Not Quite Timely Shipping ...1:45 pm
If anyone ordered Modern Times via Amazon and didn’t receive it yet, I sympathize. I haven’t got the copy I ordered from Amazon either. The album has been broadcast repeatedly in full on XM Satellite Radio at this point. It can also be heard, for free, at this AOL link — and you don’t need to have AOL in order to access it. You might be prompted to download a new plug-in or something.
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“A Song About Clinton” ...1:08 pm
Thanks to Dana for the tip, as I hadn’t yet seen the USA Today piece that came out today. It seems every time Dylan has a new record, he talks to Edna Gundersen at that paper. It always makes for some good quotes, and how’s this for a doozy:
Dylan aims to tell a truthful story and nourish it on stage. Keeping it real doesn’t mean copping ideas from CNN or responding to the conflict du jour, which is why you won’t find an updated Masters of War on Modern Times.
“Didn’t Neil Young do that?” he jokes, referring to the rocker’s recent anti-war disc. “What more is there to say? What’s funny about the Neil record, when I heard Let’s Impeach the President, I thought it was something old that had been lying around. I said, ‘That’s crazy, he’s doing a song about Clinton?’”
Topical songs “are not my thing. I’m not good at it. Stuff you read in papers is secondhand information. My stuff is my own experience.”
It would be hard to imagine something he could say that would rile the Bush-haters more. Well — OK — I can imagine certain things, but this is almost better, because it’s so sly. Fantastic.
A lot of the other quotes in this piece echo what Bob said in Rolling Stone, almost uncannily, like he has some specific things he wants to get across in the current round of interviews. He adds to his comments about modern day recording technology:
When recording spare folk albums Good as I Been to You (1992) and World Gone Wrong (1993) in his garage, an engineer suggested he pin a microphone to each guitar string.
“It was the height of insanity,” Dylan says. “There are so many layers on records today. There are so many tracks in studios, and producers think they have to use them. This is no art form. It’s just corporate sound. Because there’s very little there, you have to dress it up with all these tracks. For me, everything has to have a purpose or it should get lost.
“The beat stuff people play, that’s as far away from real rhythm as the sun is from the moon. Those beats make people pose, but they don’t make people move or change their lives. They’re low-key and laid-back, and that’s what popular music has come to. Even metal is ponderous.”
He stops himself and chuckles.
“I hate to go on my soapbox about the recording industry. I’m sure there’s a lot of good songs getting recorded today, but I can’t hear them. I’m just hearing buzz. There’s a superficiality to it which might be successful, but people forget about it real quick and go on to the next one instantly. I don’t want to be a performer like that.”
He also, if I may say, confirms a point I’d made here in the past about his attitude to people coming at his work from various personal angles (Scorsese, Haynes, Tharp et al):
He’s only peripherally entangled in other enterprises. Todd Haynes is directing I’m Not There, a Dylan biopic with a half dozen actors portraying the bard at various stages. Twyla Tharp plumbed his catalog for Broadway-bound dance musical The Times They Are A-Changin’. He consented to both projects without much hand-wringing.
“A lot of people are very protective of what they’ve got and rightfully so,” he says. “But so much has been done to me and to my work, and it’s been exploited on such grandiose levels with no thought of me, that you get to a point where you don’t care anymore. Anything that comes your way is better than somebody taking it their way.
“I don’t care about image. I don’t have any image problem. It matters not to me which commercials or movies or TV shows they’re in or not in or how many are being sung in clubs or school plays.”
In any case, you’ll naturally want to read the whole thing.
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Pain ...11:45 am
A couple of responses to the previous post regarding Bob and baseball. Joe was amused, in a manner of speaking:
I especially found the following pretty funny: [ "Part of baseball is pain (something which Yankee fans are very familiar with, having not celebrated a World Series victory since the year 2000)." ] As a Red Sox fan, all I can say is “Take the rag from your face, now ain’t the time for your tears.” (the debacle of last weekend, or triumph in your eyes, will never dim the glorious memory of the 2004 ACLS).
Pepe responds, in part:
Excuse me, but when you talk about this sort of “pain” I want to come over there and pop you one on the noggin. … When the Yankees lose an average of 100 games a year over 10 years, or go in a deep funk and don’t win the World Series for 85-90 years, then and only then can you talk to me about baseball pain.
