A Short Note On Bob Dylan

Millions of people have been listening to Bob Dylan for very many decades. Since not long after the middle of the last century in fact. However, despite the Traveling Wilburies and the Concert for Bangla Desh, I’ve never been one of them. Never bought into the whole Bob Dylan thing. I remember a guy I worked with in Glasgow telling me about seeing him in concert; the Bobster came on, either bored or really badly needing to take a pish, played all his songs at three hundred miles an hour, a few seconds and no conversation between each one, and then he hoofed it for the exit and never returned. The guy was forgiving of this, as people seem to be when they see Bob on a bad night. He has that much of a thing about him. Me, I thought it was kind of mental to want to listen to that and went back to my Beatles albums, safe in the knowledge that they would never disappoint me in concert.
 
This was all to change one warm and bright summer’s evening last July. It had been a humid afternoon, and as the sun sank to the west of the eastern European sky, the early evening insects buzzed and swooped and bit, forcing the kids indoors. We were having dinner with our friends Jon and Emma, and as the wine flowed, the conversation turned to the fact that Jon could play the guitar and the mandolin, that I could strum a guitar and play the piano, and that maybe we should form a band. The Mabel Rankin Beat Quartet was born. (The quartet, I should add, is completed by two invisible llamas called Brian, not the women.) We agreed to perform at the embassy club ten days later, and then rushed to put together a set of some description. Like all fledging superstar beat combos, we started with cover versions, and Jon fatefully introduced a couple of Bob Dylan songs.
 
Time passed. The band stayed together – in fact, the Mabel Rankin Beat Quartet debut album, The Year Of The Kitchen, will be released later this summer – although so far there has only been one more sell-out gig and we’re still some way short of a stadium tour. Crucially however, at some point in the autumn I said to Jon, ‘Wouldn’t mind hearing those Bob Dylan songs.’
 
I was hooked, and the die had been cast. At Christmas I received my first two Dylan albums and have since bought eight more. Only thirty-four more to collect. Bob has become the fifth member of our family, a constant presence on the cd player. However, like introducing a new child at this late stage, or an unwanted pet like a warthog or a jellyfish, this has not proven popular with the other three members of the family. Every new album purchase is greeted with groans and cries of despair – and we haven’t even got close to the low point albums of the 80’s yet.
 
Every evening as we sit down to dinner, there’s a dash to the cd player to be the one who gets to choose the music. Usually some blood is spilled. Brawn normally wins out – something I’ll have in my favour for a few years yet – although sometimes craft and cunning is triumphant. Last week One of Two set up a gun emplacement, put on her goggles, and sat behind her 7.62 mm GAU-17 gatling gun. I had to back off, and that night, as we ate our spaghetti hoops and popcorn, we listened to Natasha Bedingfield.
 
(Stumbled across Natasha Bedingfield’s ‘I Wanna Have Your Babies’ video the other day… Oh my God! Couldn’t somebody have said? Eventually, I suppose, it was inevitable that someone would surpass the last thirty seconds of The Girl Is Mine for toe-curling embarrassment.)
 
A few weeks ago, while perusing Bob Dylan.com, I discovered his latest tour dates. Well, I said to the family a few minutes later, we’ve been meaning to go to Berlin anyway. Despite much cajoling, while they have all agreed quite happily to hop on a train to the German capital in the first week in May, I could persuade none of them that they wanted to come with me and spend a Thursday evening watching Bob. Not even if he plays his songs really quickly and then dashes off to the toilet.
 
So, Bob is probably here to stay, although I did hear TPCKAM on the phone the other night trying to have me booked into the Betty Ford clinic. When that failed she searched for the nearest branch of Bob Dylan Anonymous, but that turned out to be in Novosibirsk. I expect, as with all unreasonable obsessions, the madness will fade with time, and we can go back to listening to Matt Munro and Perry Como.
 
For now, Bob is King, except when the mujahaddin kids get to the heavy artillery before me, and bar my way to the cd player. And on those dark and grim evenings, we have to listen to Girls Aloud, Avril and JoJo.