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Light On Light Through

You'll hear a little of this and lot of that on Light On Light Through - my reviews of great television series and movies, my interviews with authors and creative media people and their interviews of me, my media theory and political commentary, thoughts about my favorite cars and food and space travel, discussions of my music, and a few of my readings from my science fiction stories. In the first years, starting in 2006, I put up a new episode at least once a month.  More recently, it became more or less often than once a month, usually less often.  But in the Summer of 2020, I began getting more in the mood to podcast, and on 17 October 2023, I began publishing a new episode of the podcast every Tuesday at 12:01 pm -- a minute after Noon (New York time).  - Paul Levinson 

24 October 2021: Interview about Light On Light Through podcast

26 December 2023: Chuck Todd interviews Paul Levinson about Alternate Realities on The Chuck Toddcast  

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Dylan

Sep 11, 2007


I continue to be fascinated - haunted, even - by Martin Scorsese's 2005 film about Bob Dylan, No Direction Home.  I'd seen large pieces of it before, but saw the whole movie for the first time just a few nights ago.

Dylan's performance of "With God On Our Side" at the Newport Folk Festival with Joan Baez in the summer of 1963 is the high point of the movie.  His voice never sounded better - Joan Baez's voice has always sounded great.  She takes him by the hand out on stage, and the two waifs open up with what is probably the most powerful anti-war song ever written - we all go to war irrationally thinking and claiming God's on our side.  This is exactly what Mike Huckabee said in defense of staying the course in Iraq, when Ron Paul spoke out in last week's debate about the war being wrong, strategically, as well as unconstitutional.  Dylan's lyrics are, sadly, as searingly relevant today as in 1963.

But by 1964, Dylan was singing another kind of song at the Newport Festival - "Mr. Tambourine Man".  This was the pivotal transitional song. The lyrics are sublime, but they never had much relevance to any current event.  The Newport crowd applauded, willing to give Dylan the benefit of the doubt.  He was, after all, still acoustic, and still sincere.

But Dylan was singing "Like A Rolling Stone" in 1965 in Newport, with electric backing.  In just two years, he had morphed from the most powerful, splendid, social critic ever known in folk song to a caustic, psychedelic commentator on the human condition.  Someone who even, for the first time, it seemed, may even have been sarcastic and condescending to his audience. For all of that, he got booed...

I've always loved both of Dylan's phases.  But given the state of the world today, I miss the Dylan who sang up there with Joan Baez, and still wonder at the transformation.  The assassination of JFK, Dylan's wanting some of the fame enjoyed by the Beatles, just needing to move on to other things - these were no doubt  important factors.  But, somehow, insufficient, either singly or in concert, to explain just what happened to Dylan....


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