I Never Meant To Be So Bad To You

sorry sorry for my long absence. i have been very busy of late, but that is basically over from now till thanksgiving time. lovely :)

I have (once again) been thinking about music. I love the music of today. but almost equally I love the old songs. everything from "learning to fly" to "yours is no disgrace", "heat of the moment", "carry on wayward son", "don't stop believing"...the list goes on :) all of these songs are what made the music of today what it is. would Steve Earle have become what he is without Tom Petty? but it goes even farther back than that. my main focus here is on Bob Dylan, the man who almost single handedly revolutionized popular music. not Dylan alone, but the folk music community of the early sixties. what did they originate, you ask? Woody Guthrie was really the guy who started it all. by all I mean the idea that you could write your own songs, instead of taking them from a song factory...as many mainstream artists do, especially in country and pop music. the idea that you could make it with only a guitar and harmonica, when everyone else had their full bands. understand, he didn't invent these principles, but he was the one who brought them into the mainstream.

so, you say, he started people songwriting. so what? well, this had a great influence on the greatest popular songwriter of all time, Bob Dylan. once again, so what? what did Dylan do that was so incredible? have you ever loved the music of Crosby Stills and Nash? of Tom Petty, or the more modern people like Wilco and Ryan Adams? their style only exists because of Bob Dylan. let me explain. in California in 1964 there were three young men who went to see a movie called "a hard day's night", starring the Beatles. these three were Roger McGuinn, Gene Clark and David Crosby. they were getting ready to start a band. seeing that movie made them fall in love with the Rickenbacker sound that would later become their signature when they became the Byrds. so as you can see, half of their inspiration was from the Beatles. where did they get the rest of it? why, from Dylan, of course. if you'll look at their history, Many of their biggest hits were Dylan songs, such as "mr tambourine man" and "my back pages". these folk musicians, who came to gether with the Beatles and Dylan as their north star, were the band who invented country rock.

so that was a brief history of why Dylan is so cool...thanks for reading if you read it all :)
oh BTW, Bob Dylan also had a big influence on the greatest rock band of all time, U2.
so think about that, Will

Good Day...