The Pop Corporation

Over at the Wall Street Journal, Bob Dylan has been talking about what he doesn’t like. You can pretty much imagine the kinds of things he doesn’t like. He’s earned the right to be an old curmudgeon and, if we’re being truthful here, it’s not like he wasn’t a young curmudgeon too. He’s always been a bit vague and irritated by everything – it’s one of the reasons we like him.

That, and he’s a massive charlatan. Hates selling out but appears in Victoria’s Secret knicker adverts? C’mon. It’s the perfect troll and he’s been trolling everyone long before someone yelled “JUDAS!” at him because he’d bought an electric guitar.

So, in a bid to be fair to you dear reader, here’s a list of things he likes and then you can decide whether you want to read more about it or not. We don’t want to waste your time too much. We’re not a publication that times the amount of time a reader spend on an article so we can work a metric out for what we should write about in the future, LIKE SOME PUBLICATIONS DO.

• Coronation Street
• Jack White
• Wu Tang Clan
• The Oasis Brothers
• Metallica
• Rag N Bone Man
• Julian Casablancas
• Someone called Celeste
• Nick Cave
• Leonard Cohen
• Eminen
• Royal Blood
• Alex Turner
• Someone else called Zac Deputy
• Old episodes of The Twilight Zone
• Grace Potter
• The Klaxons
• Boxing to stay in shape
• Zappa
• The idea of opium
• Dunkin’ Donuts

Righto, let’s look at that list then. Firstly, Coronation Street. It’s fun to think about Bob Dylan listening to Blanche and Norris go at each other, while Audrey Roberts pulls her face in the Rovers Return. And then, of course, him off to the gym to do some boxing with his little moustache.

Moaning about streaming first, Dylan said: “Everything’s too easy. Just one stroke of the ring finger, middle finger, one little click, that’s all it takes. We’ve dropped the coin right into the slot. We’re pill poppers, cube heads and day trippers, hanging in, hanging out, gobbling blue devils, black mollies, anything we can get our hands on. Not to mention the nose candy and ganga grass. It’s all too easy, too democratic. You need a solar X-ray detector just to find somebody’s heart, see if they still have one.”

“Who is going to write standards today? A rap artist? A hip-hop or rock star? A raver, a sampling expert, a pop singer? That’s music for the establishment. It’s easy listening. It just parodies real life, goes through the motions, puts on an act. A standard is on another level. It’s a role model for other songs, one in a thousand.”

See? He’s comfortingly whiny. But, ever the optimist, he added: “The Oasis Brothers, I like them both, Julian Casablanca [sic], the Klaxons, Grace Potter. I’ve seen Metallica twice. I’ve made special efforts to see Jack White and Alex Turner. Zac Deputy, I’ve discovered him lately. He’s a one man show like Ed Sheeran, but he sits down when he plays. I’m a fan of Royal Blood, Celeste, Rag and Bone Man, Wu-Tang, Eminem, Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen, anybody with a feeling for words and language, anybody whose vision parallels mine.”

Also in the interview, he confesses that he’s been binge-watching Coronation Street and old Twilight Zone shows, and always careful to avoid any television that’s “foul-smelling or evil. Nothing disgusting, nothing dog ass.”

To stay in shape, he’s sparring and spent the most of the COVID lockdown changing door panels on a ’56 Chevy, painting, and getting really into Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention’s, Freak Out! “Frank Zappa was light years ahead of his time – if there’d been any opium laying around, I probably would have been down for a while.”

And finally, in the acknowledgements of his ‘The Philosophy of Modern Song’ book, Dylan gave a shout out to Dunkin’ Donuts. Why? “They were compassionate, supportive, and they went the extra mile.”

Batshit.