation Row" changed the way I thought about poetry. I had never really "got" abstract poetry before, but now I did.
After I started listening to Dylan I also started to play the guitar. The first song I tried was "One More Cup of Coffee". It took me a while to get started because I taught myself how to do it. I gradually became better by pretty much only playing Dylan's songs (with help from the great chord/tab site dylanchords.info). By now I can even play more complicated songs like "Abandoned Love", "It's Alright, Ma" and "Buckets of Rain" on the guitar, too. A year and a half ago I could barely play "Knocking On Heaven's Door". Now I also play harmonica while playing his songs. I started to write and record my own songs about half a year ago as well.
I have found that singing his songs can be quite therapeutic. When I'm angry after a rough day at school I can scream out "Positively 4th Street". When I'm depressed I can play "Idiot Wind". When I'm melancholic I can play "Sign on the Window" on the piano (yeah, I taught myself that as well. I can only play chords though). When I'm feeling reflective "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue". You get the idea.
Anyway, I'm going to see Dylan live in Hamburg this June. And I'm really looking forward to it. What's also great about Dylan is that he always keeps on changing his songs. That way it stays interesting and it inspires you to do the same when you cover his songs.
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I'm 18, got into Dylan when I was 12. Saw him live for the first time when I was 13. Seen him 6 more times since
When I got into Bob during my first years of secondary school it was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. I stopped hanging out with the "cool" kids at school, stopped trying to be popular and just to be myself. I look now at the people I used to hang out with and I'm so glad I got out of there and carved my own identity as the 'girl obsessed with that old siger dude'. A few years down the line and some of my friends have also got into Bob. I go there first though, so they all look to me to lend them CDs and to give my opinions, I've been waiting so long for friends who also liked Dylan, so glad the time has finally come!
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Hi, I'm 16, female, from Poland.
I've been listening to Dylan's music for about 1,5 year now.
This is how it started: I am generally interested in the sixties, music, fashion, movies etc. and as I was reading about all that on the internet his name would appear often, so once I just typed it into Youtube - I would do so with many other artists. First video i saw was Dylan singing Like a Rolling Stone on Newport Festival. I had no idea what was the song about, what was going on, but it did somehow catch me.
I ofen realise how lucky I was - after all nobody from my family or friends actually knew Dylan's works (and, less obvious, this video must have been taken down now by sony). It was only after that I started to notice that you can sometimes hear him played in some radio stations. He is also mentioned in my Polish literature book and English book. It also turned out my English teacher liked him.
Because of Dylan... Because of Dylan I get to know other's work - just to mention Donovan, some beat generation poets, Joan Baez, Woody Guthrie, The Band. I may have know the hippie's sixties and the Beatles sixties before - but that was something new. I followed a path of some kind that has brought me to Walt Whitman on one side playing harmonica on the other.
I've read about the new generation of young fans - I don't know whether I am the kind you write about, probably not - I've never been to his concert, but rather for practical reasons - he has only been to Poland twice and I don't find his concerts attractive enought to go to another country. I also find the sixties music of Dylan more interesting beacause of the whole background and amazing stories, but I don't find it "better" than music from last albums.
I read expecting rain discussions from time to time and would be glad if you find my post useful. Sorry for any grammar mistakes
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Dan – 17
First got into Bob in March 2009 after my dad played me a few songs. My music collection is pretty much Dylan and not a lot else! Know so many of his songs - whenever I hear one, I'm sure of all the lyrics.
My first gig, and as of yet, only gig was at Birmingham NIA, UK on April 29th 2009. Amazing! Although I wasn't completely aware of all the songs because I was only very new to his music, I still loved every second of it. Also that day I got my first Dylan album which was 'Time Out of Mind' which is my favourite Dylan album and also has my favourite song on it - 'Not Dark Yet'. I'm also very fond of 'Together Through Life'
I owe all of this to my Dad for introducing me to Bob. He's my musical God! My opinion, and not very many of my friends share this - because they aren't Dylan fans, is that Bob Dylan is the greatest musician and songwriter to have ever lived!
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I'm 20 and I've seen Bob live 6 times with the first one being in 2006 when I was 15.
I posted this in an earlier thread about discovering Bob:
When we got our first computer, around 1995, it came with a CD-ROM with a bunch of movie/music clips on it. After my mom taught me how to use the computer and put in CD-ROMs, I put this particular one in. It had Bob singing "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" from DLB. And for some reason I liked it. I was about 5 at the time.