I’ll refrain from rubbing any more salt in baseball wounds. All in all, I guess it’s safer to stick to lighter and more agreeable subjects with my posts, like politics and religion.
…
And an unrelated tip from Justin: Dylan stars in a new ad for iPod and iTunes (and Modern Times), which you can see if you have QuickTime and click here. It’ll make you grin. I hope it gets run on TV.
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Monday, August 28, 2006
Modern Times Not Number Three of a Trilogy; Dylan a Tigers Fan? ...9:50 pm
Back when Modern Times was getting its first advance publicity, Columbia’s chairman Steve Barnett described it as the third of a trilogy, numbers one and two being Time Out Of Mind and “Love and Theft”. Not so, says Dylan, in Rolling Stone. It might be number two in a trilogy, though:
I would think more of “Love and Theft” as the beginning of a trilogy, if there’s going to be a trilogy. … If I decide I want to go back into the studio.
Back then, I speculated in various ways in this space about the “trilogy” idea, including by saying this: “Columbia may simply see it as shrewd marketing to associate this album with the previous two, because it means that stories about it, like this one, will mention all three albums.” Bob (RWB) is right again. It’s worth remembering that everything that Columbia says and does in relation to Dylan is not necessarily Dylan’s own idea. Should be obvious, but there you go. This “trilogy” concept has acquired a life of its own.
Dylan also says in RS:
Time Out Of Mind was me getting back in and fighting my way out of the corner. But by the time I made “Love and Theft”, I was out of the corner. On this record, I ain’t nowhere, you can’t find me anywhere, because I’m way gone from the corner.
That might sound kind of abstract to some, but I think if you listen to those records, it’s clear enough exactly what Bob is talking about.
Dylan also speaks in the RS article regarding notions of retirement:
I always wanted to stop when I was on top. I didn’t want to fade away. I didn’t want to be a has-been, I wanted to be somebody who’d never be forgotten. I feel that, one way or another, it’s OK now, I’ve done what I wanted for myself.
…
I see that I could stop touring at any time, but then, I don’t really feel like it right now.
…
I think I’m in my middle years now … I’ve got no retirement plans.
Hooray to that.
Another interesting tidbit in the RS interview is a sort-of answer to a question RWB asked not long ago — is Bob Dylan a Yankee fan? That was after he had made a reference to Derek Jeter on his radio show (and, after all, he did write a song about Catfish Hunter). Dylan says this when Jonathan Lethem asks him who his favorite baseball team is:
The problem with baseball teams is all the players get traded, and what your favorite team used to be — a couple of guys you really liked on the team, they’re not on the team now — and you can’t possibly make that team your favorite team. It’s like your favorite uniform. I mean … yeah … I like Detroit. Though I like Ozzie [Guillen] as a manager. And I don’t know how anybody can’t like Derek [Jeter]. I’d rather have him on my team than anybody.
So, for non-Americans or sports-phobic persons reading this, that means Dylan has named three teams that he sorta likes … this year. The Detroit Tigers get pride of place — and that shows Dylan really follows the sport, because the Tigers have been the hottest team in the Major Leagues this year, to many people’s surprise. (With the prophetic Zimmerman picking them like this, does it make them a lock for the World Series?) Spreading the love around, however, Dylan says he likes Ozzie Guillen as a manager — and he manages the Chicago White Sox. (Ozzie is nothing if not a colorful guy, by the way, as you could discern by reading his Wikipedia entry.) Finally, he again gives Derek Jeter a namecheck — and he plays shortstop for the New York Yankees. Coming out of the closet, for a moment, as a Yankee fan myself, I have to concur with Bob’s remarks about Jeter. Too often written off as a pretty boy by some Yankee haters, Jeter is one of the great character players in the game at the moment (the pretty boy plays third base, I regret to say).
