MO' BOB

At risk of going irredeemably retro, the subject of Bob Dylan has come up again. London Steve writes…

“I think we all have to accept by now that there's no way we can prevent all those songs we know and love being used in TV ads. But the real pisser is when they condense and conjoin songs so that the original verse/chorus structure is corrupted. Case in point is the new ad over here for the Co-op's fair-trade initiatives, which uses Bob's original Blowin' In The Wind. I guess Dylan thought this was a worthwhile cause, but I wonder if he knows what they've done to his song. The verse starts off, as it should, with "How many roads can a man walk down before you call him a man?/How many seas must a white dove sail before she sleeps in the sand?" All well and good, but then some stupid fucker has decided that "cannonballs fly until they're forever banned" doesn't fit the ad's sentiments - so they've arbitrarily stuck in the "mountain exist... until it is washed to the sea" line as the last line in this verse. So it doesn't rhyme, makes no sense and pisses the hell out of every Dylan fan who hears it.”

But, in another email, Steve wonders “I'm also not sure that Dylan gives a damn one way or the other (after all, he was happy to appear in that Victoria's Secret ad, though maybe the lure there was the scantily clad woman).”

In addition, when I noted on Face Book that “The worst thing about hard times is that they can demand undignified solutions.” Valerie sent us a 1994 clip of Bob performing Dignity (in a polka dot shirt.) Click here.