Being a huge Dylan fan, my dad was impressed that I liked this clip. He showed me his collection of Dylan cassette tapes and I listened to them a lot. I was obsessed with trains, so my favorite song became the one that talked about the "train line" and the "railroad men." (Stuck Inside of Mobile). (He also showed me the Hard to Handle video. The only Dylan I had ever seen was the clip from DLB, so 80's Bob kinda scared me, with the loud band and backup singers, )
Then, for my 7th birthday, (November of '97) my dad got me Time Out of Mind. I listened to it a lot, and loved Love Sick.
But then, shortly afterward, I lost interest. I don't know why for sure. My dad played me Love and Theft when it came out a few years later, but I never really got re-interested.
That changed around Christmas 2004. I found the Essential Bob Dylan, and for some reason played it. I remember listening to it with a friend and us both making fun of and laughing at his voice. But after that, I started enjoying the songs. I started remembering the songs I had heard when I was a kid.
After I became fully engrossed in the Essential Bob Dylan, and when I got a Rhapsody and then an iTunes account on the computer, I started getting more and more songs. And from there it's grown into Bob Dylan being my absolute favorite artist. I've seen him 6 times live, and I have more than a 1000 Dylan tracks on my iPod. I have probably 50 songs memorized that I can perform on guitar or piano, and I've even started to collect and listen to his albums on vinyl.
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21 (just recently!)
M/USA
Been a member here since, what, '06? So give or take a year or two before that, is when I went off the deep-end and became a huge Dylan fan. Used to listen to music in the shower, and I remember taking Blood on the Tracks from my dad's car. 'Simple Twist of Fate' IMMEDIATELY resonated with me, for some reason. The echoes of his vocals were just awesome.
I'm guessing I was around 13 or 14 when this happened. My dad had been pushing me to listen to him for years, because he knew I would like him. After listening to BoTT, I went and got some more cd's from my dad - including the Greatest Hits sets. I was hooked. Went through all his back albums, and I'll be damned, but I recognized and knew more than half of the songs. When I was young and growing up, the Beatles and Dylan were the soundtracks of my life. I just never really knew it....
Been to 4 shows so far, hoping to make it 5 within the near future.
Though i remember being 15 and hearing "Working Man blues" on the radio and remember digging it. I never knew who it was and was suprissed to hear such an old song on the radio. (turns out it was brand spanking new) So i'm sure there could be kids who listen to radio and find him that way never hearing of the 60s.
Yet i met a 21 year old waitress the other night who saw my dylan shirt and we sparked a conversation and she went to the same concert i did and enjoyed his newer material more than the other. So there is hope. IT's just that the gooffy "hippster" kids like his protest stuff, who happen to just like indie music (which stealls from the 60s) is such a larger group that maybe it puts it off.
I don't know. bobs music is like having a conversation with yourself. it's refreshing, real, truthful, vast, and inspiring in any kind of way. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi Barry. I'm Angus, 17, from Scotland. I shall be seeing Bob for the 3rd time in a little over 2 years on the 17th of June.
In 2007 I hear 'All Along The Watchtower' on the radio and it was like I'd struck some ancient vein of truth that had been forgotten by the world. The thing about Dylan that most alluring to me was that I'd never heard of him before, not even just his name in passing. My dad had always played the Beatles and the Stones around the house and in the car ect so I was pretty well of them, but I seemed to have managed to avoid Dylan up until that point. Then, as is the case for most of my generation, the next step to find out more was youtube - a step that is no longer available thanks to Sony's ill-devised policy. I was entranced by a video Mr. Tambourine man at Newport. Then I watched Like A Rolling Stone live 1966 and the world forever looked and sounded different. I had never heard anything remotely like it. As Bruce Springsteen said, it was like a door being blown open in my mind. These songs still sounded relevant to me as a 15 year old, they sounded fresh and honest.
So I then got a greatest hits compilation for Christmas and proceeded to buy, and wear out, the 60s and 70s albums. At some point I must have found, via google, expecting rain and with it bootlegs. With this, and a copy of 'Time Out Of Mind' that I got on sale for £2, I was exposed to a new Dylan sound, the sound of the NET. What may be a surprise to some is that the sound of a 70 year old Dylan still sounded as relevant to me as a 16 year old as the 25 year old Dylan not following leaders and watching parking meters. Modern Day Dylan still has the same energy which young fans can connect with. he still has that unstoppable drive and that rebellious rock and roll sound which endears him to the youth. So with that, I find myself about to embark on a costly journey by plane to Cork to see Bob live for the third time.