So there’s good reasons for all of Dylan’s remarks about baseball, but, at bottom, isn’t he copping out? Let’s see; he was born in Minnesota. Why doesn’t he like the Minnesota Twins (who are more than merely competitive this year)? I guess you can give him a break, since that franchise only moved to Minnesota when Bob moved out (1961) and so cannot lay a claim on him as his childhood team. Still, he has a place in Minnesota now, by all accounts. He could, with integrity, claim the Twins as his own. Alternately, he could go with the Yankees, as being the team of his adopted hometown — New York. There’s also the Mets, but they also only came into being around 1961, and, well, they’re the Mets. Also, based on his picks, it seems Dylan is an American League — versus National League — kind of guy. Dylan could make a respectable case that the Yankees should be his team. He may have been born in the Midwest, but he found himself in New York City. A third defensible alternative would be to use his Malibu address to justify an affection for the Anaheim Angels (Los Angeles). Again, we’ll rule out the LA Dodgers since they’re National League. While support of the Angels is defensible, this would be the weakest argument Dylan could make. After all, he was into his thirties by the time he took up residence in Malibu. That’s no time to be coming up with new baseball loyalties.
Instead, however, Dylan dispenses with all of this, and basically says he’s a fan of the game, and of particular players and characters, as opposed to any one team. Maybe that’s a natural offshoot of his peripatetic lifestyle. And he has a point about the constant trading of players — it’s difficult to take. Still, something in me chafes at the notion of just picking different favorites year after year. Part of baseball is pain (something which Yankee fans are very familiar with, having not celebrated a World Series victory since the year 2000). Dylan is exempting himself from any of that, and I think that it ill suits a man of his integrity.
Still, I’ll give the new album a chance.
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Sunday, August 27, 2006
West Point ...5:49 pm
Dylan writes in Chronicles of his youthful ambition, at one stage, to go to West Point and make a career in the military. That was most likely sometime during Eisenhower’s presidency. His uncle, among others, disabused him of the notion, saying, “You don’t want to have to work for the government. A soldier is a housewife, a guinea pig. Go to work in the mines.”
On October 13th, 1990, Dylan played the Eisenhower Hall Theater in West Point, New York (and he played there again in October of 1994). The sixth song he played at that gig was Gotta Serve Somebody. Click here for a clip (and dig the ZZ Top opening riff).
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Friday, August 25, 2006
Those Early Reviews ...1:31 pm
Said it before, but saying it again: There are reviews of Modern Times sprouting in many locations, but I’m not big on spoilers, so all that will wait until after August 29th around here.
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Mail Call Addendum: RWB Only a “Semi-Psychopath” ...1:08 pm
From JL, this e-mail:
Subject: re your website
I think Bob is pretty clearly an entertainer first and foremost. This is why he shuns being a poster boy for political movements because it is superfluous to his art which he insists on presenting in its pure form without media and interviews and various other BS getting in the way. To try to twist his lyrics into a message that fits in line with your right wing beliefs is a desperate attempt from a semi-psychopathic Bob Dylan fan. I commend your fanship but you’re a bit off. Bob would think you’re a bit silly but he would love you anyway for buying his records.
Thanks to JL for this relatively restrained (although still insulting) missive. I actually agree with much of what he says — especially the part about Bob loving me. I’d like to single out this line, however: To try to twist his lyrics into a message that fits in line with your right wing beliefs is a desperate attempt from a semi-psychopathic Bob Dylan fan.
I naturally don’t think I do what he’s accusing me of, but perhaps, since this is his perception, he at least now knows what it’s like when a conservatively-inclined Bob Dylan fan has to read Michael Gray, or Greil Marcus, or any of a host of other highly lauded commentators on Dylan’s work. The difference, of-course, is that while my political biases are right there on the table, these other writers purport to only be dealing with what they see in Dylan’s art, when in actuality they have sharp political agendas of their own.
As I’ve explained elsewhere, and, I think, repeatedly: I don’t claim that Bob Dylan or his work is politically conservative, as such. Anyone who does look objectively at Dylan’s ouevre and his statements knows that he loathes labels, is hostile to the kinds of ideologies that some people allow themselves to be controlled by, and is almost physically allergic to party politics. This is a given, to the initiated. There were two major things I was interested in doing when I started this website: (1) Contradicting the persistent false-hood (notwithstanding all the preceding) that Dylan and his work is in fact inherently of the Left and (2) illustrating some ways in which his work could be both well appreciated and indeed applauded by those with a politically conservative mind-set (in particular in America in the time in which we live). In addition to that, obviously I also write stuff that has nothing to do with Dylan, just because I feel like it. If I quote some Dylan lines along the way, it’s not to say that Dylan takes this or that position on the issue, but only that those lines reflect off of the question at stake in a revealing way, to me.
