The bit that you skip #270: Bob Dylan – Things have changed
“I’ll listen to it later” is the common response we all have to classic acts when we kinda want to listen to them, but not make them a priority.
As far as I remember, I heard about Bob Dylan, but barely knew about him for the majority of my life. Sure, Blowin’ in the wind and All along the watchtower permeated through 80s and 90s tv and for a long ass time, that’s all I heard (Traveling Wilburys being the other addition). I read a lot, but music was a little harder to listen to when you didn’t own it on tape, record, or CD.
Come the era of file sharing and public libraries carrying albums, and some gaps in my discography started to fill out. Thanks to Vanilla Sky I ended up buying The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan and I loved it. I thought about blind buying Blonde on Blonde, but never got around to it.
While living on Sheffield, I remember plenty of musicians raving about his entire discography, but mostly about the first decade. So I made it a point in the summer of 2009 to stop dawdling and listen to his albums. Blonde on Blonde and Nashville Skyline were keepers.
Then in the winter of 2015 I went to see my brother, who lives in Arkansas. We drove everywhere and saw a few of the sights. We were doing some late night shopping at a supermarket and the Christmas playlist had Dylan’s Must Be Santa.
I thought it was a fucking hoot, and I actually love the song, as cheesy as it is. The video is even better and I wish more Christmas videos were this chaotic. His knowing nod to Santa at the end of the video always draws a guffaw from me.
But let’s jump back in time to today’s subject. Things have changed was the lead single for the soundtrack for Curtis Hanson’s massively underrated flick Wonder Boys. An adaptation of Michael Chabon’s 1995 novel, the film failed at the box-office, but got massive kudos from critics and the few people who watched it. I love the movie and Dylan’s performance at the Academy Awards made me want to listen more to his music, hence my slow but steady quest to fill out any gaps in the collection.
Dylan’s gravely delivery meditates so much on his own career and the parallels to Michael Douglas’ writer’s block dilemma that it’s impossible to split both entities. It’s now a symbiotic relationship. Go listen to the song and watch the movie!
-Sam J. Valdés López
#BobDylan #CurtisHanson #MichaelChabon #thingsHaveChanged #WonderBoys