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23/M/Connecticut, USA
It's not in me right now to tell you what Bob means to me.
But this is what I can tell you: there are 39 artists in total on my IPod currently. I average about five records per artist. But when it comes to Dylan, I have 37 official records and 57 unofficial bootlegs. I've been to 7 Dylan concerts since 2008. This is a simple way to indicate to you how important Dylan's work is to me without having to sit down and try and unravel my feelings about the work.
Dylan is with me today based on the strength of his most recent work. In particular, Time Out of Mind, Love & Theft, and Modern Times. The early records I discovered later. I feel strongly people know this.
Bob Dylan's recent work is to me as vital as his earliest. Many people who grew up with Dylan like to disparage his later work. But it will not be their generation who have the final say in deciding Dylan's artistic worth; it will be mine. It will be the generation after mine, those who have the advantage of distance and the fairness distance affords.
As well, Dylan has almost single-handedly expanded my musical horizons by covering other artists in the studio and in his live performances. In doing so, he has saved the work and lives of dozens of other artists by passing them on to me and other young people like me. Without Dylan, I would not know about Blind Willie McTell, Buddy Holly, Hank Williams, Howlin' Wolf, John Coltrane, John Lee Hooker, Leonard Cohen, Levon Helm, Elvis Presley, Fats Domino, Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, Elizabeth Cotton, Ralph Stanley.
He is as vital today as he was yesterday. My hunch is he will be even more important tomorrow.
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I'm 26 (does that count as "young" still?) and i always thought dylan's comments about his young fan base were interesting. i've been a fan for 10 years now and will soon be attending my tenth and eleventh dylan concerts.
i've seen and met other young dylan fans and while i think it's safe to say that probably most people my age or younger still get into dylan through his earlier material, there is something very refreshing about people only discovering his music now and perhaps not being aware that, you know, it's not "cool" to like New Morning or Slow Train Coming. I mean, it's great that there's such a strong and widespread Dylan community, most of which are wonderful and generous people, but I do think dylan also lends itself to fans becoming quite elitist and snobbish about his music. it's just that there is so much to know, obviously one thinks it's not enough for someone to only know the albums from the 60s. but the next step is to say that it's not enough just knowing the studio albums. i've seen younger people being patronised by older dylan fans, i myself have been patronised numerous times and it's just unnecessary. for what this younger generation might lack in experience, in memories of dylan through the decades, they make up for with the enthusiasm of having the opportunity to discover it all at once, to delve into the wealth of his material.
but at the same time, of course the recent albums hold a dear place in my heart. love & theft was the first album i was looking forward to being released and it was so exciting. when modern times came out, my friend and i greeted it with the same glee that people perhaps greeted desire with. don't get me wrong, i'm not the biggest fan of rollin & tumblin or the levee's gonna break, but i don't get to see enough dylan concerts that i would ever feel in a position to complain about it. (on the other hand, i will never grow tired of the songs from love&theft.)
what i'm trying to say here is that i think if you become a dylan fan post 2000, then you know the basic facts of his career. you know all about the twists and turns, the good albums, the bad albums. At some point, one might even get dangerously close to calling him a living legend. But then he goes and does a Victoria's Secret commercial or records a christmas album and hopefully makes everyone realise that he's not perfect and not boring yet.
i'm not sure if this makes any sense, but i think it's really important to have young fans that not only receive the recent albums with the enthusiasm they deserve (well.. personally, I wasn't that big on Together Through Life apart from a few wonderful songs), but also to shake up the fan community and bring in some fresh opinions.
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I'm an 18year old lad from north england and have been into bobs music since i was fifteen which was weird because nobody apart from one of my teachers actually listen to him and appreciated what bob does like i do, it was strange to walk around a scum infested run down chav school listening to 'positively 4th street' and 'forever young' id thought id found a peice of truth or an answer to issues and of course i had.
I remember when the bootleg series 8 came out it was and i got a free download of 'dreamin of you' and laughed because of the first line, it is a great but what i find even more greater is together through life theres only 1track on that i dislike but i love all the rest, the productions great, its arranged/mix great, and bob voice is amazing.
I guess its the bluntness that attracts me to his music i used to get told im too much of a 'say it how it is c.nt' by friends and relatives so its only natural to want similar music.
I still get took back to the feelings ect from those days almost instantly when i hear them tunes and i hope it never stops doing that because its magical.
