Reviews Archives
May 28, 2007
Bauer's a Bore
Those of you who take a little torture with your TV dinner might be experiencing a bit of post-game letdown now that the final episode of this season's 24 has come and gone.
Paul Cella has long wanted one of us here to savage the show, believing that it perpetrates much mischief in the American moral imagination, or what's left of it. He is apalled that millions of his fellow citizens watch it weekly, unrepelled by certain of Jack's interrogation techniques, which this season included snipping off a Russian diplomat's finger with a pair of wirecutters.
July 31, 2007
Dave Matthews and the apocalypse.
A professor at Washington and Lee University by the name of Eduardo Velázquez, in his recent book A Consumer’s Guide to the Apocalypse — in my incomplete reading, a rip-roaring adventure in polemics and philosophy, bombast and humor, caricature and insight — dedicates a chapter to a careful analysis of the music and lyrics of Dave Matthews. Now for those readers over 40, Dave Matthews is the songwriter and frontman for an exceedingly successful rock band, whose albumic strategy, if you will, has largely consisted of a couple very catchy tunes supported by a mass of more complex and enterprising material, much of which is uneven but the great peaks of which have formed the soundtrack for a generation of young men and women.
December 18, 2007
The irony of Bob Dylan.
Mr. J. H. Kunstler, of the Peak Oil theory fame, reviewed Bob Dylan’s first volume of memoirs some time ago. Dylan fans (of whom I doubt this website has in abundance) will find in it some insight and interest, though I only link to it reluctantly — not least because of Kunstler’s penchant for profanity. If you don’t know or like Dylan, or are repelled by the deliberate if rare use of oaths or vulgarity in critical writing, the essay will probably just fatigue you: so I’ll offer just a couple points for your notice.
January 22, 2008
My review of Ronald L. Numbers' The Creationists (revised edition)
It has just been made accessible online on the website of the Journal of Law and Religion, which will publish the review in its forthcoming issue, vol. 23 (2007-08): 101-104. You can find the review here.
November 21, 2009
Bob Dylan wars
Andrew Ferguson of The Weekly Standard takes a run at Bob Dylan and his fans here, on the occasion of the singer’s recently-released Christmas album. He calls us fans, “the battered wives of the music industry,” and, in an even more vivid image, compares us to “Baby Huey dolls, those inflatable figures with the big red nose and the rounded bottom, weighted so that when you punch them — punch hard, punch with all your might — they bounce right back, grinning the same frozen, unchangeable grin.” This because Dylan allegedly holds his fans in such contempt and will not hesitate to dump the most awful recordings and live performances on them.
Ferguson is a facile writer with a knack for the biting dig. He certainly lands a few solid blows, and the many detesters of Dylan will undoubtedly be heartened by all his invective.
I can do no better in response to this than Sean Curnyn of Right Wing Bob. I would put heavy emphasis on the particularly unfortunate fact that Ferguson chose this album — all the royalties of which, you may recall, Dylan has announced will be given to hunger-related charities — to run the singer down for cupidity. It is also peculiar that he arraigns the man for publishing his songs “under the auspices of the particularly ruthless copyright enforcer BMI,” without ever taking a moment to notice the many Dylan tunes that have been adapted and released very successfully by other musicians. To adduce just a couple examples: Jimi Hendrix, U2 and Dave Matthews Band have all released acclaimed versions of “All Along the Watchtower”; Johnny Cash and June Carter recorded a rendition of “It Ain’t Me Babe” that may well be more famous than Dylan’s original; and the Grateful Dead frequently played covers of Dylan tunes, often hilariously botching the complicated lyrics. A friend of mine who has seen countless Grateful Dead shows says there were times when the listener could be forgiven for thinking he mistakenly wandered into the wrong concert.
One thing we can be sure of: people will continue to love and hate Bob Dylan.