I strongly agree with JL that “Bob is pretty clearly an entertainer first and foremost.” That being the case, I find it interesting that if you ask a person on the street — one who is not a Bob Dylan fan — who or what Bob Dylan is, you are likely to often hear that he is “an anti-war singer,” or something similar. This persistent popular impression is a disservice to Dylan on a couple of levels. First, it means he is wrongly characterized as a political commentator above all else. Second, it’s utterly inaccurate; as he has stated in so many words, and as a careful contemplation of his recorded output would reveal, he does not write “anti-war” songs at all. His way of dealing with the notion of war is by going at it on a much deeper level, and springs from the remarkable insight into human nature that grounds his songs.
So, who is responsible for this mistaken impression of Bob Dylan that lingers out there in the minds of the masses and gets regurgitated faithfully in the media on a regular basis? It’s not conservatives — I’ll tell you that much.
To the extent anyone might be surprised and prompted to think again — for themselves — by something I’ve written on this website, then I’d consider it a job well done.
Now, back into the restraints.
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Thursday, August 24, 2006
Mail Call ...4:42 pm
A few e-mails I thought I’d mention (some belated, sorry):
Justin, following up on the story about Dylan’s complaints against modern recording technology, says:
… while listening to the ‘Tell Ol’ Bill Tapes’, Bob says(to others in the studio) “if it doesn’t capture on tape, there’s nothing we can do, but it’s great out here.”
Not sure if you’ve heard them yet, but I highly recommend you download them. There are some interesting tidbits in them, as well as great versions of ‘Tell Ol’ Bill’
Indeed — I did hear that recording session, which has been making the rounds in various online download forums. And it does a show a Dylan who likes what he’s hearing in the studio but is suspicious that the finished record won’t sound the same.
The whole session is a fascinating window on what Dylan does in the studio. In fact, he comes across so well out of it, that maybe he released the tape himself — though it’s unlikely. It reminds me of some Sinatra recording sessions that you can find if you’re industrious. After hearing Sinatra work in the studio, you realize the extent to which he knew exactly what he was doing, and how he was in charge all the time. You get the same message from “Tell Ol’ Bill.”
Dylan may be looking for something spontaneous, but it doesn’t happen randomly. That seems like a contradiction, but it isn’t.
…
Fred writes about the recently published Michael Gray “Bob Dylan Encylopedia,” which he was working his way through:
While some of Gray’s analysis of Bob’s work certainly has merit, his political opinion inappropriately pollutes the work (I won’t bore you with the details, but examples are found in the entries for “Sheryl Crow” and “Charlie Daniels”). His entry for “Love and Theft” is quite good (although I disagree with several points), and it’s an example of how the book really shines in some areas. It also includes interpretations that I just think are over the top. Some of his commentary on Bob’s humanity seems unreasonably hostile. His analyses of the recordings are inconsistent, some more fleshed out than others. For example, he neglects to include “Shooting Star” as a highlight on Oh Mercy. Some bewildering: he hates the MTV Unplugged so much that he just can’t get near it and does little to objectively explain it. Oh well, that’s his loss. I get the impression that he’s not too fond of Country music either, or at least he’s not real savvy about it. Anyway this book is already outdated what with the radio show (not mentioned) and the upcoming Modern Times (not mentioned)… This is the Summer of Bob.
I haven’t yet acquired this book. Fred’s opinion about it echoes a lot of what I thought about Gray based on his previous “Song and Dance Man” opuses (opii?). He’s knowledgeable, but has axes to grind. To me he’s an example of a critic who has arguably grown to hate his subject. However, the media will continue to defer to him as the number one Dylan analyst, thanks to the mind-numbing poundage of his written work, if nothing else.
“This is the Summer of Bob” — I like that. Who could argue?
…
Rob says:
Thanks for your recent post on Bob’s Devil show. I don’t have XM and don’t get to hear the shows, so it is nice to get a rundown on the things that went on. The info about Sammy Davis Jr was a bit disturbing. Speaking of Bob and the Devil, I came across this web page. It claims that Dylan sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads. Can’t say I agree with a lot of it. It brings up his last interview in Dec 2004 where he talks about keeping a deal he made. I am not sure if I believe that a person can sell their souls to the devil. If one isn’t in Christ then they belong to the devil anyway.
Thanks, glad you enjoy the posts on the show.
The website Rob speaks of is here: BOB DYLAN: A BARGAIN WITH THE DEVIL?
