As someone who never really got 70′s Dylan, this comment intrigued me. I tracked down “New Pony” on YouTube and listened. Yes, it’s a lightweight song, just standard barroom blues rock fare, but it did rock a little. Besides, it’s not as if Dylan never does that sort of thing.

My wife loves 70′s Dylan. Her favorite album is Desire. I told her that to me 70′s Dylan is basically wry commentary on life and love. She said (correctly… I’ve always used the word “wry” to mean “pithy,” when what it actually it means is more like “ironic” or “biting,” or perhaps even “abstrusquiescence”) that “wry” was too strong a word, and that she liked Dylan mostly for his narrative quality.

I am a huge mark for 60′s Dylan. But there are few artists that I enjoy for the entirety of their careers. Had Dylan remained 60′s Dylan forever, he would have become boring and sucked. Instead, he changed into something that didn’t really grab my fancy. In my eyes, he was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t.

A good example of what I don’t get about Dylan is “Tangled Up in Blue.” To me it’s a nice song, not a whole lot more. What elevates it to true art is something that escapes me.

But then, I love The Smiths, and at least half their stuff is, by any objective standard, ridiculous. It’s all part of life’s rich pageant, I suppose.