Also im amazed how many young folks listen to bob on here as i aint met any round my way or many old for that matter.
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I'm 18, from New England. I took a Film as Text class in high school. The second film we watched was I'm Not There. At first, I rather hated it. At that point I had always hated surreality and philosophy; it made me feel uncomfortable. I tended to just shove it under the rug and try to forget about it.
I got home after we finished it and couldn't explain to my parents how weird it was, so I rented it to show them what the heck I was takling about. This time, I was attempting to explain to them what was going on, so it started to make more sense to me and I paid more attention.
As I am a wikipedia nut, I looked Bob up there. Read a bit about him. Then I watched the movie again and it totally clicked. All of a sudden it was amazing. I realized it wasn't just 'weird', it was artistic. It revolutionized my idea of art. Before then I viewed it as something technical you worked at to get perfect, not that much more. But then I listened to Bob and realized it was all about the Muse. I started reading and writing poetry. I started drawing again. I finally broke away from the residuals of my nervous breakdown. It changed my life. Not to be cliche but Bob is my hero and my inspiration.
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I'm 17 and from Germany. I also got into Dylan through the movie "I'm not there". I like art films and biopics so I thought I'd like the film though I knew very little about Dylan. I knew he wrote "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "Quinn the Eskimo", but I had never consciously heard him perform any of his songs himself. I don't think I even knew what he looked like.
The movie was fantastic. There were lots of great songs in it and the one that stuck with me was "Ballad of a Thin Man".
A couple of weeks later I bought the album "Highway 61 Revisited" for a cheap price while browsing through the CD's in a multimedia store. I wasn't blown away by the music at first. It was very blues-heavy and I didn't like that at the time.
The second album I listened to was "Desire". One day I was bored and looked through my dad's record collection and found this album. He wasn't a big Dylan fan and bought the album back in the seventies because he really liked the single "Hurricane". It's his only Dylan album. With this record I really started to get into Dylan's music. Especially emotional melodic songs like "Sara" connected with me.
Maybe his songs are easy to relate to because they are often rather abstract. "Ballad of a Thin Man" doesn't make a whole lot of sense when you look at it in a literal way. But certain phrases and combinations of words remind you of feelings you once had. I think a whole lot of his songs are really not about anything in particular but merely a series of words or sentences inspired by certain feelings. His song "Desolation Row" changed the way I thought about poetry. I had never really "got" abstract poetry before, but now I did.
After I started listening to Dylan I also started to play the guitar. The first song I tried was "One More Cup of Coffee". It took me a while to get started because I taught myself how to do it. I gradually became better by pretty much only playing Dylan's songs (with help from the great chord/tab site dylanchords.info). By now I can even play more complicated songs like "Abandoned Love", "It's Alright, Ma" and "Buckets of Rain" on the guitar, too. A year and a half ago I could barely play "Knocking On Heaven's Door". Now I also play harmonica while playing his songs. I started to write and record my own songs about half a year ago as well.
I have found that singing his songs can be quite therapeutic. When I'm angry after a rough day at school I can scream out "Positively 4th Street". When I'm depressed I can play "Idiot Wind". When I'm melancholic I can play "Sign on the Window" on the piano (yeah, I taught myself that as well. I can only play chords though). When I'm feeling reflective "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue". You get the idea.
Anyway, I'm going to see Dylan live in Hamburg this June. And I'm really looking forward to it. What's also great about Dylan is that he always keeps on changing his songs. That way it stays interesting and it inspires you to do the same when you cover his songs.
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I'm 18, got into Dylan when I was 12. Saw him live for the first time when I was 13. Seen him 6 more times since
When I got into Bob during my first years of secondary school it was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. I stopped hanging out with the "cool" kids at school, stopped trying to be popular and just to be myself. I look now at the people I used to hang out with and I'm so glad I got out of there and carved my own identity as the 'girl obsessed with that old siger dude'. A few years down the line and some of my friends have also got into Bob. I go there first though, so they all look to me to lend them CDs and to give my opinions, I've been waiting so long for friends who also liked Dylan, so glad the time has finally come!
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Hi, I'm 16, female, from Poland.
I've been listening to Dylan's music for about 1,5 year now.
This is how it started: I am generally interested in the sixties, music, fashion, movies etc. and as I was reading about all that on the internet his name would appear often, so once I just typed it into Youtube - I would do so with many other artists. First video i saw was Dylan singing Like a Rolling Stone on Newport Festival. I had no idea what was the song about, what was going on, but it did somehow catch me.