See it to believe it. It has numerous factual inaccuracies, but they pale in comparison to the fundamental inanity of claiming that Bob Dylan — of all modern entertainers — is somehow in league with Beelzebub.
I think that Dylan, by virtue of the nature of his work and people’s reaction to it, tends to attract the most sensitive as well as the most rebellious souls, often in their teen years. They might be attracted to the image of protest, of radicalism, the questioning of authority and/or the expansion of one’s mind. Those things are all in Dylan’s work, to one degree or another, though not in the way conventional wisdom would have you believe. In the end, however, for those that stick with his work and make headway towards realizing what is really so different and powerful about it, the path leads nowhere so much as right back to the Bible. The very thing, in fact, which those rebellious teenage types may have rejected way back along the line. Dylan turns out to be a subversive among the subversives.
If the Devil made a deal with Dylan, it was one bad deal for the Devil.
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Welcome to Modern Times ...12:09 pm
The Middle East Media Research Insitute reports:
The Iranian news service Al-Borz, which is known to have access to sources in the Iranian government, predicted that on the first anniversary of Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s government, in late August 2006, Ahmadinejad is expected to announce what the news service called Iran’s “nuclear birth.”
…
Addendum 12:47 pm: And the NY Times today has an article on how those war-mongering Republicans think that the threat from Iran is being played down.
The consensus of the intelligence agencies is that Iran is still years away from building a nuclear weapon. Such an assessment angers some in Washington, who say that it ignores the prospect that Iran could be aided by current nuclear powers like North Korea. “When the intelligence community says Iran is 5 to 10 years away from a nuclear weapon, I ask: ‘If North Korea were to ship them a nuke tomorrow, how close would they be then?’ said Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the House of Representatives.
“The intelligence community is dedicated to predicting the least dangerous world possible,” he said.
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Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Down By The Riverside ...9:54 pm
On his show today, Dylan also recommended that everyone go on over to YouTube and look for Sister Rosetta Tharpe. “It’ll blow your mind.”
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DJ Dylan Blows His Stack ...11:48 am
Bob Dylan has cultivated a radio persona that is all about mysteriousness, insinuation, slyness, clowning and a little naughtiness. With a heavy dose of pure gentleness thrown in too (he’s studiously avoided putting anyone down).
On the XM Radio show that aired today, however, Dylan let the mask slip for a moment and came close to pounding his desk to make a point. I thought it was worth reporting on before my usual longer sketch of the show.
Firstly, Dylan played a record by George Jones and Melba Montgomery, called, “Let’s Invite Them Over,” about a couple who are in love with their best friends. Right — so that “Let’s Invite Them Over” line means just what you might suspect it means and more. It’s quite a song — both risqué and heartbreaking in its way. Dylan says it’s “country music at its best,” and after it plays, he says:
A song from the swingin’ ’60s. I don’t mean the swingin’ ’60s like Carnaby Street; I mean the swingin’ ’60s like, we have a party, and the men put all their car keys in a hat, the wives pick out a car key, they put on a Trini Lopez record, and everybody just swings.
Now, I’ve never been to a party like that myself, but I hear those kind of things happen.
Dylan’s voice then goes up several notches:
Now, I love country music, but I see what happened to it! You hear a song like this and it’s obvious, it’s about real people, and real emotions, and real problems. That’s all — that’s the country music we learned to love. Nowadays they want to sweep all the problems under the rug, and pretend they don’t exist.
Well, guess what, folks? They do exist! And if you try and sweep them under the rug, they’re just gonna pop up somewhere else. So we might as well just face it and listen to the old style country music. The real country music. You know: about drinkin’, and sleepin’ around. That’s my kind of country music! And I hope yours.
But I digress.
Wow! Digress all you want, Bob.
…
Addendum 9:30 pm: It’s been suggested I’m exaggerating by using the term “blows his stack.” Well, maybe. Everything’s relative. Dylan’s degree of animation when making the above points was on a whole other level than usual on his radio show. Maybe not a temper tantrum by anyone else’s standards, but definitely a startling moment on Theme Time Radio Hour.