I ofen realise how lucky I was - after all nobody from my family or friends actually knew Dylan's works (and, less obvious, this video must have been taken down now by sony). It was only after that I started to notice that you can sometimes hear him played in some radio stations. He is also mentioned in my Polish literature book and English book. It also turned out my English teacher liked him.
Because of Dylan... Because of Dylan I get to know other's work - just to mention Donovan, some beat generation poets, Joan Baez, Woody Guthrie, The Band. I may have know the hippie's sixties and the Beatles sixties before - but that was something new. I followed a path of some kind that has brought me to Walt Whitman on one side playing harmonica on the other.
I've read about the new generation of young fans - I don't know whether I am the kind you write about, probably not - I've never been to his concert, but rather for practical reasons - he has only been to Poland twice and I don't find his concerts attractive enought to go to another country. I also find the sixties music of Dylan more interesting beacause of the whole background and amazing stories, but I don't find it "better" than music from last albums.
I read expecting rain discussions from time to time and would be glad if you find my post useful. Sorry for any grammar mistakes
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Dan – 17
First got into Bob in March 2009 after my dad played me a few songs. My music collection is pretty much Dylan and not a lot else! Know so many of his songs - whenever I hear one, I'm sure of all the lyrics.
My first gig, and as of yet, only gig was at Birmingham NIA, UK on April 29th 2009. Amazing! Although I wasn't completely aware of all the songs because I was only very new to his music, I still loved every second of it. Also that day I got my first Dylan album which was 'Time Out of Mind' which is my favourite Dylan album and also has my favourite song on it - 'Not Dark Yet'. I'm also very fond of 'Together Through Life'
I owe all of this to my Dad for introducing me to Bob. He's my musical God! My opinion, and not very many of my friends share this - because they aren't Dylan fans, is that Bob Dylan is the greatest musician and songwriter to have ever lived!
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I'm 20 and I've seen Bob live 6 times with the first one being in 2006 when I was 15.
I posted this in an earlier thread about discovering Bob:
When we got our first computer, around 1995, it came with a CD-ROM with a bunch of movie/music clips on it. After my mom taught me how to use the computer and put in CD-ROMs, I put this particular one in. It had Bob singing "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" from DLB. And for some reason I liked it. I was about 5 at the time.
Being a huge Dylan fan, my dad was impressed that I liked this clip. He showed me his collection of Dylan cassette tapes and I listened to them a lot. I was obsessed with trains, so my favorite song became the one that talked about the "train line" and the "railroad men." (Stuck Inside of Mobile). (He also showed me the Hard to Handle video. The only Dylan I had ever seen was the clip from DLB, so 80's Bob kinda scared me, with the loud band and backup singers, )
Then, for my 7th birthday, (November of '97) my dad got me Time Out of Mind. I listened to it a lot, and loved Love Sick.
But then, shortly afterward, I lost interest. I don't know why for sure. My dad played me Love and Theft when it came out a few years later, but I never really got re-interested.
That changed around Christmas 2004. I found the Essential Bob Dylan, and for some reason played it. I remember listening to it with a friend and us both making fun of and laughing at his voice. But after that, I started enjoying the songs. I started remembering the songs I had heard when I was a kid.
After I became fully engrossed in the Essential Bob Dylan, and when I got a Rhapsody and then an iTunes account on the computer, I started getting more and more songs. And from there it's grown into Bob Dylan being my absolute favorite artist. I've seen him 6 times live, and I have more than a 1000 Dylan tracks on my iPod. I have probably 50 songs memorized that I can perform on guitar or piano, and I've even started to collect and listen to his albums on vinyl.
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21 (just recently!)
M/USA
Been a member here since, what, '06? So give or take a year or two before that, is when I went off the deep-end and became a huge Dylan fan. Used to listen to music in the shower, and I remember taking Blood on the Tracks from my dad's car. 'Simple Twist of Fate' IMMEDIATELY resonated with me, for some reason. The echoes of his vocals were just awesome.
I'm guessing I was around 13 or 14 when this happened. My dad had been pushing me to listen to him for years, because he knew I would like him. After listening to BoTT, I went and got some more cd's from my dad - including the Greatest Hits sets. I was hooked. Went through all his back albums, and I'll be damned, but I recognized and knew more than half of the songs. When I was young and growing up, the Beatles and Dylan were the soundtracks of my life. I just never really knew it....
Been to 4 shows so far, hoping to make it 5 within the near future.