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Rolling Stone ...11:25 am
Rolling Stone today has an excerpt of an interview with Bob Dylan (by Jonathan Lethem) on its website. Certainly makes interesting reading and of-course you’ll want to read it all. Here’s a couple of extracts, anyway. On writing the songs that are on Modern Times:
“I’d make this record no matter what was going on in the world,” Dylan tells me. “I wrote these songs in not a meditative state at all, but more like in a trancelike, hypnotic state. This is how I feel? Why do I feel like that? And who’s the me that feels this way? I couldn’t tell you that, either. But I know that those songs are just in my genes and I couldn’t stop them comin’ out.”
And the longer version of the quote that inspired stories in a thousand newspapers yesterday and today:
“The records I used to listen to and still love, you can’t make a record that sounds that way,” he explains.
…
“Brian Wilson, he made all his records with four tracks, but you couldn’t make his records if you had a hundred tracks today. We all like records that are played on record players, but let’s face it, those days are gon-n-n-e. You do the best you can, you fight that technology in all kinds of ways, but I don’t know anybody who’s made a record that sounds decent in the past twenty years, really. You listen to these modern records, they’re atrocious, they have sound all over them. There’s no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like — static. Even these songs probably sounded ten times better in the studio when we recorded ‘em. CDs are small. There’s no stature to it. I remember when that Napster guy came up across, it was like, ‘Everybody’s gettin’ music for free.’ I was like, ‘Well, why not? It ain’t worth nothing anyway.’”
He also has very high praise for his current touring band, with whom he also recorded the album:
“On this record I didn’t have anybody to teach. I got guys now in my band, they can whip up anything, they surprise even me.”
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Tuesday, August 22, 2006
DOGS ...9:36 pm
Early in his most recent XM Satellite Radio show Bob Dylan made what is perhaps the most radical statement (… continue reading …)
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Told You So ...2:54 pm
Back in a previous post when I was speculating that North Korea and Iran might being going in together on a nuclear test, timed around August 22nd, I ended with this:
By the same token, August 22nd may be nothing more than an opportunity for the Iranians to deliver a convoluted counter-proposal to the West on uranium enrichment, in an effort to divide their opposition and muddy the waters.
So, by shrewdly covering all the bases, RWB can boast once more: Bob is right!
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Dylan Endorses Illegal Music Downloads ...2:38 pm
From a forthcoming interview in Rolling Stone, via al-Reuters:
Noting the music industry’s complaints that illegal downloading means people are getting their music for free, he said, “Well, why not? It ain’t worth nothing anyway.”
“You listen to these modern records, they’re atrocious, they have sound all over them,” he added. “There’s no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like … static.”
As pointed out by a reader, the Drudge Report is spinning this story a little inaccurately by linking to it with the text: “Bob Dylan says modern music is worthless.”* Well, OK, he does say “it ain’t worth nothing,” but, in the snippets released he’s only criticizing the recording technology, not the artistic content. It’s nothing new for him, either. For example, in an interview (with Bono) from 1984, Dylan said:
I don’t know, they spend time getting their various songs right, but with me, I just take a song into the studio and try to rehearse it, and then record it, and then do it. It’s a little harder now though to make a good record - even if you’ve got a good song and a good band. Even if you go in and record it live, it’s not gonna sound like it used to sound, because the studios now are so modern, and overly developed, that you can take anything good and you can press it and squeeze it and squash it, and constipate it and suffocate it. You do a great performance in the studio and you listen back to it because the speakers are all so good, but, ah, no!
Today’s wire story continues:
Dylan said he does his best to fight technology, but it’s a losing battle.
“Even these songs probably sounded ten times better in the studio when we recorded ‘em. CDs are small. There’s no stature to it.”
If he thinks CD’s have no stature, how about thousands of tunes squeezed invisibly on an iPod?
I don’t think Dylan is genuinely endorsing illegal downloads, or writing off all modern recordings (he does play some on his radio show, after all). He’s just going out of his way to make a cantankerous point about something that’s been lost through recording technology. Even to my ears, old recordings seem to have an organic wholeness to them that modern recordings often seem to lack. Even when they’re recorded live, they tend to sound like they were recorded in 24 different takes and spliced together. There’s no solution to it all, but Dylan seems to like to hear himself complain about it. It’s an intangible thing, and completely contrary to what you’re supposed to believe about how much better technology is these days, so maybe it takes someone like Dylan to point it out.
…
*Addendum 5:32 pm: Not Drudge’s fault after all; that was Reuters’ own headline in at least some appearances of this story.
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